Library Day
This week's storytime had a birthday theme complete with real cupcakes to snack on at the end. We listened to several fun birthday stories, then made cards decorated with cupcakes out of tissue paper. Several of our favorite friends were there this week, so we hung out for a long time afterward, and came home with tons of books:
The Yo-yo Man
The Happy Hedgehog
Now and Ben (a neat picture book about how Ben Franklin's inventions effect our lives today)
Alphabet under Construction
An Invitation to the Butterfly Ball
Waking Dragons
Buzz!
The Island of the Skog
Prehistoric Pinkerton
The First Strawberries
Chief Crazy Horse
Black Elk
The Talking Leaves: The Story of Sequoyah
The Mystic Horse

Yellow Belts!
Monkey and Bug passed their third strike test on Thursday, and on Saturday we attended a graduation ceremony where they received their yellow belts! The graduation is a really big deal: it involved their being willing to be up on stage in front of an audience of a couple hundred people and join their classmates in showing off some of their skills before being given their belts. Their class demonstrated a strike drill (jab, cross, uppercut, hook punch), kick walking across the stage, and swinging their nunchucks while walking across the stage (that's hard enough to do while stationary!). Like the rest of their class, Monkey demonstrated a very nice figure eight with her nunchucks. Bug, however, has been struggling with figure eights and decided she would do something she knew she was good at instead. At the last minute backstage and without any adult involvement as far as I know, she decided to do her own thing (propeller spin, over the shoulder, around the back, repeat). I just really impressed that didn't freak out when asked to do something she wasn't confident with!

Monkey and Bug (far left) participating in a school tradition
of kneeling to wipe some sweat on their brand new belts.

 

Bug is SO proud of her new belt!

Lessons (Plus One)
Lessons continue. Monkey and Bug are both making progress with their reading. Monkey can now figure out most words with only one slow sounding out. Bug made a major breakthrough this week: she realized she could sound out words in her head and read everything the fast way out loud! They really finished the math concepts workbooks this week, and Monkey started on her addition book in earnest. I made a stack of flash cards this week for addition problems using all the single digit combinations. Bug's been working her way through that stack. We sorted out which ones she just knows, and she used Cheerios for counters one day to figure out some of the others. She continues working out multiplication spontaneously on her own by asking questions.

Thursday's lessons were made more exciting with an additional member of the entourage: the girls' best friend LA (a homeschooling 3-year-old who lives next door) spent most of the day with us, so her mom could get some serious work done for her at-home business. The girls had a blast. I did regular individual lessons for the big girls first while Goose and LA played. Then we dug up the sidewalk chalk and all went outside for a handwriting lesson for everybody (well, Goose just scribbled). LA's letter of the week was E, so they all focused on that and helped LA come up with a long list words that start with the letter E. Of course, that evolved into just playing outside and my girls helped LA conquer the climbing dome! Then everybody listened in on Goose's lessons: an alphabet book and a fairy-themed counting book, An Invitation to the Butterfly Ball. The latter inspired them to create their own version of the butterfly ball complete with costumes, dancing, and a plastic food banquet.

Happy little homeschoolers!

The beginning of the alphabet Bug was working on outside

Stories of the Plains
We read more picture book biographies and folktales this week, most of which involved the plains tribes: Black Elk, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Sequoyah for the biographies and The Mystic Horse and The First Strawberries for the folktales. For some of these readings we decided to pretend to be Native Americans and sit in our "teepee" (beach tent) in the backyard to hear the stories. The girls are fascinated by teepees because of the decorations and their mobility, so on Friday we decided to make miniature ones the right size for their Playmobil figures. We gathered sticks from the woods near our house, and the girls colored pictures on "buffalo skins" (cutouts from paper bags). Bug got frustrated with the instability of the teepees and decided to move her Playmobil to "pueblos" (the Playmobil police station). Monkey however had quite the camp set up.

The very latest in household fashion: paper bag hats!

Lessons

Formal lessons continue as usual! I don't have any big news to share, but here's what those actually look like just in case you were wondering: Lessons time is about an hour and half to two hours right after the girls eat breakfast and get ready for the day. I snuggle up with each girl individually for reading lessons while the other two play (Monkey and Bug work through their assignment for the day from our textbook, and Goose and I have been reading ABC books). This is the most challenging lesson of the day for Monkey and Bug, so we take a "brain break" before jumping into math--I set a timer and we dance to music, take a walk, or they just have a few minutes to play and relax.

Next Monkey and Bug usually do math simultaneously, though they rarely work on the same thing; I sit between them at our table in the study and help when necessary to read directions or point out what needs to be corrected. They've both almost finished their workbooks for numbers and math concepts, and they've both done pages from their addition book (the concepts books also involves addition). Bug has worked on subtraction, but Monkey decided she wasn't quite ready to go there yet. Goose will either color (sometimes they're even number coloring sheets) or listen to me or her sisters read a counting book. (Unrelated to lessons, Bug continues excitedly discovering multiplication. This morning she was sorting out the "times 10s" and "times 2s" and was explaining to me that "two 10s is 20, three 10s is 30, four 10s is . . . " and on up to 100, while "three 2s is 6, four 2s is 8, and five 2s is 10. [long pause] How many 2s would I need to make 100?")

Finally, the girls work on handwriting--once again simultaneously but not usually the same thing. At this point I let them pick their own letters to work on and medium in which to do it (workbook, dry erase book, coloring sheet, markers, crayons, paints, etc.).

After that we jump into our less formal lessons (history, science) or chores if it's a stay-at-home day or head off on our outing for the day (library, Y, shopping, homeschool group, etc.). At the moment my goal is to do formal lessons four days a week: Saturday is Daddy's stay-at-home day, Sunday is for church and resting, and we usually have one day during the week that just gets shot for whatever reason (appointments, field trip, etc.).

History
We're still having lots of fun with everybody's favorite subject. The girls recently saw a preview for Disney's Brother Bear, recognized that it was about Native Americans and decided we should watch that for one of our history lessons. I agreed, so we checked it out from the library and ordered pizza. There were some scary moments, but they loved it, and they were definitely paying attention to details like the kind of clothes they wore, weapons they carried, and things like kayaks. We also did our usual separating fact from fiction (for example, people don't really turn into animals--either while living or after death).

