Visit to Nana and Papa Bear's House

The entourage was very excited to visit Nana and Papa Bear, especially since we got to take Daddy with us this time! Even Aunt S managed to get to town that weekend, so we got to visit with her too. Nana found some great Richard Scarry's books for them in addition to all the Berenstein Bear books they always pore over when we visit, and the girls were also excited about acquiring a trio of law enforcement vehicles (two police cars and an MP truck) from the garage sale being held next door one morning. The weather was gorgeous, so we got to spend lots of time outside. Nana and Papa Bear live on a lake, and we got to see/do all kinds of fun things: identify trees behind the house (leaf samples ended up in our journal), watch a flock of turkeys and find their dropped feathers later, feed and attempt to pet ducks, check on a huge spider with a perfect orb web on the bushes and speculate about what might be on his menu for lunch, watch a school of minnows at the edge of the lake, and go for a hayride along the lake--checking out a variety of plants and critters along the way. Of course, many of these things or photos of them ended up in our nature journal, which the girls continue to be excited about creating and sharing with people.

Nana and Papa Bear work from home and we came at a very busy time, so Thursday morning we decided to make ourselves scarce and take advantage of our zoo membership that would get us into "Nana and Papa Bear's zoo" for free. We made it a very low stress adventure, finding the favorite animals (like zebras, leopards, monkeys, and flamingos) and visiting the petting zoo. All three girls did actually pet the animals (goats and donkeys) this time! They even took off chasing one poor goat around the yard. We also had time to explore the playground: this zoo has a really cool one--a massive wooden structure with mazelike walkways, huge twisty slides, and rope bridges.

Monkey wanted a picture of her and her current favorite animal, a "leopard"
(technically, that's a lynx in the background, but she decided it was close enough).

The entourage with a very obliging goat

For two other mornings, we headed to a local park where Daddy and Aunt S could go running (I opted for a morning run through the neighborhood beforehand) and the entourage could play on the playground. While this playground wasn't as large as the zoo one it was the same style and the girls loved it, especially since we had it mostly to ourselves the first time. The second time was more crowded, and Monkey and Bug had to figure out how to deal with an 8ish-year-old boy who desperately wanted them to play war games with him (Monkey, Bug, and the boy were the only non-toddlers on the playground). We tried to convince them to play along--Daddy even pretended to arm them with fairy swords and arm cannons--but they weren't interested. They did, however, do a good job of sticking together and trying to find ways to get away from him (for example, crawling through a tunnel they didn't think he'd fit in).

Somewhere in this maze of playground architecture are my children
(don't worry I could hear them at the time; I just can't locate them in the photo).

As usual no visit with Nana is complete without some shopping! Monkey and Bug are very excited about the additions to their fall/winter wardrobe. Goose just got some new PJs, but we'll be breaking out the hand-me-downs at home and she'll be just as thrilled with those. The highlight purchase: fedoras and purses. They followed their typical patterns: Bug wanted a zebra print fedora and a purple purse, Monkey wanted the leopard print fedora and pink purse, and Goose went for the sparkles with a shimmery purple hat and a silver bag.

We couldn't resist a visit to our favorite huge used bookstore. The entourage got to pick out a couple of picture books including a Dr. Seuss book we'd never heard of, I Wish that I Had Duck Feet, and we found a new "project book" to add to our collection (Monkey and Bug have loved flipping through a couple of arts and crafts book and finding projects we have the supplies for). For my own reading, I found books by Mary Hood and Charlotte Mason, two prominent homeschool educators who I keep running across and loving their thoughts or activities. Daddy also came home with a stack of books, although we both agreed we're not sure when we'll find the time to read them!

We used to live in the same area as Nana and Papa Bear, so we also got to visit with some friends while we were in town. This was a lot of fun for Daddy and I, but of course, the entourage doesn't remember them. They were, however, extremely well-behaved during a dinner out and earned themselves a trip to the Lego store. As we were winding down at dinner, Bug started getting antsy, but had the self-awareness to quietly inform me that we needed to leave soon or she wouldn't be able to handle it anymore. We took her at her word and had a great time at the "sticking blocks store," which had a disappointingly small number of Legos out to play with but lots of cool creations to see.

Neighbors
Now that the weather's been consistently pleasant we've been spending a lot more time playing outside with our neighbors. Pulling out riding toys and playing out front is always popular, but we've been retreating to backyards too since more of us have aquired swing sets and things in the last year. One of the highlights this week was playing in B's yard and having his mom, Miss A, catch a great big toad that decided to attempt hopping through a yard full of preschoolers. The poor thing was probably traumatized by the experience, but the kids loved getting to see and touch him before we let him go in the flower bed.

Later in the week, we were playing outside before any of our little friends were awake and watching Mr. B across the street spreading mulch in his flower beds. At some point he realized he had purchased far more mulch than he needed and offered to share. The entourage was excited to find their own shovels and help him spread it around our bushes. They even thanked him for being a nice neighbor and sharing with us.

Artistic Endeavors
So, at some point this week the entourage was quietly coloring with markers at the kitchen table while I simultaneously cooked dinner and talked to Daddy on the phone. I realized they were VERY quietly coloring with markers and looked over to discover than they had quite industriously moved from coloring the paper to coloring themselves!

We also pulled out our sewing projects again this week. I worked on cross-stitch, Monkey and Bug practiced stitching in felt, and even Goose pulled out the cardboard sewing cards.

Library Day
Since we were going to be out of town all week we didn't check out any books, but we did get several videos for the drive to Nana and Papa Bear's later this week: Make Way for Ducklings, Is Your Mama a Llama?, (these two videos also included a few other familiar books) and Fantasia. We also had a great time at stortime. The librarian read a few silly books, and the kids got to make silly monster popsicle stick puppets. All three girls loved this activity--even Goose could complete it with minimal assistance.

Doctor's Appointment
Monkey and Bug had their four-year-old well check this week. We prepped by watching an episode of Curious George going to the doctor (a happy coincidence) and talking alot about what the doctor was going to do and why, how they should behave (with bravery and no meltdowns), and what to do if they were worried or scared (talk about it and hold my hand). They are perfectly healthy, and things went as well as can be expected. Monkey took it all like a champ and only cried and screamed during/after getting four shots (a perfectly valid response in my book). Bug required a bit of forced cooperation at times, but we got through it anyway. The most exciting part of the visit was getting in on the new literacy program the hospital is sponsoring and coming home with three new books.

Daddy's Home!
We have Daddy home again, and the entourage (and I, of course) were so excited to see him again. We got home from Grandma and Granddad's house and picked up Daddy at the airport the next day. I don't like having him gone so frequently, and it's heartbreaking when the girls miss him, but I do love hearing them cheer for him when we drive up to the airport!

Library Day
Storytime is back! For the first storytime of the schoolyear our librarian took the opportunity to go over proper treatment of books and proper behavior for the library with some really cute picture books. Then the girls got to color a cutout of a book (they had the option of creating an About Me book, but they decided they just wanted to color). The real highlight, though, was when the libarian let them each pick out their own bookmark to take home, which they each immediately insisted on putting in a book to save their page.

This week we brought home:
Word Bird's Circus
Word Bird's Shapes (Bug recently discovered this series and is very excited about it)
Hoptoad!
Chibi (a true story about a duckling in Tokyo, Japan; the Aunt E connection caused lots of excitement)
Because we were out of town for most of the last week, we also decided to keep the books we checked out last Wednesday, so we've been re-reading those as well.

Projects
This week, in addition to a number of coloring sheets (they requested bird and bug sheets this week), Monkey and Bug picked two projects from our project books to do. First we made paper helicopters (folded strips of paper with a paper clip on the bottom). Lots of fun.

Another afternoon, related to their current interest in outer space, they picked out sun and moon projects. The original project is masks, but the girls decided they didn't want them to be masks--just projects. I hastily cut out some suns and moons from construction paper, and set out scissors, glue, appropriately colored bits of construction paper, and star stickers and let them have at it. Bug and Goose wanted full moons and Monkey wanted a crescent moon, which led of course to discussion about why the moon appears to change shape. Bug also explained to me that the real sun and moon aren't made of paper--they're made of fire and rock, respectively.

Monkey's is the sun/moon combo on top; Goose's sun and moon are on the left, and Bug's are to the right.

The entourage has been doing so many projects and coloring sheets lately, that Bug requested that I put up an additional art string. We decided to put it in their room, so they now have two short art strings next to their window.

Playdate!
We didn't have our homeschool group this week, but we planned a playdate with some fellow homeschoolers, Miss K and her boys, N and G, instead. So, what happens when you get together three 4-year-olds being raised by likeminded parents? An enthusiastic discussion of the solar system, of course! Shortly after we arrived, Bug was jumping up and down with excitement because N "has space in his room!" (N and his dad recently put together a model of the solar system with styrofoam balls and hung it from his ceiling along with glow-in-the-dark stars.) N happily pointed out all the planets to the entourage, and Monkey and Bug explained about the rotation of the earth and orbits. After this, they all moved on to playing with trains, of which N and G have a very extensive collection.

It was a gorgeous day, so Miss K and I brought up the idea of walking down to the neighborhood pond to feed the ducks and geese. The girls and I hadn't been there before, and we will definitely want to go back! There's a lovely paved trail, and the pond is inhabited by friendly--non-aggressive--foul, turtles, and fish. We also found sweet gum balls and acorns to add to our nature collection box. And of course, they all just had fun running the trail and climbing on rocks.

