Little Swimmers
Monkey and Bug finished up swimming lessons this week and continued to do a great job. The swimming milestone they accomplished this week was willingly going completely underwater and coming back up smiling! They're still working on doggy paddling while wearing a floaty belt and floating on their backs without assistance--Bug actually pulled this off the last day of lessons! My plan is to get us all in the pool pretty frequently this summer, so they can continue making progress, then do another formal session of swimming lessons toward the end of the season. The personal milestone they accomplished was handling the final day's "talent show" with grace.

Shots from the talent show (Monkey's on the left; Bug's on the right)

Goose has definitely been paying attention during the big girls classes. She's been lying on the floor of the living room practicing kicking and pulling her arms through the freestyle stroke.

Karate Kids
At least that's what Monkey and Bug have been calling themselves lately. They now LOVE karate lessons, and they've been so excited when "the plan for the day" includes going to karate school! The teachers have introduced new things each lesson, and Daddy's been practicing with them in between. They've been practicing punching and kicking sequences, a few jujitsu moves (the martial arts style of the week, which the girls really love), jumping jacks and push ups (Daddy is very proud to have the only preschoolers who can actually do correct push ups), the formalities of bowing in and out, and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Besides the class and karate skills, the girls are improving their personal skills too! All the kids had to rush back to their parents for their gloves at one point, and Bug didn't hesitate to let a "friendly stranger" (a classmate's dad) help her get her gloves on while Daddy helped Monkey. They've also brought two of their class rules back home with them: The One Rule (when a teacher/parent gives an instruction, you follow it the first time they say it) and The Zero Rule (when you know you're supposed to do something, you do it without being told). This Mommy and Daddy are big fans of these "new" rules and the girls excitement about the times they've remembered the Zero Rule about things like picking up their toys or clearing their dishes after meals.

Goose has been participating in the practice times at home and is already looking forward to "going to karate school when I get big."

The Weaver's Guild
With swimming lessons taking up so much time and energy this week, we just did one history lesson, but the project that we did with it is still keeping them busy. We read the section of the Eyewitness book about the medieval trade guilds and the different occupations that formed guilds. One of the relatively common occupations for women was weaving (although they technically couldn't join a guild), and this was an easy one for the girls to learn. We made a loom out of a shoebox lid and cut a shuttle out of cardboard. They picked out a rainbow yarn and decided to make a rug or a blanket for their dolls. It isn't finished yet, but it's coming along nicely.

Lessons
For her reading lessons, Monkey mostly wanted to do review sessions for particularly letter sounds (which is fine since she's actually learned the whole alphabet by now). We also covered the er as in mother and oo as too sounds this week. This also introduced the concept that the same sound can be made with multiple letter combinations (er/ir, oo/ue/ew). Monkey actually did several math worksheets this week that focused on matching numerals to the appropriate number of objects. We did a brief lesson about money (matching names and values to coins). She also requested that we all play Candy Land for one of her lessons. While this doesn't involve any numbers, it was good practice in following a sequence and rules of the game and introduced the concept of good sportsmanship (only one person can win, but everyone still has fun, and you need to at least pretend to be happy for the winner).

Bug added the ing letter combination to her lessons this week and continued to practice some sight words (said, girl, to, do). She read through several lists of words, a story, and even read random words found on things around the house. She's been excited to discover she can really read more than what's in her textbook.  She's also been trying to understand the concept of reading silently since she apparently realized recently that that's what I must be doing with my own magazines and books. She's still cheerfully working away at her math book! She did pages about shapes and patterns, matching numerals to objects, the concept of price tags, and introduced how to tell time.

Goose still loves having her own lessons that involve reviewing letters, shapes, and counting. She also participated in the round of Candy Land, which was a good opportunity to practice colors and following directions.

Photography
Monkey and Bug commandeered my camera at some point this week. Here's a sampling of their work: