Ugh.

Hmm. What to say about this week? Actually, I think the title of this post says it all.

We’re now finishing our second week back after three weeks mostly off, and it is clear we’re still not really back in the swing. Math, especially, is simply exhausting and unpleasant.

So, here’s where we are:

Math:
Despite our (my) best intentions, RobotBoy never did very many math lessons during his semi-break. Then, last week (our first week back), he didn’t even finish a single week’s worth of lessons. So, we’re right back into six-lessons-a-week territory. And, we’re now elbow deep in quadratic equations, which is not exactly easy stuff. Add in the fact that RobotBoy is having some trouble even getting to work at a decent time in the morning, and you can see why the going has been a bit tough this week. We did trudge through all but one of the requisite number of lessons, but his grades on the daily assignments were pretty awful. The thing is that I just really can’t tell whether he honestly doesn’t get it or whether he just isn’t mentally present enough to do it. (There’s just so much going on right now. See “Other Stuff” below.) He does fine when we work through the lesson together. And he’s slow but fairly accurate for the first few questions of each assignment. But then it just spirals down into him spending inordinate amounts of time complaining and begging for help and getting wildly wrong answers because he seems to completely forget how to add. Sigh.

In other news, he has finished the first Murderous Maths book I bought for him and is now working on The Phantom X. He also did two more pages of Greek-inspired math in Can You Count in Greek?

History & Literature:
He continued reading about ancient Greece this week, and he’s especially enjoying Theras and His Town. He also read about Socrates and Plato and others in The Story of Philosopy, which he seems to find very interesting, and dipped into Terry Deary’s Top 10 Greek Legends. He watched another episode of Secrets of Ancient Empires and the “Spice Routes and Silk Roads” segment of the Story of India series. His written work this week was a History Scribe page about Phoenician culture. Oh, and he did a couple of Child’s History of the World stories, “The People Who Made Our ABC’s” and “Hard as Nails.”

English:
In English Prep we read Wordsworth’s “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge” and talked about personification. We also learned about the rules for making plurals of words ending in ‘o’ (which I don’t think I ever had explained to me, by the way) and reviewed active and passive voice. The new writing model is the story of Androcles and the Lion, which we read over and talked about a couple of times. RobotBoy also did two lessons of Word Roots.

Science:
“No Joke—The Earth Is Pancake Flat!” Or so said the title of this week’s chapter of The Story of Science. Alongside that, RobotBoy is reading Science in Ancient Rome. We never got around to the project/experiment for this week, because we used most of Wednesday to catch up on desk work.

Spanish:
He just chugging along in The Learnables.

Greek:
He did a page of the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker and several pages of Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek!

Geography:
RobotBoy spent most of this week working on his “briefing” about India for the module on South Asia. He is also supposed to be making corrections and additions to a couple of lessons on which he didn’t do very well the first time around.

Other Stuff:
He had to skip tap class this week, because it conflicted with the dress rehearsal for his recital, which is coming up this weekend. He did attend ballroom, ballet, choir and organ, though, along with two more rehearsals for the opera. We’re now gearing up for the final weekend of The King and I performances, another opera reherasal and the recital. Next week, he’ll have rehearsals Monday through Wednesday evenings for the opera, which opens that Friday. So, it may be challenging—again—to get much schoolwork done.

One thing about which I'm very pleased is that RobotBoy has done some spontaneous and serious music practice in the last couple of weeks. I haven't nagged him about it, and he's actually working on the currently assigned piece instead of just playing ones he already knows over and over. That's a good thing.

My 52-Book Challenge:
I’m managing to keep up so far, with the addition of some audiobooks for the time on the road. In the weeks since my last post here, I’ve read/listened to Larklight (Phillip Reeve), The Virgin Blue (Tracy Chevalier), Q & A (Vikas Swarup), The Book Thief (Markus Zusak) and Innocent Traitor (Allison Weir). I enjoyed Larklight, which was a family listening experience on a road trip. All the faux Victoriana was fun, and RobotBoy is clamoring for the next in the series. I have mixed feelings about The Virgin Blue. I found it very absorbing, but I knew from early on that something nasty was going to happen to a child and spent a lot of time dreading it. Q & A is the novel on which the film Slumdog Millionaire is based. I enjoyed it, although I found the writing style rather bland in many places. I’ll admit that the big reveal caught me by surprise, though. The Book Thief was lovely, just lovely. I found myself consciously memorizing phrases and descriptions to savor later. And I enjoyed Innocent Traitor much more than I expected. In fact, I was inspired to dash out and buy Weir’s other novel, The Lady Elizabeth, which I’m reading now.