We read the true stories of Sitting Bull and Squanto this week, and much of the girls pretend play continues to involve "wearing clothes made out of animal skin," hiking through the country, and paddling boats. We also read the folktales The Legend of the Blue Bonnet and The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush. Fortunately, the big girls at least seem to have developed a very good sense of separating which stories are about real people from a long time ago versus stories written by those people a long time ago. After reading the Indian Paintbrush book, we talked about how most Native Americans didn't have a written language the way we do, so they often painted pictures on animal skins to help them remember stories and history--the way Little Gopher does in the book. Since we didn't have stretched buckskins like his, we made do with big pieces of construction paper instead, and I asked Monkey and Bug to paint about a story, then tell me about it.

Bug's story: He's an Indian warrior going to fight. He's riding a horse,
holding a spear, and the green arrow is showing which way he's going.

Monkey's story: A knight was going home, but a HUGE rainstorm came,
and he got lost. Before the storm, a monster attacked and ate his horse.
That's why he doesn't have one. But the knight found his home anyway,
so it was a happy ending.

Little Scientists
I haven't mentioned doing science lessons before because most of the time we just don't. These girls are insatiably curious, and I've checked off all the kindergarten science standards just by answering the questions they come up with every day (and of course we cover tons of subjects that aren't listed). This week though Monkey and Bug wanted to do some real experimenting since they happened upon a book about bubble experiments at the library. I gathered a bunch of supplies, took us all outside, and facilitated some intentional bubble play time. Then I explained that real scientist always keep a record of what they did and what they learned. I offered to write things down for them, and here's what they said:

• We made triangle, square, and rectangle things to blow bubbles with, but the bubbles all came out circles
• We made bubbles with straws and overflowed the cup.
• Bubbles stick to things that are bubbly. They can stick to water too.
• We made pictures with bubbles.
• We got soap all over our hands, and we could catch bubbles. We could see what a real bib bubble looks like. They had colors, but some just looked clear.

Later in the week, they asked me to help them make paper airplanes. They spent a long time playing/experimenting with those, and came up with these results:

• We can throw it really far.
• To make it flip we hold straight up and throw it that way.
• We threw them backwards, and they flipped that way too.
• We tried to hit things with them.

This week I also introduced them to the Magic School Bus (thank you, Netflix)--very popular! Ms. Frizzle introduced the girls to the Solar System, and of course didn't provide quite enough info for my crew, so we pulled out our book about outer space (thank you, Grandma & Granddad) and read up some more on all the planets. (Did you know Neptune has a pink moon?! The girls--especially Monkey--found this very exciting.)

Playing with Language
Thanks to a scene from Brother Bear (in which a kid bear tries to get a young adult bear to call him by name), we talked about syllables and practiced clapping out the syllables in our own names and other words.

Monkey and Bug have also discovered suffixes. They've gotten to be good enough readers that more of their lessons include words with -s, -ed, and -ing endings, and they recognize those as separate from the base words. This has resulted in their experimenting with other suffixes in everyday conversation with new words like these being added to their vocabulary:

• office: verb, any action taken by an officer; e.g., "What are you officing now?" (Monkey annoyed after being repeatedly "pulled over" by Police Officer Bug while driving the china cabinet)
• realizable: adjective, capable of being noticed; e.g., "I was being so quiet I was hardly realizable." (Bug proudly after a particularly quiet car ride)

Library Day
The theme this week was hats, and the girls got to make paper visors for the craft this week. The librarian also pulled out the parachute and a couple of balls this week.
There's a Dragon in the Library
Tap Tap Bang Bang
Truckery Rhymes
A Kiss for Little Bear
I Will Fly!
The Legend of the Blue Bonnet (Native American folktale)
1, 2, Buckle My Shoe
Eat Your Way from A to Z!

One Last Pool Day
The pool closes at the end of this week, so we did one last morning at the pool (it's amazing how quickly they get through lessons with that motivation). It was a bit cool, but we stayed about an hour and had a great time. They practiced jumping in, paddling around with and without noodles, and using their kickboards.

Dentist 
This week's non-lesson weekday was occupied by all three girls going to the dentist. They were awesome! Even Goose let the dental hygienist use the special spinning toothbrush to clean her teeth! Fortunately, our dentist is really good about explaining all her tools and what she's doing, so it proved to be quite the educational experience all on its own. I think we surprised her though when she expected (with three little girls) to see their "sparkly princess teeth" and was greeted with shiny monster grins and roars instead.

We made the unpleasant discovery that it's time to say goodbye to Goose's paci--at least during the day time. It's starting to effect her teeth, and so far Goose has willingly handed it over to be put away when she wakes up; although, we're still dealing with meltdowns a couple of times a day when I won't give it back until bedtime. Fortunately, she's been very motivated by "being a big girl" lately, so we'll make it.

Visiting Uncle K
This past weekend we decided to take the girls on a mini-vacation to visit their great uncle K, and we had a wonderful time. Uncle K lives in a lake house just outside a relatively big city, so we had quite a variety of activities to enjoy.

Into the Wild!
The girls had a blast just exploring Uncle K's yard, which (unlike our typically suburban postage stamp of grass) is all trees, bushes, and rock steps going down a hill to the dock. I know at some point they were actively hunting for spider webs and were really excited when they found a few with visible spiders.

Uncle K has three boats--a canoe, a kayak, and a motorized fishing boat--and the girls all got to take a ride in each of them. Monkey and Bug were particularly excited about the canoe and kayak originally being Native American boats that we've seen in our books. They didn't do any paddling themselves this time, but they've decided they're definitely going to learn how when they get bigger. At some point I went back to the dock to hang out (aah, peace and quiet with a good book), while Goose piled into the kayak with Daddy and the big girls joined Uncle K on the fishing boat for a longer excursion. They even got to explore up a small river that feeds into the lake.

