Outside
We had some truly gorgeous days this week, so we headed outside to enjoy them! It was even warm enough for some water play inspired by the fact that we had to try on bathing suits (Last year's still fit the big girls, and Goose has several hand-me-downs to choose from!). I wasn't willing to go through the hassle of getting out the big pool this time around, but they love the hose and the sprinkler this year!

One day we also found a HUGE toad sitting beside the house. The girls were intrigued but kind enough to give him his space. By the next day he had apparently found a new, less social location.

The girls also thoroughly enjoyed our steep, still-unlandscaped hill at the back of our yard. In fact, they turned one patch of particularly long grass into a preschooler-sized nest by flattening out the grass and adding extra pine-straw for padding.

Books This Week
The theme for storytime at the library this week was spring, and the girls made butterflies out of paper hearts, popsicle sticks, and stickers. We came home with these books:

• Strega Nona's Gift
• Curious George Counts to 100
• Bob's Best Ever Friend 
• Rooster's Off to See the World
• Doctor Ted
• Food for Thought (all the preschool basics--shapes, colors, numbers, letters, and opposites--illustrated with hilariously sculpted vegetables)

I forgot to mention this last week, but before Daddy left he recorded himself reading the Illustrated Classics edition of Howard Pyle's King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. We've been listening to a chapter every night, and the girls love it. The storylines and vocabulary are pretty advanced, so we pause it frequently to talk about what's going on, and we always discuss what happened yesterday before we get started. They love the characters though--kings, villains, princesses, and wizards . . .

Friday was a very Seussical day. We read a number of books from our Dr. Seuss collection, and the girls watched a live action Cat in the Hat (not the full-length movie; a 30 minute British theater version that's wonderful and true to the book) and cartoon versions of Green Eggs and Ham and The Sneetches.

I checked out The Book of Virtues from our church library, intending peruse it myself and decide if it should be a purchase for our home library. For reasons unknown to me, Bug desperately wanted me to read it to her and her sisters (really, it's an 820-page book with small print and no pictures! At least I know I've succeeded in instilling a love of books!). She made the right call though. They sat for far longer than I expected listening to me read, they were intrigued enough by a few of the poems and stories to talk about them later, and the selection we read from "Self-Discipline" has already had an impact on their behavior--they're consistently closing the back door behind them now and saying "please" has become something of a game. Needless to say, this book is now on my must-own list (I see a trip to the used bookstore in my future!).

It's fun to see how the girls pull quotes from their favorite books into everyday things. We made angel hair pasta with alfredo sauce one evening, and as we were getting started, the girls recited Strega Nona's song to see if my Dutch oven could possibly be a magic pasta pot like hers. They even remembered to blow three kisses in for the "ingrediente segreto." Sadly, we still had to cook our noodles the normal way, but they thought the exercise was hilarious. The really wonderful literature in life moments have been whenever anyone tries to turn their nose up at a dish at dinnertime. Thanks to Green Eggs and Ham, the culprit is instantly accosted with "Try it! Try it and you may!" along with threats of "Do I have to chase you around like Sam-I-am?"

Reading
Of course, in addition to all these books, Monkey and Bug are continuing their reading lessons. Monkey added the sound sh, and Bug added o as in go along with the question mark. The paragraphs Bug is required to read are getting longer and the type is getting smaller. She balked when she first noticed the change this week, but her enthusiasm when she conquered each one was so much fun to watch. Monkey's sounding out skills seemed to take a leap this week! She's been wanting to do my pre-made sentence and picture sheets this week, and she sounded out two full sentences by the end of the week! At her request I also taught her to read the Star Wars easy reader book this week. She can sight read all the major characters names and some other key terms like "father."

At some point in the week, Monkey and Bug vehemently disagreed about who got to use the writing pad. I'm all for encouraging them to write, so I solved the problem by purchasing them each a composition book that has early writer lines and space for a drawing on each page. They were thrilled! In fact, Bug has informed me that she is writing a chapter book for kids, so it's going to take a while until it's done. Not to be left out, Goose has a notebook of her own too, in which she practices writing "letters" with a great sense of pride.