So, not a terrible week, but I’m really not sure what to do with math. I guess we’ll hang on another couple of weeks until we get past the opera and then see if RobotBoy’s brain becomes functional again.

PUPPY!
Good grief, I can’t believe I almost forgot to mention the puppy! I picked her up in South Carolina on the drive to take Moonheart back to school. She’s been with us for almost three weeks, now, and is just a wonderful, sweet, adorable ball of fluff. I’ve been taking her with me for quite a few of our afternoons out, and having her in my arms makes me the most popular person in any room. We’re working on housetraining, of course, and just generally getting into a daily routine that works with a puppy. She’s just darling, though, and well worth the wait.

Here she is playing with the cats' toy today:

Weekly Not-Much-of-a-Report

I planned our homeschooling schedule around Moonheart’s college calendar this year. Since her spring break starts this Friday, I figured I’d be on the road for at least a couple of days this week and, therefore, planned no new work. I figured we’d use whatever time we did have this week to catch up on anything that needed our attention.

As is turned out, we were pretty much caught up. We were gone most Monday and took Tuesday to recover, then had light days Wednesday and Thursday. And I’ll be gone Friday for yet another to-Virginia-and-back road trip. RobotBoy will be home with Dad, but I’m assuming there will be no schoolwork done.

Because Moonheart will be home and RobotBoy will be very busy with his birthday and assorted show rehearsals, I’m not planning on any heavy schoolwork next week, either.

Math:
We did the left-over lesson from last week plus one more. He’s still on quadratic equations, but is now solving by factoring, which seems to be a bit easier for him. I'm really hoping we can get through several more lessons in the next week, because that would lighten his weekly load for the remainder of the year. Currently, he needs to do about six lessons a week in order to finish the course by the end of this semester. If he could do an extra eight or nine lessons in this two-week semi-break, he could bring the number down to a more normal five per week for the rest of the year.

History & Literature:
He watched the other two short Greek myths from Jim Henson’s The Storyteller.

Geography:
He’s still working on the North America module. The current lesson has him learning about demographics and population changes.

Other Stuff:
We did a quick Virginia trip last weekend to see Moonheart in the college’s spring musical, Wonderful Town. We made it back home on Monday afternoon with just enough time for RobotBoy to get into choir uniform and head out for a concert. That went quite well, but we didn’t get home until almost 11:00 that night. RobotBoy ended up sleeping until very late on Tuesday morning. He had a make-up music lesson on Tuesday afternoon, followed by his regular tap class and a show rehearsal, which again kept him out later than usual. We finally got some schoolwork done on Wednesday before running out for organ practice, ballet and another show rehearsal. He has another long run on Thursday afternoon, with his regular weekly organ lesson followed by choir and then one more show rehearsal.

All in all, it’s a good week to have a light academic schedule.

My 52-Book Challenge:
My “official” book for the week was the audiobook we listened to on the road, Larklight by Phillip Reeve. It was a lot of fun. I particularly enjoyed the faux Victorian tone. Currently, I’m reading Q & A, the novel on which the film Slumdog Millionaire is based, and another book about dog training.

Back on Track

Well, after a less-than-wonderful last week, it was lovely to be back to smooth sailing. RobotBoy took Wednesday completely off, which leaves us officially one math lesson behind. However, when I planned the year, I assumed we would do no work at all for the next two weeks to accommodate a couple of road trips to Virginia and RobotBoy’s birthday. As it turns out, we’ll miss only a few of those days. So, RobotBoy and I have decided to do a math lesson on each day we’re not doing anything else and that he will keep working on the online geography course. This means that we will not only make up that one math lesson but may be able to lighten the load for the remaining weeks of the academic year.

And, even with taking Wednesday off, he wrapped up all of his work for the week before noon on Friday.

Math:
He’s finally hit some concepts that he’s finding truly challenging. This week’s lessons were on “Introducing Quadratic Equations and Their Graphs.” There were two lessons that just took a lot of time, and he didn’t score as well on the chapter test as I would have liked. I’ve opted not to stress about it, though, since the plan is for him to work through a fun algebra program for review this summer. I’m sure he’ll be in good shape to move on the geometry in the fall. He also read some more Murderous Maths, Fractions and Averages: The Mean and Vulgar Bits and did two pages of playing with Greek numerals from Can You Count in Greek?