Of course, we did more extensive exploring on land too. Uncle K led us down the road to a trail head in his neighborhood, and we followed the trail to a pile of huge rocks that were perfect for climbing around on. On the way home the girls decided they wanted to lead the hike and took off at a run down the trail. Daddy followed close on the heels of the big girls to make sure they really did follow the trail while Uncle K and I lagged behind to follow Goose's lead. All three girls actually did a very decent job of paying attention and sticking to the the trail. They only needed a couple of course corrections to get back.

Roaring from the top of the big rocks!

Urban Adventures
On Sunday we decided to take the light rail into the city to let the girls get up close and personal with some skyscrapers again. They were really excited about the train! It's the first time they've been on a real train (the kiddie one at the zoo doesn't count--it doesn't even have tracks), and they loved it. Particularly cool moments were the sightings of the first skyscrapers and getting to ride the train through a building!

Very excited about their first train ride!

Once downtown we just did some walking around and went through the book themed park that we discovered last time were in town. We got to explore some new sculptures this time though, since a different set of sprinklers were on.

We happened to be downtown just as an Indian Festival was getting underway. The girls played in a bouncy house for a while, then we did a quick walk through the booths to admire all the beautiful dresses, jewelry and pictures. After that unexpected adventure we actually got to go in one of the skyscrapers. Most of the building was closed to the public, of course, but we got to see a small indoor garden, and we went up to the 8th floor of the parking garage to look out. The parking garage had the added of fun of being extremely good for making echoes. We stopped for lunch at a deli a couple of floors up a different building and found seats by the window--very cool for a trio of little ones excited about big buildings!

We took the train back to Uncle K's, then got in our own car to head home. Not a long visit, but a good one. I doubt he could hear them, but he girls were yelling, "I love you, Uncle K!" as we pulled out of his driveway.

Pool Time
Monday was one of those "this is why I love homeschooling" days. By 10 a.m. the girls had finished all their formal lessons, so we headed out for a two-hour health & safety and PE class, i.e., we went to the neighborhood pool, which we had all to ourselves. This process involved answering questions about why we wear sunscreen and how swimming is a form of exercise, reviewing pool safety rules, and of course working on actual swimming skills. All three girls can paddle around the pool independently with floaty noodles tied around their waists. Monkey and Bug both practiced doing star fish floats (Bug has gotten really good at this), and Bug also tried actually dog paddling without the noodle on for a long time. Goose also worked on getting in and out of the pool by herself. Their favorite game during this pool visit was to throw sponge balls out into the pool to swim out to. I just tried to stay centrally located in case anyone needed assistance.

Library Day
Story time is back! The theme for the first fall session was simply books, and the librarian had some fun books about books to share. Then the girls got to make bookmarks that said "I <3 Books" by gluing magazine cutouts to strips of poster board. We got to hangout with some of our usual friends as well as make a new one (a fellow milspouse who's new to the area and her toddler son). As usual we came home with lots of books (including a small collection of picture book biographies for our Native American history unit):
Bye Bye Binky!
Can I Throw Your Ball?
Pamela the Camel
ABC
How Chipmunk Got His Stripes (Native American folktale)
Sacagawea
The Boy Called Slow (biography of Sitting Bull)
Squanto and the Pilgrims

Milestones

Bug's been very into skyscrapers, and she
constructed this huge one out of Legos. She
even thought through building a wider base,
so it would fall over as easily.

The big one this week was Bug's deciding that she is really, really done sucking her thumb. She's been trying very hard, but this week she said she was really having trouble remembering and asked if we could put a bandaid on her thumb to keep her from putting it in her mouth. We've gone through a lot of bandaids, but it's working!

Kind of funny milestone: Goose figured out how to swish and spit, so she's using big kid toothpaste just like her sister's now! It's a little thing, but she was very excited about getting to do something like a big girl.

Goose's other "big girl" thing is that she now gets to go to the preschool Bible study on Wednesday nights. Monkey and Bug are in there too (other church night activities don't start until 1st grade), and Goose was the only kid in the nursery. The nursery worker and preschool teacher talked it over, and we decided to Goose could handle the activities and would probably have a lot more fun with the other kids.

Lessons
We did official lessons (as opposed to the learning they do all the time everywhere) four days this week, which I've decided is going to be my goal.

Goose has decided that, at least at the moment and unlike her sisters, she's not that into coloring sheets (there goes that plan). However, Bug has been absolutely thrilled to read ABC and counting books to Goose, while I work with Monkey. Then whenever Monkey's done, she whisks Goose off into whatever their pretend play of the day is going be, so it all works out anyway.

For reading, Bug is getting to where most of her reading is done "the fast way" without having to sound out every letter, and her stories continue growing in length and shrinking in font size. Monkey continues working on her sounding out skills, but she's getting better everyday (only a few words requiring sounding out half a dozen times before it clicks; she goes through most words just a couple of times). I've also made her lessons a little more enticing by incorporating her word lists into short somewhat nonsensical stories and having her read just the words from the list, while I read the rest. (Interesting learning style difference: Bug loves conquering a list and seeing just how far she can go; Monkey couldn't care less about how many words she read--she needs them to mean something more significant!)

They're still very into the math workbooks, and both girls continue to usually do more than required. This week Monkey did more addition and practicing writing numbers, while Bug did more shapes, measuring, and comparisons. They got their new Puzzle Buzz magazines, so I let them count completing some of those dot-to-dot, mazes, and hidden picture puzzles as their math lessons. Bug has also been discovering multiplication on her own this week. A typical totally-out-of-the-blue interchange goes like this:
     Bug: How many is two 10s?
     Me: Twenty
     Bug: So, that means four 5's is twenty, right?
     Me: Yep

This week I finally remembered to make handwriting part of our usual lessons. Bug is very into it, and has systematically written the entire alphabet (upper and lowercase) a couple of times by going through a dry erase workbook. She also wrote a couple of sentences all by herself (interesting--she had all the write letters in each word, but not always in the right order, i.e., over her drawing of a sheep "Cna ti baa?" = "Can it baa?") Monkey is practicing letters more at random. She has a favorite pen she likes to use, and she practices on blank paper whatever letters catch her fancy, verifying with me that she has them facing the right way. She can write her name all by herself now!

