Forging Ahead

This has been one of those weeks when I feel like I’m trying to telepathically steer the Titanic through a whole field of icebergs. We had a full week’s worth of work to do in spite of several major distractions, and it required every ounce of brain power and focus I could muster to keep us moving more or less in a forward direction. All in all, I’m pleased with how much we accomplished, but I am seriously fried from standing close enough to the fire to hold RobotBoy’s feet to it! (Hmm. I wonder how many more metaphors and clichés I could toss in here?)

The big distraction this week, of course, is preparing for our church’s annual Halloween party, which takes place this Saturday evening. You’d think with only one costume to make that I’d be coasting, but it doesn’t seem to be working that way. RobotBoy chose to dress as a samurai this year, inspired by The Demon in the Teahouse and its sequels. I decided there was no reason we couldn’t squeeze a little education out of the process, so I had him do all the research and find photos of appropriate garb and go with me to the fabric store to select materials. He’s consulted every step of the way and made all the significant decisions and done a bit of the hands-on work. I think he’ll be very happy with the results. It really is going to look cool. But it’s been a lot of work, and he is so much more interested in that process than he is in math or science or any official schoolwork that I’ve gotten a bit irritable.

Here’s what we’ve got so far:



He also took upon himself the task of decorating the house for Halloween, since neither my husband nor I seemed to have the time or the energy. Again, he’s had a blast, but I can’t help seeing every minute he spends doing that as a minute he’s not doing schoolwork. The results are pretty cool, though. He’s been quite creative about how he uses various items we’ve had around for years:





Other distractions included two days out of the house. Our local science center has had one of those Our Bodies exhibits for months, and we kept meaning to go see it. Well, after at least one extension, it is closing for sure at the end of this month. So, since RobotBoy did not have a science class this week, we decided Wednesday would be a good day for a field trip. And, after I committed to that, some friends of ours invited us to go play at a local water park on Friday. So, we were working on a compressed schedule, even before you take into account the concert we attended on Tuesday evening, the hours we lost on Tuesday taking my car in for repairs (again), or the extra dance rehearsal scheduled for Thursday afternoon.

Nonetheless, we forged ahead. Here’s what we managed to get done:

Math:
RobotBoy managed only two lessons and a quiz (on which he got a nice, solid ‘A’) during the week. He’s still working on standard and metric measurements. We’re still working on catching him up after our road trip, though, so the plan is for him to do at least one lesson over the weekend.

History & Literature:
We’re back on Great Expectations after our side trip into the gothic stuff last week. On his own, RobotBoy finally got around to reading the copy of If You Lived in Williamsburg in Colonial Days that I bought for him to read before our trip. He also read another in the same series, If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon. He tried hard to get through the abridged copy of David Copperfield I found at the close-out bookstore, but really hated it. This version is based on the one that Dickens, himself, used to read aloud during his public lectures, but it must lose something without Charles’ own personal touch, because I, too, found it incomprehensible. Since we’re already doing the unabridged Great Expectations aloud, I opted to let it go. Meanwhile, he’s also reading about the mid- to late 1800s in Revolution and Conflict, Learning Through History: The Victorian Era and Time for Learning: Presidents and watching a DVD biography on Queen Victoria.

English:
We worked through the remainder of the grammar and vocabulary exercises in this chapter of English Prep, focusing on verbs and on correct usage of their, they’re and there. RobotBoy also got his act together and wrote me two paragraphs for the assignment left over from last week. He produced a pretty good first draft about manatees, although we still have some work to do on organization and transitions. Given our compressed week, however, I’ve decided to let revisions slide until next week.

Science:
As I said, the big event of the week was our field trip to the science center. We explored the Our Bodies exhibit, which got mixed reviews from RobotBoy. He was clearly uncomfortable with the idea that we were looking at real bodies and was not able to focus as well as I would have liked on actually learning anything. We did get the audio tour, though, and he listened to most of that. And he said it was interesting to see what different parts of our bodies actually look like. So, I think some information got through. The exhibits that were of most interest to him were the ones that showed how various types of joints and muscles work together, because he could relate that to dancing. While we were there, just for fun, we also saw two IMAX films, one on dinosaurs and another on mummies. RobotBoy enjoyed both. At home, he continued reading from Time for Learning: Human Body and Earth’s Waters and completed two worksheets from his Marine Science book.

Latin:
Finishing up Chapter 3 of Minimus Secundus, he did the Latin Roots exercise, read the Roman Report about how they built roads, translated the second picture story and read the myth about the birth of Athena. He ran out of time to type the new vocabulary into his word bank, but has promised me to do that over the weekend.

Spanish:
RobotBoy did great work in Spanish this week! He did four ejercicios, earning perfect scores on all of them. I’m very pleased.

Music:
This was one of his review weeks, when I assigned no new pieces to learn and encouraged him to go back and practice all the songs he’s learned so far this year. What actually happened was that he spent most of his time working on the Surprise Symphony, because he didn’t really do much with it last week. He really likes that one, especially when I pretend to fall asleep and then get startled as he sings through it.

I think I mentioned last week that he had his debut with his choir on Sunday? Well, it went really well. The choir sounded great, and he got through the almost two-hour-long service with nary a complaint. The cathedral was hosting a choir visiting from England, and the two choirs sang a few pieces together, which was just wonderful. Even though we are not members of the cathedral (or, indeed, the denomination with which it is associated), I simply love that church. It is a gorgeous, inspiring space, and the acoustics are incredible. I feel so lucky to have a really good excuse to visit and enjoy their music program on a regular basis.

On Tuesday evening, the visiting choir gave a full concert. RobotBoy and I attended and were impressed all over again with how good the other choir was. I realized part-way through the performance that I was actually relaxed and had more or less turned off my brain. I wasn’t worrying about what I had to do when I got home or making a mental shopping list or criticizing the choir or analyzing the lyrics . . . I was just being there and enjoying the sounds washing over me. It was lovely.

Oh, and on a non-academic but really fun note: RobotBoy found two big, healthy monarch caterpillars on our patio today. One was happily munching away on one of the milkweed plants, but the other had already attached himself and gone into the ‘J’ position. Unfortunately, he chose the top rail of our guinea pigs’ play pen, instead of a plant.





So, we’ll have to be careful moving things around out there until he completes his metamorphosis. We raised some monarchs as part of our biology curriculum three years ago and have had a soft spot for them ever since. So finding these guys just outside our back door was a very exciting event!

I’ll keep you posted on any butterfly-related developments in next week’s entry.