It's the classic children's museum
big chair photo!

Back to the Routine

Well, not quite. The routine is sometimes interrupted by awesome things like visiting the local children's museum with "long-lost" friends we followed her from the west coast. The girls had a blast exploring the museum that included things like a bubble zone with people-sized bubbles, theater with a light & sound board they could control, a physics-based circus where they could lift an elephant using a lever among other cool activities, a town with a bank, library, store, fire station, etc., etc., etc.

When we are attempting to establish the routine, we've been slowly easing ourselves into it. The girls have been learning tons of practical housekeeping things  as we've been settling in, and of course we had a "science intensive" with Grandma's gardening visit, but here's what we're up to in some other topics:

Reading: At the girls request, this was the first subject to be added back into the routine. Lion continues to insist on primarily sight reading and has been avidly reading our anthology of Dick & Jane stories. She's also picked up a few easy readers (like Bears on Wheels) that we found at the local library. Monkey is still not a completely confident reader, but we've changed tactics and so far have met enthusiastic success. Rather than looking for something mildly interesting among   easy readers, we checked out a book I knew she'd love--the first book of the Spiderwick Chronicles. It's certainly beyond her ability to read on her own, but with assistance on tough words and my reading every other page outright, she's cheerfully struggling through and her reading skills are definitely improving! In fact, her reading lesson is usually the first thing she wants to do! Bug doesn't actually have reading lessons per se. We just have an understanding that she should spend some time reading every day. That's never a problem: she blitzed through all five Spiderwick books in a matter of days, read an anthology of Aesop's fables, several stories out of a book of Norse mythology, a Kate DiCamillo book, most of my complete collection of Beatrix Potter stories, etc. etc.

our happy little drummer!

Writing: We've been working on composition lately, though we haven't been doing much actual writing on paper. We've done lots of rounds with Story Cubes  (roll picture dice and tell a story based on what lands).  Monkey and Lion enthusiastically weave elaborate fairy tales; Bug groans when I pull them out, but she can usually come up with at least a few sentences. I also recently pulled out the story cards, and taught the girls about the 5 Ws. This exercise seemed particularly helpful to Bug, who often struggles to even get started with story prompts. We did recently pick up a spelling unit at Bug's request (She was writing something on her own and getting frustrated with having to ask me for help spelling things: "Mom, if you teach us spelling again, I'll know more of these words all by myself." Well, ok then.)

Math: Since we don't yet have internet or a functional printer, the big girls haven't been doing their usual combination of Khan Academy and math drills worksheets. However, we've been doing lots of flashcards, and I've been throwing in practical math at every opportunity (for example, at the grocery store the other day, I had the girls pick out four pears and figure out about how much we'd have to pay for them--find the price per pound sign, weigh the pears, then round both numbers to easy-to-work-with numbers and multiply to find the total). Meanwhile, Lion and I worked our way through a kindergarten math assessment (I was reading through a list of published standards, and would occasionally call her over, "Hey, Lion, can you . . . ?" She would prove she could do it or admit ignorance and move on.) As expected, she's all but done with kindergarten math, and I now have a short list of topics we ought to focus on.

(Because a frame on my desk needs
a new photo and it's too cute not
to share!)

History: For history/civics we're continuing our study of the U.S. Presidents by making our way through a workbook and getting some additional sources from the library.

Bible & Religion: Now that we're no longer travelling and keeping crazy schedules, we've been much more consistent with our morning Bible readings. We're now in the book of Acts in their story Bible. Our church here doesn't have a program for kids' to memorize Bible verses, so we're on own again. Now that we're in a liturgical church, the first thing I had us work on was the Lord's Prayer. We talked through the meaning of every phrase as well as why we say it together in church every Sunday. It took a couple of weeks, and now the girls can proudly participate in another part of the service! Speaking of which, the girls and I also took a little time one morning to go through an order of worship, so I could explain each aspect of the worship service and why we do it. I also made the big girls ribbon bookmarks to bring to church with us: they spend the prelude and welcome/announcements time looking up the hymns we'll be singing that morning. Lion loves hymnals! During the service she follows along with me and does her best to sing along, then frequently spends part of the sermon leafing through a hymnal. In fact, since our church is getting new ones, Pastor R even let Lion bring one of the old ones home to be her very own!

Personal Projects: Of course, the girls always have their own things they're doing. The three of them together have been regularly organizing restaurants in the playroom, coming up with elaborate story lines involving ALL of their stuffed animals, and performing readers theater versions of Elephant & Piggie books (hilarious). Monkey has spent lots of time drawing and practicing her new drum (she is so excited about having her very own real snare drum). She and Bug even collaborated on a duet with one of Bug's songs from her piano lessons. Bug has lots of interests: she's still practicing typing, she's watched several silent films, she had me teach her a basic crochet stitch and made a cape for one of her dolls, she and I are both learning how to use the sewing machine, she reassembled her balsa wood house and finished decorating it (she even designed and built a poolside pergola out of clothes pins and Popsicle sticks).