History & Literature:
This week, he’s been learning about both ancient Greece and ancient India. He read more Aesop and D’Aulaire’s and watched both Clash of the Titans and two short retellings of Greek myths from Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. He read about ancient civilizations in general in Mysteries Through the Ages: Mysteries from the Past and Present Explained Through Recent Scientific Discoveries and about the Mauryan and Guptan empires in his Atlas of World History. His worksheet for the week was a fill-in-the-blank one with sentences about ancient India.

English:
In English Prep we read a poem and talked about symbolism. We also did some vocabulary and reviewed different types of sentence (simple, compound, complex). So, of course, we had to take time to sing a couple of verses of “Conjunction Junction.” We introduced a new writing model, the story of Atalanta and Hippomenes, and RobotBoy did two lessons of Word Roots.

Science:
This week’s chapter of The Story of Science was about Claudius Ptolemy. RobotBoy also read the remaining three chapters of Science in Ancient Greece and did a fun project from Ancient Science: 40 Time-Traveling, World-Exploring, History-Making Activities for Kids inspired by Pythagoras’s discoveries about how the length of strings affects the pitch in musical instruments.

Spanish:
The Learnables continues to go well. This week, RobotBoy was particularly delighted to learn how to say “big feet.”

Greek:
He did a page of the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker and several pages of Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek!

Geography:
This week, he started the module about North America. His assignment was to research either the United States or Canada and prepare an itinerary for a trip to either country. He chose to research the U.S. and to plan a trip to Virginia and New York. Conveniently, he has been to both of those places more than once, so he even had pictures to use in his report.

Other Stuff:
Both ballroom (because of the holiday) and organ (because the teacher had a scheduling conflict) were cancelled this week. And, although the original plan had been to drive up to Virginia last weekend to visit my daughter and see her current show, a variety of things came up that led to a decision to delay the trip. RobotBoy attended his first rehearsal for The King and I, and we went to church and then to see Coraline on Sunday afternoon. Otherwise, though, we stayed home. So, all in all, we ended up with more free time than usual on our hands. It was kind of nice.

Life will get busier again in the next few weeks, however, I suspect. Rehearsals for the King and I will heat up as they get closer to opening. And RobotBoy volunteered to take a non-singing, just-be-cute role in an upcoming Orlando Opera production. His ballet and character classes are also preparing for their recital, which is coming up in March.

And, of course, I am counting down the next couple of weeks until I can go pick up my new puppy.

My 52-Book Challenge:
It was another re-read for me this week, Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation. I have a couple of books on my wish list for this week, but what I read depends on what comes to hand easily at the bookstore or library.

A Bit Belated

Things were a little ragged last week, with RobotBoy hitting a bit of a bump trying to get back to work following the camping trip. So, we were working right down to the wire on Friday afternoon. He did finish up, but not until moments before we needed to head out for the afternoon activities. Somehow, in the rush, I never got around to writing my weekly update.

But I’ve decided to remedy that now.

Math:
Math was a bit of a chore last week. He was factoring various types of polynomials, and he got a little tangled up now and then. We got through it, though, and I feel pretty good about his grasp of the material. So, we gratefully moved on. Toss in a couple more Mayan math worksheets and another chapter of Murderous Maths, Fractions and Averages: The Mean and Vulgar Bits, and you’ve got the whole week.

History & Literature:
RobotBoy finally wrapped up his Mesoamerica study this week. He finished reading both The Children’s Homer and The Well of Sacrifice, both of which earned thumbs up reviews. His worksheet for the week was a criss-cross with vocabulary from his history reading. He also watched a documentary about efforts to decode Mayan hieroglyphs and spent some time playing with a website about the ancient ballgame.

English:
This was a writing week. RobotBoy turned in his draft of the re-telling of the hero twins story on Tuesday, then made corrections and finished the final version on Friday. There were a few minor mistakes remaining, but I’m pleased with the effort. We did a few pages of English Prep, too, but I can’t remember what they were about right now. And RobotBoy did two lessons of Word Roots.

