The entourage got to spend almost all day with Daddy on Saturday (Mommy took a day of personal retreat to hike at a local state park--absolutely lovely). Daddy and the entourage headed to a nearby larger city to shop for cleats for Daddy for ultimate frisbee, eat lunch at a restaurant (a big deal in this household), and run around a children's garden. The entourage loved the children's garden! Although Daddy admitted it will probably be prettier if we go back in the spring.
Election Day
The entourage came with me to vote, and I prepped them ahead of time, so I didn't have to try answering all the questions while actually voting. I explained that all the grown ups get to cast a vote to say who they think should be the next leader of America, the person who gets to make the rules. Among the litany of questions:
- Why am I voting for that one? (Because I think he'll make better decisions--I chose not to get into partisan politics.)
- Will the one who doesn't win be sad? (Probably)
- What will he do instead of being President? (I don't know--probably make speeches and write books.)
- Will we get to see them [the candidates]? (No, but we looked at photos later.)
- So, who won? (This immediately after I cast my vote. I explained that everybody has to vote first.)
- Will we go somewhere later to find out who won? (No, we'll just look it up online. This was met with disappointment. Bug thought there should be a party.)
When we got home they were still trying to sort out how this whole voting thing worked, so I held a mock election: An Animaniac figure and a fairy doll campaigned for leader of the playroom. We used pennies to vote with, and the fairy won by a landslide.
Projects
This is the project the entourage did with our homeschool group this week. Miss J brought her girl's favorite current favorite book, It Looked Like Spilt Milk, to share, and conveniently it just happened to be one that we checked out of the library the day before! The entourage was excited about a book they were familiar with and they loved making their own fun shaped clouds out of cotton balls.
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| Top to bottom: Goose, Bug, and Monkey |
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| Bug was the most prolific artistic today with one experimental abstract piece (using a paint brush to make prints), a field of many colored flowers, and a school bus full of people. |
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| Goose created the painting on the left (with remarkably little paint on herself!). Monkey made the other two experimenting with prints and layering colors. |
On Beyond "Why?"
Life with the entourage has involved answering a plethora of questions from the moment they could utter the word why. Now that Monkey and Bug are older though, they ask more in-depth questions, and they stick with a particular curiosity for longer than a single question. These are the random things that sparked their interest this week:
Sumo Wrestling
At some point this week, Bug pulled out my set of wooden sumo wrestlers to play with (a leftover from a childhood partially spent in Japan). She was intrigued by the idea that there were real ones, so Monkey, Bug and I spent about 20 minutes watching YouTube videos of sumo wrestling matches and training stables. Monkey was mesmerized. Talking points during the viewing included: rules of the sport, the special clothes (or lack of them) required for this and other sports, the purpose of referees, the significance of trophies and traditions, and the importance of training and perseverance in sports and other endeavors.
Surgery
Out of the blue, Bug started asking questions about surgery and anesthesia (deep thoughts from the carseat). I answered what I could while driving, but during our lessons time at home I finally had the chance to satisfy her curiosity. We found a great site with a virtual tour of the surgery suite at a children's hospital, so the girls got to see everything from the waiting room to the recovery room with cartoon staff people explaining what would happen at each stage. They seemed particularly concerned about the patient being put back together, but I was able to allay their fears by showing off my own surgery scar. Who knew having two c-sections would be so educationally helpful? (Note to Granddad: If you're up for a show-and-tell session, your grandkids would love to see some real surgeon's tools!)
Track Races
The entourage organized races around our downstairs one evening this week, and Daddy picked up on the fact that they were saying "March! Set! Go!" at the beginning of each race and declaring that they were each the winner at the end. His attempt to set them straight on proper terminology and logistics led to watching clips of women's track races from this summer's Olympics, explaining things like starting blocks and starting guns, relay races verses regular sprints, etc. They also discussed good sportsmanship and perseverance after watching one runner trip and stop running.
Reading
I had a breakthrough idea this week, and reading lessons got much easier! Monkey was still interested in learning to read, but completely failing to be engaged by the actual lessons. So, I made a simple change: instead of us sitting and staring at rather crowded black-and-white pages, I started writing out the relevant parts of the text on her white board in the marker color of her choice. You would think I'd flipped a switch in her head! She loves it and is progressing much faster now. While Bug had never been put off by the original format, she decided the new one looked like more fun, so we've been doing her lessons on her white board too. Bug is now back up to the lesson in which we decided to go back to the beginning, and she conquered it without a hitch! She has even sounded out words entirely by herself without my promptings about what sounds come first, second, and third.
Monkey also decided to jump in on the sight reading part of reading lessons. We added the word and to their reading vocabulary this week. In addition to finding the words in picture books as I read them, I had them pick out a couple of pages from a chapter book, I made copies for each them, and had them circle the words they knew and tell me what they were as they found them.
Library Day
The storytime theme this week was colors with some fun books about mixing them. Sadly, the craft was unrelated. Starting this week, the kids will be making ornaments to put on the children's section Christmas tree. This week's ornament only involved gluing two paper circles together with a loop of paper between them at the top, so a ribbon could be strung through to hang it on the tree. It didn't really involve any creativity on the kids' part, so the entourage lost interest pretty quickly. They were supposed to make two (one for the library and one for home), but they were only willing to make one, and I ended up slapping three more together to leave for the library. Oh well, we did come home with a stack of great books:
Milo the Really Big Bunny
Thanksgiving
Time to Sleep, Sheep the Sheep
Snowed in with Grandma Silk
It Looked Like Spilt Milk
Peek! A Thai Hide and Seek
How an Egg Grows into a Chicken
The Human Body (the previous two were our "what do you want to learn about?" books)
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