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.

Ancient Egypt
We finished the biography of Hatshepsut this week. We also read through several pages in the Spectacular Cross-section book and got to explore in detail the layout and contents of a temple compound, a pharoah's tomb, and a worker's house. This week we also decided to get our mummified apple going. The girls are pretty excited to see how he turns out!

Right: Our un-mummified apple face and all the necessary equipment
Left: The girls insisted we put up a note, so no one would accidentally eat him.

The Three Rs
First sessions with Goose continue to pay off! This week she and I did some simple math with Legos (patterns, counting, adding, comparisons), read a bunch of pre-reading skills and alphabet Bob books, and she started working on a dry-erasable workbook about writing. She was particularly proud of her work in it, and I was pretty impressed too!

Monkey and Bug are reading their way through the Little Bear stories we have. Monkey finished A Kiss for Little Bear and started "Little Bear's Friend." Bug finished "Little Bear's Friend" and "Duck, Babysitter" and started "Owl's Party."  In watching Monkey read this week, I realized that one of major reasons she's reading so slowly is not actually her reading skills--it's because she's studying the illustrations instead of the words! These books have lovely pictures and I want to encourage her to enjoy them; however, it's counterproductive for her to get so caught up in them halfway through a sentence that she forgets what it's about. So, this week, she and I started beginning her reading lesson by flipping slowly through the pages she's going to read and closely examining the pictures, talking about them, and conjecturing what might be happening. Then we tackle the words--much more focused!

Both big girls finished their first math workfolders this week! This accomplishment comes with no other reward than getting the folder refilled, but they were both excited to hand over a stack of completed sheets and get a fresh stack in return (Actually Bug got a whole new folder itself, since hers got covered in sticky jelly spots somewhere along the way. Oh well, hazards of homeschooling!)  Bug finished up with multiplication, counting money, and subtraction. Monkey worked on counting by 5s, addition, subtraction, and fractions. Outside of the worksheets we spent several additional sessions tackling the concept of telling time. For some reason this has been really challenging for them! One of the activities that seemed to help them grasp the concept was drawing a timeline of a day on the board, so they could place daily events with hours of the day and sort out that the hours repeat and clocks are always moving--they don't just jump from one hour or quarter hour to the next.

Writing this week involved more creative writing since both big girls chose to do writing prompt activities, and I had them do journal entries (I'm still having them dictate the journal entries to give them practice composing something longer than they're willing to hand write themselves at this point). Monkey also did a worksheet about verbs, and Bug did one about nouns. Of course, we completed another unit of spelling, and adding this subject is definitely paying off! Both girls have noted with excitement when they spot their spelling words in their reading lessons and they can just know them as sight words. We've been making a special point of working on writing neatness with Monkey--she's very capable of writing neatly but frequently doesn't take the time.

Bible Quizzing
At home we're studying King David, and we'll be doing that for awhile. Not only does he have a lot of stories, but I found a resource online that matched up stories to Psalms he wrote while the events were happening. The girls and I have been pretty fascinated by the pair ups and matching the events to David's emotions and prayers.

Monkey and Bug memorized Psalm 7:10 for this week. They had all the kids (grades 1-5) in the same class this week, and that got mixed reviews from my two. Monkey enjoyed it: I think the faster pace helped keep her interest, and she had a big kid assigned to her who was really good at helping her spell things and write in a few answers when she had trouble keeping up. Bug--not so much: She was frustrated with not being able to keep up herself and annoyed that her assigned big kid wasn't doing his job (his "just follow what they're doing on the board" instructions were less than helpful for a beginning reader/writer).

Library Day
I think this week may be our record for fastest library trip. We were running late and missed story time, the library was absolutely packed with kids, and Goose was not handling herself well. We grabbed this stack of books and made a hasty exit:
Ladder to the Sky
They Were Strong and Good
So Many Bunnies!
Emergency
Brave Martha and the Dragon
The Apple Doll
Code Blue
Captain Abdul's Little Treasure

Art Class
Everybody trooped into art class with no hesitation this week, and they had a great time. They got to do lots of painting and strung color wheel necklaces. They also got to bring home their artwork from last week's session:

Monkey's art

Goose's art

Bug's art

Swimming Lessons
Bug accomplished a major milestone in swimming this week: she swam the width of the pool with no assistance! Monkey has gotten brave enough to do the dead man's float for a little while--with her whole face underwater (this is a big deal). Goose is having a blast as usual and being completely fearless in jumping in and following all her teacher's instructions.

Jujutsu
I know I haven't mentioned it in a while, but Monkey and Bug are still participating in and enjoying their jujutsu classes once a week. They're getting very good at rolls and are starting to have some actual katas memorized.

Nana Came to Visit!
Nana conquered her fears to fly out to see us, and I had three very excited little girls last weekend! They got in lots of snuggling, book reading, game playing, movie watching, and FaceTiming with other family members. Daddy and I even got a date night! Here's the rundown of the highlight events from our long weekend.

