Patriot's Day
This was a must-see event for our Revolutionary War studies: a reenactment event commemorating the battles of Lexington and Concord! We visited Minute Man National Park for the day, and spent some time in the Whittemore House first. A couple of female reenactors were on hand to talk about every day life in colonial times, and the rooms were set up with activities about colonial-era food, clothing, and daily activities. The girls even got to dress up!

All the girls tried on clothes, but Bug was the only one willing to model them.
She was particularly excited about digging into the boys clothes and pretending to be Sadie Ludington.
(A 16-year-old girl who borrowed her father's clothes and rode through the night to call the men
to muster at her family's farm.)

Next we headed back to the visitor center to watch a presentation about the events of the battle. It involved "locals" describing what they witnessed leading up to and during the day-long battle, and a large light-up map that helped illustrate who went where when (the various patriot riders calling men to muster and both British and American troop movements). That day they also had another theater running a muppet-like, musical retelling of Paul Revere's ride.

By this time, more reenactors were beginning to gather,

and we got to watch a fife and drum corps concert (tagline: "All the hits of the Revolutionary War!"). Besides just playing music for the fun of it, the drum major explained the usefulness of the instruments in relaying orders to the soldiers. Afterward, Monkey and I approached a drummer, explained that she was just starting to learn the snare drum, and asked about his instrument. He was thrilled to have a newbie to explain things to! He talked all about how his drum worked and how it differed from the modern one she would play.

Finally, the big event itself! A reenactment of the running battle from Concord to Boston. We found a decent spot toward the beginning of the reenactment along the Battle Road Trail and listened to a "colonial citizen" answer questions while we waited for the battle to begin. Once it did, we followed the action down the road, and the girls could watch the battle continue to play out by taking turns riding on Daddy's shoulders. (Moment of hilarity: apparently one of the "colonial wives" watching the battle was in reality married to one of the "British officers." He stopped by for a quick kiss just before the battle began.)

Anybody seen this meme floating around the Internet? That's pretty much what my life feels like right now, and I'm terribly behind in blogging about it all. Over the next couple of days I hope to get this blog a bit more up to date!

To make that job a little easier I'm going to skip the boring details. You're just going to have to trust that we are indeed still covering the three Rs, along with history, Bible, science, and--by enthusiastic request--art appreciation. The girls are still involved in the church children's choir and all three continue their instrument lessons. We continue to go swimming at the Y once a week, although the girls' gymnastics class just finished up (that would feel more like a break in the schedule except now I need to find a different time to go running). Not to mention the major project the girls took on in creating an entire city of fairy paper dolls (finding images online, printing, coloring, gluing to construction paper, and cutting out). Seriously: sometimes I walk into the living room and find perhaps 50 fairies have taken over all the furniture. So much fun!

Here's the first post on the big events we've experienced in the past few weeks!

Battleship Cove

We got to tour all those ships in the background!

A few weeks ago we took a detour in our historical studies and did a quick pass of World War II (bad guys were taking over Europe; almost all the countries in the World picked sides; our side won, but lots of people died). The occasion--a visit to Battleship Cove: The World's Largest Naval Ship Exhibit. The Cove includes a PT boat exhibit, a landing craft, a battleship, a submarine, a destroyer, and a missile corvette, as well as a variety of other more modern aircraft.




It didn't have the polished audio tours that some of the other sites we've visited have had, but except for making it all non-operation very little had been modified to accommodate tourists, and we really had the run of the place. We got to clamber into gun turrets, wind our way through engine rooms, and stretch out in the racks. I'm pretty sure the girls thought this place was about the most amazing playground they'd ever seen!

Library Lizards!

Everybody wants to pet the baby alligator!

That's right--reptiles in the library. One week recently, storytime was replaced with a fantastic reptile show. As usual the crowd was pretty light, which made for a much more involved experience for the girls. The Reptile Guy brought in several big rubbermaid containers full of a large skink, a baby alligator, a tortoise, several smallish snakes, a special needs snapping turtle (he was born with a concave shell and doesn't snap), and an albino Burmese python.

