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.