We dived right back into our regular routine this week, with a full slate of extra-curriculars and a more-than-full slate (thanks to needing to make up the work missed over the last few weeks) of regular desk work. The whole process was made more challenging by the fact that we didn’t really take time to catch our breath before we took the leap. Our plane touched down at shortly after 9:30 on Saturday night, meaning that it was after 10:00 before we claimed our luggage and drove home. For reasons that seem slightly insane to me now, we decided to get up on Sunday and go to church. (That did not go well, mostly, I suspect, because RobotBoy was both over-tired and overwhelmed by his experiences of the last few weeks.) Then, he was scheduled to go sing a concert with his choir on Sunday afternoon.
So, Monday morning arrived all too soon.
Nonetheless, we’ve tried to forge ahead.
Math:
RobotBoy started working his way through the University of California College Prep open access Algebra One course this week. He did the first three sections of the first lesson—Real Numbers; Variables, Expressions and Equations; Number Operations—with nary a whimper or problem. He earned perfect scores on all three assignments and says he really likes the format. I’m crossing my fingers that it continues to go well.
History & Literature:
At long last, the conclusion of Great Expectations is in sight. I anticipate finishing it by about Tuesday of next week, after which we will move on to our next read-aloud, Around the World in 80 Days. RobotBoy finished The Adventures of Tom Sawyer on Tuesday and is about halfway through Treasure Island. He also read Mark Twain in Lives of the Writers: Comedies, Tragedies (and What the Neighbors Thought) and about Rutherford B. Hayes in Time for Learning: The Presidents. Through the magic of Netflix, he watched an A&E Biography about Thomas Edison.
English:
We did major league catching up in English Prep this week, since this was one of the subjects that got seriously neglected while we were running around. RobotBoy finished the remaining reading comprehension exercise for this chapter, as well as doing all the grammar and vocabulary orally and completing a writing assignment. There wasn’t as much “writing” as I would usually require, but he was so good about tackling it independently and making all the corrections I asked for that I decided to let it be enough.
Science:
He did some more reading from Human Body and Earth’s Waters, with extra helpings of each to get us back on schedule. Wednesday brought the second meeting of his chemistry class at the science center, where they did all kinds of good hands-on activities and attended a show about the many uses of liquid nitrogen.
Latin:
RobotBoy was back to Minimus Secundus, completing most of a chapter this week. He read and translated both picture stories, did an activity sheet about positive and negative imperatives and read the Roman Report about having a baby in ancient Britain. On Friday, we went through the Grasp the Grammar and Latin Roots exercises together.
Spanish:
It just happened that this week’s pages from The Learnables didn’t include any written ejercicios, and I got a bit nervous about how much attention RobotBoy was really paying. So, we sat down together on Thursday and went over all the pages for the week together, just to make sure he was staying on top of things. He did stumble a few times, but I remain impressed with how much he learns and retains from this program.
Music:
RobotBoy spent some time listening to and singing through the two excerpts from “The William Tell Overture” in Themes to Remember. He also watched a Great Composers DVD about Franz Schubert, and made some very interesting comparisons between Der Erlking and the opera in which he recently performed.
Other Stuff:
Why is it I always think that “things will calm down after the holidays?” You’d think by now I’d know that doesn’t happen. Especially when it comes to all the performance activities, it seems like things just get more hectic from February through the end of the academic year. In RobotBoy’s dance classes, they are starting to work seriously on their recital pieces, and his choir has either an extra rehearsal or a performance scheduled at least two weekends a month. Add to that the fact that his Pirates of Penzance performances will happen in late April and that he has a birthday coming up in March, and it becomes clear that there is no calm in sight. It is equally clear, however, that RobotBoy is truly happy and thriving on this routine, so I suppose it’s all worth it.
At least I'm sure I'll think it is once I get some sleep!
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
The New York Adventure
Oh, where to begin? I feel as though we were gone for much longer than the single week.
Well, first of all, the rehearsals and “presentations” for the opera went very well. The approach to these performances was quite different from what they had done for the first two at the arts center. Here in Florida, although they had only minimal sets and props, they did much more in the way of staging and had everyone moving about the stage and really “performing” the piece. The New York performances were billed as “musical readings,” and all of the performers spent most of the time just singing or speaking into standing mics. In addition, they were recording the piece, so there was a lot more attention paid to how things sounded. So, RobotBoy had the opportunity to work closely with the music director and the composer during rehearsals, which was really cool.
