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?