2 Hours of Work Is Apparently a Lot

I think my son did 2 hours of assigned work this morning. It might not have even been that much. It might have only been 1.5 hours. I can't remember at what time he got up. Here is what he got done:

*I read Matthew 4 to him and we talked a bit about it (I admit it, while the Charlotte Mason approach would be to just have him narrate, there are certain things that seem too important to just leave to his narration!)
*a page of division practice
*copywork: very simple (Demain, c'est ma fête de treize ans. J'ai vraiment hâte!)
*read a grammar lesson and do one page of grammar work (not much to it, to be honest)
*read the next chapter in Our Island Story
*read the French poem "Le Corbeau et le renard"

He was practically moaning by the end of it. Even said, even though the readings were fine the other times, that he wasn't really interested in Our Island Story and didn't see why he had to read about it (and complained about how "long" yesterday's reading about ancient Egypt was). I see different factors in this finding the amount of work difficult:

1) We had a busy day yesterday and he is visibly tired today. Tiredness = grumpiness.
2) I'm not alternating the type of work enough (I see now I have the poem right after the history reading.
3) I haven't yet included enough "extras" that would pique his interest more (like science; gah, I need to pick something and thinking that if he's balking right now with the amount of reading, perhaps more reading is not a good choice for the time being. I quickly grabbed a TOPS science unit we have but decided it's not a good fit for him; he needs something more complicated, in-depth, although the pH testing might interest him).

I said to him, after he complained about the "11 pages of reading" (it's below his reading level, was only 9 pages and each page is not that full) from the ancients book yesterday and there being a LOT of information in it, that he was going to be in high school soon and would have a lot more he would have to read at a time. He said he could read that much, he just didn't like it. lol. But, since he's having a hard time narrating much shorter things, I probably should have given him a shorter amount to process.

Regardless, this is all still progress. He has adapted rather well to having requirements, except for how long they take up of his morning. (No, he has never expressed an interest in school and is always worried when he thinks I've said something about him having to go to school. I can't imagine how he would handle it!)