Quite Time
This photo is what my idea of a perfect autumn afternoon looks like: three happy girls with cozy blankets, hot tea, and good books gathered around the fireplace. My own tea and Bible study books are waiting for me! I've successfully instituted an after lunch quiet time that involves everyone picking out a book to read on their own. We've tried this before, but this is the first time I've actually had all three able to read independently. (The fact that Monkey in particular is cheerfully reading to herself for 30 or 45 minutes a day is an amazing milestone!)

The Election and Geography
We officially wrapped up our government study on November 9th when I read out the election results, and the girls colored in a map and added up electoral votes to figure out who the new president would be.

We're all excited about beginning our world geography studies! We've almost finished a small Maps & Globes workbook that goes over the basics of identifying continents and oceans, identifying cardinal directions, and learning about latitude and longitude. We also examined a number of maps, atlases, online mapping tools, and our globe to notice differences between them. I've been collecting worksheets to go into these topics in greater depth later, and we'll be doing studies about landforms and about individual continents after the holidays.

As a side study we've also been reading Land Ho!, a book about explorers from the Age of Exploration. So far we've learned about Christopher Colombus, John Cabot, Amerigo Vespucci, and Vasco de Balboa (Of course, we also noted that these men didn't really discover the North and South America; there were already people living here. In fact, they weren't even the first Europeans, since the Vikings had crossed into the Western Hemisphere about 500 years earlier.)

Adventures in Eating!
Have I mentioned how thankful I am not to be raising any picky eaters? They've had several opportunities to be adventurous recently: Apparently none of them remember eating acorn squash last fall; they were a bit skeptical at first, but I won them over when they realized the squash had been doused in butter and brown sugar. On their own initiative, they each decided to sample the jalapeno-stuffed olives that were being passed out at the grocery store. They immediately dashed for the store water fountain, but at least they tried them! Much more successfully, we also made smoothies using passion fruit harvested from Grandma's garden. Yum!

Academic Highlights
Monkey and Bug reached a major math milestone this week! They have successfully memorized all the multiplication tables! After the holidays their math focus will shift from primarily math facts to doing more work with math concepts in Khan Academy. Even with my intentionally holding them back in Khan until they had their multiplication tables, they're both almost halfway through third grade. I expect they'll move along through elementary math pretty quickly once I let them move at their own pace.

The highlight of science topics we've recently discussed was conducting a demonstration of a chemical reaction they learned about from a Bill Nye episode about chemicals. They cleaned a handful of pennies using vinegar and salt in a mason jar. Lots of discussion about the elements ensued. They also recently watched a Magic School Bus episode about bones and muscles, and Monkey's been telling her sisters interesting things she's learned from a Magic School Bus chapter book about bones.

In their writing lessons, since I wrote last, we've covered informational writing and poetry. For informational writing, Monkey and Bug each had to choose a topic, find three sources, take notes, write a rough draft, then type up a final paper. They did a great job! In fact, here are their reports read aloud by the authors:

They definitely had more fun with poetry though (who can blame them?!). I found a series of worksheets that uses "Casey at the Bat" as a starting point to discuss rhythm, rhyme, parts of poetry (couplets, stanzas, etc.), then went into different types of unrhymed poetry (haikus, diamante poems, etc.)

Here are a few samples of their poetry:

Sea, Sand, and Sky, a free verse poem by Bug

On Sunday morning
We went to the beach
And waves go rolling by.
We each have a sandwich,
And we stay there till dusk,
And that's the end of the day.

Monkeys, a cinquain poem by Monkey

Monkeys

Tails, hand-like feet

Monkeys love yummy fruit.

They like to climb and swing in trees.

Not apes