Back to Church
After so much travelling, we finally got back to activities at our own church. Sunday we had the usual classes and worship service with the extra fun of a potluck luncheon followed by participation in an assembly line to fill hygiene bags for the mission team to Haiti to take with them in a few weeks. The girls, including Goose, probably filled a half dozen bags each and were very excited about sending things like new toothbrushes and washcloths to people in Haiti. Wednesday night suppers at church also started up again. Bug did not want to go to her class, but I'm taking it as a sign of increasing emotional maturity that she didn't have a meltdown about it. I got us to church about 10 minutes early so the girls had some time in their classroom without all the other kids, we had talk about how she usually enjoyed the different activities (projects, stories, etc.) , and their teacher got them involved enough in some pre-class activities that Goose and I were able to leave without incident--well, except that Goose desperately wanted to stay with Miss K and all the other kids.

Library Day
Another library day with just us and the librarians. The girls even commented on how quiet it was. This week we stayed to read books, and the girls even introduced the librarians to our current favorite book, How Do You Wokka Wokka? by quoting some of it to them. The librarians were impressed and even looked up the book for potential use in a future storytime. We came home with these books:
Bears: Polar Bears, Black Bears, and Grizzly Bears ("what do you want to learn about" book)
The Gingerbread Man
Toddlerobics
Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed
Whooo's Haunting the Teeny Tiny Ghost?
Dancing Granny
My Teacher for President

Zoo Day
I decided to take a last opportunity for a mini-roadtrip before potty training Goose, and we headed to the zoo one day this week. That membership has definitely been worth it! We've probably made a half dozen trips to that zoo, and we continue to have new and exciting experiences. When we arrived we could actually hear the monkeys from the parking lot! I think they must be enjoying the cooler weather, because we couldn't remember hearing them before. Once we arrived at their exhibit, we observed their enthusiastic activities and their breakfast menu for a bit, and then Bug informed us that "Actually, they're apes, not monkeys, because they don't have tails." Bravo for the little zoologist! We checked out their sign and discovered that they were indeed apes--siamang gibbons to be exact.

My monkeys watching zoo monkeys--no, I mean, apes!

We happened to go on the zoo's storytime day, so we got to participate in a storytime about animal ears. I was very proud of Bug for being willing to speak up and answer questions that the reader asked of the group. This week we also discovered the vulture's nest (It's huge! The vultures themselves, however, were hiding; although we got to see one later.), and an exhibit of mole rats we hadn't seen before. This was particularly interesting in light of one of our library selections this week since the exhibit included naked mole rats. We spent a particularly long time in the aquarium, since we've usually rushed that experience on our way out of the zoo, and the entourage spent great deal of time observing the komodo dragons: noting particular features (scales, long claws, holes instead of "normal" ears), noticing that we could see their necks expanding as they breathe (followed by putting our hands on each other's chest to feel us breathing), and comparing the komodos to their toy dragons (forked tongues--yes; fire--no; wings--no, but they have 4 legs instead of 2, so the komodos would be better at walking and climbing). The entourage was holding up particularly well, so we decided to stay later than usual and watch a bird show featuring local predatory birds, including those vultures that we missed earlier.

No zoo visit is complete without climbing on the statues!

Reading
The girls continue making progress! Reading her first sentence seemed to be a breakthrough experience for Monkey: now she usually requests having a sentence to read (which means I end up composing them out of the words involved in that day's lesson), and she's even been sounding out words without assistance! Bug has gotten far enough in the book that her lessons usually involve reading a sentence, and she added a new sound this week (o as in ox).

Goose has been taking shorter or no naps at all this week, so she's been up and about for more of our lessons, and she doesn't want to be left out! She doesn't have the articulation or pencil control to do many of the tasks, but I figure I can at least start teaching her the letter sounds in the order they're presented as long as she's requesting lessons. So far she's worked on m, s, and a (as in apple). She can match up letters to sounds with reasonable accuracy during a lesson, but I've yet to ask her anything outside of that context. She also likes to "wite yetters!" (write letters) by practicing scribbles on her white board.


Topics of Discussion This Week

• Evergreen plants (defining and excitedly identifying them)
• Attributes of God (how big, strong, old, etc., He is)
• Calendars (usual activities for months and weeks)
• Medicines and pharmacies (different meds for different sicknesses, how the pharmacist knows what to give people, etc.)
• Banking (We deposited checks into their savings accounts this week, so we talked again about how banks work and what savings [as opposed to checking] accounts are for)