They did two readings, and, as in Florida, the audience feedback was very positive. The types of comments and questions were different, with the New Yorkers much more interested in the nuts and bolts of production. However, the general feeling in both places was pretty enthusiastic. People would really like to see the full production. And there was universal praise for the whole cast, including my little guy.
By the time he was done, RobotBoy was pretty tired, but was still sad to know it was over. Fortunately, he still has the junior Pirates of Penzance production on the horizon. So he doesn’t feel completely bereft.
Although we did no formal “schoolwork” while we were away, we did manage to get in a couple of outings I can count as field trips. First on RobotBoy’s agenda, given his ongoing fascination with samurai, was the Arms and Armor exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum. He was absolutely delighted to find three rooms full of Japanese armor and swords, and I was, honestly, surprised at how much he had retained from his reading and research on the subject.
We used our last free day mostly at the American Museum of Natural History, where RobotBoy spent a few hours exploring.
He devoted most of his time to the Rose Center for Earth and Space. We walked the Cosmic Pathway, which traces the entire history of the universe at several million years per foot. We visited the Big Band Theater and saw the wonderful Cosmic Collisions in the Hayden Planetarium. He found out how much he would weigh on various planets, the sun and even on a neutron star.
Of course, one cannot visit this particular museum without seeing the dinosaurs. So, we also browsed the Fossil Halls before taking our leave.
In between rehearsals and performances and educational field trips,
we also managed to just plain have some fun exploring Manhattan. We rode the Ferris wheel and did some shopping in the ginormous Toys R Us in Times Square. We rode many different subways from Soho to the Village to midtown and Central Park, and we tried different restaurants in “Little India” on 6th Street. RobotBoy went ice skating (in a borrowed, too-large ski jacket) at Rockefeller Center on Monday . . .
. . . and then again at Wollman Rink in Central Park on Friday:
I waited in line at TKTS while RobotBoy was in rehearsal one afternoon and scored us tickets to his see first Broadway show. We saw Curtains at the really lovely Al Hirschfeld Theater. Coincidentally, we happened to decide to go on the annual Kids on Broadway night, which meant we got a discount on dinner at the Times Square Planet Hollywood and were treated to a brief post-curtain speech from David Hyde Pierce following the show. He reminisced about being taken to see his very first Broadway show when he was nine years old, and it was just magical, like he was speaking directly to RobotBoy.
All in all, I suspect I may have done just a bit too good a job showing him around the city, since he was downright reluctant to come home! I’ve assured him I’ll be happy to move to New York with him just as soon as he gets rich and famous enough to support his dad and me in the style to which we’d like to become accustomed.
But, in the meantime, we’ll try and settle down to getting some schoolwork done.
Well, first of all, the rehearsals and “presentations” for the opera went very well. The approach to these performances was quite different from what they had done for the first two at the arts center. Here in Florida, although they had only minimal sets and props, they did much more in the way of staging and had everyone moving about the stage and really “performing” the piece. The New York performances were billed as “musical readings,” and all of the performers spent most of the time just singing or speaking into standing mics. In addition, they were recording the piece, so there was a lot more attention paid to how things sounded. So, RobotBoy had the opportunity to work closely with the music director and the composer during rehearsals, which was really cool.
They did two readings, and, as in Florida, the audience feedback was very positive. The types of comments and questions were different, with the New Yorkers much more interested in the nuts and bolts of production. However, the general feeling in both places was pretty enthusiastic. People would really like to see the full production. And there was universal praise for the whole cast, including my little guy.
By the time he was done, RobotBoy was pretty tired, but was still sad to know it was over. Fortunately, he still has the junior Pirates of Penzance production on the horizon. So he doesn’t feel completely bereft.
Although we did no formal “schoolwork” while we were away, we did manage to get in a couple of outings I can count as field trips. First on RobotBoy’s agenda, given his ongoing fascination with samurai, was the Arms and Armor exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum. He was absolutely delighted to find three rooms full of Japanese armor and swords, and I was, honestly, surprised at how much he had retained from his reading and research on the subject. We used our last free day mostly at the American Museum of Natural History, where RobotBoy spent a few hours exploring.
He devoted most of his time to the Rose Center for Earth and Space. We walked the Cosmic Pathway, which traces the entire history of the universe at several million years per foot. We visited the Big Band Theater and saw the wonderful Cosmic Collisions in the Hayden Planetarium. He found out how much he would weigh on various planets, the sun and even on a neutron star.Of course, one cannot visit this particular museum without seeing the dinosaurs. So, we also browsed the Fossil Halls before taking our leave.
