A Day in the Life.....of a Middle-School Boy

I'm writing this Thursday night, so will just talk about it as "today" even though by the time you read this, it will be yesterday, 'kay? 'Kay.

The Artist, sipping some hot tea, and reading. Of course.

Today, The Artist.  Newly-turned age 12, he is in his 2nd semester of 6th grade. He is enrolled in Science & English via the same TTUISD that we use for The Writer; Science is a print-based course, meaning they sent us a PDF of the course syllabus & assignments and we type his answers and email them back (or, if we were in the US, we would mail them in). English is on-line and is done the same way as The Writer's courses; reading assignments are posted, he reads in a textbook and completes quizzes and worksheets on-line, and submits written assignments by typing them, saving them, then uploading them to the website.

The Artist also does Teaching Textbooks Math 6 and reads assorted history books; he is supposed to be doing World Geography, but I have seriously let that slide. The therapy stuff for The Adventurer really threw me for a loop, and most of my planning time from September to now has been used up with sorting out what all of the Psychologist's suggestions mean. I have not had time to be in charge of directing The Artist through a research based geography course, so instead have been handing him biographies to read and historical fiction about different time periods and parts of the world; thank goodness for all the leftover Sonlight books!

I've decided to save The Adventurer's routine for next week, so today, just a quick look at a day in the life of a middle school boy.  Today his day involved a LOT of computer time. The boys rediscovered Civilization III last night, so he's been playing it basically every time he can convince me to let him on the computer. As I was fighting a sore throat and general blah feeling, and it was raining so outside activity was a definite no-go, he got let on the computer a lot.

Between Civ III sessions, though, he attempted to do research for a paper on volcanoes (for English, not Science) and despite 45 minutes of faithful effort, could not find the answers he needed. I decided I did not have enough brain power to direct his research, so told him I'd help him later. That no due date thing is a blessing. Or a curse. Whichever.

Instead of working on the paper, then, he had to write a 500 word essay on a hero in his life. I typed up the questions that his teacher wanted him to answer and left space between each so he could fill in a chart and organize his thoughts. Then I spent two hours helping him develop his thoughts into well-written, well-developed paragraphs. We managed to get from "My hero is my dad. He is good at Resident Evil, is very nice, and makes great apple pie" to a fairly good essay, though we did stop at 479 words because I just could not see how on earth to add those last 21 words to what we had. And after two hours, I was ready to quit. I uploaded the file, clicked submit, and crossed my fingers. Here's hoping the teacher likes it.

Aside from that, The Artist had one math lesson and read half a chapter of Science. Or, as he puts it, "two entire sections....."  He did learn a lot about types of energy, though, and spent the rest of the afternoon telling me what types of energy exist in all the objects in our house. And which civilization he was going to conquer next. But I don't think that was from Science.

Oh, and he read. A lot. As he is never without a book (or his kindle), I forget to count that as school. He reads while he eats breakfast, reads while he eats lunch, reads between school assignments, reads out in the hammock in the afternoons, reads at night after going to bed......he is always reading. Right now he's reading through the original Boxcar Children series, as a 12-book set was recently free for Kindle. Right now he's advising his older brother on the best strategy for Civilization III......

Over the weekend (you don't have to stop by, but I'd love it if you do) I'll post up The Artist's essay, and hopefully his grade, so you can see what an average 6th grade boy writes and how it gets graded by an average school teacher; I will also share some quips and quotes from The Adventurer's past week just to give you a glimpse of who he is before I really get into his therapy needs. Monday (and probably a lot of next week) will be all about how a veteran home school mom can be totally caught off guard by something like a dyslexia diagnosis, what all therapies were suggested, what all we're doing, and how that fits into our day. In a country where every aspect of his therapy and remediation rests solely on me, because there simply are no options available to us in English otherwise.