More Native American Adventures
This week we talked a lot about houses and boats. We actually flipped through the DK book looking for all the different kinds of houses they lived in, noting what materials they used and how many people would have lived in each one. The girls were most intrigued by teepees: "When they need to move, they don't need to find a next new house like we do. They just pack up the whole house and move it with them!" They were very excited when we went for a playdate at their friend V's house, and he had a teepee they could play in. They noted with disappointment that it was just made out of cloth though, not animals skins like a real one. The topic of boats came up after reading the story of Sacagawea (which they loved). We talked about different kinds of boats the Native Americans used (canoes, kayaks, and bullboats are the ones that came up), and the girls have spent a long time exploring "new lands" by paddling their "great big canoe" (the couch).

We made mini totem poles this week too. I found some good templates online that the girls used to color faces. We also watched some YouTube videos about how real totem poles are carved. While the girls colored, I discovered NativeRadio.com--a great source of free streaming Native American music. The girls really liked all the drums featured in the songs we heard.

In addition to reading the Sacagawea story, we read several Native American folktales that we happen to own copies of. We didn't get to the other biographies from the library this week, but I'm planning to keep them around for a few weeks anyway for repeated readings.

Business as Usual
While we did our official beginning-of-the-year breakfast several weeks ago, this is the first week that we actually returned to the usual fall routine. Karate is still going, and mid-week church activities and our weekly homeschool group have started back up. We even managed to consistently do our formal lessons first thing every morning!

I've even been a bit more organized for Goose now. I printed up ABC and number coloring sheets for her to work on while her sisters are busy with their work, and I've made a point to do more Goose-specific read-alouds in the morning (the kind of books the big girls had read to them repeatedly when they were 2, but that tend to get passed over now that they're 5). Goose knows the ABC song, so now we're trying to work on more letter recognition, and Bug has been really on top of teaching Goose her numbers (she can count objects accurately up to at least 6).

Goose and Monkey also worked on their names--Monkey in actually writing hers using a worksheet I made that removes one additional letter from her name each line until she's written out the whole thing; Goose colored in/traced her name on an outline version. Bug's real name is actually really short too, so she's mastered it already and she did her own thing while I worked with Monkey.

Monkey and Bug continue their reading lessons. They know all the basic phonetic sounds now, so they're just plugging away at actually sounding out words and picking up on common sight words. In fact, just to satisfy my curiosity I printed up a checklist for each of them with the twenty most common words. Bug knew 17 of them--many of by sight and some by sounding them out. Monkey knew or sounded out 5, but then decided to dig her heels in and refuse to sound out any more (we had a small bug perched nearby issuing less than encouraging comments about ones Monkey had to sound out that she just knew. Serious discussions were had with both of them). I've managed to get Monkey back to reading from the textbook or at least from Bob books (a set of easy readers that correspond pretty nicely to our curriculum), so her lessons will be a little more systematic now.

They were really into math this week! In addition to spontaneously breaking out into sums (confirming aloud at random sums up to 10), they each did at least three pages a day from their math workbooks (they each have ones for numbers, math concepts, addition, and subtraction--at this point I let them choose which they work from). They've both been working a lot on actually writing numerals this week. Monkey also spent time on measuring activities and shapes pages (not just identifying standard shapes, but doing activities like figuring out which shapes were put together to create 3-D shapes, i.e., two circles and a rectangle make a cylinder). Bug chose to spend time working on subtraction problems and counting money.

Finally their favorite subject--history! Our studies of Native Americans continues. We read through the book about Pocahontas several times, and we even managed to find some coloring sheets that were more historically accurate than the plethora of Disney ones out there. The girls were particularly excited about finding one that pictured her as a child and one with a grown-up Pocahontas with John Rolfe and their son Thomas. We spent lots of time perusing the DK book, of course (it's organized by geographic region instead of by topic, which is what the girls would prefer since they tend to ask about subjects not places). This week we looked at different Native American masks--and made our own obviously. Then we studied all the different styles of clothing and the pictures and patterns they decorated them with. For this subject, we went with the classic paper bag vests and construction paper & feather headdresses. For the bases of the headdresses, the girls suggested we use the crowns they made at church earlier in the week. It all worked beautifully! (Unfortunately, the pictures did not turn out--they won't open on my computer. Hopefully, I can get this sorted out for next week's post.)

Library Day
There's no storytime yet (it starts up next week), but these girls were desperate to get more library books since we never made it to the library last week after returning from our trip. I got in touch with a friend and we met up for a playdate at the library Tuesday. The kids had fun playing and looking at books, and Miss M and I got to chitchat. Of course, we came home with lots of books:
Time to Sleep, Sheep the Sheep!
There Is a Bird on My Head!
Leonardo the Terrible Monster
Turk and Runt
The Tiny Tortilla
Night Rabbits
Pocahontas
How Thunder and Lightning Came to Be (a Native American folktale)

Dragon Club Members!
Monkey and Bug were super excited about getting back to their karate classes this week! They were invited  join Dragon Club, an extra 15 minutes of class for a select group of students to learn weapons (nunchucks and bow staff) and "kicks & tricks" (a bit more advanced combinations plus a little gymnastics). They actually picked up on the nunchuck routines faster than we anticipated they would.

Church: Study & Service
All the regular activities have started up again at church. On Wednesday, the girls and I enjoyed a church night supper with a couple of other members, then Monkey and Bug went cheerfully off for the pre-k and kindergarten Bible study (where they studied the story of King David and made those crowns). Poor Goose was the only one in the nursery. There wasn't even a nursery worker at first, but after waiting awhile I dropped her off in the class with her sisters, so I could get to my own class. The nursery worker did eventually appear, but she decided to keep Goose in the pre-k class anyway (curious to see what happens next week).

On Friday I took the entourage to assist a couple of other moms and I with setting up the fellowship hall for a potluck luncheon happening on Sunday. They were thrilled to have a real job to do at church. Bug learned how to properly set a table and took over the task of placing the forks and spoons. Monkey and Goose handled the centerpieces--for a football-themed event this involved setting out megaphones, mini-footballs, and confetti on every table (I was impressed with how little confetti ended up on the floor actually). All three of them helped us set out plates, and we grown ups were impressed how quickly we got the job done!

