Tag Archives: story of the world

Homeschool

Barbarians, butterflies and a three-day week

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“On a Walk” by Poppy

Can you believe this is the last day of August? I cannot. We’re only 115 days away from Christmas! Unbelievable.

Anyway.

Poppy spent the latter part of this week with Rockford’s parents, so we only did schoolwork on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Pete’s schedule yesterday included:

  • lots of reading;
  • playing with cars and blocks;
  • watching “Madagascar 3” at the cheap theater;
  • and playing “Rock Band” before bed.

    I think he had a pretty great day. I know I did. I’m not sure what we’re going to do today, but I think a trip to TCBY might be in our future.

    Reading

    Poppy finished “Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings” and “Jane on Her Own: A Catwings Tale” by Ursula le Guin this week. The series is, as the name suggests, about cats with wings. Poppy loved the books.

    In slightly more down-to-earth literary pursuits, we got to the chapter of “Anne of Green Gables” that required an explanation of what “drunk” means.

    Me: “Sometimes grown-ups drink too much alcohol, and my makes their brains not work so well.”

    Poppy: “Oh. Well why would they do that?”

    Me: “I don’t know. It’s just a choice some grown-ups make.”

    So thanks for that, Lucy Maud Montgomery.

    History

    This week we read about the barbarians attacking Rome. We didn’t get to any of the activities, so we might still be talking barbarians next week. Poppy did her narration work for the chapter on her blog, where she included this bit of information:

    The word “vandal” now means a person who does bad things on purpose, like someone I knew who drew an X on the wall. (That was my brother.)

    You can read the rest at “The Romans try to fight off bad guys.”

    Extra credit

    • In “Artistic Pursuits this week, the lesson called for us to take a walk in search of things we might find inspiring. Poppy filled up almost a whole notebook with sketches of trees, flowers and butterflies, while Pete drew a mailbox, a berry and a fighting robot monster. Then we came home and talked about Marc Chagall’s “Birthday” before using their sketches to inspire a painting.

    It feels odd taking a break this early in our year — Wednesday was, I believe, only our 22nd day of school — but Poppy had been yearning for some special time at Grandma’s house, and it worked out well for her to go this week. I think it was good for Pete and Poppy to have some time apart, too. They were already missing one another by yesterday afternoon.