County Fair
The county fair was this past weekend, it's within walking distance of our house, and Friday night was military-families-are-free night! We decided to hit the rides at the kids' carnival first, and Monkey and Bug zeroed in on the climbing wall. They loved it! They got 2 or 3 tries each, and they each reached the top of one of the sides. Poor Monkey though! She was strong enough to climb up, but not heavy enough to trigger the automatic belay line to let her down! Fortunately, she loves repelling, so she just swung around for a while until the worker had a chance to gear up and climb up there to rescue her. They got to enjoy a few more rides before we ran out of tickets and went to peruse the
arts and crafts show--particularly fun since some of our homeschool friends had entries. Then we grabbed some dinner (fried alligator bites and funnel cakes, yum!) and headed to the rodeo! Nana did a little bargaining and got us inexpensive box seats, so we had a great view of the events, and got a little frighteningly up close and personal with one of the bulls who wasn't interested in returning to his stall! The rodeo was a first-time experience for the girls and they had a blast. They got to see bronco- and bull-riding, rope tricks, trained horses doing tricks, a barrel racer vs. a motocross racer (the cowgirl won), and freestyle motocross on a couple of huge ramps (yeah, we're not sure how that fits into the rodeo either, but those guys pulled some very impressive stunts!). Daddy even caught one of the free t-shirts they threw into the crowd.

Shopping!
OK, Nana's love language is gifts, so a shopping trip is inevitable, but this time we had a mission! We recently found out Daddy was selected for a temporary duty assignment on the East coast, so we'll be going along and spending the winter months in New England--a climate for which the girls wardrobes are utterly unprepared. We spent most of Saturday shopping, but since our current location doesn't really experience winter, we completely failed to find things like coats, hats, and cozy tights, but they do now have sufficient long-sleeve shirts, pants, and maxi skirts. Thank you, Nana!

Beach Day
Everybody loves a day at the beach! The water was cold as usual, but it was at least warm enough to don swimsuits and get in up to our knees (or chest in Goose's case). Goose happily made sand angels, Monkey frolicked in the waves with complete abandon, and Bug enlisted all of us to help build her first full-scale sand casstle--five towers connected by walls, surrounded by a village of huts (added after the photo below was taken), a moat, and a wall.

The past two weeks were happily split by a visit from Nana! So, I'm going to write about our regular weeks events in this post, then post again later about the long weekend we spent with Nana. We've been busy!

Library Days
Last week we managed to squeeze in a quick trip to the library before driving to the airport to pick up Nana. We didn't have storytime, but we checked out these books:
Babies on the Go
Geraldine, the Music Mouse
Bedhead
The Ugly Duckling
A Snowy Day in Bugland
The Princess and the Pizza
The End
The Pigeon Needs a Bath
Someplace Else
Rhinos who Play Baseball

I also scoured the shelves with our study of Ancient Egypt in mind and found these great books, which we'll keep for several weeks at least:
Egypt in Spectacular Cross-section
Voices of Ancient Egypt
The Crafts and Culture of the Ancient Egyptians
Hatshepsut, His Majesty, Herself

Storytime is back this week! There's a new children's librarian doing storytime, and she is a fantastic storyteller, who obviously loves what she's doing. This week's theme was colors, and she had some great favorites to share--Pete the Cat and His New Shoes, Mouse Paint, etc. The girls were even willing to participate in a color hokey pokey that involved putting paper shapes of specific colors in and out instead of body parts. We came home with these books:
Hattie Hippo
Alphabatics
When Papa Snores
The Night of the Goat Children
Fenwick's Suit
Lola Reads to Leo
The Rubber-legged Ducky
Rhinos who Rescue
Boy, Bird, and Dog
Edward in the Jungle
A Flea Story
First Flight

Art Class!
Earlier this summer I was thrilled to discover that the little rec center near our house offers inexpensive classes for little ones! I signed all three girls up for a once a week art class (3-6 year olds--perfect!) this month. They were really excited to get started! Then for some unfathomable reason Goose became very anxious the minute we walked through the door. I tried to reassure her, but Bug was more effective: She pulled Goose aside and explained how she was usually scared about a new class and a new teacher too, but if she was brave and participated she always had lots of fun and made new friends. And besides, she and Monkey would be right there with her the whole time! Goose tried to cling to me when I led her into the classroom, but Monkey and Bug each grabbed one of her hands and steered into a spot on the carpet between them. I love seeing these sisters stick together and help each other out!

They did indeed have a great time, and Goose told me afterward that she calmed down shortly after I left and had lots of fun. This week they talked about and read a story about primary colors and how they make all the other colors, then they got to experiment with actual paints and methods of applying and mixing them--finger paints, sponges, brushes, etc. The actual paintings were left at the center to dry until next week, but they had the kids draw with primary colors using crayons, so they would have something to bring home this week too. Of course, we couldn't leave the rec center without playing on the playground for awhile!

Back to Swimming Lessons
The girls are now signed up for swimming lessons two afternoons a week, and they had their first session on Wednesday. They are actually in three different levels at two different (back-to-back) times. This is the first time Bug and Monkey have been officially separated for anything, and I was so proud of them! They went their separate ways with no hesitation! We'd been talking about it a lot to prepare them, and they all seem to have great teachers again.