Lessons? Traveling!
Formal lessons didn't really happen much for the last two weeks. (The big girls practiced a bit of reading and some simple math, and they reviewed shapes and colors with Goose.) Instead we traveled--albeit in different directions. We all drove to Nana and Papa Bear's house first for a day, then Daddy and I left the girls behind and flew to Seattle for a couple of days to visit friends before embarking on a week-long Alaskan cruise (don't worry, family, I'll send out an email with photos about that later). As the pictures below will show, the girls had a blast!

Morning milk and snuggles with Nana; reading an Oz book with Papa Bear
at bedtime; snuggles with Uncle K, who came to visit for a few days too

A day the county fair with farm animals, cotton candy (and lots of other yummy foods), and rides.
The two photos on the bottom right were taken on the ferris wheel.

playing on a really cool wooden playground

playing in the local lake

riding around the neighborhood in style with Uncle K

making pillows with Nana (the girls got to pick out the fabric
and help with the sewing and stuffing)

coloring on their awesome collapsible cardboard playhouse

Birthday
Monkey and Bug's fifth birthday fell at the end of our trip, so we celebrated at Nana and Papa Bear's house before returning home, where they had more presents from Daddy and I and Grandma and Granddad waiting for them. They are thoroughly enjoying all their new things, and they even cooperated with cleaning out some old toys from the playroom to make more room!

Celebratory cupcakes at Nana and Papa Bear's house!

Monkey trying out the BB gun she and Bug got for their birthday.
Bug was actually even more enthusiastic about shooting than Monkey,
but my computer refuses to let me download the photos I took of her.

History Closer to Home

Monkey's little "pottery" bowl

While we didn't finish my list of topics and activities for imperial China, we decided to move on to a new unit when the girls returned from our travels with an intense interest in Native Americans. Daddy and I returned from Alaska with several pieces of Native American art that they admired, but mostly the interest came from watching Disney's Pocahontas. They're smart enough to realize that movies do not always match reality, so they came home with lots of questions. We sorted out the fantasy from reality, and they placed the era portrayed in the movie in their mental timeline ("after cavemen, but before people invented cars"). Once we got home they peppered me with questions about food preparation and storage, houses, and clothes. I pulled out the DK book about Native Americans, and they spent a long time just looking at the pictures and soaking it all in. We specifically read the sections about the Northwest and the area where we currently live. We even did two activities already: The girls searched the book for examples of pottery, and we pulled out the Playdough to create dolls and bowls; we also played a slightly modified version (we don't have room for a 100 ft long court) of a game called chunkey.

"First Day of School"
As year-round learners who are constantly soaking up information and who informed me that I needed to teach them to read when they turned 4 years old, declaring a first day of school just because "they're old enough" seemed pointless--especially since over the past year since that declaration we've slowly added a number of other academic subjects.  However, I stole a great idea from a fellow homeschooling mom's blog for turning everyone else's first day into a fun milestone for us: When the public school kids dragged their feet to the school bus on their first day of school this Tuesday, we loaded up into the car and headed to IHOP for a scrumptious breakfast and discussion of our own educational efforts.

My little foodies: Monkey and Bug decided to ditch the kids menu in favor
of splitting a Belgian waffle topped with cherries and vanilla cream. Goose
went for the chocolate funny face pancake that her sisters (quite cheerfully)
helped her eat.

We talked about all the things they're learning at home (reading, math, history, etc.) and the fun activities we have coming up (home school group, Wednesday nights at church, etc.). We talked about things they're going to be doing in the future (handwriting, studying locations along our cross-country trip in February) and what some of their favorite things are that we should do more of (history projects, visits to the zoo). We also talked about kindergarten--that kids their age would be going to school now and that if anyone asked, yes, Monkey and Bug could say they did kindergarten at home. At some point later in the week Bug gleefully announced that "We don't have to go to school! We learn ALL the time!" Home schooling win!

History
Monday turned out to be a sick day--only Monkey, fortunately, and she wasn't terribly sick, but it was just easier to declare it a general sick day and make lessons optional for everyone. They really wanted to do history though, so I pulled out a more involved lesson that actually turned into two back-to-back topics. We started out studying the Chinese invention of printing. We read about it in our Eyewitness book, then created our own "woodblock" print of their names using a sheet of Styrofoam and tempera paints.

From there of course they wanted to just paint, and they asked about what ancient Chinese paintings looked like. We watched a slideshow of traditional Chinese paintings (thank you, Google Images) and got out their brushes and paint palettes. Bug even picked a favorite painting of flowers that she wanted to emulate.

Later in the week we learned about Chinese medicine. I think they were a little weirded out by the idea of acupuncture, although they thought the maps of acupuncture points were pretty cool. The idea of herbal medicine definitely had more appeal, and at bath time they pretended to make an herbal soup, so they would stay healthy (fortunately, they knew better than to actually drink the bathwater).

Lessons
They didn't actually do much in their workbooks this week, but we did a lot of spontaneous math problems. Monkey and Bug would just start asking me to verify simple addition problems with sums less than 10. Monkey and I also spent some time doing math with their abacus, and Bug created a few of her own dot-to-dot activities (draw dots, connect and count them, figure out what the picture looks like afterwards). Bug also decided to intentionally do math during our grocery shopping trip, and she helped me figure out the cost of all the produce.

For reading Bug has continued reading from her textbook, and she reads more and more "the fast way." Monkey asked me to write a few sentences for her to read, but mostly she likes to pick a book for us to read together. I get her to sound out a word or two on each page, and we do repetition reading for the rest. Monkey has also been making letters out of found objects a lot--necklaces, blocks, string, etc. She has yet to spell any real words this way, but she has fun sounding out what she does put together.

Home School Group Kick-off Party
Our home school group is starting up again! This year we had a kick off party at Monkey Joe's--a warehouse-sized place with huge bouncy house things, included a massive bouncy pirate ship. We got there just as it opened for us, so the girls could explore the place before it turned into complete chaos. The timing turned out to be perfect: They played on the smaller things for about 40 minutes until the actual meeting started, at which point they were really ready for a rest. They were perfectly content to just sit quietly for the 20 minute meeting. Afterwards we ate the lunch we brought, and they were brave enough to experience the larger bouncy things. While the girls were too busy having fun/being overwhelmed to make friends with the other kids, I got to chat with friends from last year and meet a few new people with kids the same age.

