Weekly Report: Six Week Slump?

It's rained here. Not just today, or yesterday, or even just a few days this week. No, it's rained all week long. My driveway has a coating of green on it. Everything has a dreary grey pallor. Lest you think I exaggerate... no. I don't exaggerate. It really feels this way, at least in my head.

To add to that, Fabulous Boy acquired a low-grade fever on Sunday. It came and went, off and on, all week, just enough to have me opt out of taking him to Master's Academy on Monday, or tumbling on Wednesday. Wednesday night I checked on him around 9 pm and he felt cool. At 11 pm, he woke up, glassy-eyed, and he was hot. Low-grade fever had spiked. 102.4°F. Fun times!

We went with cool cloths and sleep Wednesday night. Thursday during the day we added homeopathics to the arsenal. Fever didn't really budge. He tossed and turned near bedtime, so we pulled out the big guns - Children's Tylenol.

I should say here that I generally don't agree with fever reduction. I think fever plays an important role in immune response, and whenever possible, I'd rather my kids have a fever for 12 to 24 hours and get their illness gone. Since he'd cycled between fever and not for days, though, and we were approaching the 24 hour mark, and he couldn't sleep, we went with the Tylenol.

He drank it after 30 minutes, and went to sleep. An hour later, I checked on him and he was dripping sweat, but cool. By this morning, the fever had returned (holding steady at 102.1°F), so back to the Tylenol we went. He still has a fever, at 100°F, but the difference in his mood is staggering.

So that's FB's report for the week - he was sick. We read books and watched movies. That's it!


Purple Child, luckily, has not contracted whatever sickness ails her brother. I attribute this primarily to the antibodies that I am sure my milk must be transmitting to her. Later today, she's getting her picture made. In theory, we were going to get her picture made around nine months, but in practice, it's become nearly ten months. How did August and most of September go so fast?


Eclectic Girl's week has probably been the best of everyone's. Since I felt rather unmotivated when I wasn't taking care of a sick FB, spelling hasn't gotten done this week. I feel certain that she appreciates this greatly.

In Latin, she's firmly into Chapter 5 and mastering the three sets of vocabulary introduced so far. She's essentially doing Latin six days a week - five days of work and one of vocabulary games online. I think most of the grammar is a review from previous programs, but she has had some new words introduced.

Grammar is still going well. EG is getting better at finding all of the errors in the day's selection without needing hints. Writing Tales 2 is going extremely well. She's finishing up her work with "The Boy and the Nuts" (I think that's the name of it) today, with the grammar review. Her rewrite changed the boy to a girl named Hanna and the nuts to a jar of Skittles!

No drills beaten this week - she's still doing Levels 11 and 27. She's doing well with her work in Key to Measurement but she's having trouble fitting in drill, Life of Fred, and Key to Measurement all within her alloted time period. I'm thinking about doing measurement with her on the weekends or in the evenings, just once or twice a week. It's important, but rushing through it isn't going to help her - she knows the mathematical operations being used, but not the units. Life of Fred is going well, though she did require two or three tries to the Bridge on Monday. I think she was picking up on the overall chaos of last weekend, as her work on the preceding chapters had all been excellent.

History this week covered France, Prussia, Canada, and South America. She chose to write her summary about France and its various governments in the nineteenth century. She read a biography of Geronimo and finished up her look at the Civil War with Lee and Grant at Appomattox. She's also making steady progress on her Civil War memorization projects - "O Captain My Captain" and the Gettysburg Address.

This week kicked off magnetism in physics. EG completed activities 1-5 in the TOPS Magnetism module. I love these TOPS modules! I wish they had had more that fit with our physics study. After these, though, we have some Science in a Nutshell kits to complete.

Finally, in literature, EG and her father continue racing through Where The Red Fern Grows. EG is reading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes this week.

So it wasn't the most stellar week, but at least we kept swimming, to paraphrase Dory.