I dub thee . . .
Before I continue, though, there has been much pleading and begging from both of my children that I quit referring to them as generic “daughter” and “son” and give them nicknames. So, with all appropriate ceremony, I hereby dub my daughter “Moonheart” (envision the traditional tapping with a sword—or maybe a giant pencil—on each shoulder) and my son “Robot Boy.”
And now, a day in the life of Tweaked Academy:
We’re making an effort to get more of a head start on our days, so Moonheart and I have agreed to try getting up by 6:30. She is at her most productive and focused early in the day. So, the theory is that this will allow her time to practice at least one instrument and eat breakfast, shower and dress and still sit down to desk work before 9:00.
Robot Boy always gets up early, but has a tendency to loll on the couch (sometimes even going back to sleep for a bit). That’s where he was when I emerged from my bedroom this morning. Moonheart had taken her guitar into her room to practice.
We’re reading aloud A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and are getting through a chapter or so a day over breakfast. However, this morning both kids started on desk work before I had breakfast ready, so we ended up puzzling out a problem from Moonheart’s economics course while they ate.
After breakfast, they took turns in the shower and getting dressed while the other one got back to work. Both usually begin the day with whatever assignments they have in their virtual school courses. Moonheart was delighted to find an e-mail from her economics instructor letting her know she got a perfect score on yesterday’s assignment. She also traded a couple of e-mails with her chemistry instructor to make an appointment for her upcoming oral quiz. Meanwhile, Robot Boy did some review for the oral math quiz he had on his agenda for the day, He re-did an assignment on order of operations on which he had gotten a less-than-wonderful score and wound up with a much better grasp of the concept and a perfect score. I wandered in and out doing dishes and laundry and checking my own e-mail.
Once everyone was cleaned up and dressed, Moonheart continued to plug away at economics for a while, while waiting for her phone appointment with the chemistry instructor. Robot Boy did his oral quiz and earned lots of praise from the teacher. I will admit to being a bit nervous on his behalf about this aspect of the course, since it required him to work problems in real time with an audience, but he did great. I was very, very proud of him.
Next on Robot Boy’s checklist for today was some reading in one of his history books. He read two pages about Alfred the Great and wrote a few sentences to outline what he read. His spelling and punctuation are still pretty shaky, so our approach to this is to have him narrate to me what he wants to say. I then either write out or type and print this, and he uses it as a template to write out a good copy. After that, he moved on to a couple of pages in Latin for Children Primer B.
By around 11:00, Moonheart had made revisions to yesterday’s composition exercise (from Wordsmith Craftsman), then went on to her own Latin assignment (So You Really Want to Learn Latin Book III). She had left two messages for her chemistry instructor, but had not yet managed to connect.
Robot Boy had a really good day today and worked very efficiently. It probably had a lot to do with knowing that he had dance classes in the evening that he would not be allowed to attend if he was behind in his schoolwork. Classes were cancelled last Wednesday in anticipation of a major tropical storm and again on Monday because of the holiday, and he is very anxious to get back. Consequently, by 11:30 he had blown through not only math, history and Latin, but also vocabulary (Word Roots A2) and Logic Liftoff. He had finished his assigned reading from Robert Nye’s Beowulf: A New Telling (which he’s enjoying), leaving only a few Latin and logic corrections to make and his 30 minutes of piano practice.
About that time, Moonheart took our guinea pigs out on the patio for their daily play time. She took her German text and study guide out there and drafted me to come work with her on this week’s assignments. (For the record, I have no background in either economics or German, but I get elected to help with them, anyway!) We made our way through a dialogue and translation exercise before I had to go in an clean the piggies’ cage.
The kids fed both fish and the cat, and all the humans who were interested had a snack, too. Since Robot Boy had finished all his independent work, I gave permission for him to watch a bit of TV. I then insisted he get some air and exercise, so he took the portable stereo and his new CD and a ball out onto the patio. (He took the cat, too, but Sir Piggers seemed more interested in checking out the lizards and insects than in playing catch.) He couldn’t stay out long, unfortunately, because it’s just so very hot today. He came in and logged his time at http://www.presidentschallenge.org/. (Both kids are working toward awards as their official PE for the year.) Then he played on the computer for a little while.
Moonheart read a few pages of Morris Bishop’s The Middle Ages and gave me a quick oral summary of what she read. She grabbed the globe and showed me how the political borders are different now from what they were then. She then put in some time with her statistics course.
Meanwhile, I tried to decide what to do with the kids during our afternoon “together learning time.” Each week, in addition to the assignments for each child, I have a list of activities and projects and DVDs and so on that I want to do with both of them together. For example, since Moonheart is currently reading selections from the Koran and both kids are covering the rise of Islam in assorted history books, yesterday we perused the gorgeous illuminated Koran at the British Library’s wonderful Turning the Pages website [ http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html ]. We also worked on their year-long project to illustrate and build their own periodic table.
Today, I’m leaning toward a virtual field trip to the Alhambra [ http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200604/ ] and either some map work on the Islamic empire or completing their History Scribe/History Scholar notebook pages on Mohammed.
I used my 45 minutes of “free time” to fold laundry and managed to get through all of it, despite the fact that the cat insisted on “helping” me. (Okay, full disclosure: There is still one load of towels in the dryer, but they aren’t dry yet. So, that doesn’t count.)
Just before 2:00, Moonheart took a break and we all went for a quick walk down the street to the mailbox. And, of course, we had to stop and admire the fairy village of mushrooms growing in a corner of the front yard. She practiced her piano pieces for the week while Robot Boy cleared his desk and I found the website I wanted them to explore.We spent an hour or so exploring every facet of the virtual Alhambra tour, which was very cool. Then I handed out the notebook page templates and set them to work on writing about Mohammed and Islam while I threw together a quick dinner. Robot Boy is not big on writing more than necessary, so he finished up his page fairly quickly. Moonheart likes to linger over these projects, though, and particularly enjoys adding drawings and embellishments. So she packed up her encyclopedia and the box of colored pencils and brought hers on the road.
Wednesdays are Robot Boy’s long evening at the dance school. He begins with an hour of tap, then does 90 minutes of ballet and conditioning. Moonheart and I staked out a couple of chairs in a relatively quiet spot with a table, and I read while she put the finishing touches on her Mohammed page. We did duck out long enough to make a quick run to Target for a new CD player/alarm clock for her room.
By the time class was over, the weather outside was truly scary, with loud thunder and some extremely impressive lightning. We ended up hanging around in the entry way with three other families waiting for a break. We finally made it back home about 8:45, said hi to Dad, sent Robot Boy off to bed, plugged in and set Moonheart’s new clock radio . . .
And now I have all the rest of the evening to myself.
All in all, it was actually a very good day. Long, but good. And I’m now daring to think that we might be starting to find a rhythm that will see us through this year.
But we’ll have to see how it goes tomorrow, right?
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