Karate
Because the girls will have to miss several classes over the next couple of weeks, they went to an extra class this week in order to have enough lessons to qualify for yellow belt testing next month. No complaints from them though--they still initiate their own practices almost every day at home, and Goose has been insisting on going with them to watch their class (she practices with them at home). This week they even spread out a flat sheet on the living room floor, so they have a "mat" to bow on and off. They've particularly been practicing some of their new skills: hook punches, upper cuts, and side kicks.

Library Day
Before we actually headed off to the library on Monday, I decided to introduce the concept of oral book reports. I asked the girls to tell me about their favorite books from last week and why they liked them. Here's what they responded:

• Monkey: The Seven Chinese Brothers. I like that they were apart, then got back together. I like that they ate fish together. I like that one had legs that grew.
• Goose: [about I Am Invited to a Party!] There was Piggie going to a party, and they were getting all ready. And Piggie was getting all ready. I like it cause it has orange on it.
• Bug asked if, instead of telling me about the book, she could read it to me (I took a video of this, but now the camera's missing. Grrr....). She said she liked "that it was Piggie and Elephant going to a party. And I like that there were party noises at the party."

There's still no storytime, but we met several friends at the library this week. We came home with these books:
The Night Eater
Dinosaur Bob and His Adventures with the Family Lazardo
Inch by Inch (Monkey was interested in inchworms this week; we spent a really long time looking at Google images of them)
Did I Tell You I Love You Today
All about Me (anatomy for toddlers)
How I Became a Pirate
Way out West Lives a Coyote Named Frank
The Secret House of Papa Mouse
The Emperor's Silent Army: Terracotta Warriors of Ancient China

We were actually back at the library on Thursday for the end of summer programs pizza party! The girls earned their tickets to the party by reading/having read to them 30 picture books. The girls thoroughly enjoyed their pizza and the opportunity to find themselves in the slideshow of photos from this summer's events.

Imperial China
The girls loved the book about the terracotta army that we got from the library this week. We read all about their discovery, the emperor's tomb, and how they would have looked when they were first made. Then of course we had to make own versions out of playdough.

(a horse and two soldiers)

We had a gray, rainy morning this week, and the girls did a fantastic job with their formal lessons, so I decided we'd "be lazy" by snuggling up on the couch and watching the History Channel clips about ancient China available online. The girls were intrigued. We learned about the Great Wall of China, the first emperor's unifying China and searching for immortality, traditions of the Chinese New Year, early legends of dragons, and ancient Chinese weapons technology. The girls spent lots of time during the rest of the week using Legos, Playmobil, and wooden blocks to build build palaces and stage battles for "the first emperor of China."

Bug and Monkey with one of the many palaces they constructed for the emperor.

Lessons
We added a new subject this week: handwriting. I hadn't actually planned on starting it yet, but we bought some workbooks, and Monkey and Bug just couldn't wait to get started. In addition to the standard lines for tracing and practicing all the letters, our books have activities for matching up letters and sounds, matching upper and lower case letters, and doing mazes and dot-to-dot activities practicing alphabetical order. We even found a couple of dry-erase books, which are particularly popular. The girls have made this one of their daily lessons, and Bug even worked handwriting into her reading lesson one day: she asked me to help her spell some of her sight words (i.e., said, you) because she thought writing them down would help her remember them better. She really seems to enjoy writing more legible letters. Monkey has been practicing the letters in her name, but mostly she works on the other activities in the book at this point.

Reading lessons continue, and Monkey and Bug have been more willing to attempt reading actual books! Bug still reads some out of her textbook, and Monkey definitely prefers to read sentences I write on the board (a preference we realized this week may be due to poor vision after she attempted--and failed--to read a book with small print; she has an eye appointment scheduled for the end of the month). They both tend to pick books they mostly have memorized and don't need to sound out every word, so that's been confidence boosting for them.

Math lessons still happen, of course. Bug usually works in one of the workbooks--comparisons, writing numbers, addition--and Monkey mostly uses manipulatives--measuring, counting, number recognition (on rulers and flash cards), and addition (flash cards and wooden blocks).

Let's Be Social!
The girls are finally getting this whole making friends thing. We started off the week on Sunday afternoon with a cookout at the house of one of Daddy's co-workers. The host's 6-year-old son, recently moved into a neighborhood with no kids, was ecstatic to have a trio of playmates arrive. They found him a little overwhelming at first, but I was impressed with how quickly they warmed up. By the time we were ready to go home they were busy helping him construct a series of roads for his trucks in the backyard and asking when they'd get to play with their new friend again.

The girls and I also made it to the neighborhood pool this week. In addition to swimming, they specifically said they were looking forward to possibly making a new friend at the pool, which they did--a little girl about Goose's age, whose daddy is also in the military. They had a blast in the pool. They can all kick around the pool with noodles tied on them, and Bug spent a lot of time practicing doggy paddling without a floaty. She can go a couple of yards all by herself!

Then on Saturday we went to a birthday party for one of our neighbors--a pretty low key event that involved pizza, cupcakes, and just letting the kids play while the grown ups chatted. The girls had fun playing with a bunch of familiar friends; although Monkey and an 11-year-old girl, C, nearly came to blows after C playfully "stole" Goose. Goose was having a great time, but Monkey was not ok with the situation. Fortunately, C handed Goose over before it devolved into violence.

Projects!
The girls really wanted to do a project one day this week, so we pulled out all the collage supplies, stickers, markers, and pencils and I just let them go for it. So much fun!

