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I’ve been battling both a headstrong 7.75-year-old as well as a vague but pervading sense of ennui or malaise or some-other-French-term-for-the-blahs this week. Maybe it’s because we’ve spent so much time talking about Napoleon.
Anyway, here’s a bit of what les enfants did this week in school.
Language Arts
Reading
We finally finished “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” this week, and we celebrated by watching the movie. The kids (especially Poppy) were not pleased that there were a lot of differences between the book and the movie. They petitioned me to start “Order of the Phoenix” immediately, but I’m sticking to the One Potter Every Year timeline. We’ll see you next year, Hogwarts!
(And when I say “we,” I obviously mean “I.” Because Poppy got all seven books for her birthday. I put the ones we haven’t read yet away, but she’s already re-read “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”)
Pete is reading a biography of Marie Curie for his assigned reading. I’m not sure what our next read-aloud will be, but I’m open to suggestions. As long as your suggestion isn’t “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.”
Writing
Pete started WriteShop B this year. He’s a very reluctant writer. It isn’t that he doesn’t want to create a story, it’s that he doesn’t want to physically take pencil to paper. That hasn’t been a huge problem with WriteShop, though, because the book he’s on has him dictating a lot of the work to me. Today he did his first writing assignment — a letter to his Papa — and we took turns writing the sentences.
After about a year of complaining about doing her writing, Poppy is finally just sitting down with her notebook and her writing book and getting the work done.
Math
Both kids had math tests today. Poppy got an 87 on hers. After a full hour of telling me why he DID NOT and COULD NOT do his test, Pete finally finished it and got an 86. The reluctance wasn’t because he doesn’t know how to do the work or even because it’s difficult for him. It was just because he’d rather be doing something else, so he’s spent a lot of time whining and a little time actually looking at the paper.
History
We finished talking about Napoleon and the Louisiana Purchase this week. Malaria in St. Domingue (now Haiti) played a role in making Napoleon decide he’d had enough of trying to extend his empire into North America, so our project today was supposed to be trying out some old-timey malaria remedies, like slathering mustard on our persons. Poppy and Pete weren’t keen to do that, though, so they subjected a PlayMobil guy to an ice bath, wrapped him in a blanket and covered him with “hot” bricks to make him sweat his fever away and applied a mustard poultice to his little plastic chest. I am pleased to report that he recovered.
Extracurricular
Poppy has been saying for the past several years that she wants to be a baker when she grows up. So I picked 10 recipes of varying difficulty from a baking cookbook for kids
and told her to work her way through them. This morning she made Peanut Butter Kiss cookies all by herself, and they are delicious. Now I just need to teach her about the Cleaning Up After Yourself portion of the craft.
How was your week?
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Waaaaay back in May, I told you that we were going to be having Family Movie Nights at ButterscotchSundae headquarters. I shared with you a list of 
.
as I present to you: A selection of my favorite family films from that most glorious age of cinema, 1990s.
Is “Home Alone” a great movie about child abandonment and endangerment, or is it the greatest movie about child abandonment and endangerment? That’s hard to say, but it certainly has to be the slapstickiest. Twelve-year-old me found this one to be a laugh-a-minute riot. 
“Hook” is a weird twist on “Peter Pan,” in which Peter grows up to be a total square, Jimmy Buffett is a pirate, Violet Crawley is Wendy and someone has named their child Rufio and he responds by going all “Beyond Thunderdome” meets a troll doll. 
Macauley Culkin was the boy king of the early ’90s, wasn’t he? I remember this movie as a delightful romp that suddenly shocked the tears right out of my ducts. I was 13, though, so I probably stuck the popcorn bucket over my head to hide my tears.
As much as I loved “Mrs. Doubtfire” when I was a kid, I was a little hesitant to include it in my list. It’s kind of a creepy story, and it would probably be a viral sensation if it happened in real life. Regardless, it’s Robin Williams and he’s equal parts manic and charming, so it made the list despite being pretty darn weird.
I’m a sucker for a sentimental tale of human-animal friendship, so of course “Free Willy” is on the list. My brother was a jaded, world-weary 10-year-old the first time we saw it, and I remember hearing him gasp at that final leap to freedom. 
” is available as a digital rental or purchase from Amazon.
Speaking of animal-kid buddy movies…
” is available for free streaming via Prime and as a digital rental or purchase and Amazon.
This adaptation stays true to Roald Dahl’s dark and sometimes-scary humor. Be warned that, as with pretty much every Dahl story I’ve read, a lot of the adults in this story are truly despicable. In the end, though, kindness and gentle hearts win the day and the rotten folks get their comeuppance.
” is available as a digital purchase as Amazon.