Noam and I started by going over some of the chess homework he had from yesterday by doing chess problems in the Chess School 1a book. Sasha, Noam's chess teacher, who is Russian, said that this book is like the ABC's in Russia, every kid carries one around and knows it by heart. Although the problems were pretty straight forward, Noam still seems to get them quite quickly and he displays a level of confidence that I don't see him having in other areas.

Before starting lessons for the day I had him transcribe his notes from the other day into his notebook because he hadn't had it with him that day. I also asked to him to pay special attention to doing it well and to take his time. I was quite surprised that he was able to transcribe so well when he puts his mind to it because normally his handwriting is quite atrocious.

After that Noam chose to do science experiments from his some of the books we took out from the library. One thing we looked at was friction. We tried sliding around on the wood floor with our socks on and then with our rubber soled running shoes. Then we read the description of why the two different materials produced differing amounts of friction but I'm not really sure that Noam understood or was all that interested by this point.

We then moved on to looking at money and all the different ways in which one can tell counterfeit bills from real bills. Noam told me that he had been given two counterfeit 5 dollar bills once as change but that he didn't know until he tried spending it at the next store. It would have been interesting to still have one of those bills so we could have compared it to a real 5 dollar bill to see the differences but he didn't have them any longer.

Noam reminded me that to remain in good emotional contact with those close to you it was important to hug, kiss, squeeze and otherwise touch them for at least 5 minutes a day. I thought that it was so sweet that you actually requested this! So we did just that, after which he again gave me a massage. We also went for a run to the library (and picked up some strawberries after) and raced back. When we got back he wanted to wrestle so we did that too. And by that time it was time to head off to his CAMH psychological assessment feedback appointment.