History: Archery & Female Knights
After watching Robin Hood and Brave so recently, the girls were really interested in archery. They've been staging tournaments in the backyard using sticks for bows and arrows (since we're still working on acquiring an inexpensive kiddie bow, they've been cheerfully making due by throwing the smaller sticks at the target instead). We also pulled Daddy's wooden recurve bow and arrows out of the closet to examine and talked about how during Medieval times they used bows and arrows for tournaments, hunting, and fighting.

This week we also took the time to do a bit of online research and discovered that, while female knights were not exactly commonplace, they did exist! In fact, there were whole orders of them! We found a number of true stories online, and the girls were particularly interested in the Order of the Hatchet (composed of the women of Tortosa, Spain, who successfully defended their town against the Moors in the men's absence) and in the story of Agnes Hotot (who took her father's place in single combat when he fell too ill to compete himself--she won, of course). Monkey and Bug requested girl knight paper dolls (they remember the Ancient Roman paper dolls we made). Unfortunately, those don't exist and I'm not talented enough to draw them myself. However, we did find a decent knight paper doll who we altered to have long hair and simply declared him a girl for our purposes.

Lessons
With the excitement of Daddy coming home this week, we didn't do lessons everyday, but the ones we did went very well. Monkey completed a matching letter sounds puzzle (letter + picture + word) and officially added a new sound: o as in oak. We had a lot of fun with this one: Using the easel in the playroom, she and I made up a list of words that contain that sound and drew small pictures to go with them. For math this week, she and I (and Goose) played with patterns--taking turns getting each other to complete patterns with small colored blocks. Bug read through several lists of words and reviewed the sound she added at the end of last week: e as in egg. She continued working in her math book, completing some fill-in-the-number-sequence problems. Goose insisted on lessons too. At her request, we practiced recognizing her own name and sang several counting songs.

Into the Woods!
This Friday we attended a cook out for the officer's at Daddy's workplace that included a 4-mile hike. The girls had the option of staying at the house, but they were excited about the opportunity to explore new woods, and they completed the hike without complaint! (Well, Goose complained a little when I insisted on carrying her for awhile, so we wouldn't get left too far behind.) Each of the girls took a turn or two being carried by Daddy--mostly for the entertainment value of being up so high, though toward the end their little legs probably needed the rest too. Along the walk, in addition to all the plant life, we saw two different kinds of toads, two turtles, and a snake. Obviously, everyone had worked up a good appetite by the time we got to the potluck barbeque at the end. I was also pleased with the girls social skills--no one freaked out about all the unfamiliar faces, and Bug even carried on a conversation about the toads with an adult she didn't know previously.

Library Day: Summer Kick off!
Saturday was an unusual library day, since we didn't actually come home with any books. This weekend was the kick off for the summer reading program: Dig into Reading. There were outside activities--digging for treasure (gold spray painted rocks), planting seeds, creating chalk "cave paintings," along with cake to eat and a booth to sign up for the reading program itself. The girls have the whole summer to get me to read them 35 books (or 15 hours), but I'm guessing we'll reach that milestone in a matter of weeks. Though this isn't part of the official program I told Monkey and Bug we could put a star beside the title of every book they read themselves (or significantly help me to read) that way we can show the librarians what good readers they're getting to be. They were pretty excited about that prospect! We decided to wait until Monday to actually return and check out books--there were just too many people today.