Library Day
Story time is on hiatus again, but of course we're at the library anyway! This week was particularly fun because some of our friends decided to join us. We moms got to chat and the kids had a blast playing in the cushions, looking at books, and doing puzzles. We came home with these books this week:
I'm Invited to a Party! (an Elephant and Piggie book)
Home Sweet Home
Jabuti the Tortoise: A Trickster Tale from the Amazon
Kali's Song
The Seven Chinese Brothers (a Chinese folktale)

Ancient China
History lessons this week began with that last book mentioned above, and the girls really love this tale of seven brothers who rescue each other with super-human powers. The antagonist in this book happens to be Qin Shi Huang, the real first emperor of China, so that segued nicely into reading a brief biography of the man who united the Chinese states, while the girls colored paper dolls of girls from imperial China. Hearing four year olds' reactions to historical events is always fun: they were glad to hear that Qin Shi Huang managed to make the Chinese states stop fighting and work together, but absolutely horrified when we read that he also tried to burn all the books and scrolls.

I actually cook Chinese food pretty frequently, but this week I pointed out which meal's recipe was Chinese (beef and broccoli over white rice), and the next day Goose and Bug helped me turn the leftovers into fried rice for lunch. Later we actually read the sections in the book about food and took it into the kitchen, so they could smell some of the spices we read about. We also read about tea and made a small pot of green tea to share. They were big fans once I stirred in a little honey.

The entourage loved eating fried rice with chopsticks out of little fancy bowls.

We also read about traditional Chinese music and instruments, and I found a website that offered free streaming songs. We finished coloring and cutting out their paper dolls while we listened. The girls thought the instrumental pieces were really pretty, but they didn't like the singing much.

Karate
The girls continue to initiate lots of their own karate practices at home, and this week they enlisted me to help them work on their side kicks and punches. They particularly appreciate the clapper pad Brian got them, so they can hear when they get a really good strike. They've been working hard and finally mastered jumping jacks--very exciting, since that exercise has been a tough one since day one.

Lessons
This week Monkey has been practicing number recognition for 1-20 (out of order), and she's getting significantly better. Sample activities: she counts out 20 of something while I write the numerals on the white board, then she erasing them one at a time when I call them out in random order; I call out numbers in random order and she "writes" them on the floor using string or necklaces. Bug continues to prefer workbooks; she did over a dozen pages in her addition and math concepts books this week. Both girls also did sessions with Daddy reviewing the names and values of coins.

Both girls are reading at least a few sentences every day. Bug still works mostly out of her textbook, and Monkey's been getting me to write sentences on the white board for her. The girls are at about the same reading level now, so our theory about Monkey just suddenly "getting it" seems to have panned out.

At some point this week, I sat down with Goose with books about colors and shapes and confirmed that she now consistently knows all the basics (about half a dozen shapes and 8 or 9 colors). She can usually count up to 10 accurately, and she practices that pretty frequently all on her own.

Potty Training Update
After about a month and a half of potty training, we're throwing in the towel and going to back to pull ups all the time. Poor Goose went from stopping making progress to getting worse in the last week or so, so at the end of this week she and I had a conversation about how she seemed to be really struggling with this and maybe she wasn't quite ready yet. She readily agreed that pull ups sounded like a great idea. Now that we've actually had most of a day with no underwear, she's actually had to two completely successful incidents! I think maybe just the stress of all the accidents was getting to her.

Pool Party!
On Friday Daddy had the day off and we ditched our lessons in favor of attending the Command Summer Bash. The girls were really excited to get in the pool (a fun zero-entry one). They all practiced jumping in, and Monkey and Goose brought their goggles and practiced actually swimming and going under water. Goose got a kick out of having such a huge area of really shallow water to run around in. They also played in the bounce house (with a slide!). Even Goose jumped in after her sisters with no hesitation--that's a first! We enjoyed a cookout for lunch and got to hang out with some of Daddy's co-workers and their families.

Other Projects

We made fancy hats!

This looks like a random mess they made, I know. But it isn't!
This is a very carefully planned, complex piece of machinery.
I never figured out what it did exactly, but they informed me
that they were making a machine, which they designed on
on the fridge using different shaped magnets to represent
each piece. Then they built it on the playroom floor,
occasionally referring back to their "blueprint" on the fridge.

