Where It Happens: The New England Edition

Snow! The flakes are there, I promise, and the girls are
desperately trying to catch them. (FYI, the purses have
car activities for the outing we were embarking on when
the snow started falling.)

This move wasn't just a matter of rearranging all our stuff in a new space. We packed just 12 suitcases full of the bare necessities (I know that seems like a lot, but the airline said we could bring 20), and unpacked them into a furnished house that's normally rented out by week during the summer.

Two things were immediately most puzzling to the girls: how they were going to sleep (the house has 3 bedrooms with a queen bed in each, but the girls are used to sleeping in bunk beds in one room) and how we were going to function without a study (actually they were baffled as to how anyone functioned without a study or even any bookshelves. I think it was their first inkling that we're not normal.)

After a temporary stint with Bug in a separate room (self-imposed nightly quarantine because of a nasty cold), the girls decided they really did need to be all together again, so we made a Saturday day trip to visit IKEA and found a mini twin mattress that fits perfectly between the bed and the dresser. We also repurposed a large decorative basket from the living room to hold an overflowing pile of books in their bedroom (the fake flowers have been relegated to the basement. I may or may not remember how to redecorate this place 6 months from now.)

Can't you just picture me there--peacefully sipping tea and
making lesson plans? That never actually happens, of course,
but it's a nice idea, isn't it?

To replace the study I took over the sideboard in the dining room. It's now lined with books and folders instead of froufrou, the caddy for touristy brochures is now full of pens, pencils, scissors, rulers, and Brain Quest cards, and a small mixing bowl from the kitchen holds glue, tape, and a small stapler. The magazine rack was emptied in favor of 2-gallon bags organizing school materials by subject, and the basket containing more froufrou is now overflowing with craft supplies (I'm going to need to dig up a bigger bin). We no longer have a project table, but I bought a clear vinyl tablecloth to protect the poor dining room table. Oh, and the printer occupies space on a kitchen counter. Weird, but there's just no where else to put it.

Of course, the house was also lacking an obvious playroom, but what it does have is a semi-finished basement that the girls commandeered our very first day in the house. It was basically a large concrete-floored empty space with a washer and dryer on one side and random things stored around the edges. So . . . the girls and I got to work. We brought down the rug that was under the dining room table (a disaster waiting to happen), an Adirondack chair and a couple of beach chairs from the garage, an empty cabinet and old telephone table from among the stored heaps (which their collapsible toy bins fit perfectly under). We also bought some flowery masking tape and put down a hopscotch game.

Voila!  Mission accomplished.

More with Less at Playtime
Our serious downsizing of their toys when we moved has certainly inspired creativity! Even with only the very basics in craft supplies, they've created all kinds of fun. They've used pipe cleaners and fabric scraps to create little dolls and jewelry, and they've used construction paper and tape to create doll beds, boxes, dress-up armor, more jewelry, and interlocking building toys. Of course, the Legos have gotten lots of play as well; their biggest project was creating a series of mech suits for the Lego mini figures. We also bought a couple of cheap unframed white boards from Home Depot that the girls have been drawing on and creating whole story lines (my personal favorite was the dragon battle. As a project, and to help them acclimate to the new place/climate, we decided to make no-sew fleece blankets. I let the girls pick out their own fabric: Bug went with her classic purple and zebra stripes, Goose went with typical cute flowers and orange, and Monkey decided to pair an Avengers print with red. Good times.

Library Days!
We haven't actually established a weekly routine of outings yet, but we did make it to the library--a location we are very excited about. The children's section is awesome, featuring easy to flip through racks for picture books; kid-sized tables, chairs, and couches; and a large collection of puzzles, building toys, puppets, etc. The librarians were very friendly and could even assure us there were lots of homeschoolers frequenting the library that they'd try to connect us with. Of course, we couldn't visit the library without coming home with a stack of new books.

A couple of fun Christmas stories:
The Drummer Boy
The Donkey's Dream

A new book for our history studies:
The Rhode Island Colony

Never-read-by-us books by familiar authors:
Ladybug Girl and the Big Snow
Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse
Mr. Seahorse
Big Anthony and the Magic Ring
Mouse Tales
Bravo Amelia Bedelia
Berenstein Bears Learn to Share
I'm a Frog!

And of course some entirely new books that just jumped out and had to be read:
Pinkalicious
Little Bear Sleeping
Mother, You're the Best (But Sister, You're a Pest!)

We came back the next week to try out their story time, and it's exactly what we're looking for! Story time takes place out in the middle of the children's section, which allowed Monkey the freedom to listen in from the tables while she worked on puzzles and set up a castle. Bug and Goose decided they wanted to go in for a closer listen. The librarian Miss C is lovely and very approachable--even to my little introverts. Bug noted that, unlike our last librarian, "this one actually likes books!" Four or five good books were clearly the focus of the event. In fact, the "theme" was simply Miss C's favorite picks out of the brand new box of books she received that morning. The storytime crowd only involved about 10 kids, and the in-between-books activities were just quiet counting/colors/rhyming games for a change of pace (not the noisy, boisterous interruptions that so put off my girls at our last library). Bug and Goose both actively participated, answering questions and putting pieces up on the flannel board.

The Three R's
Yes, these are still happening in the midst of everything else! Obviously, we've had days off from formal lessons for travel days and Thanksgiving, but the girls are still hard at work. In fact, since we've been in our new house, Goose has also been joining in and picking out one or two worksheets or a Bob book to go through each day while her sisters are doing their lessons. She's been doing a lot of tracing letters and numbers, and she's really improving her pencil control.

For math, we did a lot of manipulatives work and flash cards when we first arrived. The girls really had fun with the fraction bars--seeing what different fractions they could combine to add up to 1, 1/2, or 1/4. The other math thing they've enjoyed is going through the math questions in the Brain Quest cards. It was a fun switch that hit on lots of different topics. Of course, once we got the printer finally set up, we they did some worksheets touching on the usual topics--addition, subtraction, time, money, skip counting, and graphs.