Library Day
Story time is on hiatus again, but of course we're at the library anyway! This week was particularly fun because some of our friends decided to join us. We moms got to chat and the kids had a blast playing in the cushions, looking at books, and doing puzzles. We came home with these books this week:
I'm Invited to a Party! (an Elephant and Piggie book)
Home Sweet Home
Jabuti the Tortoise: A Trickster Tale from the Amazon
Kali's Song
The Seven Chinese Brothers (a Chinese folktale)

Ancient China
History lessons this week began with that last book mentioned above, and the girls really love this tale of seven brothers who rescue each other with super-human powers. The antagonist in this book happens to be Qin Shi Huang, the real first emperor of China, so that segued nicely into reading a brief biography of the man who united the Chinese states, while the girls colored paper dolls of girls from imperial China. Hearing four year olds' reactions to historical events is always fun: they were glad to hear that Qin Shi Huang managed to make the Chinese states stop fighting and work together, but absolutely horrified when we read that he also tried to burn all the books and scrolls.

I actually cook Chinese food pretty frequently, but this week I pointed out which meal's recipe was Chinese (beef and broccoli over white rice), and the next day Goose and Bug helped me turn the leftovers into fried rice for lunch. Later we actually read the sections in the book about food and took it into the kitchen, so they could smell some of the spices we read about. We also read about tea and made a small pot of green tea to share. They were big fans once I stirred in a little honey.

The entourage loved eating fried rice with chopsticks out of little fancy bowls.

We also read about traditional Chinese music and instruments, and I found a website that offered free streaming songs. We finished coloring and cutting out their paper dolls while we listened. The girls thought the instrumental pieces were really pretty, but they didn't like the singing much.

Karate
The girls continue to initiate lots of their own karate practices at home, and this week they enlisted me to help them work on their side kicks and punches. They particularly appreciate the clapper pad Brian got them, so they can hear when they get a really good strike. They've been working hard and finally mastered jumping jacks--very exciting, since that exercise has been a tough one since day one.

Lessons
This week Monkey has been practicing number recognition for 1-20 (out of order), and she's getting significantly better. Sample activities: she counts out 20 of something while I write the numerals on the white board, then she erasing them one at a time when I call them out in random order; I call out numbers in random order and she "writes" them on the floor using string or necklaces. Bug continues to prefer workbooks; she did over a dozen pages in her addition and math concepts books this week. Both girls also did sessions with Daddy reviewing the names and values of coins.

Both girls are reading at least a few sentences every day. Bug still works mostly out of her textbook, and Monkey's been getting me to write sentences on the white board for her. The girls are at about the same reading level now, so our theory about Monkey just suddenly "getting it" seems to have panned out.

At some point this week, I sat down with Goose with books about colors and shapes and confirmed that she now consistently knows all the basics (about half a dozen shapes and 8 or 9 colors). She can usually count up to 10 accurately, and she practices that pretty frequently all on her own.

Potty Training Update
After about a month and a half of potty training, we're throwing in the towel and going to back to pull ups all the time. Poor Goose went from stopping making progress to getting worse in the last week or so, so at the end of this week she and I had a conversation about how she seemed to be really struggling with this and maybe she wasn't quite ready yet. She readily agreed that pull ups sounded like a great idea. Now that we've actually had most of a day with no underwear, she's actually had to two completely successful incidents! I think maybe just the stress of all the accidents was getting to her.

Pool Party!
On Friday Daddy had the day off and we ditched our lessons in favor of attending the Command Summer Bash. The girls were really excited to get in the pool (a fun zero-entry one). They all practiced jumping in, and Monkey and Goose brought their goggles and practiced actually swimming and going under water. Goose got a kick out of having such a huge area of really shallow water to run around in. They also played in the bounce house (with a slide!). Even Goose jumped in after her sisters with no hesitation--that's a first! We enjoyed a cookout for lunch and got to hang out with some of Daddy's co-workers and their families.

Other Projects

We made fancy hats!

This looks like a random mess they made, I know. But it isn't!
This is a very carefully planned, complex piece of machinery.
I never figured out what it did exactly, but they informed me
that they were making a machine, which they designed on
on the fridge using different shaped magnets to represent
each piece. Then they built it on the playroom floor,
occasionally referring back to their "blueprint" on the fridge.

Weather Permitting

After about two weeks of seemingly non-stop rain showers and thunderstorms, the inclement weather was starting to get really old. Finally on Sunday the forecast included only rain, and I announced an afternoon activity that brightened the day for everyone: The girls donned their bathing suits and spent a good thirty minutes to an hour dancing, shrieking, running, and giggling in the "great, big sprinklers!" while Daddy and I watched from the shelter of the front porch. They came in drenched and shivering but very happy!

After that day, the weather really improved. To celebrate our first truly rain-free day, the girls and I made frozen pink lemonade to enjoy outside while doing our day's lessons with sidewalk chalk on the driveway. (It was one of those "This is why I love homeschooling!" moments.) We also pulled out the kid-powered vehicles and headed to the cul-de-sac to play. Goose had her little red riding toy, Monkey chose to bring her trike, and Bug brought her new bike. She still has training wheels, but she and Monkey outgrew their old bikes. Bug at least is getting a lot more confident on her "wobbly bike" and was even willing to get back on after toppling over when she hit a curb.

Zoo Day!

The good weather continued, and we decided to make Friday a zoo day. Some friends of ours were also going that day, but, while it was fun to say hi to familiar faces, we decided to stick to our own plan. The girls had a list of particular animals they wanted to see on this visit, and we tend to skip some animals and spend longer amounts of time studying others. Our first stop on this visit was the bears at Bug's request. Definitely a good choice! We got to witness one waking up the other by pulling on his ears and the ensuing play/fight. Pretty impressive. Bug also wanted to feed the giraffes and the goats. Fortunately, she told me this ahead of time, so I could make sure I brought appropriate change. Bug and Goose were brave enough to feed the giraffes; although Goose only

We had fun examining
several new statues--
animals made by reusing
old materials (we discovered
this lion, for example, had a
mane made of old nails).

A classic pose atop the elephant statue

gave them one lettuce leaf since the giraffe wrapped his tongue all the way around her wrist in his attempt to get it. (Me: "What did his tongue feel like?" Goose: "Gross!") Monkey decided to join them in feeding and petting the goats. At Monkey's request we found the bats (they were eating breakfast near the ceiling while the zookeeper cleaned the floor of their room) and the ostriches (they were conveniently right next to the fence when we arrived, so we got a really good view). We also ran into a zookeeper with a corn snake wrapped around his arm, so we got to take a close up look at that and to hear the keeper answer some questions about it. Another highlight was a new display at the gorilla house that allowed the girls to hear the different sounds they make and interpret facial expressions.

