This week’s “Five in a Row” book was “When I Was Young in the Mountains” by Cynthia Rylant. It’s set in the Appalachian region years and years and years ago, before electricity, plumbing and, apparently, snake deterrent. Having grown up in the same region — with indoor plumbing, electricity and a dearth of snake sightings, happily — I was pretty excited about exploring its history with Poppy. We listened to a lot of bluegrass this week and read a few Jack tales in addition to our regularly scheduled activities.

I’ve been trying to jot down some notes on each day as we go along, but I didn’t do that very consistently this week. I’m sure you’ll be able to tell on which days I neglected to do it! Here’s what we did this week:

Monday

After reading “When I Was Young in the Mountains,” we looked back through the illustrations and noted the things that were different to Poppy’s experience, like the grocery store and the wood stove. Then we looked at a map of the Appalachian Mountains and talked about which states they run through.

As we were talking about Appalachian culture, I pulled up Pandora radio on my new phone and put on some Earl Scruggs, and the kids danced their way through lunch.

We also started our cooking lessons on Monday by reading over some basic kitchen safety rules. Then Poppy watched the “Power Trip” episode of “Good Eats.” She went on an outing with our neighbor after that, though, so we didn’t get to make any granola bars.

Additional work: handwriting, two chapters of “Dr. Dolittle,” Spanish.

Tuesday

It was health day again, and there were no puppets involved! We talked about how families change, and the accompanying activity was rather confusing. There were nine drawings of three different family units, and Poppy was supposed to cut them out, arrange them by family and paste them onto another piece of paper in chronological order. She was having a hard time with separating out the family units, though, so I tried to help her. And I couldn’t tell who was supposed to be where, either. So attention Horizons: That page needs some work.

I didn’t plan to do any nature journal work on Tuesday, but Rockford found a turtle while he was mowing the lawn. We put him in a box for awhile so Poppy and Pete could watch him, and Poppy drew a rather abstract picture of a “turtle that’s up with God” for her nature journal. We tried to give the turtle a mushroom, a blueberry and some grass. He tried the mushroom but didn’t seem all that interested in the rest of his buffet.

Additional work: handwriting, a chapter of “Dr. Dolittle,” Spanish.

Wednesday

On Wednesday we did some light math from the illustrations in “When I Was Young in the Mountains.” First we made a list of all the foods Poppy could find in the book, then we made a graph of what colors people were wearing in the book.

Additional work: Handwriting, ballet, Spanish, “Dr. Dolittle.”

Thursday

Rockford had to leave for a business trip in the afternoon, so he stayed home in the morning. He was in his home office* for most of the morning, but he did take a break before he left to talk to Poppy about the food groups.

For health, we talked about Good Manners (and How to Use Them) before making a “good manners tree.” Poppy cut out a tree trunk and pasted it to a piece of paper, and we worked together to cut out a bunch of leaves. Then we were “good manners detectives” throughout the day. Whenever someone used good manners, we noted it on a leaf and pasted the leaf to the tree.

Additional work: Handwriting, Spanish, “Dr. Dolittle.”

Friday

We got off to a very slow start on Friday, what with the small boy who got up three times to check in with me and the cat who would not stop meowing on Thursday night. Poppy tends toward the crabby in the morning, and the tendency was magnified for some reason on Friday. We didn’t actually get around to doing anything schoolish until well into the afternoon. Around 3, to be exact. I didn’t actually have all that much planned for the day, though, so other than the copious amounts of ‘tude, it wasn’t really a big deal.

Anyway, once we finally got on track, we read “When I Was Young in the Mountains,” paying special attention to the illustrations of the sky, then we set up Poppy’s easel so she could do her own sky illustrations. Her first painting was wildly colorful, but the second one looked much more sky-like.

Additional work: Handwriting, Spanish, “Dr. Dolittle.”

*Sounds fancy, eh? Here’s the reality: We cleared all of the junk’n’stuff off of his bedside table and put a chair up there, because his foot kept falling asleep when he was just working on the bed.