They are reading tons, and I've been terrible about keeping track of every book--even just for the formal reading lessons. Little Bear stories continue to be a favorite pick, and the both girls have gained enough confidence to tackle "regular" picture books like Ferdinand, Blueberries for Sal, and Snow Day. They've also been much better about doing incidental reading like the story problems in their math work.

For writing, they've both dictated journal entries, we completed a couple units of spelling words, and they each did a story prompt. We also reviewed nouns, verbs, and adjectives (by finding and labeling words in photocopies of a Little Bear story), capitalization, and contractions (I found cards for a matching/memory game to print up).

This season has required everything I may have gained in the way of superpowers as a military spouse and homeschooling mom (superhuman creativity and flexibility just come with the job, right?). Over the next week I'm hoping to post about our adventures in the holidays, moving across the country, and adjusting to our new home, along with the usual homeschooling fun that we've had over the past several weeks. Here's the first installment:

Thanksgiving: Goodbyes and Moving Day
Last year we celebrated Christmas in a hotel as we transitioned into our new house in California. This year we celebrated Thanksgiving in the same hotel as we transitioned out of that house and prepared to move clear across the country to New England! For the feasting day itself we actually joined several other military families at a friends's house, and the girls had one last day to hang out with some of their best friends. (It was quite the gathering: at one point we realized we had 14 children aged 7 and under all gathered in their living room!). We also managed to meet up with a few other families at a local park for a farewell picnic earlier in the week.

This photo doesn't nearly do justice to the crowd of people or
the vast quantities of food that day.

The cactus garden did make for an
excellent alien landscape.

For the most part, the girls enjoyed our almost week-long stay in the hotel (although Bug did grab a pillow, blanket, and book and turn the bathtub into a fortress of solitude for a while). Their favorite part was probably exploring the formal and cactus gardens. My favorite part was eavesdropping on their play while doing so: They were walking in circles around the cactus garden trapped in a time loop! They eventually discovered they could escape the time loop by changing their identities! But, when they did, they landed in a parallel universe where magic is real! This, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when you take the toys away from children who've been fed a steady intellectual diet of classic science fiction and fairy tales. We're calling it a parenting win.

The day after Thanksgiving the real adventure began, and the girls got to take their first airplane flight. Of course, this involved more than just an airplane--the girls also experienced moving sidewalks, a tram between terminals, and a hotel shuttle for the first time. They were a little nervous about going through security, but we tried to prep them as much as possible for what they'd need to do and they did beautifully (fortunately, they don't make kids go through the whole body scanning process, just a metal detector). They thought the whole taking off and landing process was pretty exciting. Getting to see a birds-eye view of the city lights of our temporary hometown as we came in for a landing was also a highlight. The low point was the crew's discovering that the cargo doors were stuck shut on arrival. About an hour later someone managed to climb through a vent, I think, and we finally got our bags--well, except for that one that ended up in Kalamazoo (literally, the one in Michigan).

Some friends we knew from California who moved here a few months ahead of us picked us up from the hotel the next morning, and we finally got to see our new house! Living in a furnished house is a weird adjustment, and the girls are definitely building the virtue of flexibility that's so crucial for military kids! (More on the creative ways we're making do in a future post.)

All buckled in for our first flight!

Dinner in the airport between flights (Monkey's excited
because we were finally far enough east to find an Arby's--her favorite)

Thanksgiving: The Formal Educational Segment
Of course, Thanksgiving segued nicely into our next history unit about Colonial America. Before Thanksgiving, we read a book and watched several videos (a reenactment, a virtual tour of the living history museum of Plymouth Plantation, and a retelling of the story while touring the modern locations where these events happens). We didn't just cover the first Thanksgiving; we got into whole story of the Separatists/Pilgrims from persecution in Scrooby, England, to the flight to Amsterdam to their migration to Massachusetts, the hardships they experienced upon arrival, their interactions with the Native Americans (good and bad events), and the establishment of a successful permanent colony. To conclude our study about this particular colony I had the girls tell me the story (with a few prompts) and write a few sentences about it.

Library Day
The girls had fun with some new puzzles and blocks set out in the children's section this week, and we sat and read through quite a few books while we were there. As our big trip approaches and their little lives are heading for major changes, they seem to be seeking out the familiar--the first four books on our list this week are ones the girls have checked out and loved multiple times:
Where Are You Going, Little Mouse?
The Ugly Vegetables
Mother Goose
Doctor Meow
The Man Who Didn't Wash His Dishes
Manana Iguana
The Kindhearted Crocodile
Lucky Ducklings
My Truck Is Stuck
Pilgrims
Penny and Her Song (an easy reader chapter book for the big girls)

No Surprises Please
Just like me, our girls really like to know what they're headed for. At some point this week, Bug strolled into the kitchen and said, "Mom, I don't totally understand the concept of how we're moving. Can you explain it again?" I can't blame her: it's a pretty complex series of events that involves suitcases to go with us, packing boxes to stay here, a moving van, a storage unit, two hotels, two flights, one shipped car, one car lent to a friend, one rental car, and one car borrowed from a friend. Oh, and one cat being fostered by a friend of a friend until we return. Whew. On top of that Bug was also getting the timeline for our Christmas travels mixed up in there (I won't even get into those yet). The girls and I sat down in the middle of the floor with the calendar, and I mapped it all out. Everyone seemed to feel a little better.

This week we also finally got around to reading a book about planes that we checked out awhile ago. Bug in particular seemed reassured by the deluge of new information about what that will be like (yes, she's definitely my kid). The book went into great detail about the inner workings of passenger airplanes, but we focused on the parts the girls would actually relate to: the cabin, galley, bathroom, cockpit, and cargo area.

The Three Rs
The bookworm genes have kicked in! This week I suddenly have a duo of voracious readers. Bug can frequently be found settled into a corner of the kitchen, where she has easy access to my assistance with tricky words, and Monkey even chose her breakfast foods based on what I would let her eat with a book at her elbow. They've been re-reading books like the Little Bear series and familiar library books. They still have their fifteen or more minutes of one-on-one time for an official reading lesson, and they've been using this time to read either entirely new-to-them books (e.g., Bug's reading Penny and Her Song) or books they know are going to be challenging (e.g., Monkey's reading The Magic School Bus: Lost in the Snow).

