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.