Between two minor league baseball games and a trip to the fair, we had three late nights this week. Three late nights turned into three leisurely mornings, which made me feel like we were running behind all week even though we really weren’t.

I’m hoping to get everyone to bed on time every day next week. Here’s a little of what we did this week, once we finally got out of our PJs and got to work.

History

We broke out “Story of the World Volume Two: The Middle Ages” this week. I was a little disappointed to find that we were still talking about the Romans, but the kids didn’t mind. Yesterday we read about the Roman signum, about which our “Story of the World” activity book says:

Each legion in the Roman Army had its own signum, or standard, that it carried into battle. … During the later part of the Roman Empire, most signa were decorated with ribbons, gold or silver eagles mounted at the top, and round metal disks. Each metal disk was carved with a picture of a fierce animal or a portrait of the emperor.

Poppy and Pete love doing crafts & activities, and I didn’t do many of the crafty things from the first volume. I’m going to make a greater effort to do more of the activities from this time around, and so yesterday we made our own signum out of an old wrapping paper tube, some cardboard, a little aluminum foil, some ribbon and a lot of glue. Poppy drew a bear shouting “Ya!” on her metal disk; Pete drew a sad monster with hair; and I drew a lion of which I’m rather proud.

Reading

Poppy has been enjoying the “Magic Tree House” series lately, and she was very disappointed last week to find that the fifth volume — “Night of the Ninjas” — was temporarily out of circulation at the library. It was back when Pete and I went during Poppy’s ballet class, though, so we snagged it and the next four books in the series for her. She finished “Ninjas” yesterday afternoon and then devoured “Afternoon on the Amazon” and “Sunset of the Sabertooth” last night.

We’ve been reading “Anne of Green Gables” at bedtime, which means we haven’t read as much of it this week as usual. We skip the bedtime reading when bedtime doesn’t happen until after 10pm. (The children don’t like this rule.)

Pete really wants to move on to the next Bob book, but he’s still having trouble with “Dot and the Dog.” He’s getting his Bs and Ds mixed up, and then he gets frustrated and wants to quit. I welcome any and all suggestions on how to deal with the B/D thing!

Math

Most of Pete’s math lessons have included some practice writing his numbers. That’s by far his least favorite part of math, so imagine my surprise when he wrote numbers 1 to 23 on some drawing paper the other day and presented it to me. I’d planned to scan it and post it here, so of course he decided to scribble all over it once he’d finished. I guess he doesn’t want proof that he’s learning to fall into the wrong hands.

Pete’s math lessons this week also included a board game called Number Raceway, which was a big hit. I played one round with Poppy and Pete, and they played for another 20 minutes after I left to do laundry.

In PoppyMath news, she did a lot of work with counting coins this week. I’d like to get some play money to use, but for now I’m just dumping out the piggy bank when she needs some coins.

Extra credit

• Our co-op started back up this week. Poppy is taking “Story of the World”-based class on the Middle Ages and a performing arts class, and Pete is taking a Dinosaurs class and a Clay Exploration class. I’m assisting in the clay and Middle Ages classes.

• Poppy actually practiced on the keyboard this week and did the homework her piano teacher had assigned. I think this is the first time that’s happened.

• In addition to her regular ballet class, Poppy started a second class to rehearse for “The Nutcracker.” It’s the same day as her regular class, so I was thinking she’d be completely exhausted by the end of the day. Not so. Children are made of energy.

• Poppy had her first soccer game of the season last Saturday, and Pete’s first-ever game is tomorrow. I’m very much looking forward to seeing him play.

• Pete memorized “A Leaf” by Aileen Fisher this week, and Poppy is working on memorizing the Preamble to the Constitution.

I didn’t take any pictures at all this week! (Until this afternoon, when I finally hauled out my camera.) That’s a good sign that we didn’t really do any fun project stuff. We had a nice & productive week, but it wasn’t a terrifically exciting one.

Reading

Pete is making good progress on his reading. He’s still trying to memorize the Bob Books — he’s working on Book 5 of the series this week — and sometimes he tries to recite it without even pretending to look at the words. To get around that, I’ve made little flash cards of the words. Sometimes I just ask him to tell me what the words on the cards are, and sometimes I read a sentence from the book to him and have him put it together using the flash cars. He doesn’t like being made to slow down and pay attention, though.

Poppy read “Bad Kitty Gets a Bath” by Nick Bruen and “Pirates Past Noon” by Mary Pope Osbourne this week. She’s flying through chapter books lately; it took her all of two days to read both of those. I’d like to have her try some slightly more challenging material, but she’s entirely against that idea. Any suggestions on that front?