In between rehearsals and performances and educational field trips,
we also managed to just plain have some fun exploring Manhattan. We rode the Ferris wheel and did some shopping in the ginormous Toys R Us in Times Square. We rode many different subways from Soho to the Village to midtown and Central Park, and we tried different restaurants in “Little India” on 6th Street. RobotBoy went ice skating (in a borrowed, too-large ski jacket) at Rockefeller Center on Monday . . . . . . and then again at Wollman Rink in Central Park on Friday:
I waited in line at TKTS while RobotBoy was in rehearsal one afternoon and scored us tickets to his see first Broadway show. We saw Curtains at the really lovely Al Hirschfeld Theater. Coincidentally, we happened to decide to go on the annual Kids on Broadway night, which meant we got a discount on dinner at the Times Square Planet Hollywood and were treated to a brief post-curtain speech from David Hyde Pierce following the show. He reminisced about being taken to see his very first Broadway show when he was nine years old, and it was just magical, like he was speaking directly to RobotBoy.
All in all, I suspect I may have done just a bit too good a job showing him around the city, since he was downright reluctant to come home! I’ve assured him I’ll be happy to move to New York with him just as soon as he gets rich and famous enough to support his dad and me in the style to which we’d like to become accustomed.
But, in the meantime, we’ll try and settle down to getting some schoolwork done.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
A Whole Week of Relative Normalcy
So, RobotBoy finished his two-week sojourn at the arts center. It was a wonderful experience for him, personally, and the show seemed to be very successful. Although it was technically open to the public for both presentations, they really promoted the second one. And, on that night, they had so many reservations that they had to add chairs. They got a standing ovation and lots of great audience feedback for both the show and the performers.
Sometime during week two, we got word that they wanted him to come to New York to participate in two more presentations. This possibility had been mentioned before rehearsals began, but became “real” when they bought us the plane tickets. So, next week, we’re off on that adventure. RobotBoy has never been on an airplane and hasn’t been to NYC since he was an infant in a stroller. As you can imagine, this is very big news for him.
Needless to say, I’m not planning on trying to accomplish anything academic next week. Instead, I re-wrote my lesson plans for the month to pull in the left-over assignments from last week and all of February and compacted it into the three weeks we’ll actually have. And I did my mean mommy act and cracked the whip this week to make sure we got things done while we were here.
Math:
Having finished his online math class (with a nice A, thank you very much!), he began this week reading through Painless Algebra. The idea was that it would be a gentle introduction and that he could start a full-fledged algebra class in the fall. However, somewhere around Wednesday of this week, he began telling me Painless Algebra just wasn’t interesting for him, because there was too much reading and not enough equations. So, we sat down together and looked at the University of California College Prep (UCCP) open source Algebra One online class, which I had been keeping in the back of my mind for him to do next year. He really liked the look of it, and we’ve decided to have him go ahead and start that now, moving slowly. With RobotBoy, all math plans are always subject to change, but the plan right now is for him to complete slightly less than one-third of the course this year, then spread the rest over the 2008-2009 academic year. I’ll keep you posted . . .
History & Literature:
We’re still plugging away at Great Expectations. We’re really enjoying it, but are having a tough time finding enough time to read. RobotBoy finished Dragon’s Gate during the second arts center week. He is now reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I had intended for him to finish Alice and then start Tom, but he chose to do them concurrently. He seems to be enjoying them both, especially if I will let him get comfortable in my new patio lounge chair while he reads. He watched a Modern Marvels DVD about the invention of the telephone. For fun, he’s reading Kate DiCamillo’s Tale of Despereaux.
English:
We did some reading comprehension exercises on Monday, and RobotBoy spent the rest of his time this week on that essay he owed me from before the opera. He finally got it done and wrote out his clean copy on Friday. It’s still like pulling teeth to get him to write more than a couple of sentences, but he did manage to produce something that looks a lot like an essay.
Science:
He read this week from Human Body and Earth’s Waters. The thing that seemed to make the biggest impression on him was the section about water treatment. He interrupted my lunch on Friday to show me the diagrams from the book and explicate them in great detail. (Lucky me.) Since the Marine Science books seem to be giving us the least bang for our bucks and contain lessons that are not sequential or dependent on each other, they were one of the few things I jettisoned from our compressed lesson plans to save us a little time. On Wednesday, he went to the first afternoon of the Chemistry series at the science museum. He said it was mostly review for him, since we did chemistry last year, but he had fun.
