Library Day
The storytime theme this week was trucks--very popular with the entourage, especially since one of the books was one of our favorites at home: I Want My T-R-U-C-K. They were disappointed though when the librarian just read "truck" instead of spelling it out--messes with the rhyme pattern. The craft this week was recreating an illustration from one of the books by gluing cut-out animals into the back of a picture of a pickup truck. We came home with quite a few books this week:

Cinderella (Goose wanted a princess book, and we found a gorgeously illustrated one that she's been almost inseparable from)
Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy Town
Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg (This one's a chapter book Monkey and Bug stumbled upon, and they were very excited about finding a fairy book--there aren't many out there, at least in our library.)
There Was an Old Woman
More Bears!
Plantzilla
Monday on the Mississippi
When the Library Lights Go Out
The Butterfly's Dream
Teddy Bear Counting

Reading
Bug added the letter sounds g as in got and sh this week as well as the word I. She's also moving a lot faster through the lessons and will actually do a full lesson in one sitting now (previously I've divided them into two, sometimes three lessons). She and I also spent some time reading the beginning of Heidi together: I traced under all the words with my finger, and she read the ones she could sound out while I filled in the others. She was so excited to be reading a real book! And, of course, she gets in on Monkey's reading activities.

This week Monkey added f and u as in under and reviewed several other letter sounds using coloring sheets. Building on the activities we did with alphabet blocks last week, I pulled out the Scrabble tiles this week, which gives us a lot more freedom in creating words (the blocks each at two letters per block and each letter was only represented once; from her perspective the tiles are practically limitless). This also meant we had enough letters that Bug could build her own words simultaneously. We built some real words with her new sounds, and then the girls built nonsense words for me to sound out. Monkey came up with her own sight reading activity this week. The process started at breakfast when she began spontaneously listing words that rhyme with at. When we went upstairs, she asked me to write down a few of them for her trace. After that she came up with other, much longer words that she simply wanted to know how to spell--like monkey and binoculars. We also added these to her word book.

Goose has been very interested in the reading lessons and usually insists on getting a letter sound coloring sheet too and practices the sound right along with Monkey. She's also put together that words on a page mean words you can say, and she's been occasionally pointing to a particular word in a book she's looking at, "What's this say?"

Math
Math activities continue to mostly focus on numbers 1-20 and simple addition problems. This week I pulled out the bin of colored noodles (Super easy to make: Throw a handful of dry noodles into a jar with a few squirts of food coloring. Shake until coated. Lay out the noodles on paper towels until dry.) First activity: I would call out numbers and have them count out the appropriate number of noodles. Interesting: Bug did this by making separate piles for each number. Monkey did this by adding or subtracting noodles from a single pile. Earlier in the week we ran into the concept of skip counting while watching a LeapFrog math video. Bug in particular was fascinated, so we practiced counting by 2s and 5s using the noodles. The last math activity with the noodles involved each of us taking turns creating patterns with the different colors and seeing if the others could continue the pattern. After that Bug started creating letter shapes with the noodles, and we practiced spelling for a bit instead.

We also read through the Counting Bears book several times this week. The first time Goose joined us and jumped in to practice identifying colors, shapes, and numbers 1-10. The second time we read the book, Monkey and Bug requested we "really do the book" and pull out some edible manipulatives. We decided on marshmallows, and they were more than happy to practice their subtraction by strategically moving the marshmallows from the table to their tummies.

Sometime this week Bug also got in a spur-of-the-moment math session with Daddy in which he explained the concept of hundreds, and they practiced skip counting all the way up to 1,000! This was a new and thrilling big number for Bug.

Geography
Monkey and Bug rediscovered our puzzle map of America this week, and they've gotten really good at putting it together without adult assistance. They did get me to tell them the name of each state as they put it in place, though. I took the opportunity to introduce them to one of our new books, Don't Know Much about the 50 States. Each state has a page with a small map, information like the state capital, bird, and flower, and tidbits about history or resources. I had the girls pick a page and locate the state on the puzzle map, then I'd read the page itself. Our library book Monday on the Mississippi coincided nicely with this interest as it traced the path of the Mississippi River from it's spring to the Gulf of Mexico, noting special sites and history along the way. The girls excitedly found the Mississippi River on the puzzle map and noted that it touches the state where a set of grandparents live.

Firearm Safety
Daddy and I went to the shooting range one evening this week, and Monkey and Bug were around when he was cleaning the guns in the afternoon. They were interested, so he explained the mechanics of how they worked and showed them photos of what the bullets would do to a lead pipe. We talked about what they could do to people and stressed that these were tools only for grown ups. This interchange was repeated and repeated: What do you do if you see a gun? Find a grown up!

New Bible Story Time
Our routine has been that I read them one Bible story from The Beginner's Bible right before naptime after we read a few other not-Bible stories. Monkey and Bug were obviously ready for a more challenging text with additional stories, so I switched to The Little Kids' Adventure Bible. However, I still wanted to read the Beginner's Bible to Goose, while Bug and Monkey wanted to read more stories from their Bible in one sitting and ask lots of perfectly reasonable questions about them. I found myself cutting them off and skipping Goose's story, because I was so ready to get them down for naptime. It certainly wasn't reflecting the importance I want them to place on studying the Bible.

While contemplating how to fix this problem without sacrificing my sanity, I realized that our morning 30 minutes of TV viewing was just a leftover from when I was breastfeeding Goose and wanted a peaceful first feeding--Goose has been weaned for a year and a half. So we made a simple switch: Instead of watching TV we have 30 minutes first thing in the morning to read Bible stories and talk about them. Bug in particular loves the new routine; I still get some mild protests from Goose and Monkey that they want TV time, but no meltdowns, so I'm counting it a big win. It was definitely a good move. We read the Beginner's Bible first, and sometimes Goose wanders away after that. The new Bible book (it's not a complete Bible) includes stories like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham's near sacrifice of Isaac, both of which required multiple readings and lots of questions. Bottom line: Starting off the day snuggling in on the couch with the girls and a Bible is so much more rewarding than snuggling in with a potentially annoying kid's show.