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!