Weather Permitting

After about two weeks of seemingly non-stop rain showers and thunderstorms, the inclement weather was starting to get really old. Finally on Sunday the forecast included only rain, and I announced an afternoon activity that brightened the day for everyone: The girls donned their bathing suits and spent a good thirty minutes to an hour dancing, shrieking, running, and giggling in the "great, big sprinklers!" while Daddy and I watched from the shelter of the front porch. They came in drenched and shivering but very happy!

After that day, the weather really improved. To celebrate our first truly rain-free day, the girls and I made frozen pink lemonade to enjoy outside while doing our day's lessons with sidewalk chalk on the driveway. (It was one of those "This is why I love homeschooling!" moments.) We also pulled out the kid-powered vehicles and headed to the cul-de-sac to play. Goose had her little red riding toy, Monkey chose to bring her trike, and Bug brought her new bike. She still has training wheels, but she and Monkey outgrew their old bikes. Bug at least is getting a lot more confident on her "wobbly bike" and was even willing to get back on after toppling over when she hit a curb.

Zoo Day!

The good weather continued, and we decided to make Friday a zoo day. Some friends of ours were also going that day, but, while it was fun to say hi to familiar faces, we decided to stick to our own plan. The girls had a list of particular animals they wanted to see on this visit, and we tend to skip some animals and spend longer amounts of time studying others. Our first stop on this visit was the bears at Bug's request. Definitely a good choice! We got to witness one waking up the other by pulling on his ears and the ensuing play/fight. Pretty impressive. Bug also wanted to feed the giraffes and the goats. Fortunately, she told me this ahead of time, so I could make sure I brought appropriate change. Bug and Goose were brave enough to feed the giraffes; although Goose only

We had fun examining
several new statues--
animals made by reusing
old materials (we discovered
this lion, for example, had a
mane made of old nails).

A classic pose atop the elephant statue

gave them one lettuce leaf since the giraffe wrapped his tongue all the way around her wrist in his attempt to get it. (Me: "What did his tongue feel like?" Goose: "Gross!") Monkey decided to join them in feeding and petting the goats. At Monkey's request we found the bats (they were eating breakfast near the ceiling while the zookeeper cleaned the floor of their room) and the ostriches (they were conveniently right next to the fence when we arrived, so we got a really good view). We also ran into a zookeeper with a corn snake wrapped around his arm, so we got to take a close up look at that and to hear the keeper answer some questions about it. Another highlight was a new display at the gorilla house that allowed the girls to hear the different sounds they make and interpret facial expressions.

Library Day

This week's story time was supposedly about worms, but none of the books were about worms and we made coffee filter butterflies for the craft (fun even if unrelated to any of the books). We came home with these books:

White Tiger, Blue Serpent

The Butterfly's Dream

Let's Go for a Drive (an Elephant and Piggie book)

Cornelius

Don't Eat the Babysitter!

The Sleepy Little Alphabet

More on Imperial China

We checked out another Chinese storybook from the library this week: The Butterfly's Dream is a retelling of several of the ancient Chuang Tzu stories (they remind me of Aesop's fables), which the girls love--both the stories and the traditional Chinese style illustrations. We read it almost everyday. We also kept the White Tiger, Blue Serpent book, another Chinese folktale. The Butterfly's Dream even features the titles in Chinese calligraphy, which the girls were fascinated by. So, one day this week, we read the Eyewitness book's section on Chinese writing, and the girls did their reading lesson that day by painting words of their choice. (This of course evolved into a general painting pictures session.)

This week we also studied the Eyewitness sections on ancient Chinese farming. The girls were particularly interested in the man-powered irrigation machines. After reading up on farms, we watched the section of Fearless that featured rice planting and following the seasons through a farming village. They even had one of those irrigation machines. The girls also got to see typical clothes, buildings, and cooking techniques. 

Lessons
Neither of the big girls added new sounds this week, but they did lots of reading. Even Monkey has been much more willing to sound out words this week! She and Bug worked together to read several sentences when we had our lessons outside, and Monkey's been asking me to write sentences on the white board for her to read inside. Bug is still working her way through her textbook, and added the "funny words" talk and walk this week. For the reading lessons Goose requested, I wrote a half dozen letters on the white board and asked her to point to the ones I named. She can't actually do this very accurately of course, but she loved the game and she's slowly gaining some letter recognition.

Math has been fun this week too. On the day we did lessons outside, we practiced counting by tens: I wrote out the numbers and the girls screamed the names of them as loud as they could repeatedly. Our neighbors may have wondered what was going on, but we had a blast. Monkey and Bug also acquired new workbooks this week. The Target dollar bins had a great selection this week, and we came home with books for numbers 1-12 (just for Monkey), math concepts, and addition. Monkey did about a dozen pages in the number recognition book, and they both started on the addition books. Bug also worked on a couple of counting money pages from her current book.

Library Day
Library day was highly popular this week. The theme was mud, and story time involved several great, muddy books along with plates of actual mud to paint with. Fortunately, the librarians came well armed with wipes and paper towels (and--they reassured the moms--they scheduled this story time for right before the carpet cleaner came).

We came home with these books:
The Wizard
George and Martha: Rise and Shine
Frederick
While Mama had a Quick Little Chat
Blue Sea, Little Fish
The White Tiger and the Blue Serpent 
The Great Wall of China

Imperial China
The girls were very excited when I announced we'd be starting up our next history unit this week! We are now engrossed in Imperial China. We started by spending a lazy Sunday afternoon watching Disney's Mulan, which they loved. Interestingly, I think they were more intrigued by the brief scene on the Great Wall than anything else--thus the book I found at the library about the history, building methods, and current state of the Great Wall of China. Block versions of the Wall have built and rebuilt throughout the living room and playroom this week. Bug has been into perfecting her building methods (overlapping the bricks and building two layers of wall beside each other--she noted that she couldn't really fill in the space between them with dirt the way they built the real wall), and Monkey has been more interested in building the square towers that dot the Wall and manning them with soldiers.

At their suggestion we flipped through their series of Ask Me books for tidbits about China (the Great Wall of China, dancing dragons at festivals, Chinese calligraphy, and fishing with cormorants are all topics we stumbled upon). We also studied the Eyewitness book's sections about traditional Chinese dress and pored over the pictures, looking at robes, jewelry, and hairstyles. I even had a few items of clothing to pull out of my closet for them: an embroidered robe and a shirt with a mandarin collar and monkey fist buttons that they got to try on, and my old kung fu gi (uniform) for them to look at.

The yellow shirt Bug's wearing is actually a family heirloom from Daddy's grandmother
(maybe from Uncle K's travels in Asia?). The robe Monkey is wearing is just my dressing robe,
but she was excited that on her it had really long sleeves like Mulan's fancy dress.

The girls are extremely interested in kung fu between the drill and fight scenes from Mulan, their own study of karate (which they know is from Japan), and their knowledge that Daddy and I both studied kung fu. I picked out a few scenes from the Jet Li movie Fearless to watch with them that showed them not only what kung fu looks like, but also included scenes of a typical upper class home and city from Imperial China and allowed them to hear Chinese spoken (the version we have is subtitled). Monkey has been experimenting with inventing her own kung fu moves including using a "staff" (cheap plastic golf club).

Karate
I assured Monkey that someday she would get to really study kung fu, but in the meantime she and Bug both continue their enthusiastic study of karate. They do extra practices with Daddy a couple times a week, but they also help each other practice (and teach Goose) almost every day. Monkey and Bug take turns leading, and they ask me to help them remember all the things from class they should practice. This week in class they learned a side kick, back fist, and side fist. They also turned in their My Best Lists this week and earned black stripes on their belts. (The My Best List is a month-long parent-created check list of personal care, chores, and good attitudes for the students to complete. I love that this school is concerned about more than just performance on the mat.)

Lessons

The usual reading and math lessons continued this week. Monkey finished up her study of vowels, ending the week by coming up with a list of words that have long and short sounds for each letter. She also did more word building with the cards I made. This week I added a few word cards (for things like I, am, is, the), and we put together a sentence or two for her to read. Bug added the letter sound y as in yard this week, and she got through several word lists and two stories. Both girls did some math worksheets this week, and we started actual lessons in telling time using a wooden puzzle clock with moveable hands and a lift-a-flap paper one I made to help them remember how many minutes correspond to each number on the clock face. With Goose, the big girls and I all continue to casually teach her numbers 1-20, the ABCs, shapes, and colors.

(This photo refuses to go right side up. Weird.)

Library Day
As a result of the weekend's extended adventures, we missed story time this week, but I never actually wrote about story time last week (which we kept all the books from). The girls were less than impressed with story time this time around. The librarian read alphabet and counting books--actually really good ones that we've thoroughly enjoyed checking out; however, the real enjoyment is found in the illustrations which they obviously couldn't fully appreciate from across the room. They had great fun with the project though--painting with veggie stamps (mostly potatoes with shapes cut into them). We came home with these books:
Twenty-six Princesses
When I Grow Up
Hot! Hot! Hot!
Love the Baby
Hands off, Harry!
Me and Infinity
Obi-wan Kenobi: Jedi Knight (Star Wars easy reader book)
If the Shoe Fits (a fun trip through nursery rhymes with a large, househunting family)

More Stripes!
Karate classes were actually cancelled this week to celebrate Independence Day, but one of last week's classes was pretty exciting. Last Thursday, the girls completed their first strike test, in which they were required to demonstrate various kicks and punches. Monkey and Bug did a great job, and even  picked up quickly on the few punches they weren't actually familiar with yet (they've barely been going long enough to qualify). They passed their test, and each received a new blue stripe on their belts! Grandma, Goose, and I actually got to be there to watch, and Monkey and Bug were thrilled to show off their new stripes to Daddy later.

Happy Independence Day!
For the Fourth of July, we ditched the usual lessons in favor of explaining and celebrating what this holiday is all about. I'd given the girls a few off-hand explanations leading up to the 4th, but we started off the morning by watching the Fourth of July episode of Liberty's Kids (a PBS mini-series about the Revolutionary War; a great show that we'll be watching in it's entirety whenever we study colonial America). Monkey and Bug definitely grasped the basic concept that America used to be part of a different country, but Americans from a long time ago decided they wanted to make their own rules instead of having King George make them; thus, the Declaration of Independence was written. After that, we headed to the study to work on some 4th of July activities: mini-books about the holiday (coloring sheet, tracing words relevant to history, answering questions about contemporary celebrations, word search), a flag-themed search and find page, and a 4th of July Sudoku game (a 4x4 grid with pictures to paste in the blanks instead of numbers.

That afternoon we cut out watermelon stars with cookie cutters, made homemade peach ice cream, and headed outside to our street's block party to hang out with friends, enjoy more yummy food and a good view of the local fireworks show (despite the sudden downpour that immediately preceded them). The entourage was thrilled to get to stay up so late to watch the fireworks and all three girls actually loved them this year!

Lessons
Between the travel adventures and the 4th of July, we only ended up doing three days of our usual lessons. Monkey has now formally covered all the basic letter sounds, so I decided to reintroduce the vowels as a group. We covered a and e this week with each lesson including both long and short sounds. I also made a set of notecards with letters and syllables to have Monkey practice building words and actually sounding them out (for example, c + ar = car). For Bug's reading this week, she gained the letter sound i as in ice cream and read a full page story in her text book and a couple word lists. For For math, Monkey practiced some fill in the blank number sequences (i.e., 1 2 _ or 7 _ 9), and Bug continued working on subtraction. We decided to introduce both girls to a simplified version of Sudoku that involves only numbers 1-4. They loved it, so I'll definitely be looking up more of for them play with.

Beginning last week, the girls restarted an intense interest in puzzles (as in mazes, word searches, etc., not the wooden ones you piece together). All three girls were digging up old issues of Clubhouse, Jr. and Puzzle Buzz to pore over, and we acquired a new set of Brain Quest cards that they've been really into. We even remembered that we have a set for 2-3 year olds that Goose is just old enough to start enjoying. These usually require a parent's assistant to figure out the question or activity, but I've seen Bug helping Goose go through hers, and Monkey seems to just enjoy studying the cards all by herself. These cards involve every subject appropriate to the age group, so I can't even begin to tell you all the learning that's happening here!