History
We started off the week by revisiting the story of the Apostle Paul. Only this time instead of talking about his travels and Roman transportation, we talked about the epistles and Roman writing tools. After reading the introduction to the epistles in their Bible, we read the DK section about Roman writing, looked up photos online of reproductions of scrolls and wax writing tablets, then made our own scrolls complete with a verse from the Letter to the Romans for the girls to trace. They thought it was so cool to have a real scroll with a real sentence that Paul wrote to the Roman Christians.

Most of the rest of the week was involved with exploring the Colosseum and Roman games. When exploring topics about Ancient Rome online or in books, images of the Colosseum are everywhere, and the girls realized that something important must happen inside that huge, neat looking building. So, to satisfy their curiosity, we read all the appropriate sections in the DK book, watched a History Channel clip about the architecture of the building itself, watched clips from Spartacus about the gladiator school and a gladiator fight scene (classic movies were definitely a good way to get a gore-free look at the games), watched the chariot race scene from Ben Hur (the girls got really into the chariot race, and it resulted in some good discussion about sportsmanship), and looked up information online about the water battles staged in the Colosseum (Monkey remembered water battles being mentioned somewhere and wanted to know how exactly they got all that water into the arena).

We also finally got around to reading the Ancient Romans book we checked out of the library last week. It covers many of the same topics as the DK book, but instead of containing photos of ruins and artifacts, it's illustrated with detailed artists' renderings of what things would have really looked back then. Monkey in particular was fascinated.

Math
We're still working on all the same concepts: counting to 100 by rote memory, understanding the teens, and simple addition. We've read the Curious George book several times already, and Bug will spontaneously decide to count to 100 almost every day. Monkey verified with me at some point this week that 100 meant one hundred. She informed me that, while she knows that number, she can't count that high yet, but she will when she gets a little bigger. It's encouraging to know that she's looking forward to that increase in her knowledge even if she isn't ready to be there yet. We worked on the teens and twenties with drinking straws this week: I bundled two sets of 10 straws and got out 10 loose straws, then had the girls help me build whatever number I called out. (I wrote out a number line for reference, which definitely helped.) At the end of the week, I decided to experiment and wrote up a couple of flash cards with addition problems with sums of 6 or fewer. I've never had them do additional without some kind of manipulative, so I wasn't sure how they'd handle this. Bug was thrilled to discover she could come up with answers to almost every question without counting it out. Monkey isn't ready for numerals only problems, but I was having Bug check her own answers with the abacus, so it wasn't a big deal for Monkey to count hers out from the beginning.

You've Got Mail!
In a homeschooling book or blog somewhere along the way, I read about a mom who said her kids had learned a lot informally by getting them their own magazine subscriptions on different topics of interest. I tucked that away as a good idea "for later." Then one day this week I checked the mailbox and only the kids of the household had received any mail! It struck me that "later" has arrived already. So for the record, here are the subscriptions the entourage currently receives (despite the fact that they're barely reading):

• Clubhouse Jr. (a great publication of Focus on the Family that I grew up with)
• National Geographic: Little Kids (tons of fun pictures, facts, and activities all about animals)
• Puzzle Buzz (a Highlight's produced magazine of puzzles, mazes, quizzes, etc.)
• Dolly Parton's Imagination Library (not a magazine, but a free book subscription; they each get one book per month until they turn 5. Parents and grandparents of babies and preschoolers, if you don't know about this, check out ImaginationLibrary.com and see if it covers your location.)

Bug, the Photographer
Bug borrowed my camera one afternoon to practice her photography skills. She frequently picked a subject and took multiple pictures to get the angle and the clarity right. Her are a few of her favorites (she took about  100--thank goodness for digital cameras!).