At some point this week, I told the girls I wasn't putting together any more workfolders until we arrived at our next new house. They decided to take this as a challenge, and they both put in the extra work to get their math folders finished this week! Monkey worked on counting money, subtraction, addition with carrying, telling time, and word problems. Bug worked on fractions, measuring length, subtraction, addition with carrying, and counting money.

For writing, we completed our last spelling unit until our next new house and continued working on contractions and adjectives. Each girl also completed a story starter sheet. Looks like we'll spend most of next week reading, writing, and packing!

New History Unit: Colonial America
We officially quit studying the Egyptians and started our next history session: Colonial America. While it's out of chronological order, it seemed fitting to start with Plymouth Colony with Thanksgiving just around the corner. I found a fun book from the library that talks about their whole story--not just the first Thanksgiving--that we've been reading through. I don't have any cool projects planned, but we will be joining our friends for a feast before we make our own voyage into unfamiliar territory!

Legos!

Now that most of the toys have been packed up, the Legos have taken on a whole new appeal. The girls have branched out from just building simple houses and towers, to building the furniture to fill houses and restaurants for their Playmobil figures. They commandeered several empty bookshelves for their purposes (it all got dismantled before I could snap a photo, though). What I did manage to capture a pic of was the complex ice palace they built for "Elsa." They were quite proud of their engineering feats, and I was also impressed by their persistence in painstakingly picking out all the blue and white Legos. 

Goose has been involved in all this too, along with her own side project: building windmills. For some reason, the wind farms we saw on our road trips out here really made an impression on her, and she's been trying to recreate a windmill with Legos. This is her most recent, and best, rendition yet.

Tidbits

• For our at-home study, we've started reading Esther, and at church the girls continue quizzing in Exodus and memorized Exodus 15:2. They'll have their last week of quizzing next week, and Monkey and Bug are planning to pool their remaining tickets (which they earn for various tasks throughout the evening) to buy something fun from the prize shelf.
• The girls are all making progress with their swimming, and they've already started talking about what particular things they'll want to work on during our visits to the pool in our next location.

Happy Birthday, K3!
The girls got a fun start for their week! On Sunday afternoon they joined a gaggle of other 3-8-year-old girls to celebrate the birthday of a close friend of theirs with a princess party--complete with fancy crafts, cake & ice cream, and time on the trampoline. The girls were all invited to come dressed as princesses or borrow one of K3's many costumes once they got there. While the rest of the crowd arrived as a classic Disney princesses, our girls did their own thing: Bug dressed as WonderWoman (she was shocked that the other girls didn't even realize WW was a warrior princess of the Amazons--they have now been educated), Monkey dressed as Pocahantas (a real princess), and Goose became a fairy princess of her own making, complete with wings, wand and crown.

Library Day
Another lovely quiet day at the library. We got mostly picture books this time, since we kept most of our non-fiction from last week.
Seven Stars, More!
The Story of Babar, the Little Elephant
The Mixed-up Chameleon
On My Way to the Bath
Museum 1 2 3
Gray Goose and Gander & Other Mother Goose Rhymes
Penny and Her Marble (an easy reader chapter book for the big girls)
The Missing Piece
So Sleepy Story
Anansi the Spider
Bonjour, Butterfly
Pharaoh's Boat 

The Three Rs
The big girls got a new writing pack this week. For grammar they're learning about contractions and about adjectives (we did some diagramming of the latter). Monkey also completed a story starter, and both girls did spelling as usual.

Both girls read Fancy Nancy: Poison Ivy Expert. Bug also finished Not Tired, and Monkey read Mother Bear's Robin. They've also been doing a lot more happenstance reading--things like signs, instructions on math worksheets, etc.

For math this week, Bug worked on fractions, reading graphs, multiplication, telling time, counting money, and addition. Monkey worked on counting money, addition, subtraction, fractions, and measuring length.

Goose still isn't doing any formal lessons, but she's expressed a lot of excitement about starting them when she's 4, though. It's funny--that's the same age her big sisters were when they decided they were ready to really start learning the three Rs. She has, however, been thoroughly enjoying the counting books we got from the library, and she's been working on writing her own name.

Updates

• Bug and Goose both did some unsupported swimming this week! Bug managed to swim the width of the pool, and Goose made it a couple of yards to get to her teacher. Monkey's not quite there yet, but she's making progress.
• For our home Bible readings, we finished reading about Isaiah and started the story of Job. For quizzing the big girls memorized Exodus 15:6. They also earned extra tickets (which they can use to purchase prizes) for reciting verses from previous weeks. Their teacher was really impressed with how many they still knew!
• Life skills learning of the week: the girls helped me sort out what toys we're taking on our big trip (evaluating what they play with most, what will pack best in suitcases, etc.) and pack up the rest of the playroom in boxes for storage.

Halloween

We don’t go in for scary and gory, but Halloween is a fun social event. This year we joined a couple of other families for a lasagna dinner before heading out into their friendly neighborhood for trick-or-treating. The kids were cute, they had a great time, they were thrilled with the piles of candy we came back with, and they were drenched! Seriously, I think it rained more in that one day than it has rained in the entire year we've lived here!

Library Day

Another good day at the library! We came home with these picture books:

Zomo the Rabbit (they were excited about finding another trickster tale; this one from Africa)

Strega Nona Takes a Vacation

Little Cloud

In the Leaves

I am Kermit the Frog

Thank you, Amelia Bedelia

This week Goose was the one who wanted to learn about something in particular, and we found these two books to satisfy her curiosity about airplanes and prep for our upcoming trip:

Plane (kids’ book diagrams and descriptions of all the parts of a passenger jet)

Plane Song (rhyming picture book about different kinds of planes)

We picked up two fun math-related books:

1 Hunter (counting)

One Hundred Hungry Ants (multiplying/dividing)

I also found two more books about ancient Egypt:

How the Sphinx Got to the Museum

The Egyptians (general knowledge of ancient Egypt, but it came with a CD of games and activities for us to try out)

The Three Rs

This week Monkey finished reading Snow and almost finished “Grandmother and Grandfather Bear.” Bug read “Grandmother and Grandfather Bear,” “Mother Bear’s Robin,” and most of “The Goblin Story.”

