Feb. 11 2009

Whew! I'm just exhausted. Once a week I babysit (although that implies I get paid--and I don't) two toddlers, ages 2 and 3. Yes, I'm crazy, but it's volunteer work and I'm building Heaven points. Anyway,poor Connor has to get up extra early to get his math done before they arrive, and then he spent the entire day trying to do school work in between chasing these two wild Indians around. But Connor did just splendidly. In spite of the absolute chaos, Connor managed to complete an entire unit in his vocabulary book. It's the same book that Austin is using at McQuaid, and I found out from Austin (over dinner tonight) that the 7th graders do a unit a week. Oh well. Connor does a unit almost every day,and doesn't seem to mind. Connor also finally mastered (I say finally, but really it was only a week) Asian geography. He can fill in the map of Asia (30 countries) in 140 seconds now, with 100% accuracy. So we can cross off the USA, Europe and Asia now. Tomorrow we can start on Central America. Good thing I was an international travel coordinator for 15 years and already know this stuff cold. Connor also completed another one of the reading packets I use to teach Reading 101 at Monroe Community college. Connor scored 95% without any assistance. Time to move to a more difficult book. Math was a bummer today. Connor didn't know how to do tessellations, and neither did I. I've decided I'm going to have to cough up the $32 for the solution/teacher manual. Darn. I hate it that I can't do 5th grade math. On a positive note, my Chinese is coming along. We listened to our Chinese Cd for awhile, and "our babies" as I often call them, seemed to like it too. Connor is on page 92 in Huckleberry Finn, and we talked about how the seven years between the novels beginning and its end might have affected the author, Samuel Clemmons (Mark Twain). Connor also went to a horse-back riding lesson today, and a guitar lesson. So, even though we chased around toddlers quite a bit, Connor did manage to accomplish more today than he would in a week at school. He's now starting to tell people (with pride) that he's home-schooled. The guitar teacher told me that he was telling Connor about a band, named the Demos. Connor informed the guitar teacher that Demos, in Latin, means people. Connor wondered aloud if the band knew the definition of Demos and wanted to be a band "of the people." Again, it's all good stuff.