Science:
He read the next chapter of The Story of Science and a couple of chapters of Science in Ancient Greece. We never got around to either of the projects I had on the assignment sheet, but we’ll try to make them up this week.

Spanish:
RobotBoy continued with The Learnables, learning some vocabulary for facial features and hair.

Greek:
He did a page of the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker and several pages of Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek!

Geography:
He finally finished that assignment about the Pacific Rim , turning it in on Thursday. I was pretty irritable about how long he lingered on that one, but he got a very good score. He did the oral assessment for the module on the phone with his teacher on Friday and earned full marks on that, too. She had lots of really nice things to say about him and his work, and she assured us that the remaining two modules are much easier than the last one.

Other Stuff:
We camped with the choir last weekend. It was pretty cold for us Floridians, but RobotBoy had a wonderful time running around with his choir-mates. If I agree to go again next year, it will be because someone has bought me an air mattress with a battery-operated pump. We made it home on Sunday afternoon with enough time for me to nap for an hour, then shower and dress and drive back uptown for a ballet performance. It was a fun program of short pieces, but I so much prefer the full, story ballets.

My 52-Book Challenge:
Umm, this was not my finest week. I dragged the Henry James novel with me on the camping trip, but just could not focus. RobotBoy and I both tried reading in our tent by the light of our lantern, but I didn’t get very far. Then Moonheart got sick, which caused me some distraction and plenty of time on the phone. Eventually, since I am in the process—at long last!—of trying to adopt a puppy, I bought and read Ian Dunbar’s Before and After You Get Your Puppy. So, that’s what got counted for last week. I’m also about half-way through re-reading Oliver Twist, so that will probably be my “official” book for this week.

We're Packed

Okay, I mentioned in my regular weekly report that RobotBoy and I are off to camp with his choir this weekend. What I might have failed to mention is that I drive a MINI Cooper. Now, granted, it is the "extended" Clubman model, but it's still pretty small. So, I thought it might amuse folks to see what it looks like when we pack for a camping weekend.

Not too bad from the outside:



And here are the interior views:



Note: We had to strap in the bin of cooking supplies, because my car assumes anything over a certain weight is a person and beeps at me until I put on its seatbelt.





Still, not to bad for my teeny, adorable car. It's nice to know it's practical, too!

Another Friday

So, here we are again. Now, it’s not that I’m complaining. Honest! But it’s getting to be a bit challenging to come up with a cute title or introduction to these weekly reports when things are just coasting along smoothly. Of course, I’m very happy with the smooth thing, but still . . .

Math:
We had our first tiny bump in the road on Thursday with the lesson on “Factoring Polynomials: Using the Distributive Property” It was really, really tiny and may well have had something to do with the fact that RobotBoy had already completed one and a half other math lessons before we started that one. But he did get very frustrated and have to retire to his room for a few minutes to calm down. After that, all was well. Things clicked, and he got 100% on his assignment. Otherwise, things are going well. Earlier in the week, he earned 95% on a chapter test. He also played around with another Can You Count in Greek? worksheet on Mayan math and read some more of Murderous Maths, Fractions and Averages: The Mean and Vulgar Bits.

History & Literature:
It was more Mesoamerica this week: a page from the history atlas, an article from Learning Through History: Mesoamerica and a few pages from The Maya: Life, Myth and Art (Timothy Laughton) followed by cryptogram with a message about Mayan religion:

The Mayan religion was polytheistic, meaning they worshipped many gods. The most important god was the sun god. The Mayans used large mounds and pyramids for worship.

This was his first puzzle of this sort, and he had a blast with it. He was so much enjoying The Children’s Homer and The Well of Sacrifice that he read ahead and finished his assigned reading for the week in both by sometime on Tuesday.

English:
This week, we introduced a new writing model, based on the Mayan story of the hero twins. RobotBoy knows a couple of versions of this story from his reading, and the one I chose for the model was slightly different. So, we talked about how such things develop variations over the years. In English Prep, we read and answered questions about Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”) and a non-fiction piece about St, Valentine. (Pretty clever how this chapter fell at just the right time of the year, huh?) We also read the vocabulary section about forms of the word ‘martyr.’ He also did another two lessons of Word Roots.

Science:
In The Story of Science, RobotBoy read about Rome. He then read the first two chapters of Science in Ancient Greece and did a project about light and parabolic reflectors from Ancient Science: 40 Time-Traveling, World-Exploring, History-Making Activities for Kids. For fun, he watched two episodes of Secrets of Ancient Empires, one about pyramids and another about obelisks.

Spanish:
RobotBoy did the next 11 pages of The Learnables. I don’t remember exactly what was covered, and I’m too lazy to go get the book and check. I do know that I chatted with him about a couple of the pages, reading the sentences in Spanish and asking him to translate, and he did just fine.

Greek:
For the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker this week, RobotBoy learned “The Dipthong Song.” He also did several pages of Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek!

Geography:
He’s still working on the module about the Pacific Rim and is a little bit stuck on one assignment. He is supposed to choose three countries in the area and do a compare and contrast thing. In order to earn full points for the assignment, he is supposed to compare and contrast with seven categories, and it’s just taking a lot of time to mine the information.

Other Stuff:
The reading I mentioned for last Friday was kind of disappointing. It was billed as a re-working of The Tempest from a female point of view. Prospero became Prospera, and Calliban was played by a woman, etc. We were really looking forward to it. But it turned out to involve little more than changing of pronouns and introducing a couple of musical numbers in the second half. Sunday afternoon, we went to see a production of one of our favorite shows, The Compleat Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). So much fun. And RobotBoy talked us into letting him audition for a community theatre production of The King and I. (He starts rehearsals next week.) We spent most of Wednesday making lists and shopping and gathering gear from the garage, because RobotBoy and I will be camping with his choir this weekend. He’s very, very excited.

My 52-Book Challenge:
I have started and dropped several books lately. So, my official book for last week was Queen Bee Moms and Kingpin Dads, by the same woman who wrote Queen Bees and Wannabes. It was okay, although I found an awful lot of the information just didn’t seem to apply to our family’s life. And I never did figure out for sure what “type” I am. I can’t seem to settle into anything for this week, either. I’ve started a novel called In the Fall, but I’m really not loving the writing style. And last night I started The Wings of the Dove, but it hasn’t really grabbed me, either. I’m sure something will click. I’ll let you know next week!

Still Holding My Breath

Okay, I admit it: I’m a little stunned that we had another good week. I’m not sure what’s going on, and I have this insane compulsion to knock on wood all the time, but things are going really well. I did mention it to RobotBoy, and he said he just came back from our holiday break feeling like he wanted to do better. And so he is.

Absolutely amazing.

So, here’s how it went.

Math:
RobotBoy is keeping up very well with the faster pace in this course. He’s completing his six lessons a week with good (okay, mostly perfect) grades and nary a whimper of protest. He took the test on the introduction to polynomials and is now breezing through the unit on factoring them. He read some more of Murderous Maths, Fractions and Averages: The Mean and Vulgar Bits and did another page of Maya-themed math from Can You Count in Greek?

History & Literature:
He’s continued to focus on Mesoamerica this week, reading from his world history atlas, Learning Through History: Mesoamerica, The Maya: Life, Myth and Art (Timothy Laughton) and Egyptians, Maya, Minoans (Susanna Matthies). This Friday’s worksheet was a fun wordseach with vocabulary from his reading. Literature-wise, he’s continuing with The Children’s Homer and has read about the first third of The Well of Sacrifice. Both are getting thumbs up reviews.

English:
RobotBoy did his writing project this week, recounting the Chinese folk tale of “Wang the Peddler.” He turned in a pretty good first draft on Tuesday (right on schedule!), which really just needed minor punctuation and spelling corrections. The “final” draft he turned in a day early on Thursday wasn’t completely clean, unfortunately. So, he made the remaining corrections and re-submitted on Friday. I did knock off half a point, but I still consider it a success.
In English Prep, we reviewed prepositions and definite/indefinite articles. Then on Friday we read the excerpt from Silas Marner and talked through the comprehension questions.

RobotBoy did two more lessons of Word Roots. I’m a little sad that he won’t be able to continue the program next year, since he’s finishing the last level that is available for the computer.

Science:
This week in The Story of Science, RobotBoy read about Eratosthenes and his attempts to measure the earth. He then finished Archimedes and the Door of Science, which also earned a thumbs up review.

Spanish:
He’s still working on the “Pronouns” section. I think his favorite thing this week was the exercise about the man being chased out of his tent by the lion. He tracked me down in the kitchen to read that one to me. I have to say, though, that I was actually pretty pleased with his pronunciation. It’s not something that gets worked on formally in The Learnables, but he seems to be picking it up, anyway.

