Daddy's Home!
We have Daddy home again, and the entourage (and I, of course) were so excited to see him again. We got home from Grandma and Granddad's house and picked up Daddy at the airport the next day. I don't like having him gone so frequently, and it's heartbreaking when the girls miss him, but I do love hearing them cheer for him when we drive up to the airport!

Library Day
Storytime is back! For the first storytime of the schoolyear our librarian took the opportunity to go over proper treatment of books and proper behavior for the library with some really cute picture books. Then the girls got to color a cutout of a book (they had the option of creating an About Me book, but they decided they just wanted to color). The real highlight, though, was when the libarian let them each pick out their own bookmark to take home, which they each immediately insisted on putting in a book to save their page.

This week we brought home:
Word Bird's Circus
Word Bird's Shapes (Bug recently discovered this series and is very excited about it)
Hoptoad!
Chibi (a true story about a duckling in Tokyo, Japan; the Aunt E connection caused lots of excitement)
Because we were out of town for most of the last week, we also decided to keep the books we checked out last Wednesday, so we've been re-reading those as well.

Projects
This week, in addition to a number of coloring sheets (they requested bird and bug sheets this week), Monkey and Bug picked two projects from our project books to do. First we made paper helicopters (folded strips of paper with a paper clip on the bottom). Lots of fun.

Another afternoon, related to their current interest in outer space, they picked out sun and moon projects. The original project is masks, but the girls decided they didn't want them to be masks--just projects. I hastily cut out some suns and moons from construction paper, and set out scissors, glue, appropriately colored bits of construction paper, and star stickers and let them have at it. Bug and Goose wanted full moons and Monkey wanted a crescent moon, which led of course to discussion about why the moon appears to change shape. Bug also explained to me that the real sun and moon aren't made of paper--they're made of fire and rock, respectively.

Monkey's is the sun/moon combo on top; Goose's sun and moon are on the left, and Bug's are to the right.

The entourage has been doing so many projects and coloring sheets lately, that Bug requested that I put up an additional art string. We decided to put it in their room, so they now have two short art strings next to their window.

Playdate!
We didn't have our homeschool group this week, but we planned a playdate with some fellow homeschoolers, Miss K and her boys, N and G, instead. So, what happens when you get together three 4-year-olds being raised by likeminded parents? An enthusiastic discussion of the solar system, of course! Shortly after we arrived, Bug was jumping up and down with excitement because N "has space in his room!" (N and his dad recently put together a model of the solar system with styrofoam balls and hung it from his ceiling along with glow-in-the-dark stars.) N happily pointed out all the planets to the entourage, and Monkey and Bug explained about the rotation of the earth and orbits. After this, they all moved on to playing with trains, of which N and G have a very extensive collection.

It was a gorgeous day, so Miss K and I brought up the idea of walking down to the neighborhood pond to feed the ducks and geese. The girls and I hadn't been there before, and we will definitely want to go back! There's a lovely paved trail, and the pond is inhabited by friendly--non-aggressive--foul, turtles, and fish. We also found sweet gum balls and acorns to add to our nature collection box. And of course, they all just had fun running the trail and climbing on rocks.

L to R: Bug, Monkey, G, and N (I think Goose was still watching
the actual geese a little farther back down the trail)

Job Chart Update
The job chart is working beautifully! Bug is much more motivated by actually putting on the stickers than Monkey is, but for the most part Monkey still does everything she's supposed to. What's been interesting is watching their interactions and decision making after I added the first additional job. I printed up clip art representing the different bathroom cleaning chores and had them each pick one to add to their chart. The first week Bug picked the bathtub, and Monkey chose the sinks. After they got started Bug decided cleaning the bathtub was "too messy" (it involves her stripping and getting into the tub with a rag and a bowl of soap and baking soda), and asked if she could help with a different job instead. Goose was more than happy to climb into the tub to take her place. Meanwhile, Monkey was getting overwhelmed by the large task of cleaning the sinks. Bug offered to help, and I agreed that she could still earn her sticker that way. That's the kind of sisterly helping I like to see! The next week, they remembered the previous experience: Bug chose cleaning the mirror (it involves a tidy squirt bottle and a rag and is a good fit for her attention to detail), and Monkey chose cleaning the toilet (this involves the fascinating baking soda and vinegar reaction and requires my assistance, so she didn't have to tackle it by herself). Of course, both clean up events ended with water play in the sinks, and who's going to complain about that?! While I realize their enthusiasm for bathroom cleaning is unlikely to last into the teenage years, I'm hoping they'll be such experts by then that it won't even be a big deal. (A mom can dream, right?)