Year-round Learners
Just for the record (and because the topic has been coming up a lot in local social circles), we practice year-round homeschooling for several reasons. The first is simply academic: especially at their young ages when they're just grasping early reading and math concepts, I feel like we'd lose too much ground if we stopped doing lessons for three months. Really, it feels mean to have re-teach them things in the fall that I let them forget by taking such a long break. (Also, I'd probably have a mutiny on my hands if I told them we weren't studying history for the whole summer!) Year-round schooling gives our family much more flexibility too. Since we're not taking three months off at one stretch, we can do things like take a break for a random week in March if Nana comes to visit or a week-long trip to San Diego when Daddy has mandated days to take leave. From my perspective, not following a school schedule really eases a lot of stress. I don't have the year-end crunch to "fit it all in" by summer time--we can just keep working steadily at the pace the girls need. It also frees me to do things like declare that on Thursdays the three Rs will not be covered, because there's just too many other things going on that day right now.

Library Day & Fairy Tales
This week's storytime theme was kittens. They even had one of the librarians in a cat costume to act out one of the books! Perhaps the best part about this week, though, was that the girls were brave enough to sit front and center in with all the other kids instead of huddling by my feet at the edge of the room. After storytime the girls and I found a relatively quiet corner and read a few books ourselves, but we actually didn't check out any books this week. We won't be able to visit the library for the next several weeks, so we decided to focus on digging back into our own shelves chock full of books that we haven't read recently!

Among our many books at home, the entourage was thrilled to discover my copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales and asked if I could read them the real stories about the princesses. So far we've read Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, The Frog Prince, and Cinderella. We've made some interesting discoveries that certainly downplay the romance of the tales we think we know! For example, Snow White is revived, not by true love's kiss, but because the dwarves drop her coffin and the bit of poisoned apple gets dislodged from her throat. Similarly, the frog prince isn't transformed by a kiss (even an unwilling one), but because the princess throws the poor long-suffering amphibian against a wall! Besides the fun comparative analyses, we faced the truth that princesses are just another character in books--they're not always perfect heroines: sometimes they are the active protagonist (Cinderella), sometimes they're good but passive characters (Snow White), and sometimes they're not nice girls at all (the dancing princesses and the frog-finding princess)!

Viking Raiders
Our viking studies continue! This week we read more Norse mythology, and girls continued their comparisons to the modern Marvel characters. They were disappointed that Thor doesn't have his iron mitt in the modern take and amused that he does appear to have Lady Sif's lovely golden hair! (The mythical Thor had red hair and a full beard.)

While last week we studied everyday Viking clothing, this week we looked at the arms and armor of the Viking raiders. We read the appropriate sections of the Eyewitness book, perused the Viking raiders section of Daddy's bladed weapons book, watched a couple of YouTube videos about viking armor as well as fighting techniques, and finally made our own helmets!

The Three Rs
For reading this week, Bug read Raindrop Plop, Hop on Pop, and Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. She also spent one of her lessons sorting rhyming words--she's gotten a lot faster since last time she tried that activity! This week Monkey mastered the words in Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. After Monday's first-day read through, she really likes to gather her sisters and read to them for her lessons. Lots of fun for everybody!

For math this week, Monkey reviewed time and fractions, continued learning her addition math facts and practiced a few problems involving carrying, and did some extra studying of place value (she can read 3-digit numbers now, and we spent some time sorting out fourteen vs. forty, etc.). Bug practiced time, fractions, and addition, practiced skip counting and the 5s and 2s times tables, and did some subtraction (as expected now that she's all but mastered her addition math facts, introduced subtraction was a breeze).

The worksheets continue for writing lessons! Monkey and Bug both completed sheets that involved matching missing letters to their words, unscrambling sentences, and creatively finishing a sentence. They both also enjoyed dictating about our visit to the art museum for their journals this week.

Bikes and Playgrounds
Progress is slow, but the girls are continuing to practice their bikes (Daddy's goal is to get them riding with confidence by the end of the year, and I'm just looking forward to when they get good enough to realize it's fun! At this point they seem to think it's just frustrating and mildly terrifying). They practiced on the sidewalk in front of our house a few times, and one morning this week we met some friends and took over the church parking lot, so the kids could have a little more room to maneuver. Of course, with the church playground right there, the girls didn't actually stay on their bikes for long. They have thoroughly enjoyed all the playground time they've gotten this week. I've tried to be a bit more intentional about finding times--even really brief ones--for them to play since our backyard isn't terribly appealing for a lot of gross-motor play (it's completely bricked and terraced).