Greek:
He’s nearing the end of the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker. So, he did just two pages of that and six of Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek! He continues to enjoy these.

Geography:
This week, he’s started reading about the Pacific Rim. His assignment was to choose one country from that part of the world, about which he had to answer some basic factual questions and then research an imaginary trip. Given his obsession with samurai, it’s probably not a big surprise that he selected Japan to research.

Other Stuff:
It was a very busy week with extras. On Saturday, RobotBoy took the Explore exam at a local school. He said it was not so much difficult as tedious, but he was pretty tired by the time he was done. That afternoon, we had tickets to see the Metropolitan Opera HD broadcast of Orfeo ed Euridice. That was really lovely, by the way. We all enjoyed it. On Sunday afternoon, we went to see a reading of a new play about John Wilkes Booth at the Orlando Shakespeare Theatre’s festival of new plays. Tuesday evening brought the Horns and Pipes concert at St. Luke’s cathedral, which RobotBoy really loved. In honor of Mendelssohn’s 200th anniversary, they played several of his pieces, including the "Wedding March" from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. On Thursday evening after choir, RobotBoy and I went to see/hear a workshop of a new opera based on George Bernard Shaw’s play The Dark Lady of the Sonnets. RobotBoy enjoyed it and said it brought back memories of his own opera workshop experiences about this time last year.

We have tickets to another reading tonight (Friday) and a couple of more things over the weekend. We love PlayFest time!

My 52-Book Challenge:
I finished re-reading Sense and Sensibility this week but haven’t decided what I’ll count as my official next book. I have Utopia, which I had planned to be next, but I bought a copy of Queen Bee Moms and Kingpin Dads on sale yesterday and started that while I was waiting for RobotBoy to come out of choir. Maybe I’ll do both.

Chugging Along

Things continue to go pretty well here, which continues to pleasantly surprise me. We have reached the end of another week in which all the work got done, without undue stress and strain, and there were no incidents to report. No yelling, no complaining, no going-to-his-room-and-dragging-out-a-single-lesson-for-two-hours issues. Just chugging along.

We even managed to cope with me being under the weather for a couple of days and doing a light day on Tuesday to watch some of the inauguration coverage. And it still all got done.

Wow.

Anyway, here’s the rundown.

Math:
RobotBoy buzzed through the assigned lessons for the week, finishing “Properties of Exponents” and beginning “Monomials.” He took the exponents chapter test on Wednesday morning and earned a perfect score. He also read about prime factoring in the Murderous Maths book Fractions and Averages: The Mean and Vulgar Bits. And he made some connections with the week’s history readings, completing two pages of Maya-themed math from Can You Count in Greek?

History & Literature:
This week, RobotBoy wrapped up ancient China and started reading about Mesoamerican civilizations. He read passages from his world history atlas, Learning Through History: Mesoamerica, The Maya: Life, Myth and Art (Timothy Laughton) and Egyptians, Maya, Minoans (Susanna Matthies). On Friday, he completed the week’s worksheet based on some of his reading. For literature, he finished The Ch’I Lin Purse: A Collection of Ancient Chinese Stories and started working on The Children’s Homer.

English:
On Monday, we read the poem “Christmas” by John Betjeman, did the associated comprehension questions and talked about the role of rhyme in poetry. On Friday, we read the chapter’s non-fiction selection, “Save the Nativity Play,” did the comprehension exercise, and went over the spelling and vocabulary lessons. We also read through our new writing model, a Chinese folk tale, on both Tuesday and Thursday, focusing on grammar and punctuation. On his own, RobotBoy did the next two lessons of Word Roots.

Science:
RobotBoy continued reading with The Story of Science this week, reading the “Archimedes Claw” chapter. He also read a few chapters of Archimedes and the Door of Science. On Wednesday, because he was all caught up with work and had done so well on the math test, we treated ourselves to a slightly-educational field trip to the new T-Rex Café. Lunch left a lot to be desired, but we enjoyed touring the various rooms with all of the animatronic beasties. And RobotBoy talked me into letting him buy both a geode to split in the cool machine and a bag of stuff from which he was able to pan a few tiny fossils in the outdoor sluice thoughtfully provided by the restaurant’s management. Of course, being who he is, RobotBoy spent the last 20 minutes or so at the lunch table brainstorming how he would re-do the whole restaurant to make it so much cooler.