L to R: Bug, Monkey, G, and N (I think Goose was still watching
the actual geese a little farther back down the trail)

Job Chart Update
The job chart is working beautifully! Bug is much more motivated by actually putting on the stickers than Monkey is, but for the most part Monkey still does everything she's supposed to. What's been interesting is watching their interactions and decision making after I added the first additional job. I printed up clip art representing the different bathroom cleaning chores and had them each pick one to add to their chart. The first week Bug picked the bathtub, and Monkey chose the sinks. After they got started Bug decided cleaning the bathtub was "too messy" (it involves her stripping and getting into the tub with a rag and a bowl of soap and baking soda), and asked if she could help with a different job instead. Goose was more than happy to climb into the tub to take her place. Meanwhile, Monkey was getting overwhelmed by the large task of cleaning the sinks. Bug offered to help, and I agreed that she could still earn her sticker that way. That's the kind of sisterly helping I like to see! The next week, they remembered the previous experience: Bug chose cleaning the mirror (it involves a tidy squirt bottle and a rag and is a good fit for her attention to detail), and Monkey chose cleaning the toilet (this involves the fascinating baking soda and vinegar reaction and requires my assistance, so she didn't have to tackle it by herself). Of course, both clean up events ended with water play in the sinks, and who's going to complain about that?! While I realize their enthusiasm for bathroom cleaning is unlikely to last into the teenage years, I'm hoping they'll be such experts by then that it won't even be a big deal. (A mom can dream, right?)

Visit to Grandma and Granddad's
Daddy had to leave again on Thursday (for less than a week), and this time I decided to pack up the entourage and keep driving on past the airport to my parent's house. We had a wonderful, relaxing visit. We'd been there recently enough that the girls remembered important things like how to deal with their excitable sheepdog and where their favorite toys were (Little People upstairs and the play kitchen in the basement). They also had fun discovering new things like a small collection of my own "special buddies" from childhood and the fact that they can fit into many more of Aunt K's old dance costumes.

Singers, dancers, fairies, butterflies, . . . so many fun costumes!

Perhaps the real highlight of the trip was seeing all the amazing nature things. Our first order of business while there was to slather ourselves in insect repellent and head for the woods surrounding my parents' house.

The entourage dances down the trail!
(the big white shirts were sprayed with heavy duty  insect repellent)

We saw: lots of wildflowers, spider webs whose owners could be baited out of hiding by gently wiggling the web with a piece of grass, leaves of various sizes and colors, several types of moss, bird feathers, a box turtle, Jesus bugs, raccoon tracks, pieces of quartz, pine cones, a frog, and some really gorgeous moths and butterflies on the butterfly bush in the yard. The next day Granddad helped them dissect an abandoned mud dawbers' nest and explained the whole life cycle. They also found a bird's next on the underside of the playground tower and spotted deer (including a buck) at the edge of the woods. While eating lunch we watched a number of birds come to the feeders on the deck (hummingbirds, cardinals, finches, and a morning dove).

Enjoying the view from the top of Grandma
 and Granddad's playground

I had the foresight to bring our nature journal along on the trip, so many of these things are recorded there now. We collected a few leaf samples, and I took a lot of photos of things that piqued the entourage's interest. The next day I printed them up and Monkey and Bug helped me tape the photos in our journal and dictated what they wanted me to write about each photo. (Our newly completed pages turned out beautifully, and I think this nature journal may turn out to be one of my favorite things for us to do!)

one of the spreads in our nature journal

In my parents' basement is a closet containing everything I left behind when I went to college. On this trip one of my goals was to plunder it for things the entourage might enjoy. Besides the special buddies, craft supplies (yep, those are coming with us!), and memorabilia (sorry Mom, you get to keep the ribbons and trophies), we found BOOKS! What a walk down memory lane. You could trace my life through those shelves from the picture book The Napping House that I was given for Christmas when I was 6 to the lineup of Shakespeare editions I studied in college. The real treasure that got the entourage jumping for joy though was the truly massive collection of Illustrated Classics and Biographies. These books were my gateway to great literature, and I was hooked from the day I found them in the Dollar Store as a kid. I am so excited about passing these books--and my love of reading--down to our girls!

Other fun things we did:

• Help harvest peppers from the garden to eat for dinner
• Watch Granddad build a fire, followed by learning how to perfectly cook a marshmallow, build a s'more, and obviously, eat it 
• Play on a neighborhood playground and experience a porta-potty for the first time
• Listen and watch Uncle N practice his trumpet
• Visit Grandma and Granddad's church on a very tasty Sunday--Sunday school was replaced by a   school year kick-off breakfast and the worship service was a followed by a reception for the pastor's wife (they just got married)

One afternoon we decided to pull out the paints. Notice, at right, that it didn't take long
for Goose to ditch the paper and paint herself instead.

Money Matters
Thanks to their recent birthday, Monkey and Bug have been learning a lot about money. For their birthday they each received a check, a gift card, and some cash, so this week we've explained how each of these worked. We went to the bank, so the girls could deposit their checks (special notes that tell the bank to move a certain amount of money from one person's account to another). We went to the store, where they bought some new toys with the gift cards. The cards didn't really require explanation since the girls assumed they worked like a debit card, which they always see me use (the card gives information to the cashier's computer, so it can tell the bank to give the store the right amount of money). Then we went to a different store, so they could buy different toys with the cash. They got to hand the cashier the money and everything; they were very excited about this purchase process since it was the easiest to understand. Over the course of the week we talked about how our family has money to spend because Daddy works. At some point they also asked to borrow some coins to play store with, and we talked about the names of the coins and how much each is worth.

Make Some Noise!
One afternoon this week proved highly musical. It started with Goose attempted to sing "I'm a Little Teapot" and Monkey, Bug, and I joined in to help her out since she had forgotten most of the words. Then they requested "Father Abraham" (hilarity ensued). Next they pulled out all the instruments and started making up their own songs. Here's a sampling:

Finally, they requested I turn on kids' music on Pandora and had their own little dance party.

In the Sky
We got to see a harvest moon this week, and that inspired even more questions about how the sun and the moon work out their different paths (and what they're made of) and how part of the world has daytime while the other part has nighttime. Verbal answers simply weren't cutting it, so we went for a hands on explanation. From around the house, we collected a flashlight (sun), a ping pong ball (moon), and a rubber ball that was conveniently colored with blue, green, and white swirls and does somewhat resemble the photos of earth from space that we Googled. We closed ourselves in the garage with the lights off, and I helped the girls get properly positioned and walked them through how everything moves. They thought this was really cool, and we repeated the demonstration several times. I mentioned that there were other balls in space called planets. They were unconvinced at the time, but later in the week we watched an episode of Backyardigans in which the characters become astronauts and mission control workers and take a space shuttle to Mars, and I got to bring up the subject again with a little more success (mostly they were interested in the shuttle itself and what exactly mission control did--because as Bug pointed out the mission control people couldn't actually go into space to help the astronauts).

 Later in the week, Monkey and Bug pointed out that clouds were also in the sky and wanted to know what they were made of and how they fit in. I explained about their relative location, and we completed a quick project with a water bottle, a few drops of rubbing alcohol, hot water, and an ice cube to demonstrate how clouds are formed of tiny droplets of water. Fascinating, of course.

Lights and Shadows
While we were in the dark garage with the flashlight discussing the solar system, the girls noticed all the shadows, and I showed them how to make hand shadows of different animals. All three girls thoroughly enjoyed making "great big girl shadows" too! We also experimented with placing colored tissue paper over the flashlight and turning the garage and our faces different colors--just so you know, turning each other green like aliens is hilarious.

New Verse
I forgot to mention last week, but we have a new "special verse" posted on our fridge for the girls to learn. The current one is: "Surely, God is good" (Psalm 73:1).

Library Day
You know you're doing a good job of helping your children love reading when the announcement, "It's time to go to the library!" results in three pre-reading girls dropping their toys and running to get their shoes. Goose, who's not yet two, even started cheering, "Liberry! Liberry!" While we were at the library we read several stories about Finn MacCoul (but they didn't want to check them out). Monkey and Bug were thrilled to discover that not all giants in stories are bad guys.
This week we came home with:
There Was an Old Woman
There's a Bird on Your Head!
Little Bear's Visit
Thumbelina
Spiders! (Monkey's "what do you want to learn about" pick)
Cacti (Bug's "what do you want to learn about" pick; it's actually a field guide from the adult section since the kids section didn't have any, but she's been fascinated by the full-color photos of all the different kinds of cacti)

Projects
At a consignment sale this week, along with plenty of clothes, we came home with a brightly illustrated Rainy Day Art and Activities book. The entourage spent quite a bit of time flipping through it and inquiring if we had materials for the projects that piqued their interest. At some point they decided they were ready to do some, and it turned into quite the crafty afternoon.

Paper bag puppets! The illustration had dog ears,
but Monkey and  Bug were inspired to add tracings
of their hands and cut out legs and feet.

Friendly spiders! (wooden beads, pipe cleaners, and smiley face stickers)
This choice was inspired by Monkey's spider book.

Then they decided to go freestyle and pull out the collage box.
We're still working on using appropriate amounts of glue.