Latin:
In the name of catching up, he did two lessons in Learning Latin Through Mythology this week. He read the stories of “Diana and Acteon” and “Echo and Narcissus,” translated their accompanying picture stories, and did the worksheets. He even voluntarily did the extra activities, making a flip book of Acteon’s transformation into a stag and looking up pictures of flowers mentioned in myths. He seems to enjoy this book quite a lot.
Spanish:
More of The Learnables: Basic Structures. He hit a snag with Monday’s ejercicios and had to go back and look up a few vocabulary words, but then got back on track and breezed through the rest of the week.
Music:
This is the one thing I can think of that didn’t get done this week. He was supposed to read about and learn the snippet of the “Piano Quintet in A” from Themes to Remember, but I don’t think he got around to it. Maybe it’ll get done this weekend before we leave town?
Other Stuff:
After two weeks of hitting only the occasional outside class, RobotBoy returned to his regular schedule of activities this week. Right after we returned on Saturday, he went with his choir to sing for a wedding in a city about an hour south of us. Then he did piano on Monday afternoon, followed by a two-hour rehearsal/class for Pirates of Penzance Junior that evening. He had his boys’ class at the ballet school on Tuesday and the regular class on Wednesday after science. It’s Parent Observation week at the dance school, and I just have to mention how impressed I am with how much they have learned this year. Thursday brought his regular choir rehearsal and Friday the weekly three-class marathon at dance.
Unfortunately, RobotBoy twisted his ankle a bit in the second class, and his ballet teacher decided it was safest to send him home to rest. After a couple of hours on the couch last night with the ankle propped up and iced, there is no swelling. And he says it feels much better this morning.
More Other Stuff:
Last Sunday afternoon, I bowed out of the way to allow RobotBoy and his dad to have a "guys' only" afternoon at the ballet. They saw a dance adaptation of Pirates of Penzance, which they said was lots of fun. One of the boys from RobotBoy's dance school was having his birthday party in conjunciton with the show, so they spent some time participating in those festivities.
We also had tickets for a show at the Shakespeare Theatre on Thursday evening. It was a new play about a string quartet preparing for a major performance and was very good. (I especially noticed that there is a great part for Moonheart when she gets just a bit older.)
I ended up having to change the dates for a couple of the children’s theatre productions we signed up for at the beginning of the year because RobotBoy has conflicts with the original dates. As it turned out, the only way for us to see the production of Treasure Island was to go this week to one of the school matinees. So, we did that on Friday morning. Normally, we avoid student shows, because, frankly, the kids so often don’t behave very well and don’t have adequate supervision. And I usually demand that RobotBoy read the source material before we see a play or film version, which he hasn’t done yet. Consequently, I wasn’t entirely pleased with the whole idea. However, as it turned out, the audience was fine, and the show didn’t give away the ending of the book. So, now RobotBoy is looking forward to reading the original.
RobotBoy will take some history and literature reading with him next week. And we may take his laptop. However, I don’t really anticipate him getting a whole lot done while New York lies outside waiting to be explored. We are planning at least one museum field trip while we’re there and may do more, depending on how busy he is with rehearsals.
Next week’s report may not be posted “on schedule,” but I do promise to share our experiences in “The Big City” after we return.
And now, I’m off to pack!
Sometime during week two, we got word that they wanted him to come to New York to participate in two more presentations. This possibility had been mentioned before rehearsals began, but became “real” when they bought us the plane tickets. So, next week, we’re off on that adventure. RobotBoy has never been on an airplane and hasn’t been to NYC since he was an infant in a stroller. As you can imagine, this is very big news for him.
Needless to say, I’m not planning on trying to accomplish anything academic next week. Instead, I re-wrote my lesson plans for the month to pull in the left-over assignments from last week and all of February and compacted it into the three weeks we’ll actually have. And I did my mean mommy act and cracked the whip this week to make sure we got things done while we were here.
Math:
Having finished his online math class (with a nice A, thank you very much!), he began this week reading through Painless Algebra. The idea was that it would be a gentle introduction and that he could start a full-fledged algebra class in the fall. However, somewhere around Wednesday of this week, he began telling me Painless Algebra just wasn’t interesting for him, because there was too much reading and not enough equations. So, we sat down together and looked at the University of California College Prep (UCCP) open source Algebra One online class, which I had been keeping in the back of my mind for him to do next year. He really liked the look of it, and we’ve decided to have him go ahead and start that now, moving slowly. With RobotBoy, all math plans are always subject to change, but the plan right now is for him to complete slightly less than one-third of the course this year, then spread the rest over the 2008-2009 academic year. I’ll keep you posted . . .