For writing this week, Bug did a couple of story starters and Monkey completed a worksheet about capitalization and a fill-in-the-blank exercise about toys. They both also had to pick a picture book and write a short book report along the lines of “This book is about . . . . I like it because . . . .“ For spelling, the girls are now about halfway through Fry's first hundred words, so I decided to do a little assessment and see how much they actually remember. We went through ten words each day, and I was pleased with how they did (neither were perfect, of course, but some of those words are tricky).

Both big girls were excited about getting a new stack of math sheets to work through! In fact, Monkey decided she really likes math right now and chose to do three pages every day (I require two). Monkey practiced skip counting by 2 and 5, addition, telling time, reading and making graphs, fractions, and estimating measurements. Bug practiced multiplying by 2 and 5, telling time, making and reading graphs, counting money, and estimating measurements. I also had them practice addition flashcards.

Other Updates

• For our home Bible studies, we finished reading the stories about Elisha and started reading about Isaiah. Monkey and Bug memorized Proverbs 21:2 for Bible Quizzing, and all the girls are learning about Exodus at church.
• This week for history we read a book about the discovery of King Tut’s tomb—the process as well as what was in it.
• Swimming lessons continue, and everyone is making progress. Even Goose can swim freestyle solo for a few strokes now!
• Monkey’s loose tooth finally came out! Sadly, she refused to pose for a gap-toothed-grin picture.

Big Trip Preparations!

The packing and planning continues for our temporary move to the East Coast. The girls are handling it well—they’re excited about the airplane rides and the high possibility of snow at the other end. Our cat, however, seems to feeling the stress of an upcoming disturbance in his world. He’s been more skittish around Daddy (the “alpha cat” whose responsibility it is to stuff him in a carrier when necessary) and even more snuggly and playful with me (I think in his mental hierarchy we’re equals). Kitty’s new favorite place to hang out: the pile of stuff that’s coming with us instead of going to storage (he’s probably going to hate us when he finds out he doesn't actually belong in that pile—he’s going to live with a local friend while we’re gone).

Don’t Get Sick!

It’s that time of year: The girls and I all got our flu vaccines this week. Tuesday we stopped by the pharmacy for mine, and the next day I took the girls to their doctor. We had plenty of discussion about shots, why we get them, and what other things the doctor might check while we’re there (the usual height, weight, blood pressure, etc.). The girls were all very brave! I think this might be the first year I didn't have to hold down at least one kicking screaming child! Bug was amazing—she didn't even cry. Of course, this also meant discussion about what it means to be brave: doing the right thing (in this case, cooperating with the nurse) even when you’re scared.

Library Day

Another enjoyable day at the library! We also had the opportunity to give another 3-year-old a pep talk about getting her own flu vaccine the next day—the conversation started when she asked Goose about her fun Band-Aid. We came home with a collection of fun picture books:

Grizz!

Winnie Flies Again

The Yellow Leaf

Pigs and Pirates

Mama’s Little Bears

The Marvelous Toy

Storm Is Coming

Tender Moments in the Wild

Two math-related books that the girls discovered:

Ten Puppies (about counting, sorting, and all the ways to make ten)

One Is a Snail, Ten Is a Crab (about counting, adding, and multiplying)

Inspired by a conversation about cloud types on the way to the library, we also found:

Weather

From last week, we also kept the Easy Readers and the books about Ancient Egypt.

New Friends, Old Friends

This weekend included two out-of-the-ordinary social events. On Friday, we hosted a dinner party for the other families temporarily going to New England too. The girls were very good about interacting with the new adults and made a new friend of their own with 2-year-old Z (although Bug noted that she was so little they had to explain things like not moving the kid-sized card table while they were eating and not coming onto their beds with her shoes on).

On Saturday, Daddy and his friend Mr. A headed out of town for a Spartan run, so the girls and I joined Mr. A’s family (who've become close friends of ours here) for a late afternoon playdate and dinner. The kids had a great time, and Miss R and I had a chance for good discussions about homeschooling and faith.

The Three Rs

For math this week, Bug worked on addition, telling time, counting money, and fractions. Monkey worked on addition, subtraction, telling time, counting money, and skip counting by 2s. Both girls also did some activities with counting squares and rods (for ones and tens): Monkey focused on place value and addition with two digit numbers, while Bug worked on illustrating multiplication problems.

For reading this week, Bug finished Penny and Her Doll and Snow, and Monkey read Snow. Both girls also read other books just for fun (Go Away, Big Green Monster and One Is a Snail come to mind). Besides increasing the number of words both girls can read on sight (instead of sounding out), they’re also improving their ability to read with expression. Bug can read with expression the first time through sometimes, and Monkey will frequently re-read a sentence excitedly, sadly, or whatever is called for that she missed the first time through.

For writing, Monkey completed a capitalization worksheet and a story starter, while Bug did a story starter and asked to do some copywork from Genesis 1. Both girls completed a spelling list and wrote in their journals. Bug has also been doing a lot more writing on her own as part of drawings and things.

Updates

• Another session of swimming lessons ended, and as expected all three girls will be staying in their current levels (an Angelfish and two Goldfish). Bug is really close to leveling up—she just needs to learn how to back stroke without support. I have Monkey and Bug signed up for one last 4-week session before we head east for a while. Unfortunately, all the Angelfish spots were full, but Goose is first on the wait list (we’re really hoping somebody decides they can’t make it or I’m going to have one very sad little girl on my hands).
• Monkey and Bug also had their last jujutsu class this week. They gave their sensei hugs and told him they’d be back. They've also told me their intention not only to keep practicing while we’re gone, but to teach Goose the katas as well (they've taught her a couple already).
• For our Bible studies, we’re reading about Elisha now, and Monkey and Bug memorized Psalm 4:3. I've been reading to Goose from a storybook Bible, but I've read through that thing dozens of times now. This week we switched to a different children’s Bible—fewer pictures, but more stories.
• Continuing our reading about Ancient Egypt, we learned about Egyptians at Home (what houses for different social/economic classes were like), Song and Dance (mostly about instruments), Toys and Games, and Animals of the Nile Valley.
• Bug lost her first tooth!! She was incredibly excited about this event, and the tiny tooth was safely deposited into the fancy little box she bought for that purpose months ago. Now we are anxiously awaiting the moment when Monkey's wiggly tooth finally pops out. 