"This is an exciting day! We get to have new experiences!"
     ~Bug, while waiting for the tow truck to arrive

Sometimes it's nice to have a four year old around to remind you that joy can be found in experiencing something new and exciting, even if the event isn't necessarily happy or pleasant in itself. That certainly proved true for last week. The fun began when Grandma arrived to help with the girls while I had minor surgery (Everything went well, and I'm recovering nicely.) The girls were fascinated by the idea that the doctor was going to open me up to fix something inside, and they were very eager to examine my incisions once I was up for company (they even left me in peace to sleep off the anesthesia!). Of course, with Grandma around they also got to do fun things like read lots of books, build impressive block towers, play at the mall playspace, eat lunch in the food court, and go swimming in the neighborhood pool. That last event also involved the excitement of leaping from the pool in terror at an earsplitting crack of thunder immediately followed by a torrential downpour.

Earlier in the week, we learned that Great Aunt A passed away, and the girls had their first experience of losing a loved one. When I gently reminded the girls that this meant we wouldn't see Great Aunt A again, I was immediately corrected: "No, Mommy! We'll get to see her again in heaven! Remember?" They knew she had been sick, and they were excited about the prospect of getting to see her again once God made her all better. Having that conversation with the girls made me very thankful that Daddy and I intentionally chose not to shelter our preschoolers from the concept of death. (I never told them the squished frog on the road was just sleepring, and rather than surreptitiously replace the deceased goldfish, we had a funeral in the back yard.)

The memorial service for Great Aunt A was scheduled for the weekend, so we all packed up and went to "help cheer up Uncle K" and "celebrate Great Aunt A." The celebration of Great Aunt A began by meeting all the "friendly strangers" who also loved her (her sisters and neighbors). I was very proud of the girls for how well they handled a house full of new people and for their ability to introduce themselves when asked to.  On Friday night, we got to witness/participate in a candlelight vigil on the lake where Uncle K lives. Monkey and Bug got to take turns going out in the canoe with Daddy (a highly popular new experience) before the vigil itself started, but we let just the grown ups take to the water while we stayed on the dock with a set of candles for the vigil itself. Being a trio of little kids, of course, the entourage pieced together that any celebration involves extra desserts, and it didn't take them long to locate an assortment of cookies to choose from once everyone came back inside. On Saturday, Daddy attended the memorial service, while the girls and I stayed in the family room but rejoined everyone for the reception. Uncle K had put together a wonderful slide of show of pictures from Great Aunt A's life, which the girls got particularly excited about once photos with Daddy and I and then the girls started appearing.

We headed home on Sunday, but at Bug's request we made a stop downtown first. She remembered that this city was a fairly large one, and she asked if we could go walk around and see the skyscrapers up close. We found street parking near a big plaza with fountains and statues of kids playing. The girls had a blast running around for a bit, and Goose was mesmerized by the fountain. The girls loved craning their necks back to try to see the tops of the buildings. We walked a couple of blocks, teaching the girls how to properly follow the crosswalk rules  (something they've never encountered before), and found a great little literary-themed park with some landscaping, sculptures, and fountains, and walkways with quotes and word games engraved in them. Their first experience of "a real city" was a huge sucess that had Bug creating her own skyscrapers out of playdough later in the week.

We left the city intending to drive the couple of hours home to arrive mid-afternoon. Then, shortly afer lunch, the car's warning ligts started flickering. Fortunately, we were able to get to a gas station before the car quit working altogether. I handled keeping the girls occupied while Daddy got in touch with our insurance's road-side assistance. For the girls this was absolutely thrilling--they got to see the tow truck arrive, watch him load up our car (a fascinating process), and then (the real highlight) we all got to ride in the tow truck to the car place! The adventure continued when they couldn't/wouldn't fix the car that evening, and we spent our third night in a hotel. The next day we made it all the way home by lunchtime.

They loved being tucked in all together in the hotel beds!