One or more of us has been sick every day this week. Pete had a weird fever with no other symptoms last weekend, then I came down with an awful cold and lost my voice for most of the week — I sound a little like Kathleen Turner today, when I try to talk — and now both kids are having some (ah-hem) gastrointestinal discomforts that I very much hope not to experience personally. Right now they are both bundled up in blankets and a general malaise in the living room and listening to Jeremy Irons’ reading of “James and the Giant Peach” for the 253th time.

Despite all that, we actually got quite a bit of schoolwork done this week.

Extracurricular

Poppy finished her costumes for Odyssey of the Mind last weekend. She’ll be portraying a clown fish and an undersea explorer, and with her permission I will share at least one of the costumes with you after their competition next month.

Pete had his first basketball practice. I am so very much looking forward to his first game, which is in a few weeks.

Poetry

Poppy memorized Mary Ann Hoberman’s “Growing” this week, and Pete learned “About the Teeth of Sharks” by John Ciardi.

About the Teeth of Sharks
John Ciardi
The thing about a shark is — teeth,
One row above, one row beneath.

Now take a close look. Do you find
It has another row behind?

Still closer — here, I’ll hold your hat:
Has it a third row behind that?

Now look in and … Look out! Oh my,
I’ll never know now! Well, goodbye.

Reading

When last we spoke of such things, Poppy didn’t want to read “Harry Potter” so Pete and I were reading it together. Poppy gradually started listening, too, and by the end she and Pete were very vocally cheering for Harry & the gang. We started “The Lightning Thief” before Christmas, but neither of them wanted to finish it. Rockford gave them a copy of “The Hobbit” for Christmas, and he’s been reading it to them at bedtime.

Both kids are doing the Pizza Hut Book-It program this year. Since Pete is just learning to read, his goal for this month is to complete three Bob books. He conquered the first one of the month today. It was an odd one, about a couple with 10 children who enjoy hiding in a bag. Poppy’s goal is to read 1,000 pages. She’s done about 250 pages so far, almost from an American Girls set she got for Christmas.

Math

Both kids are still doing and enjoying McRuffy math. Pete is been working on ordinal numbers and counting by 10s this week, and Poppy has been doing quite a bit with counting money and reading clocks. I would very much like it if Poppy finished Teaching Textbooks 3, so she’s been doing about two lessons from that every week. I also downloaded a few multiplication games for her iPod touch this week in hopes that she would magically learn her multiplication tables, but it hasn’t worked yet.