Little Artists
We visited the new exhibits at the art museum this week! The first small exhibit was a truly impressive collection of large embroidered portraits. One of the portraits was a modern teenager posed to resemble Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring. I looked up the original painting on my phone, and the girls and I briefly took over the gallery bench to compare the two. The next exhibit featured the works of female artists from the local youth art collective. This exhibit also included head shots of each of the artists, and the girls loved being able to see who they actually are. The last and largest exhibit featured the works of a travelling artist from the late 1800s. His works included woodblock prints, pencil sketches, and paintings, and of course we talked about the various methods. The content of his paintings covered a wide and fascinating spectrum. Some of them were monthly magazine covers (the girls discussed why he chose particular things to illustrate the given month), many were newsprint illustrations and drawings of the Western expansion (we remembered back to our studies of the pioneers and Laura Ingalls Wilder and compared his renderings of cities like San Francisco to our own visit there), one wall featured paintings of Colorado (we're planning a roadtrip there, and the girls are looking forward to seeing some of those landscapes for themselves), and finally one gallery included a whole series of paintings of Hawaiian volcanoes at night that the girls were particularly fascinated by. The girls had decided to bring their art kits with them, so after we toured the museum, we settled into the benches in the volcano gallery to create some "inspired by" art work of their own. Eventually Monkey asked permission to wander the other gallery on the same floor by herself and settled in to copy a painting of a California farmhouse.

Explorations
I decided to make Monday a field trip day, so once lessons were done the girls and I headed to a historic plaza near the wharf. Unfortunately, the museums I wanted to visit were closed (They had hours, but not days posted! Maddening!). We at least got to read the outside signs, talk about what the buildings were originally (early government and customs buildings), and peek in some of the windows. We also walked through a little cactus garden.

Having met with a bit of disappointment, we decided to cross over to the beach next to the wharf--our favorite spot for watching harbor seals and finding sea shells. In addition to the usual seals, pigeons, and sea gulls, the girls also spotted a live crab about the size of one of their hands.

The little spots of color in the rocks to the left would be the girls doing some exploring.
They wanted to take pictures of their "treasures" and decided the best way to do that
would be for me to hold the shells and sea glass while they took the photo.

To finish the morning on a high note, we bought a couple orders of fish and chips on the wharf and took our lunch to a picnic table overlooking the beach. Mealtime entertainment: playing follow the leader with a sea gull. He cooperated remarkably well in letting the girls follow him for a while before flying off.

Library Day
Storytime is back! This week's theme was animals at the beach, in keeping with the summer reading program theme of "Paws to Read." Of course, this means the library is crowded again, and the girls weren't up for fighting the crowds to get to the toys and puzzles, but we came home with some great books:
Detective LaRue
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly
The Diggingest Dog
The Ear Book
Henry, the Castaway
The Storm Seal
O'Sullivan Stew
The Day the Animals Came
Grumpy Bird
It's Mine!
Summer
One Riddle, One Answer (Our new favorite, beautifully illustrated, princess story: Unsatisfied with the current cast of suitors, Persian princess and mathematician, Aziza, writes a riddle and travels the land in search of a husband who shares her passion for numbers and can prove himself a kindred spirit by solving her riddle.)

The Three Rs
For reading this week, Monkey came up with a new plan that I can definitely get behind. At the beginning of each week, she'll pick a book from the reading lesson shelf which she will read everyday that week, so that by the end of the week, she's able to read all the words in the book without having to sound any of them out. This week she chose to master The Foot Book (I read it to her first on Monday, but after that she didn't require a pre-reading). Bug on the other hand went for variety this week. She read: Go, Dog, Go!, You Are My Sunshine, Rosie's Walk, and Kitty Up. Goose has been opting not to do formal lessons with me, but she does repetition readings with her sisters and works on identifying letters among the fridge magnets.

For math, Goose roped the rest of us into helping her practice counting up to 20 and did simple addition with everyday objects. Monkey practiced fractions, addition (single and double digit problems including carries, and a worksheet involving how many ways one can make [some number] by adding two numbers), and telling time. Bug practiced fractions, addition (mostly double digit problems with carries; she loved the "how many ways can you make _" worksheet and continued doing the activity for far more numbers than were listed on the worksheet), multiplication (skip counting and filling in times tables for 5 and 10), telling time, and simple subtraction.