Spanish:
He continued working on pronouns. There were no written exercises this week. Even RobotBoy is beginning to say he wishes there were a little more written work in this book, because it helps him to reinforce and remember what he’s learning. In thinking about next year, we’re considering adding some work from an old copy of Barron’s Learn Spanish the Fast and Fun Way, just to give him some additional practice.

Greek:
He did four pages each of Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek! and the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker.

Geography:
RobotBoy continued learning about Latin America, with a lesson on environmental issues and the “Flow of Goods.” He also completed the chapter review.

Other Stuff:
We had a fun theatre outing on Thursday evening, going to see a preview performance of the new play Wittenberg. [Take a look here for video snippets from the show: http://www.orlandoshakes.org/CURRENT_SEASON/Wittenberg.html] It was both funny a thought-provoking, an imagined encounter/friendship between Martin Luther and Dr. Faust, with a little bit of Hamlet thrown in.

The new ballroom class did start this week, which was a lot of fun (both for him to do and for me to watch). This means he now has five dance classes distributed over four days each week, plus choir rehearsals and organ lessons. The thing that I was most pleased about this week was organ. His teacher was apparently trying to get a better feel for where RobotBoy really is with his music reading and so on. So, he was assigned to prepare three or four pieces of his choice to play in a mini-recital for the instructor at this week’s lesson. RobotBoy worked really hard on practicing this week, and the instructor seemed quite pleased. I really hope this means we may be turning a corner with this.

Something that does seem to be helping, with both the academic stuff and the dance and music practice, is going back to making a weekly planner each Monday. RobotBoy and I sit together at my desk, go over the week’s assignments and fill in a table with the specific tasks he will do in each subject each day. We opted not to create more waste paper. So, we fill in the table in a Microsoft Word document, which I then e-mail to him. We each keep a copy open on our computers throughout the day, and he turns the appropriate text red as he finishes each task. This week, we added a section with reminders for him to do music practice and some stretching exercises (since one of his challenges with dance is improving his flexibility). I still have to do a bit more nagging – er, “gentle reminding” – than I’d like. But it does seem to help.

My 52-Book Challenge:
My official book for this week was Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreiser, which I liked very much. I did find Carrie, herself, kind of frustrating, because she lacked depth. I’m also working on re-reading Sense and Sensibility. And I bought a book called Leaving the Saints off the Barnes & Noble bargain table, which I read cover-to-cover one night when I couldn’t sleep. So, far, I’m ahead of schedule.

Back Again

Well, here we are at the end of the first week of our second semester. It’s going surprisingly well, although we had to make a sacrifice to get here.

Here’s the big confession (which I’ve already shared with my friends over at the WTM boards): We’re dropping Latin for the rest of this year.

I know. I can hear you all gasping with disbelief.

Here’s what happened: RobotBoy really enjoyed Latin as long as we were doing the reading-based curricula. Learning Latin Through Mythology was an especially big hit. We’ve pretty much exhausted the only similar materials I can find, though, that seem like a comfortable fit for him. There are more programs that take a reading approach, but they seem to kick in mostly at the high school level. And we’re just not there yet.

We like the English Prep series from Galore Park, so we thought we’d try their Latin Prep curriculum. It was not going well. RobotBoy just didn’t seem to be retaining or understanding as much as I had hoped. So, at some point, I decided to drop back and aim to finish only the first half of the book this year. Then we got very busy and dropped back into “only the basics” mode for a few weeks before the holidays. And Latin just didn’t get done at all.

Then I had some chat with my student about how things are going for him and what we could do next year to make school more interesting. And he would prefer to kick up the challenge level a bit but streamline the number of subjects. He wants to continue Spanish and Greek, so we agreed to let Latin fall away. At that point, it seemed just plain silly to worry about doing half of a book we’re not likely to finish in the future. So, Latin is off the menu for now.

The good news is that, with Latin off the planner and the FLVS art class finished, we have much more time available to catch up on the stuff that got neglected in the second half of last semester. And we just have more breathing room, which, I suppose, may be why this week has been more pleasant than I anticipated.

Math:
This is another subject in which we fell behind before the holidays. In order to finish the course as scheduled, we now have to complete six lessons each week. It’s a tall order, but RobotBoy is tackling it pretty cheerfully. This week, he did the section on Systems of Linear Inequalities (which involved lots of looking at graphs) and started working on Properties of Exponents. He continues to like the course and earn very good grades. I think this should put him in a great place to do geometry next year.