Library Day
Another fun day at the library this week! We came home with even more books than usual. First, the girls picked out a bunch of picture books just for fun:
I'm Dirty
Are You a Horse?
Grandfather's Trolley
The Other Dog
The Story of the Tooth Fairy
Max & Ruby's Bedtime Book

Then Monkey and Bug rediscovered the Easy Reader section (much more interesting now that they can read more independently). They picked out three books to add to their stack for reading lessons:
Little Bear's Visit
Fancy Nancy, Poison Ivy Expert
Snow

From the Juvenile Non-Fiction section, we came home with:
Who Built the Pyramids? (picture book style explanation of the process of building a pyramid)
The Tomb of the Boy King (the discovery of King Tut's tomb told with pictures and poetry)
Missing Mittens (a fun story counting book that gets discusses even and odd numbers)
The Picture World of Space Shuttles (Monkey's request as a follow-up to the discussion described below)

Into the Wild Blue Yonder!

Monkey is very proud of her shuttle!

We followed a fun tangent one morning this week that I'd classify as science/history. Monkey and Bug were playing astronauts early this week: Monkey built a very elaborate space shuttle out of Legos over the course of several days, Bug built a Lego moon rover, and they declared the top of their dresser the International Space Station. At some point, one of them wanted to verify that people really had walked on the moon. I said yes, asked if they wanted to see the recording of it, and off we went. I looked up the clip on British Pathe (a YouTube channel that has thousands of newsreel clips from the last hundred years or so--really awesome collection). Watching the clip of Neil Armstrong's moon walk led to watching footage of Yuri Gagarin (the first man in space) which led to watching the Wright brothers first flight ever, which led Bug to note that you couldn't possibly fly that airplane over the ocean. This of course led us to watching clips of Charles Lindbergh's first ever trans-Atlantic flight (the girls noticed the jump in technology--one prop, one set of wings, actual walls and windows, etc.), which led to questions about how long it took, which led to watching footage of the Concord (the first aircraft to break the sound barrier), which somehow led us back to space shuttles. We finished by watching the launch and landing of the Discovery shuttle. Of course, this whole experience was peppered with more questions than I can possibly remember to write down, but I did my best to answer. I also tried to tie down the timeline for them by linking different events to their personal family history (i.e., Lindbergh made his famous flight when their great-grandparents were babies, Armstrong landed on the moon when their grandparents were big kids, and the Discovery first launched when I was a preschooler).

We followed all that up over the next several days with a book from the library about space shuttles and two documentaries: All About Space Shuttles with Hard Hat Harry and Shuttle Discovery's Last Mission (it actually covered the entire history of the Discovery but had a special focus on getting the Discovery to it's final home at the Smithsonian).

The Three Rs
Now that we've moved our library day to a different day, Thursdays aren't so crazy busy anymore, and for the past couple of weeks I've done "special lessons" on Thursdays. This week, I had a scrambled word game for them to practice their spelling words, we zipped through a bunch of addition flash cards, and had a white board lesson about vowel teams that make the first vowel say its name (ee, ea, oa, etc.). These pairings consistently trip up the girls during regular reading lessons, so I decided a designated review of them was in order.

For regular lessons this week, Monkey read "What Will Little Bear Wear" and most of "Birthday Soup." She also successfully read the word problem on one of her math sheets this week--it included some tricky words too! Bug read "Father Bear Comes Home," "Hiccups," and "Little Bear's Mermaid." She also read the first chapter of Penny and Her Doll. She's been reading some other books on her own just for fun (hooray!), but I don't keep track of those.

For writing lessons, Bug did worksheets about capitalization and nouns & verbs, while Monkey did several story starter sheets. They worked together to write sentences using their spelling words from this week, and they both dictated journal entries. (Not to mention all the writing they do in Bible quizzing.)

For math lessons, Monkey worked on fractions, addition, subtraction, telling time, and counting by 5 (Fun moment: when Daddy was supervising math lessons one day this week, he peaked over Monkey's shoulder and complimented her perfect work so far. She nodded matter-of-factly, "Yep, I'm really good at math.") Bug worked on fractions, subtraction, making & reading graphs, and measuring weight, length, and volume.

Goose continues listening to lots of books (read by both me and her sisters), counting random things as well as useful things like how many forks we need for dinner, assessing shapes and colors, staging elaborate pretend play (both with her sisters and solo), singing preschool songs or songs of her own invention, etc. And of course, she's frequently listening in on what her sisters are doing and just soaking it all up!

At left, Monkey and Bug pose at the bottom of a climbing wall at the gym Daddy took them to this week.
At right, while they were gone, Goose absolutely loved getting the playground (especially the swings) all to herself!

Quick Updates

• At church the girls (all three of them) are still studying Exodus, and Monkey and Bug memorized Psalm 24:1. At home we finished the stories about Solomon and started reading about Elijah.
• In history we're still reading through the Eyewitness Egypt book. This week we covered the sections: Weapons of War, Sailing on the Nile, Buying and Selling, An Egyptian Carpenter, and Hunting, Fishing, and Fowling.
• Jujutsu continues, and I think they're enjoying their newly-minted yellow belt status.
• Swimming lessons this week went really well. Bug swam the width of the pool solo several times! Monkey and Goose can both float by themselves, and they're all working hard!