For writing, Monkey started off the week by writing a report about walruses. Next she wrote a list of all the words she knew how to spell all by herself (she came up with about a dozen). She and Bug both completed a tracing sheet of the entire alphabet (they've been particularly struggling with the idea that letters with tails--q,p,y,j,g--need to dip below the line). Bug completed several other fill-in-the-letter worksheets, and both girls closed the week by dictating to me for their journals.

Little Vikings
We started reading our Norse mythology book this week. Thanks to the current popularity of the Avengers, the girls are familiar with a few characters (we watched an animated movie a while back), and they're pretty excited about learning the original stories that inspired the modern ones. We also learned fun tidbits like the fact that four days of the week are named after the Norse gods.

(Monkey also made a cute red apron with all the accessories,
but requested that I not post a photo. Sorry, folks.)

Most of this week though we focused on Viking clothing, and of course we had to make our own reproductions! We read all the Eyewitness book sections about Viking clothing and jewelry, including how they were made, and we found several fun YouTube videos (how to use a drop spindle, how a vertical loom and stick weaving works, and a re-enactors tour of her outfit) They had a blast picking out fabric for their aprons, making brooches (juice can lids + taped on safety pins + rhinestone stickers), finding cloth for cloaks, and collecting necklaces and kerchiefs from around the house.

In the process of getting them dressed up we had some interesting discussions about what our life would be like if we were a Viking family: Daddy would still take big trips while we stayed home and took care of things, and we would still probably live near the water, but we would likely live on a farm and the girls would have more chores but fewer lessons and toys. Bug also had the realization that someday we would be history, and she speculated about how kids of the future might dress up to look like us!

Perseverance
Life lessons this week were all about perseverance! We visited the neighborhood park one day, and Bug was absolutely determined to climb up this particular tree. She faced teary frustration and multiple scrapes, but she declared that we were NOT leaving the park until she did it! We had the brilliant idea that climbing might be easier barefoot, and a couple of tries later she was up there! We discussed words like "determination" and "perseverance" and how important it is not to give up if you really want to accomplish something.

Goose had been observing all this, and apparently took the message to heart. When we went to the homeschool park day on Friday, it didn't take her long to corral her sisters into coaching her up the climbing rock.  At some point they came rushing over to me so excited because Goose almost made it to the top! Goose assured me multiple times that she was not giving up. Not too long after, I heard triumphant cheers from atop the rock! (Then she kind of panicked when she realized she didn't know how to get down, but once her sisters got her to calm down that was a problem easily solved.)

At the end of the week the girls had a renewed interest in learning to ride their bikes. Bug was a little nervous about getting on the bike again, but informed me that even though she was scared, she knew she could do it, so she would keep going. For some unfathomable reason, Monkey was absolutely terrified once she actually put her bum in the bike seat. I made her do one turn, then let her put her bike aside while I helped Bug again. Monkey insisted she was never going to ride her bike--she didn't even like riding bikes, she claimed! So, she and I had a quiet conversation. We talked about the definition of being brave (doing something good even when you're scared) and perseverance (continuing to practice until you can do something). We discussed that we both knew she had strong muscles and good balance, and I pointed out that the only reason Bug was currently any better was that she'd been practicing and Monkey hadn't. I, however, was totally willing to help her practice and remedy the difference in skill levels. She agreed to try again, and by the end of the week, they could both get themselves started and were even beginning to gain confidence in coasting down a gentle slope and practicing breaking.

Science Topics
In addition to the myriad questions I answer throughout a typical day, a recurring topic this week was gender differences in anatomy. It started as answering questions and confirming their knowledge about human anatomy and became generalized to animals as they observed the many dogs who out for walks around town. Of course, once they checked out our own cat, we had to have a discussion about spaying/neutering and why one might do that and whether or not the pets care. We also discussed that for some animals gender is awfully difficult to tell at first glance--birds for example--except for the species in which males and females are different colors--like mallard ducks.

This week Daddy also rediscovered our Snap Circuits Jr. set, and did a couple sessions with the girls about electricity. They can now talk about things like open and closed circuits, how a switch works, and the fact that we can turn electricity into heat, light, or motion. They're looking forward to pulling it out again and helping Daddy build more complex projects.