History

We reached the end of Volume One of “Story of the World” this week. We didn’t do any of the additional activities, because I didn’t want to cut a hole in a tennis ball to make a scepter. (I know there were other options. I just had kind of a cranky week, OK?) I’m thinking I’d like to set up a timeline once we start Volume Two next week, but I’m not sure where to put it.

In US history, we’ve been reading about the Constitutional Convention. Poppy will be memorizing the Preamble to the Constitution over the next few weeks, and we’re going to start a unit study on elections pretty soon. It seems like a pretty good time for it.

Math

We haven’t been doing anything all that out of the ordinary in math, but I do want to say that the kids and I love McRuffy math. The hands-on aspect of it makes it something the kids look forward to doing every day. Poppy is also doing Teaching Textbooks 3 twice a week. The McRuffy/TT combination is working really well for us this year.

Extra credit

• Poppy’s piano lessons are going well, but I need to do a better job of encouraging her to practice at home. Her teacher says she doesn’t need to spend huge amounts of time practicing, but I’m guessing more than Zero time would be good.

• Poppy memorized Edward Lear’s “There Was an Old Man with a Beard” this week, and Pete worked on Carl Sandburg’s “Fog.” It was the first non-rhyming poem I’ve asked Pete to memorize, but it’s a short one so it wasn’t too difficult.

Rockford travels quite a bit for work, and one of the wonderful things about homeschooling is that we can go along with him without worrying about the school schedule. I try to join him for a trip at least once a year — this year it was to Chicago, and I had undiagnosed bronchitis which made it not entirely the best trip ever — and we sometimes all go along when he has to go somewhere within driving distance.

This week was Poppy’s seventh birthday, and Rockford had to go to Orlando. It’s a destination the kids have wanted to visit for as long as they’ve been cognizant of the Disney marketing machine. So we packed up our studies and headed for Florida.

(In August. I know. I know.)

I didn’t want to bring all of our stuff along, so we had a modified work schedule. We spent our mornings swimming in the hotel pool — physical education! — and floating on its lazy river — recreational therapy! — then came back to the room for lunch, schoolwork and a rest before going back to the pool.

It was a really, really nice week.

Reading

We’re plodding forth with “Anne of Green Gables,” and Poppy is getting a little more enthusiastic about the book. On the solo reading front, she read “The Knight at Dawn” by Mary Pope Osbourne and started “The Great Cake Mystery” by Alexander McCall Smith, which features the protagonist of the “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” series as a child.

Pete is making progress in the BOB books. I think he’s trying to memorized the book we’re currently working on, though, so I need to find a way around that. I’ll make flash cards of the words next week to test him.

Math

I brought Teaching Textbooks 3 along, but Poppy didn’t do a single lesson of it. She and Pete did, however, get through all of the McRuffy lessons I’d planned for them. Pete has been primarily working on tracing his numbers. His manual dexterity is still a little shaky, so he’s needed a lot of help with it. He doesn’t have any trouble at all with the work itself, though. This week he worked on the concept of Less Than, and he did a little bit of work with shapes. The McRuffy manipulatives kit includes a batch of colorful little shapes, and Pete loves using them to create robots.

History

I didn’t want to bring along everything we’d need to do Story of the World this week, so we took a break from world history. I did bring along “The History of US,” but we only read one chapter. It was primarily about James Madison, who was all of 36 years old in 1787 when he went to Philadelphia to help change the world entirely. It always surprised me how young these guys were.

Today we’re at Disney World, where we’ll definitely be visiting The Hall of Presidents to say hello to ol’ Jemmy.

Misc.

• Poppy worked on memorizing Robert Frost’s “Fireflies in the Garden” this week, while Pete did “There Was a Little Girl” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They like to append “and her name was Poppy” to the end of “There Was a Little Girl,” and I won’t tell you that it doesn’t drive me a little bit nuts. Because it does.

• I’m starting to think I should’ve started Poppy on a higher level of SpellWell. It isn’t challenging her at all. On the other hand, maybe this will give her some extra confidence in the spelling department.

Extra credit

One of my friends revealed on Facebook recently that he was in the process of planning his 43rd trip to Disney World. That’s a lot of Mouse. This is my second visit (the first was when I was 10 or so); Rockford’s second (he was 2 or 3 the first time); and the kids’ first. How many times have you been to Disney World?