As I mentioned, we were away for a few days visiting with Moonheart for her college’s Family Weekend. Amazingly, I actually managed to plan ahead for this when I was writing out our lessons for this year, and I decided to stretch one week’s work out over the available days before and after the trip. So, this report will cover two weeks of chronological time, but only one week’s worth of assignments.
Math:
RobotBoy has just about finished the first module of the second segment of this class. He’s been doing very well with ratios and proportions and cross-multiplying and dividing and all that stuff. The advanced lesson for this module had him outside measuring shadows and figuring out ratios that allowed him to estimate heights of buildings and trees too tall to measure directly. He had a good time with that one.
History & Literature:
Great Expectations continues to be a fun read-aloud. We’ve finished the “first stage” of Pip’s expectations (about the first third of the book) and learned a bit about the author, himself, watching an A&E Biography about Charles Dickens. RobotBoy is currently learning about significant people and historical events from the early 1800s. So, he read The Alamo from the Day That Changed America series and watched History Channel documentaries on that battle and on the development of the Transcontinental Railroad. He read about the first few U.S. presidents in his Time for Learning book, and completed story #78: “Latin America and the Caribbean Islands” on his Child’s History of the World CD. He read about Edgar Allan Poe in Lives of the Writers: Comedies, Tragedies (and What the Neighbors Thought) and watched an A&E biography DVD. We then read "The Tell-Tale Heart" together.
The high point of this two-week week, though, was our field trip to Colonial Williamsburg. Since we were in the neighborhood visiting Moonheart, we decided to tack on an extra day for some educational fun. RobotBoy had a great time and might even have learned a few things. I think his favorite sites in town were the blacksmith and cabinetmaker.
Oh, and just for fun, we listened to about the first half of an audio book version of The Fellowship of the Ring during the road trip. I’m not a big Tolkien fan, myself, but RobotBoy is really enjoying it.
English:
This was one of the subjects we took on the road with us. We started the second chapter of English Prep Book 1, reading the fiction and non-fiction excerpts and doing the comprehension exercises aloud. It was kind of fun to watch my husband be impressed at how well and quickly RobotBoy ripped through the questions.
Science:
RobotBoy had one of his twice-monthly science center classes the afternoon before we left town. They talked about plants, and he came home with a lima bean in a tiny pot ready to sprout. The class also dissected an earthworm in the last hour, but RobotBoy opted out of that one and explored a virtual worm recommended by his teacher, instead. Of course, he came home with yet another list of vocabulary words to define, so he’s been working on those a few at a time since we got home. In Earth’s Waters, he’s reading about the water cycle. He finished the first chapter of the text and took the online self-test. Time for Learning: The Human Body also went on the road with us, and he regaled us with lots of information about teeth on the way to Virginia.
Latin:
He’s back to Learning Latin Through Mythology this “week,” reading about Baucis and Philemon. He read the story in English, translated the Latin picture story version and completed the match-the-sentence-to-the-picture worksheet.
Spanish:
Nothing terribly interesting to say about Spanish this time around. RobotBoy did a nice job with the required ejercicios, but it wasn’t exciting.
Music:
He has two more Handel pieces from the Royal Fireworks Music for this week. He was supposed to watch a Great Composers DVD on Handel, too, but Netflix hasn’t delivered it just yet. So, that will have to happen next week. While visiting Moonheart, we attended a wonderful concert put on the by faculty and students. RobotBoy especially enjoyed watching the pianist and was very pleased to see pieces by both Gershwin and Tchaikovsky on the program. However, I think his favorite musical experiences of the week happened in Colonial Williamsburg, where he had the chance to hear a real glass armonica in concert and to get his hands on a reproduction harpsichord in the cabinetmaker’s shop.
Outside of official educational stuff, RobotBoy had a great time visiting with his sister. We toured the campus and the (tiny) downtown area next door. He went to the college’s Physical Activity Center with Moonheart and her roommate for a workout, then had lunch with them in the dining hall. We all went to see a performance of Love’s Labor's Lost at the local Shakespeare theatre, which was especially fun for RobotBoy since he’s currently reading Shakespeare’s Scribe.
Now, we just have to get back in the swing of normal life at home (until we have to do another road trip to bring Moonheart home for Thanksgiving . . . ).
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