Library Day

This week's story time was supposedly about worms, but none of the books were about worms and we made coffee filter butterflies for the craft (fun even if unrelated to any of the books). We came home with these books:

White Tiger, Blue Serpent

The Butterfly's Dream

Let's Go for a Drive (an Elephant and Piggie book)

Cornelius

Don't Eat the Babysitter!

The Sleepy Little Alphabet

More on Imperial China

We checked out another Chinese storybook from the library this week: The Butterfly's Dream is a retelling of several of the ancient Chuang Tzu stories (they remind me of Aesop's fables), which the girls love--both the stories and the traditional Chinese style illustrations. We read it almost everyday. We also kept the White Tiger, Blue Serpent book, another Chinese folktale. The Butterfly's Dream even features the titles in Chinese calligraphy, which the girls were fascinated by. So, one day this week, we read the Eyewitness book's section on Chinese writing, and the girls did their reading lesson that day by painting words of their choice. (This of course evolved into a general painting pictures session.)

This week we also studied the Eyewitness sections on ancient Chinese farming. The girls were particularly interested in the man-powered irrigation machines. After reading up on farms, we watched the section of Fearless that featured rice planting and following the seasons through a farming village. They even had one of those irrigation machines. The girls also got to see typical clothes, buildings, and cooking techniques. 

Lessons
Neither of the big girls added new sounds this week, but they did lots of reading. Even Monkey has been much more willing to sound out words this week! She and Bug worked together to read several sentences when we had our lessons outside, and Monkey's been asking me to write sentences on the white board for her to read inside. Bug is still working her way through her textbook, and added the "funny words" talk and walk this week. For the reading lessons Goose requested, I wrote a half dozen letters on the white board and asked her to point to the ones I named. She can't actually do this very accurately of course, but she loved the game and she's slowly gaining some letter recognition.

Math has been fun this week too. On the day we did lessons outside, we practiced counting by tens: I wrote out the numbers and the girls screamed the names of them as loud as they could repeatedly. Our neighbors may have wondered what was going on, but we had a blast. Monkey and Bug also acquired new workbooks this week. The Target dollar bins had a great selection this week, and we came home with books for numbers 1-12 (just for Monkey), math concepts, and addition. Monkey did about a dozen pages in the number recognition book, and they both started on the addition books. Bug also worked on a couple of counting money pages from her current book.

Library Day
Library day was highly popular this week. The theme was mud, and story time involved several great, muddy books along with plates of actual mud to paint with. Fortunately, the librarians came well armed with wipes and paper towels (and--they reassured the moms--they scheduled this story time for right before the carpet cleaner came).

We came home with these books:
The Wizard
George and Martha: Rise and Shine
Frederick
While Mama had a Quick Little Chat
Blue Sea, Little Fish
The White Tiger and the Blue Serpent 
The Great Wall of China

Imperial China
The girls were very excited when I announced we'd be starting up our next history unit this week! We are now engrossed in Imperial China. We started by spending a lazy Sunday afternoon watching Disney's Mulan, which they loved. Interestingly, I think they were more intrigued by the brief scene on the Great Wall than anything else--thus the book I found at the library about the history, building methods, and current state of the Great Wall of China. Block versions of the Wall have built and rebuilt throughout the living room and playroom this week. Bug has been into perfecting her building methods (overlapping the bricks and building two layers of wall beside each other--she noted that she couldn't really fill in the space between them with dirt the way they built the real wall), and Monkey has been more interested in building the square towers that dot the Wall and manning them with soldiers.

At their suggestion we flipped through their series of Ask Me books for tidbits about China (the Great Wall of China, dancing dragons at festivals, Chinese calligraphy, and fishing with cormorants are all topics we stumbled upon). We also studied the Eyewitness book's sections about traditional Chinese dress and pored over the pictures, looking at robes, jewelry, and hairstyles. I even had a few items of clothing to pull out of my closet for them: an embroidered robe and a shirt with a mandarin collar and monkey fist buttons that they got to try on, and my old kung fu gi (uniform) for them to look at.

The yellow shirt Bug's wearing is actually a family heirloom from Daddy's grandmother
(maybe from Uncle K's travels in Asia?). The robe Monkey is wearing is just my dressing robe,
but she was excited that on her it had really long sleeves like Mulan's fancy dress.

The girls are extremely interested in kung fu between the drill and fight scenes from Mulan, their own study of karate (which they know is from Japan), and their knowledge that Daddy and I both studied kung fu. I picked out a few scenes from the Jet Li movie Fearless to watch with them that showed them not only what kung fu looks like, but also included scenes of a typical upper class home and city from Imperial China and allowed them to hear Chinese spoken (the version we have is subtitled). Monkey has been experimenting with inventing her own kung fu moves including using a "staff" (cheap plastic golf club).

Karate
I assured Monkey that someday she would get to really study kung fu, but in the meantime she and Bug both continue their enthusiastic study of karate. They do extra practices with Daddy a couple times a week, but they also help each other practice (and teach Goose) almost every day. Monkey and Bug take turns leading, and they ask me to help them remember all the things from class they should practice. This week in class they learned a side kick, back fist, and side fist. They also turned in their My Best Lists this week and earned black stripes on their belts. (The My Best List is a month-long parent-created check list of personal care, chores, and good attitudes for the students to complete. I love that this school is concerned about more than just performance on the mat.)

Lessons

The usual reading and math lessons continued this week. Monkey finished up her study of vowels, ending the week by coming up with a list of words that have long and short sounds for each letter. She also did more word building with the cards I made. This week I added a few word cards (for things like I, am, is, the), and we put together a sentence or two for her to read. Bug added the letter sound y as in yard this week, and she got through several word lists and two stories. Both girls did some math worksheets this week, and we started actual lessons in telling time using a wooden puzzle clock with moveable hands and a lift-a-flap paper one I made to help them remember how many minutes correspond to each number on the clock face. With Goose, the big girls and I all continue to casually teach her numbers 1-20, the ABCs, shapes, and colors.

(This photo refuses to go right side up. Weird.)