All the animals were born in captivity and quite used to being handled. The Reptile Guy taught the kids about each animal (name, place of origin, food, etc.) as he brought it out, and every child got to touch them before he put them back in their pillowcases and boxes.

Bug was even brave enough to volunteer to learn how to catch a snake with a snake hook! She introduced herself to the crowd, stood by while the Reptile Guy talked about this particular snake and demonstrated proper catching technique, then he had Bug put the snake away for him. She was so excited!

Goose had her own excitement when she took a turn being draped in the albino python after the show. The Reptile Guy took most of the weight of the snake, but she thought it was pretty cool!

Aunt E Is Here!
This is a particularly exciting visit because Aunt E doesn't actually live in the States anymore, but she's in the country on an extended visiting, traveling around and seeing everybody! The first highlight event of her visit was tea (for the grownups) and Legos (for the kids) with some mutual friends through her church overseas. It's a crazy small world!

We spent that afternoon at the local art museum.
Not only were there several great exhibits inside a really neat building (turn of the century mansion), but this museum has artist bags for kids! Each girl got to borrow a small tote filled with a dozen colored pencils, a sharpener, a clipboard, a stack of sketch paper, and a map of the museum.

Another day we took Aunt E with us to the Cliff Walk. The tide was in this time, so most of the beaches and tidal pools we'd explored last time were underwater. We still had a blast though! It was warmer this time around, and the girls just let their imaginations run wild! Aunt E and I were entertained by the two pirates and one "wild princess" who accompanied us on our walk--complete with imaginary bad guys being fought off with stick swords.

He Is Risen!
Aunt E was here for all the Easter celebrations as well!
We bought fresh flowers to decorate the house. We dyed Easter eggs and shaped bread for Easter breakfast. The shapes (bunnies, crosses, braids, wreaths) were mostly unrecognizable after they cooked, but we had a great time, and they were tasty! (recipe: Pillsbury Italian bread dough, cut into sections and shaped + brushed with egg + sprinkled with cinnamon sugar + baked for 10 minutes = yummy!). The girls received their traditional chocolate bunnies Easter morning and got to dress up in their new dresses for church.

Library Day
We had storytime this week! Miss C presented a great collection of picture books as usual and a few preschool games/activities, and all three girls participated. We came home with these books:

The Firebird
If You Give a Pig a Party
Bear Feels Sick
Miss Lina's Ballerinas and the Prince
A Birthday for Cow!*
The House at the End of Ladybug Lane
The Best Pet of All
Slugs in Love
The Jellybeans and the Big Book Bonanza
A Fabulous Fair Alphabet (letter recognition for Goose)
Custard and Company (poetry)
Sybil's Night Ride (history)
The Seven Seas: Exploring the World Ocean (science/geography)

All three girls still have books to read solo, so none of them checked out their own this week.

Eat Your Frogs!
The girls had fun this week with an e-book on Starfall about idioms. The conversations that followed (what if it really did rain cats and dogs?), served as an excellent segue the girls to the concept of "eating your frogs first"--doing the hardest thing on your to-do list first thing in the morning. Lately, both big girls have had particular lessons that they just dread, so they put it off and put off and don't end up doing it until last when they're tired. It just makes the actual lesson worse. This week I informed them that they would have to eat their frogs! Imagining their tasks as frogs to be eaten changed otherwise stressful encounters into fits of giggles, and the hard things got done. They were still difficult, but discussing the concept with the Mark Twain idiom made them much more fun. I also took the time one-on-one to explain why I make them do these hard things and brainstorm ways to make them easier.

Everybody Loves Diggers!
We came home from running errands one day to discover a dump truck and backhoe had set to work right in front of our house! The girls never did figure out why exactly they were doing this, but the girls were fascinated to watch the workers tear up and repave a small section of our street.

Three Rs
The big girls continue formal lessons as usual, and everyone's making good progress. Since their lessons are amply recorded elsewhere, I won't discuss them much here. (I know the family members who peek at this blog regularly probably doesn't care as much about the nuts and bolts of home schooling anyway.)