Library Day
We're sticking with, and still loving, our new storytime-free library day. The girls played with the magnetic building blocks (they built the pyramids of Giza), and we read tons of books. We came home with these books:
Take a Kiss to School
If You Seek Adventure
Rhinos Who Skateboard
Good-bye, 328 Shin Dang Dong
Lizard Sees the World
Little Blue and Little Yellow
Daisy Is a Mommy
That's Not Fair, Hare!
Frederick
The Vanities

Three Rs
For reading this week, Bug finished Danny and the Dinosaur and read "Owl and Little Bear." Monkey is just two pages shy of finishing "Your Friend, Little Bear" (reading is still agonizingly slow most days, but she is making progress). We also did an extra reading/writing lesson about vowels and syllables, which they loved! I wrote the vowels on the white board, explained why they're special letters, had the girls tell me the different sounds they make and come up with a word for each sound. This segued nicely into syllables since every syllable has to have a vowel sound. I wrote words up on the board and had them underlining all the vowels, splitting words into syllables with vertical lines and having good discussions about confusing things like silent es and how in some words a particular vowel doesn't sound like itself at all (e.g., we pronounce was as if it were spelled wuz).

For writing this week, we did that review spelling unit I mentioned (very helpful), reviewed capitalization and verbs vs. nouns, and both girls dictated journal entries about the pizza and movie night they had with Daddy and some family friends (I went with the mommies to man an Officer's Christian Fellowship table for a new milspouses event. We book-ended the event with dinner and dessert and had a fantastic girl's night!)

For math, Monkey practiced counting by 2s, fractions, and subtraction; creating and reading graphs; estimating weight and volume (and actually measuring volume); and counting money. Bug practiced multiplying by 2 and 3, subtraction, counting money, and addition. Monkey and Bug particularly loved the counting money activity this week: I found a printable to create a dice with pictures of multiple coins on each side. The girls would roll two dice and add up the money shown.

Jujitsu
Monkey and Bug acquired new belts this week!
They had to complete a demonstration at the end of class to prove they know the required katas, and they had to answer a few questions about the martial art they're studying.

Quick Updates

• For their Bible studies this week, at home we're reading about Solomon, and at church they learned about the first plague in Egypt and memorized Exodus 6:5.
• For history this week we didn't do any projects, but we read a bunch of sections in the Eyewitness book (so we can get through it all before we have to pack it up): On the Banks of the Nile (about seasonal floods), Famous Pharaohs, The Royal Court, Preparing for the Tomb, Everlasting Bodies (both about mummification rituals and techniques), The Great Pyramids, The Valley of the Kings, Gods and Goddesses, and Medicine.
• Swimming lessons continue. This week before lessons we talked about what skills they needed to master before they can move up a level (particularly motivating for Bug). This week Bug asked her teacher if she could practice more swimming all by herself and was thrilled when Mr. V agreed. 
• On Saturday we helped out a fellow military family by watching their 1-year-old daughter for the morning. The girls had a fantastic time getting to be the big kids. It was a good learning experience too--evaluating what toys would be really good for her and which ones should be put out of her reach entirely, picking what foods she could eat for snack, vigilantly keeping her out of certain room or at least away from our cat (who's not a fan of babies and toddlers), and helping toddler proof the kitchen and living room (what would be safe for her and what should she stay out of).

Bug is still building things! This three room house even had internal doorways.

Before-We-Move List

The climbing wall was definitely the big girls'
favorite part of the playground.

Now that we’re already packing up boxes and the cross-country move seems imminent, the girls have been coming up with things they want to make sure we do before we leave. It actually worked out for us to do several of those this week. First, we visited the huge playground across town. (It’s not a usual destination because it’s big enough and they’re small enough that I can’t just let them run wild—I actually have to keep up them and keep them relatively together.) They had a blast of course! It includes things like a long, wobbly bridge 10 feet off the ground, tunnels through hills, a shrubbery maze, several climbing walls, and of course, the typical climb-and-slide structures.

 Next, we spent an afternoon at the aquarium. As usual we arrived with a mission (or two or three): The big girls each needed to pick a critter to research and write a report on while we were there (just a sentence or two). Monkey picked black sea nettles, and Bug chose penguins. Goose can’t write, of course, but she brought a bag with a clipboard paper and crayons, too, and drew pictures of jellyfish while Monkey wrote her paper. I also printed up a photo checklist of about a dozen species for the girls to look for and check off once found. We didn’t actually find everything, but it helped give some direction to our wanderings.

 

The girls love the glass room where the waves crash over them!

Somehow we missed this exhibit on other visits:
an open air nature center with local fish and small coastal birds.

At the end of the week, we were hit by a “heat wave” of 80 degrees. (The equivalent of a nice cool summer day in our previous location!) We put off our lessons until Saturday and hit the beach! Granted, the West Coast water is still frigid, but at least frigid was a little more welcome this time around. The highlight of this particular beach outing was Bug’s major project: digging a hole. Not just any hole—a hole deep enough to cover Goose almost up to her waist! She was very excited that she dug deep enough to have water seeping in from the surrounding sand (“Mommy! I dug a well!”) and the fact that we could see our reflections in it clearly.

Library Day

We actually succeeded in finding a library time that

Playing with magnetic shapes at the library: Goose is building
a small box and Monkey and Bug are contemplating plans to
build a bigger rocket.

didn’t coincide with a story time! We had the kids’ section essentially to ourselves. The girls got to do puzzles, play with building toys, have plenty of room to spread out, and enough quiet to read books. (We discovered that the library is a popular afterschool hangout location for the teen crowd, but of course they didn’t venture into the children’s section.) We came home with these books:

Chester

Dear Mrs. LaRue: Letters from Obedience School

“Slowly, slowly, slowly,” Said the Sloth

Maybelle, the Cable Car

The Popcorn Dragon

Amelia Bedelia Goes Camping

Hello, Arctic!

Komodo!
Meeow and the Little Chairs

A Treeful of Pigs

Father Bear Comes Home (This book is actually for Bug’s reading lessons for next week, since her competency level is high enough to accommodate library book due dates.)

Three Rs

For reading, Monkey finished “The Party at Owl’s House” and began “Your Friend, Little Bear.” Bug read “Little Bear Goes to the Moon” and “Little Bear’s Wish” and started reading Danny and the Dinosaur. They’ve both also recently had fun scouring cereal boxes for words they can sight read.

