We started a few new things after coming back from our first break. Poppy is doing some memorization work, using this memorization system. She memorized “The Purple Cow” last week; this week’s poem was “Fly Away, Fly Away Over the Sea.” We also started doing lessons from “Character Building for Families,” which I’m hoping will help with some of the attitude issues with which we’ve been dealing. The first series of lessons is on obedience. There’s some Scripture memorization involved with the “Character Building” lessons, too, so we’re using the system for that and the poetry, too.

Most of our days looked pretty much the same this week: handwriting; “Character Building”; Spanish; a chapter of a read-aloud; reciting the memory work. On Tuesday we did a health lesson on the five senses, and on Wednesday we finished reading “My Father’s Dragon.”

We’ve also started Pizza Hut’s Book It program, and Poppy’s October challenge is to read “Mercy Watson: Princess in Disguise” out loud to me. I know that October didn’t start until yesterday, but she was really excited, so we started a little early. If she gets through it with a lot of the month left to spare, November’s reading challenge will be more … challenging.

On Friday we talked about Jackson Pollock and looked at a few of his paintings before heading outside with paints, brushes and canvas. Then Poppy, Pete, Rockford and I made our own Pollock-inspired painting in the driveway. Poppy picked out the colors, which were a little “Miami Vice” for my taste. But they’ll look great in her room!