Library Day
This week's storytime was a farm theme--lots of fun books and a cow! As in, a real one in the field beside the library that the kids got to take turns petting. Daisy (the cow) belongs to two storytime regulars--5 and 7 year old sisters, who were very excited to introduce us to their cow and answer any questions.
We also turned in the girls reading programs this week (they each have a list of 35 books we read). Bug was particularly excited because she had six books on her list with stars by them that meant she read them all by herself! They each got a prize bag with a lollipop and a bunch of coupons (We used the one for free pizza buffet on Tuesday), and they each got to pick out a new book from a special shelf that they get to keep. We came home with these books:
Ladybug Girl at the Beach
Animals/Animales (a bilingual Eric Carle book)
Adios Oscar! (the previous three books were the ones the girls picked as their prizes)
Best Bear
Hip & Hop Don't Stop
One Ted Fell out of Bed
Fire Fighter Ted
Berlioz the Bear
The Little Rabbit
Shoe Baby

Doctors
I had two doctor appointments on Wednesday, and the girls were supposed to go to a neighbor's for a playdate. Unfortunately, their friend got strep throat at the last minute, and the girls ended up coming to the doctors with me. Not ideal of course, but they were beautifully behaved and quite brave about asking questions that the doctors were happy to answer.

Lessons
We picked lessons back up this week, and the girls jumped into them with no problems. Monkey reviewed a few letters and we formally introduced u (as in use), st, and qu. We also spent some time reading books through repetition. Monkey's lessons kept getting interrupted by potty training incidents, but we did manage to get in some simple addition problems. She also listened in on Bug's math lessons.

Bug was really excited about starting up math again this week. We practiced counting by 10s to 100 and by 1s up to 60, did simple addition problems (sums up to 10, frequently using a number line), and introduced the concept of subtraction (a combination of equations and manipulatives). For reading, she read through a couple lists of words and made it through one story in her textbook. She also read through 4 or 5 Bob books all by herself.

Bits of Monkey and Bug's math lessons this week

Goose has been very interested in the alphabet, and she's been getting me to write letters and draw appropriate pictures for them on the white board. Bug has been handling math lessons for Goose this week. She's been writing numbers with the right number of dots beside them and talking Goose through them.

Potty Training
Taking a longer but more laid back approach seems to be what will work for Goose. If we're home she wears underwear, and I give her occasional reminders to run to the potty if her bladder's full. She's still sorting out what that feels like, but at the end of the week she did actually tell me she had peepee in her bladder and get to the potty before she had an accident! (She's also had several Mommy-initiated accident-free successes.) Since I was solo parenting for most of this week (Daddy's chaperoning a youth retreat) I enlisted Monkey and Bug to help. I stole a page out of Grandma's book, and told them they would each get an M&M if they were the ones to rush Goose to the potty when she actually made it. So far that's happened twice, and they were really excited about it!

Karate Class
With Daddy out of town, I took Monkey and Bug to karate class this week. They were thrilled to show off their skills, and Goose loved getting to watch them too. I had fun seeing my little introverts be so appropriately loud and enthusiastic outside of our family. This week they learned to do side kicks and crescent kicks. Perhaps the highlight of lessons this week was earning a green stripe on their belts! The school's Life Lesson theme this month was teamwork, and the girls had to fill out (well, dictate answers to) a worksheet about what achievements might require teamwork, what they could contribute, and how the idea of teamwork applies in their family.

Water Play!
After a failed attempt to swim in the neighborhood pool (the access card reader isn't working!), we decided to go home and pull out our own pool. The girls played for a couple of hours and practiced skills like starfish floats and putting their faces in the water.