We’re now finishing our second week back after three weeks mostly off, and it is clear we’re still not really back in the swing. Math, especially, is simply exhausting and unpleasant.
So, here’s where we are:
Math:
Despite our (my) best intentions, RobotBoy never did very many math lessons during his semi-break. Then, last week (our first week back), he didn’t even finish a single week’s worth of lessons. So, we’re right back into six-lessons-a-week territory. And, we’re now elbow deep in quadratic equations, which is not exactly easy stuff. Add in the fact that RobotBoy is having some trouble even getting to work at a decent time in the morning, and you can see why the going has been a bit tough this week. We did trudge through all but one of the requisite number of lessons, but his grades on the daily assignments were pretty awful. The thing is that I just really can’t tell whether he honestly doesn’t get it or whether he just isn’t mentally present enough to do it. (There’s just so much going on right now. See “Other Stuff” below.) He does fine when we work through the lesson together. And he’s slow but fairly accurate for the first few questions of each assignment. But then it just spirals down into him spending inordinate amounts of time complaining and begging for help and getting wildly wrong answers because he seems to completely forget how to add. Sigh.
In other news, he has finished the first Murderous Maths book I bought for him and is now working on The Phantom X. He also did two more pages of Greek-inspired math in Can You Count in Greek?
History & Literature:
He continued reading about ancient Greece this week, and he’s especially enjoying Theras and His Town. He also read about Socrates and Plato and others in The Story of Philosopy, which he seems to find very interesting, and dipped into Terry Deary’s Top 10 Greek Legends. He watched another episode of Secrets of Ancient Empires and the “Spice Routes and Silk Roads” segment of the Story of India series. His written work this week was a History Scribe page about Phoenician culture. Oh, and he did a couple of Child’s History of the World stories, “The People Who Made Our ABC’s” and “Hard as Nails.”
English:
In English Prep we read Wordsworth’s “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge” and talked about personification. We also learned about the rules for making plurals of words ending in ‘o’ (which I don’t think I ever had explained to me, by the way) and reviewed active and passive voice. The new writing model is the story of Androcles and the Lion, which we read over and talked about a couple of times. RobotBoy also did two lessons of Word Roots.
Science:
“No Joke—The Earth Is Pancake Flat!” Or so said the title of this week’s chapter of The Story of Science. Alongside that, RobotBoy is reading Science in Ancient Rome. We never got around to the project/experiment for this week, because we used most of Wednesday to catch up on desk work.
Spanish:
He just chugging along in The Learnables.
Greek:
He did a page of the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker and several pages of Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek!
Geography:
RobotBoy spent most of this week working on his “briefing” about India for the module on South Asia. He is also supposed to be making corrections and additions to a couple of lessons on which he didn’t do very well the first time around.
Other Stuff:
He had to skip tap class this week, because it conflicted with the dress rehearsal for his recital, which is coming up this weekend. He did attend ballroom, ballet, choir and organ, though, along with two more rehearsals for the opera. We’re now gearing up for the final weekend of The King and I performances, another opera reherasal and the recital. Next week, he’ll have rehearsals Monday through Wednesday evenings for the opera, which opens that Friday. So, it may be challenging—again—to get much schoolwork done.
One thing about which I'm very pleased is that RobotBoy has done some spontaneous and serious music practice in the last couple of weeks. I haven't nagged him about it, and he's actually working on the currently assigned piece instead of just playing ones he already knows over and over. That's a good thing.
My 52-Book Challenge:
I’m managing to keep up so far, with the addition of some audiobooks for the time on the road. In the weeks since my last post here, I’ve read/listened to Larklight (Phillip Reeve), The Virgin Blue (Tracy Chevalier), Q & A (Vikas Swarup), The Book Thief (Markus Zusak) and Innocent Traitor (Allison Weir). I enjoyed Larklight, which was a family listening experience on a road trip. All the faux Victoriana was fun, and RobotBoy is clamoring for the next in the series. I have mixed feelings about The Virgin Blue. I found it very absorbing, but I knew from early on that something nasty was going to happen to a child and spent a lot of time dreading it. Q & A is the novel on which the film Slumdog Millionaire is based. I enjoyed it, although I found the writing style rather bland in many places. I’ll admit that the big reveal caught me by surprise, though. The Book Thief was lovely, just lovely. I found myself consciously memorizing phrases and descriptions to savor later. And I enjoyed Innocent Traitor much more than I expected. In fact, I was inspired to dash out and buy Weir’s other novel, The Lady Elizabeth, which I’m reading now.
So, not a terrible week, but I’m really not sure what to do with math. I guess we’ll hang on another couple of weeks until we get past the opera and then see if RobotBoy’s brain becomes functional again.
PUPPY!
Good grief, I can’t believe I almost forgot to mention the puppy! I picked her up in South Carolina on the drive to take Moonheart back to school. She’s been with us for almost three weeks, now, and is just a wonderful, sweet, adorable ball of fluff. I’ve been taking her with me for quite a few of our afternoons out, and having her in my arms makes me the most popular person in any room. We’re working on housetraining, of course, and just generally getting into a daily routine that works with a puppy. She’s just darling, though, and well worth the wait.
Here she is playing with the cats' toy today:
