Library Day
The theme for storytime this week was rainbows, and the craft was creating a rainbow on construction paper by gluing Fruit Loops to it. I'm pretty sure the entourage ate more Loops than they glued, though! Another mom and I did a quick scan of the table before the kids really got into it, and we removed all the toxic craft glues. Apparently the librarian forgot that toddlers are likely to eat cereal even after they've put glue on it. We came home with these books:
The Story of Strega Nona
Eric Carl's Animals, Animals
Wanda's First Day
This Place in the Snow
The Romans: Activities, Crafts, History
Reptiles
Cinderella (kept from last week)

Other "New" Books
We've also been spending lots of time with some "new" books in addition to the library books. I recently relocated my complete collection of Beatrix Potter books to the entourage's bookshelves in the living room, and I think I've succeeded in passing on my love of her beautiful illustrations and "twaddle-free" storytelling. Monkey and Bug even seem to be attempting to memorize The Tale of Peter Rabbit in its entirety. We also made a trip to our favorite used bookstore this week and acquired a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, which has also been popular.

Workshop with Daddy
Last Saturday a teacher store near us offered a free Lowe's workshop for kids, so Monkey, Bug, and Daddy headed out for a morning Daddy date. The girls each got a nice Lowe's apron and built working binoculars. They're still pretty young for such projects, but Bug actually managed to put some of the nails in all by herself. Goose was extremely disappointed about being left behind, so we took a walk in the rain to distract her--a bit damp, but highly entertaining.

When in Rome . . . 
I was hoping to get more prepping in before we started, but the books arrived amid much excitement and Daddy wanted to know what we were going to be up to before he left, so . . . off we go! I gave Monkey and Bug four options that they have reference points for (for example, they know Baby Moses was born in Ancient Egypt and that the Sphinx and Pyramids were built then). They chose to study Ancient Rome first, and they are really into it!

Checking out the new history books with Daddy

We've been reading from the DK Eyewitness book every day and seem to talk about it endlessly: i.e., question from the backseat while driving down the highway, "What were roads like in Ancient Rome?" They've done some Rome-themed coloring sheets, and we examined a map of the Roman Empire at its height. This inspired questions about why the Romans didn't conquer the rest of the land and we got into the logistics of huge armies and the people who wouldn't let them come any further. We found a book at the library with activities and crafts inspired by Ancient Rome, and the girls are excited about getting into those. We went through the DK book looking at pictures of Roman clothes and both girls chose outfits they wanted to create, went through the house looking for appropriate pieces, and dressed up in period costume. We even made sandals with cardboard cut outs and laces from their sewing cards.

Bug wanted to dress up as a Roman lady and tried out a couple different looks.
Monkey wanted to be a little Roman boy.

We also talked about how Jesus and the Apostle Paul were alive during the Roman Empire. The girls thought it was very cool that we could see pictures of Ceasar Augustus from the Christmas story on coins and statues. We haven't really talked about Jesus'  interactions with the Romans at the end of his life yet, but I'm sure we will with Easter approaching. We did read the story of Paul's travels in their Bible story book, and  talked about how Paul was able to travel to so many places because of the relatively safe Roman roads and ships. The girls were pretty excited that there were Christians in Ancient Rome and that part of the Bible was even written to them.

This was definitely the right time to jump into studying history as it has certainly sparked their imaginations! At some point this week Monkey decided to play with blocks and built a piece of Hadrian's Wall complete with watchtowers.

Reading
You've probably heard the educational truism that children first learn to read, then they read to learn. Monkey would seem to prefer to skip straight to that second part. Early this week, when we sat down for her reading lesson, she informed me that she wanted to learn about alligators for her lesson. So, I went with it. I taught her to sight read "alligator" and wrote the word in big letters on a blank sheet of paper for her to trace. She added a drawing of an alligator underneath. Then we looked up alligators in their Encyclopedia of Animals and read the entry together (I traced under words with my finger, she repeated them, and she read "alligator" all by herself). Later in the week she also asked to learn how to read The Tale of Peter Rabbit with the same trace-and-repeat method. She also learned two new letter sounds, l and w and spent a long time tracing her whole first name (she can write her nickname by herself, but her full name's pretty long).

Bug is really making progress. This week she added the letter sound a as in ape and the sight word said. She has fewer and fewer occasions when she actually has to sound out a word slowly aloud before really reading it, and she discovered she could read another Bob book all by herself! She's also gotten alot braver about "reading" books to Goose, which is fun for both of them.

Math
Here's the round up of math activities from this week: We played with dice alot. I always start by rolling one and seeing if they can name the number without actually pointing and counting, then I throw in a second die and they take turns adding them up. We played with the 1-20 note cards 52-card-pickup style, and they have gotten significantly better since last time we played. Also, Monkey proved she can count up to 20 accurately all by herself, and Bug will count up to 30 by 1s, then switch to skip counting by 10s and get all the way to 100. Oh, and we played Magic: The Gathering (with my kiddie rules). They are really good at addition with the right motivation! They use counters, but they can both do some of the smaller sums without the use of manipulatives.

Preparing for Worship
We attend a traditional liturgical worship service on Sundays, so I added a portion to our morning Bible reading routine. I'm teaching the girls to sing the Doxology and the Gloria Patri, so they'll actually be able to participate in parts of the service before they head back to children's church.

It actually took less time than I expected for the complaining about the lack of TV to stop. Watching TV is no longer a built in part of their day, which makes me happy. Mind you, it's not completely off limits. I have educational "TV" for us to watch (thank you, History Channel and PBS for history-themed clips), we'll still do special movie nights (we had a pizza and Star Wars event last week), and there will inevitably be times when we just need to chill in front of something fun.