Goose is an Angelfish (the second level in the 3-5 age group), and she handled her first day beautifully. In addition to the usual blowing bubbles, starfish floats, and practice paddling, she even followed her teacher's instruction and took a flying leap from the side of the pool into the "deep" end (4 ft). She came up grinning when her teacher plucked her out of the water and helped her paddle back to the wall!

Monkey is a Goldfish (the first level in the 6-9 age group). She's much more fearful of the water than her sisters, but she only freaked out once--her teacher let go when she was practicing a back float, and she dunked under water for a split second. Fortunately, she calmed down without my intervention and finished out the class. We had a serious discussion about how the very purpose of swimming lessons is to teach her how to go underwater and handle herself safely.

Bug is a Penguin (the second level in the 6-9 age group), and she was very brave! She's in the "deep" end for the first time, and at first she was the smallest and least skilled in her group by a long shot. Fortunately, another young 6-year-old joined a few minutes late, and she proved to be at the same skill level as Bug, so she has a buddy after all. They spent most of their time practicing their freestyle stroke back and forth across the width of the pool with their teacher supporting them. Bug admitted afterward that at one point she teared up a little because she couldn't swim nearly as well as the big kids, but she said she calmed herself down and kept going.

Entering Ancient Egypt!
We began our unit on Ancient Egypt last week. We got a good introductory overview of the era between reading the new DK poster and watching a video from the library. They touched on all kinds of topics: mummies, architecture, agriculture, religion, clothing, food, etc. We also started reading a picture book biography of Hatshepsut (the girls are intrigued by the girl pharaoh with the fake beard). And of course, we did our usual kick-off activity: an Egyptian feast! Tasty and popular as usual!

Our Egyptian feast: flat bread, lentils, dates, figs, raisins, grapes, melon,
cucumber, lettuce, and boiled fish with onions and lemons

Bible Studies
At home we read the book of Ruth and started reading about Samuel. Monkey and Bug memorized their first verse for Bible quizzing: Exodus 3:7. They'll memorize one verse every week, for a total of 20 verses this school year.

The Three Rs
Goose had been insistently interrupting her sisters' lessons lately, and I'd been trying to appease her by squeezing in activities and worksheets with her between working with the big girls. It was no fun for anybody and turned my interactions with Goose into a distraction and an afterthought, rather than an actual focus. Then I remembered some brilliant advice I'd read on countless blogs about homeschooling with preschoolers: Spend some one-on-one time with the preschooler first! I was amazed at how instantly this solution worked. Now our morning routine is that everybody eats breakfast, everybody listens to our daily Bible readings, everybody gets dressed, and then Goose gets 15 minutes of my undivided attention for her choice of activities. Of course, she still needs my assistance occasionally, but she's much more polite and patient with her requests since our day starts off with everyone respecting her time with Mommy. We spent a couple of days building block or Wedgit towers (with my throwing in some counting and patterns practice), but mostly she's wanted me to read stacks of Bob books from the alphabet and pre-reading skills sets. So, she's been working on letter recognition and letter sounds, patterns, sequencing, and shapes. She spends most of her time while her sisters are working either playing with the sister who isn't doing a lesson, coloring her own projects while they work, or playing in her own little world of pretend with figures and stuffed animals.

The big girls have been very busy too! For reading Monkey chose Hop on Pop and You are My Sunshine. Bug also read You are My Sunshine and some of 1 Fish 2 Fish. After that I decided I needed to give them fewer options with books that would give them practice with more commonly used words and full sentences rather than the pared down picture books they've been sticking with (they're wonderful books, but they weren't providing the repetition of frequently-used words or the challenge necessary for the girls to actually improve their skills). So, now Bug making her way through Little Bear's Friend and Monkey is reading A Kiss for Little Bear. Poor Bug was really struggling with performance anxiety related to reading lessons, but Daddy came up with a solution that worked beautifully at the end of this week: she pre-reads her lesson silently to herself before sitting down with me. Now she can approach our time together knowing that she can read most of the words and can pinpoint the words that she's struggling with ahead of time. Monkey's doing great--a confident, if still (age-appropriately) slow, reader.

Since we had two half weeks with an exciting interlude in the middle, I opted to do a larger review spelling list instead of attempting to conquer two or even one new list of words. This weeks' spelling test involved 12 words and each girl only missed one. At this stage, these spelling tests aren't just about the spelling words themselves, but the whole concept of a test--being handed a numbered page and asked to prove their knowledge without me helping them or checking each word as they complete it. They also continued doing grammar worksheets about nouns and verbs. At this point they both have trouble remembering those actual terms, but they both fully get the concept of categorizing words into person/place/thing or doing/being. Monkey didn't do anything resembling creative writing this week, but Bug wrote a story a few sentences long and only had to ask me to spell two words for her! She was incredibly proud of herself.

Both girls are still steadily working through their math workfolders. Bug worked on addition, counting money, fractions, and reading graphs. Monkey worked on addition, word problems, counting by 5s, and fractions. We spent a little time with their addition flashcards too.