A Day in the Life, Part 2

Wednesday was a fairly typical day, except that Robot Boy’s assignments were a little lighter than usual. (I had to juggle some portions of my lesson plan last week, and he ended up with a little less to do this week than usual.) However, one day a week, we aim to spend most of the day doing the “special stuff.” We inaugurated this approach about three years ago, starting each week with Art & Music Mondays. It went over so well that we’ve used some version of it every year since. The day of the week and the specific subjects we save for that day vary, but the basic idea has stuck.

This year, our day has turned out to be Thursday. We found that not doing a full day of regular academic stuff on Monday made us feel like we were losing momentum going into each week. So, we now plan our chemistry labs, drawing lessons and rhetoric—in addition to one or two of the other “together” projects for that week—for Thursdays.

We had such a good day yesterday that I decided I wanted to share it.

Both kids worked until about 10:00 on their usual morning subjects. Moonheart finally made contact with her chemistry instructor and did the oral quiz. She did really well and got a pep talk from the teacher encouraging her to go ahead and try the honors track assignments. Robot Boy did a math lesson and put a lot of energy into thinking up reasons to stall doing his science reading and summary until the afternoon.

By the time Moonheart was ready to take the guinea pigs out for their patio play time, I had gathered all the materials for the day's chemistry lab. We all moved out onto the patio and got ready to blow things up . . . I mean “do science.”


Yesterday's experiments were about combustion gases. We spent about 90 minutes playing with fire: scorching things to see the carbon, trapping carbon dioxide in a jar and using limewater to test for its presence, burning sulfur, testing for sulfur dioxide, learning about the greenhouse effect and acid rain. All went smoothly, and both kids had a great time.

We cleaned up and put away the equipment, then took a break for lunch before reconvening at about 1:00 for art at the kitchen table. Moonheart produced some really lovely pastel drawings, and Robot Boy enjoyed practicing drawing foreshortened squares. Once they had gotten to the point at which both of them were just doodling or working on their third or fourth drawing of the day, I pulled out the Art of Argument, and we read through the introduction to fallacies of relevance. They had fun trying to think of examples of all the various types.

We took another little break, then got out the globes and colored pencils and went to work on the map of the Islamic Empire. As usual, Moonheart wanted to linger over her map, coloring and shading things and labeling every visible land mass and body of water. Robot Boy finished his map much more quickly and got started on the long-delayed science assignment. He read and outlined two pages in the DK Eyewitness Chemistry book about “The First Chemists.”

About the time he finished, we were ready to leave for music lessons. We listened to the radio on the way there, and practiced trying to identify the various fallacies in the news.

Moonheart has 30 minutes each of guitar and piano, after which Robot Boy has his piano lesson. So, normally, I have to sit around alternately entertaining and shusshhhing him while we wait his turn. Yesterday, however, I realized just as we pulled up in front of the store that I had forgotten my purse at home. It was the first Thursday of the month, meaning tuition was due, so I got to spend that first hour while Moonheart was in her lessons making the round trip back home and back to the store to collect my credit card. We arrived back just in time for Robot Boy’s lesson.

I did get one piece of great news, though: Robot Boy’s piano teacher had a lesson slot open up 30 minutes earlier! This means that we can now get all three lessons into 60 minutes rather than 90 and be back home for dinner with Dad half an hour earlier.

Moonheart was happy and excited to be able to show her teachers how well she has done this week after instituting the new practice routine. She earned praise from both and more to work on this week. Robot Boy had a good lesson, too.

While Robot Boy was in his lesson, Moonheart talked me into doing a couple of Mad Libs with her. We got really into it, trying to outdo each other coming up with obscure and outlandish words—She set the bar right at the beginning with “lugubrious”--and found ourselves laughing so hard we had to wipe away tears. It was a really nice way to play with my kiddo.

We came home to a crock pot full of spaghetti sauce and the garlic bread I had prepped in advance and had a nice dinner with Dad. We watched an episode of the PBS show “History Detectives” that we had recorded earlier in the week, and I then left the three of them working on a project while I went out foraging for some much-needed groceries.

By the time I got home, it was time to send the kids off to bed. (Actually, they ended up staying up a bit late, because Dad lost track of time while I was gone. I doubt it will do them any permanent harm.)

So, there you have it, a snapshot of the other kind of “typical day.” It’s nice when it all goes well.