Goose's lessons are considerably less formal and barely recorded outside of this blog. So, here's her update: I've basically given up on the Teach Your Child to Read textbook. If she wants to try to swallow the alphabet whole, I'll see what I can do to help! This week I dug up a pre-K workbook that goes through every letter in the alphabet with tracing letters and pictures of objects to color for each letter sound. She did half a dozen or so pages this week. She also practices copying words along with her sisters during their spelling lessons, and they've been good about finding Starfall games/videos she would like. Some review letter sounds, and some read books, highlighting each word as it reads. She's soaking it all up!

Goose counting out loud is pretty much a constant, and she's gotten good at basic addition. On the day we took Aunt E back to the airport, I had the big girls accomplish part of their math lesson by doing flashcards in the back seat, and Goose joined in. They found relatively easy ones to make up her stack.

[Terribly late posting, but this is from last week.]

Library Day
No story time again this week, but the girls enjoyed their library time as usual. They picked out a ton of books this week, played math and reading games on the computers, did a few coloring sheets, and Goose made a new friend at the toy table. Here's the stack of books we came home with:
Old Bear and His Cub
Rocky the Cat Who Barks
The Rainbabies
All for One
The Guest
Two for Stew
The Rumor
Fancy Nancy: Bonjour Butterfly
If It's Snowy and You Know It
A Penguin Story
Wemberly Worried
Yoo-Hoo, Ladybug!
Francis Woke up Early
The Mightiest Heart
Ant and Grasshopper
Hop on Pop

Bug's additional book:
Fox on Stage*
(She also kept the Fox and Fancy Nancy books from last week)

Monkey's books:
Just Behave, Pablo Picasso!
Biscuit*
I'm a Frog!*

History
For our history studies this week, we read about Molly Pitcher, Betsy Ross, and Penelope Barker. We also watched a couple more episodes of Liberty's Kids and learned about the Declaration of Independence and the first 4th of July, as well as the early loss of New York City to the British. The episode about the Declaration was supplemented by studying one of those aged copies of the Declaration written in script with all the signatures at the bottom.

Choir
The girls sang in church this past Sunday! (Well, two of them did--Monkey rehearsed beautifully, but panicked at the last minute when she couldn't see me. We're coming up with a game plan to deal with a pattern of performance anxiety.) The choir quoted Psalm 100, then sang two songs. At choir practice, they learned about their next scripture passage, Psalm 23, and were introduced to the song they'll be singing in church in about a month.

The Three Rs
So our usual "lesson days" when we spend the morning focusing on the three Rs got mostly hijacked this week, but those days certainly weren't wasted! One was a sick day--we watched Liberty's Kids, Epic (along with the mini documentaries in the extras that taught the girls about the plants, animals, and natural processes that inspired the film), read most of the library books, finished reading a graphic novel, The Mouse Guard, that we'd been reading at bedtimes, and by late afternoon people were feeling up for playing computer games that involved both math and reading skills along with some troubleshooting computer skills. If you can ignore the vomit I had to clean up, it was actually a lovely day and the girls learned a ton! Another lesson day was replaced by a visit from Aunt E! More on our time with her later.

Goose is still very actively teaching herself to write. In fact, she spent several nap times copying her sisters' spelling lists, and her hard work is clearly paying off as her letters continue to get more legible. She can't always tell me what the letters are, but we're working on that.

Speaking of Goose and her letters, she's still determined to learn how to read by sight reading, but at least this week she proved she could transfer her knowledge of a particular word from one book to another. She asked for an additional reading book from the library, and we found Hop on Pop (lots of good rhyming words and sight words). She's still reading the Bob books and the Dick and Jane collection. The big girls are also mostly reading through the books they checked out from the library.

I don't think I actually did any formal math with Goose this week, but she's always counting things, noticing shapes, and looking over her sisters' shoulder while they play games or work on Khan Academy. She's clearly soaking it all up. Most of the big girls math practice this week involved playing games on Starfall that included some of the skills they've been working on in Khan Academy. In KA itself, Bug is up to 47%, and Monkey to 53%.

Outside Classes
Oh, and everyone is still taking gymnastics classes, their separate music lessons, and joining me in the pool for a weekly swim session. They're all continuing to build skills and confidence, but no major milestones to report this week.