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.