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.