History & Literature:
This semester kicked off with another very cool field trip, The First Emperor: China’s Terra Cotta Army at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Moonheart came along for the ride, since we were taking her back to campus. She gave the exhibit thumbs up, too. The exhibit was a wonderful way to jump start the semester, since it dovetailed nice with RobotBoy’s current reading. He also watched a DVD from Netflix about the life of China’s first emperor before we went to the museum. He’s working his way through the Nature Company Discoveries book Ancient China and has read several articles from the Learning Through History issue. He also read the pages in the Atlas of World History about the Great Wall, the terracotta army, the Han Dynasty and the silk road. His literature reading for the week included selections from The Ch’I Lin Purse: A Collection of Ancient Chinese Stories and the Oxford book of Tales From China.

We’re just a touch off kilter because of the need to catch up in some areas. So, his Child’s History of the World story for this week was about the Trojan war. He followed that up with a History Scribe page about the Trojan horse. Ah well, it’ll all come together eventually, right?

English:
We are having to pick up a little slack in this subject, too. So, this week we did the pages on demonstrative and relative pronouns and reviewed comma usage. We also read an excerpt from Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree and answered the comprehension questions. Independently, RobotBoy did two lessons of Word Roots.

Science:
RobotBoy read two chapters from The Story of Science this week, which got him caught up. I thought it was cool that the chapter on Hero and Alexandria happened to fall just when we’re finishing listening to the third Bartimaeus book. (RobotBoy read them over the summer and insisted I would love them. We’ve been listening to the audio versions on road trips, and they really are a lot of fun.) He also read a chapter of Archimedes and the Door of Science and did a project from the ancient Greece chapter of Ancient Science.

Latin:
Sigh. (See above.)

Spanish:
He finished the section on plurals and moved on to pronouns this week. He did well on the ejercicios.

Greek:
In Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek! RobotBoy is practicing the words he’s learned so far, going back and forth from English to Greek. He’s doing a little catch-up work in Greek Alphabet Code Cracker, reviewing the sounds of the Greek letters. Hey, Andrew! seems to be a good fit for him. We’re planning to continue with the program next year.

Geography:
The current module is about Latin America, and the week’s lessons were about “Society and Family Life” and “Land Use and Change.” RobotBoy continues to enjoy and do well in the course. I’m not sure how much he’s retaining, but it’s a start.

Other Stuff:
All of the extracurriculars have come back into play since the beginning of the month. So, we’re back into the weekly round of tap, ballet, organ, choir, ballet, character. If all goes well, he may be adding a ballroom dance class on Monday afternoons beginning later this month. I’m still frustrated with the amount of organ practice he’s not doing and kind of at my wit’s end to figure out how to fix that problem. But, all in all, things are going well.

My New Challenge:
I’ve decided to join a group of folks from the WTM boards in challenging myself to read 52 books in 52 weeks this year. That is, to be honest, not a huge number of books for me to read, but the rules say that we can’t count things we read for school. We are allowed to count things we’ve read before, as long as it hasn’t been too recent. But my own personal goal is to make the majority of the books I choose for this year classics I’ve somehow missed or things that are in some way more of a challenge for me. In other words, I don’t want to be lazy about this. We are in our third week of the challenge, and so far I’ve read Bel Canto, by Anne Patchett (because Moonheart nagged me into it), In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote (because it was on one of the Modern Library’s “best of” lists and I saw a used copy for $1) and Joy in the Morning, by Betty Smith (because I hadn’t read it since I was a teenager and I needed something more uplifting after the first two).

Of course, this challenge, combined with the B&N buy-two-get-one-free sale on their classics line, has given me an excuse to go on a small buying spree. So, waiting in the wings are Sense and Sensibility (again, a re-read, but one I haven’t done in a few years), Mansfield Park (ditto), Pygmalion and Three Other Plays, Sister Carrie, Barchester Towers and Wings of the Dove.

I haven’t yet participated, but there is a blog to which some of my fellow book-a-weekers are contributing reviews and comments: http://read52booksin52weeks.blogspot.com/ It’s fun to see the diversity of both subject matter and opinion. I’ll keep you posted on how I’m doing.