When I was in school, the days before a holiday break were not the most productive. I can’t remember how many teachers resorted to showing us “Quigley Down Under” in middle school. But I know I’ve seen it more times than I would’ve chosen to on my own.

We didn’t watch any Tom Selleck this week, but we did slack off quite a bit. I’d planned for next week to be a week off from school, but we took it so easy this week that I might have to change that. We didn’t have a “Five in a Row” book this week, and I didn’t have much planned beyond our regular stuff.

Poppy finished her handwriting book on Tuesday. I’m planning to start her on copywork using the poems she’s memorizing. But the printer’s out of ink, so I’m going to have to fix that before I can print the sheets to do that.

She’s still doing well with Rosetta Stone Spanish, but she asked this week if she could do it less frequently. She’s been doing a lesson every day. This week, she just did it on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We’ll probably stick to a schedule like that once we add our math and science curriculums.

We’re talking about Cheerfulness in our “Character Building for Families” study. I can’t say with 100 percent certainty that the lessons are helping all of Poppy’s character issues to fix themselves, but it has helped me to have something specific to say when she has a meltdown or is being generally rotten. Something other than “Stop that,” I mean.

Poppy memorized “We Thank Thee” by Ralph Waldo Emerson this week. This was the first poem that took her the full five days to memorize.

We finished “The Water Horse” this week. I finally looked up the summary of the movie, and it is so far removed from the book’s plot that I’m not going to put it on the Netflix list. I’m not sure what we’ll do for our next read-together.

Our next “Five in a Row” book is waiting at the library, but we won’t start on it next week. I’m guessing next week is going to look a lot like this week.

What to know what other homeschoolers are doing? Here’s the Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. I’m linking up there, and lots of other homeschoolers have, too.