Homeschooling Only One

Yesterday, three of my four school-aged children were sick. Ginger, the oldest, was in day three of the flu, having missed getting it when the rest of us did, the week before. Tullius and Zamakee, in 2nd grade and kindergarten respectively, both had fevers. Not sure if it was a relapse, a repeat or something new... So my 5th grader Momo got to be an only student.

MATH Math-U-See Zeta, Lesson 21, Practice B Long division with decimals, rounding patterns, remainders as fractions, etc. Boring. Easy. 100% A+.

LATIN Lively Latin, Lesson 11.3 Forming the Future Tense I love Latin, so we did this together. Interesting. Easy. 100% A+.

LOGIC Building Thinking Skills 2, Chapter 10 Verbal Analogies A page of such things as marble:stone :: diamond:jewel. Not sure if it was easy or not, but she got them all right, as usual.

GRAMMAR Straight Forward English Series Verbs, p 13, Spelling Rules for Tense. Adding -s or -es to some verbs and then making sentences with them. Here are some of her sentences:
The eyrie tosses the yooyu ball to the jubjub.
The hissi drinks the morphing potion and changes into a cybunny.
Ah, good old Neopia! Easy. All correct...

CHEMISTRY The Elements: Ingredients of the Universe, Chapter 3 Activity #5 & #6 This involved finding the number of protons in 25 or so different elements and looking at a cool website called Dave's Wizzy Periodic Table This takes awhile to load, but is worth it for looking at how many electrons are in which S & P orbitals. I have a slightly difficult time understanding about the orbitals, but she doesn't. Chemistry really is fascinating! Maybe Momo will be a chemist.

HISTORY Tapestry of Grace Year 1, Week 24 Sigh. We could be doing SO MUCH...but we're not. Her reading is a 2 page spread in The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of the Ancient World. Called "Battles and Battle Formations," it looks really unmemorable so I suggest we read it together. Everyone else is either sleeping or quietly playing.

We read the second page on formations first. Several times she mentions having "read about that" and goes back to find the page. Tomorrow, if everyone is well enough to go outside, we'll model the battle positions. We certainly have enough shields and sticks! Then we look at the list of battles on the first page. We decide to try to find them on our fold-out National Geographic Map of "The Historic Mediterranean 800 BC to AD 1500" that is on the kitchen table under the plastic table cloth.

The descriptions are short and not very specific, such as:
CHAERONEA A town in Central Greece, the site of Philip II of Macedon's decisive victory over the Greek cities in 338 BC. We struggle with the vagueness, but have fun trying to locate them. Not all are on the map.


And that was the school day. Not perfect, but peaceful and productive. I wish I could spend such time with her everyday. I wish I could spend such time with each of my children everyday.