I already mentioned the report I had them write at the aquarium for one of their writing lessons. Also, in addition to the usual spelling unit (which they struggled with this week; next week is going to be a review session), they learned the basic rules of capitalization. Being the grammar geek that I am, I taught them proper proofreading marks instead of making them rewrite entire sentences just to capitalize someone’s name the way the worksheets asked (I’m not a fan of busy work). They both get the concepts; now it’s just a matter of enforcing it in their everyday writing. They both enjoyed doing journal entries this week too, and dictating very enthusiastically about our visit to the beach.

For math this week, Monkey worked on addition, creating and reading bar graphs, concepts of units of time (would you measure particular events in seconds, days, years, etc.), and we introduced counting by 2s. Bug worked on multiplying by 2 and 3, addition, and fractions.

At this point Goose’s lessons are still optional, and this week she politely declined them every day. Of course, that hardly means she wasn’t learning. We read tons of books, she practiced counting and simple addition just in the course of everyday activities (like figuring out how many big and little forks and plates we need at dinner), and she’s been practicing writing the letters in her name (for some reason, getting them right side up is an issue, but we’ll get that sorted out).

It's Raining!
First thing Thursday morning, once the entourage had the chance to rub the sleep out of their eyes, I urgently whispered, "Listen!" They froze attentively, and you could see realization and excitement spread across their little faces: "IT'S RAINING!!" Seriously, when you live in an area affected by severe drought, this is an event that generates snow-in-the-Southeast kind of excitement in small children. They ate a quick breakfast, donned bathing suits, dug up umbrellas and an old raincoat, and had a blast! There were puddles to splash in! Water falling from the roof to catch in buckets! So much fun!

Walk Like an Egyptian
You know an era in history is really sinking in when it shows up with relative accuracy in their pretend play. One day this week, while the girls were putting away their laundry, they were pretending they were servants in Pharaoh's household. Then, they decided that they were actually Pharaoh's daughters, and we all piled into the royal chariot to go to their favorite spot to swim in the Nile (we got in the car and drove to swimming lessons). They decided the drive wasn't quite exciting enough, so they pretended we were being attacked by Vikings ("Would it be Vikings, Mom? Were they at the same time?" "No, sweetie, probably the Ancient Greeks." "Oh, ok.")

The girls also took the initiative on what we would study about Ancient Egypt this week: clothes and jewelry. We've looked at enough books that both big girls had ideas of their own for costumes, so they asked if we could read specifically about clothes and jewelry and if I could
help them make the costumes. I was more than happy to help them out! They had some great ideas for clothes involving repurposing maxi skirts and a chiton from our Ancient Greek studies. I also found ideas online for creating jeweled collars and armbands using paper plates and toilet paper tubes.

They spontaneously started building pyramids out of Legos too.
They even put a couple of Lego figures inside to be the pharaohs.

We exhumed our apple mummy this week too!

The Three Rs
Our history studies weren't the only area in which the girls took some ownership of their education. We've always carefully watched their developmental levels and personal interests and given them lots of choices on the theory that this would happen. Hooray! It works! Homeschooling win!

Monkey is finally motivated to improve her handwriting, and this week she requested tracing sheets for particular lower case letters that were causing her trouble: a, y, g, q, r, and m. She carefully and enthusiastically traced these letters maybe twenty times each, and the improvements were clear in her other work this week! Bug actually chose to do a story starter page this week. Getting her to finish the creative writing activities in the last writing folder was a real battle, but she had fun with this one! She was given a picture and a question (How will the hedgehog carry this big mushroom home?). Her answer: "She put the basket down, and she pulled the mushroom up, and she put it on her head." She was very proud of both coming up with a solution and with being able to spell a lot of the words on her own (or at least by referring to the written question instead of me). This activity also led us to discuss and demonstrate the usefulness of a dictionary since she and I disagreed on how to spell something. The issue was accurately resolved, and she spent some time flipping through the kids dictionary (Thank you, Grandma & Granddad!). This week I also introduced both girls to the joy of diagramming (yes, Mommy is a grammar nerd). They're just doing simple two word sentences themselves, but they picked out some longer sentences from one of their books to watch me diagram. Bug in particular is intrigued by these "puzzles."

This week Monkey read "Duck, Babysitter" and started reading "The Party at Owl's House." Bug read A Kiss for Little Bear, "What Will Little Bear Wear?" and "Birthday Soup." I think it finally clicked with Bug that she really can read! One day this week she emerged triumphantly from quiet time having read about 75 pages in a Dick and Jane treasury. She asked me for a bookmark and continued reading it throughout the week.

Both girls chose several telling time pages among their math worksheets this week, and I finally feel like we made some real progress! They can both draw in the correct hands on a clock if given a digital time at least. Bug also worked on counting coins, estimating and measuring with inches and centimeters, and counting by 3s. Monkey also worked on double digit addition, subtraction, counting money, fractions, and counting by 5s and 10s (counting by 10s was at her request--the sheets weren't in her folder, but she asked if she could practice those too, since it'd been awhile. Absolutely!)

Library Day
After last week's dissatisfaction with storytime, I gave the girls the option to go to the library a different day. Our plan to avoid a storytime crowd backfired a bit though, when we arrived to discover that Friday mornings are apparently baby storytime and the children's picture book section was quite literally crawling with kids. We decided to retreat to the Juvenile section reading room for own reading time and made occasional forays into the folktale and picture book section to acquire more books. We came home with these books:
The Legend of the Golden Snail
Whose Chick Are You?
The Complete Story of the Three Blind Mice
Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother, Too?
Tyrone the Horrible
Amelia Bedelia
Once upon a Cloud
The Story about Ping
Pig-Boy: A Trickster Tale from Hawaii
Cinderella

Art
This week was the last art session. The girls had so much fun getting to experiment with painting techniques and got some good practice in making quick, temporary friends (between being military kids and home schoolers this is a crucial life skill).