History & Literature:
We’re still plugging away at Great Expectations. We’re really enjoying it, but are having a tough time finding enough time to read. RobotBoy finished Dragon’s Gate during the second arts center week. He is now reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I had intended for him to finish Alice and then start Tom, but he chose to do them concurrently. He seems to be enjoying them both, especially if I will let him get comfortable in my new patio lounge chair while he reads. He watched a Modern Marvels DVD about the invention of the telephone. For fun, he’s reading Kate DiCamillo’s Tale of Despereaux.
English:
We did some reading comprehension exercises on Monday, and RobotBoy spent the rest of his time this week on that essay he owed me from before the opera. He finally got it done and wrote out his clean copy on Friday. It’s still like pulling teeth to get him to write more than a couple of sentences, but he did manage to produce something that looks a lot like an essay.
Science:
He read this week from Human Body and Earth’s Waters. The thing that seemed to make the biggest impression on him was the section about water treatment. He interrupted my lunch on Friday to show me the diagrams from the book and explicate them in great detail. (Lucky me.) Since the Marine Science books seem to be giving us the least bang for our bucks and contain lessons that are not sequential or dependent on each other, they were one of the few things I jettisoned from our compressed lesson plans to save us a little time. On Wednesday, he went to the first afternoon of the Chemistry series at the science museum. He said it was mostly review for him, since we did chemistry last year, but he had fun.
Latin:
In the name of catching up, he did two lessons in Learning Latin Through Mythology this week. He read the stories of “Diana and Acteon” and “Echo and Narcissus,” translated their accompanying picture stories, and did the worksheets. He even voluntarily did the extra activities, making a flip book of Acteon’s transformation into a stag and looking up pictures of flowers mentioned in myths. He seems to enjoy this book quite a lot.
Spanish:
More of The Learnables: Basic Structures. He hit a snag with Monday’s ejercicios and had to go back and look up a few vocabulary words, but then got back on track and breezed through the rest of the week.
Music:
This is the one thing I can think of that didn’t get done this week. He was supposed to read about and learn the snippet of the “Piano Quintet in A” from Themes to Remember, but I don’t think he got around to it. Maybe it’ll get done this weekend before we leave town?
Other Stuff:
After two weeks of hitting only the occasional outside class, RobotBoy returned to his regular schedule of activities this week. Right after we returned on Saturday, he went with his choir to sing for a wedding in a city about an hour south of us. Then he did piano on Monday afternoon, followed by a two-hour rehearsal/class for Pirates of Penzance Junior that evening. He had his boys’ class at the ballet school on Tuesday and the regular class on Wednesday after science. It’s Parent Observation week at the dance school, and I just have to mention how impressed I am with how much they have learned this year. Thursday brought his regular choir rehearsal and Friday the weekly three-class marathon at dance.
Unfortunately, RobotBoy twisted his ankle a bit in the second class, and his ballet teacher decided it was safest to send him home to rest. After a couple of hours on the couch last night with the ankle propped up and iced, there is no swelling. And he says it feels much better this morning.
More Other Stuff:
Last Sunday afternoon, I bowed out of the way to allow RobotBoy and his dad to have a "guys' only" afternoon at the ballet. They saw a dance adaptation of Pirates of Penzance, which they said was lots of fun. One of the boys from RobotBoy's dance school was having his birthday party in conjunciton with the show, so they spent some time participating in those festivities.
We also had tickets for a show at the Shakespeare Theatre on Thursday evening. It was a new play about a string quartet preparing for a major performance and was very good. (I especially noticed that there is a great part for Moonheart when she gets just a bit older.)
I ended up having to change the dates for a couple of the children’s theatre productions we signed up for at the beginning of the year because RobotBoy has conflicts with the original dates. As it turned out, the only way for us to see the production of Treasure Island was to go this week to one of the school matinees. So, we did that on Friday morning. Normally, we avoid student shows, because, frankly, the kids so often don’t behave very well and don’t have adequate supervision. And I usually demand that RobotBoy read the source material before we see a play or film version, which he hasn’t done yet. Consequently, I wasn’t entirely pleased with the whole idea. However, as it turned out, the audience was fine, and the show didn’t give away the ending of the book. So, now RobotBoy is looking forward to reading the original.
RobotBoy will take some history and literature reading with him next week. And we may take his laptop. However, I don’t really anticipate him getting a whole lot done while New York lies outside waiting to be explored. We are planning at least one museum field trip while we’re there and may do more, depending on how busy he is with rehearsals.
Next week’s report may not be posted “on schedule,” but I do promise to share our experiences in “The Big City” after we return.
And now, I’m off to pack!
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