Goose's artwork

Bug's artwork

Monkey's artwork

Swimming
This was the last week of the current session, but I immediately signed them up for the next one, which they're pretty excited about. They were anxious to get their check lists and certificates on Wednesday to find out how they did. Goose should technically have advanced to Otter since she completed all the exit skills for Angelfish; however, there's a waitlist for every single Otter class in the next session. I think Goose has gained enough confidence that being in Angelfish again won't hold her back. (Plus, from what I've seen the teachers of the preschool classes are pretty good about tailoring to suit the skills of the kids regardless of the level.) Monkey will be a Goldfish again--she still has a lot to work on (I think she and Goose are at about the same skill level at this point). Bug actually got demoted to Goldfish, which was disappointing, but we talked about it and decided it was probably for the best. Bug's skill level definitely fits within the description of the Penguin class given in the catalog, but the reality is that she was in a class with a bunch of 9-12 year olds who'd obviously been swimming with confidence for awhile now. (Obviously, corrections need to be made to either the descriptions or the class make-up.) It boiled down to her continuing to be a struggling Penguin or her being an advanced Goldfish, and her teacher thought she'd benefit more from the latter.

Little Architect
In case you were wondering, Bug's love of buildings and architecture are still going strong! She's been drawing house plans on the white board lately.

Library Day
Storytime this week proved to be a great disappointment to the girls since it involved only one actual story being read in the whole thirty minutes. The new librarian who does storytime is really into audience participation and hitting lots of preschool skills (good things in general like patterns, counting, colors, etc.), rather than just enthusiastically sharing good books, which is what these girls actual want out of storytime. Bug was the most vehemently frustrated on the way home: "Seriously, why is she a librarian if she doesn't even like books?! She should just teach a music class!" Of course, the library is still the library, and we came home with these great books (mostly pulled from the folktale/fairy tale section because the regular picture book section was even more of a madhouse than usual):
Clever Katya (Russian folktale)
Gift Horse (Native American folktale)
Monkey (a trickster tale from India)
Jabuty the Tortoise (a trickster tale from the Amazon)
How the Gods Created the Finger People (Mayan creation story)
Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters (African folktale)
Gawain and the Green Knight (Arthurian legend)
Jack and the Beanstalk (English fairy tale)
The Egyptian Cinderella (not a retelling of the European Cinderella story; this is actually the true tale of a Greek slave who became Pharoah Amasis's wife)
The Man Who Walked Between the Towers

Bible & Quizzing
Our at home Bible study involved a little research this week. In Goose's Bible storybook we were reading about Moses and the Isrealites, in particular one day the story of Moses hitting the rock to get water. Bug and I both immediately remembered that Moses got in trouble for hitting the rock, which wasn't mentioned. First Bug looked up the given reference in Exodus in her Bible, and we discovered the same happy story from the storybook, but this bothered us (we couldn't both be wrong, could we? That seemed like a weird thing to jointly mis-remember.) Sure enough, a further online search revealed a second similar story in Numbers, but this one involved Moses being reprimanded for hitting instead of just speaking to the rock. Fun Bible trivia learned and good practice in verifying information and doing research--it's a win!

The big girls and I are still reading through the stories of David and selections of his Psalms at home, and they studied Exodus 4 at church and recited Exodus 3:14 as their memory verse. They were also happy to have their little class of 1st - 3rd graders back instead of being in with the big kids.

Art
Here are their creations from class this week:

Swimming
Goose hit a milestone this week: She swam a few strokes to her teacher all by herself! Monkey is continuing to gain more confidence. She's not doing anything solo yet, but she's much more willing to go underwater and stay under for more than a split second. In contrast, Bug was disappointed this week that her teacher didn't have her doing more solo swimming! She's mostly been working on freestyle using a marshmallow floats (looks like a floating bar bell), but she's also practiced the backstroke and a kind of modified breaststroke.

heading into the wilderness of the Pinnacles

The Great Outdoors!

The dark cave beyond them
is the entrance to the second
section of Balcony Caves 

We actually wanted to go camping this weekend, but all the sites close enough were booked or closed, so we went for a day trip hike instead. We headed to West Pinnacles National Park and had a fantastic time! We took a 2 1/2 mile loop trail that involved a bit of spelunking through Balcony Caves. It was awesome! This was not a paved path, clearly lit kind of cave exploration. We had to bring our own flashlights (now very thankful we bought little headlamps for the girls awhile back), and it involved climbing through some pretty tight places.The girls loved it. Even Goose climbed through on her own; she only needed me to adjust her pack a few times, so it would stay out of her way while she was climbing. Climbing through the caves really sparked the girls innate desire to climb, and they did quite a bit bouldering once we got out of the caves (Daddy and I laughed about how many pictures we now have of them triumphantly on top of things).

The girls and Daddy at the top of two of the boulders they conquered.
 I know in the picture on the right they just far away, but that distance is mostly vertical.

Throughout the hike, Monkey and Bug took turns leading us. It was an obvious trail, but it was a fun confidence-boosting exercise to let them be charge, and do things like decide where the best spot for resting and snacking would be.

Three Rs
In math this week Monkey worked on counting money, telling time, creating and reading tables, subtraction, and measurements (we discussed units of length, weight, and volume; she even estimated length using inches with remarkable accuracy). Bug worked on mostly the same things plus we introduced counting by threes this week (she didn't actually choose to the measuring worksheets Monkey did this week, but she was listening in on all the explanations).

They're both continuing to read about Little Bear: Monkey finished Little Bear's Friend, and Bug read The Party at Owl's House and the beginning of Your Friend, Little Bear. We were also very excited about a delivery of seven new books for future reading lessons (including several that are collections of stories; all of the same type as the Little Bear books: Frog and Toad, Frances, etc.)

They finished up their first workbooks of writing sheets this week. Both girls had been putting off the creative writing prompts for last, but they did a great job! They were even proud enough of their one or two sentence stories to read them to Daddy when he got home. They also each completed a journal entry and a spelling list.

Goose and I spent lots of time reading pre-reading skills books this week. Her sisters also jumped in on our building a block town according to a pattern just like some of the characters in her books. She also decided to complete some letter sounds worksheets.