Library Day
Story time is on hiatus again, but of course we're at the library anyway! This week was particularly fun because some of our friends decided to join us. We moms got to chat and the kids had a blast playing in the cushions, looking at books, and doing puzzles. We came home with these books this week:
I'm Invited to a Party! (an Elephant and Piggie book)
Home Sweet Home
Jabuti the Tortoise: A Trickster Tale from the Amazon
Kali's Song
The Seven Chinese Brothers (a Chinese folktale)

Ancient China
History lessons this week began with that last book mentioned above, and the girls really love this tale of seven brothers who rescue each other with super-human powers. The antagonist in this book happens to be Qin Shi Huang, the real first emperor of China, so that segued nicely into reading a brief biography of the man who united the Chinese states, while the girls colored paper dolls of girls from imperial China. Hearing four year olds' reactions to historical events is always fun: they were glad to hear that Qin Shi Huang managed to make the Chinese states stop fighting and work together, but absolutely horrified when we read that he also tried to burn all the books and scrolls.

I actually cook Chinese food pretty frequently, but this week I pointed out which meal's recipe was Chinese (beef and broccoli over white rice), and the next day Goose and Bug helped me turn the leftovers into fried rice for lunch. Later we actually read the sections in the book about food and took it into the kitchen, so they could smell some of the spices we read about. We also read about tea and made a small pot of green tea to share. They were big fans once I stirred in a little honey.

The entourage loved eating fried rice with chopsticks out of little fancy bowls.

We also read about traditional Chinese music and instruments, and I found a website that offered free streaming songs. We finished coloring and cutting out their paper dolls while we listened. The girls thought the instrumental pieces were really pretty, but they didn't like the singing much.

Karate
The girls continue to initiate lots of their own karate practices at home, and this week they enlisted me to help them work on their side kicks and punches. They particularly appreciate the clapper pad Brian got them, so they can hear when they get a really good strike. They've been working hard and finally mastered jumping jacks--very exciting, since that exercise has been a tough one since day one.

Lessons
This week Monkey has been practicing number recognition for 1-20 (out of order), and she's getting significantly better. Sample activities: she counts out 20 of something while I write the numerals on the white board, then she erasing them one at a time when I call them out in random order; I call out numbers in random order and she "writes" them on the floor using string or necklaces. Bug continues to prefer workbooks; she did over a dozen pages in her addition and math concepts books this week. Both girls also did sessions with Daddy reviewing the names and values of coins.

Both girls are reading at least a few sentences every day. Bug still works mostly out of her textbook, and Monkey's been getting me to write sentences on the white board for her. The girls are at about the same reading level now, so our theory about Monkey just suddenly "getting it" seems to have panned out.

At some point this week, I sat down with Goose with books about colors and shapes and confirmed that she now consistently knows all the basics (about half a dozen shapes and 8 or 9 colors). She can usually count up to 10 accurately, and she practices that pretty frequently all on her own.

Potty Training Update
After about a month and a half of potty training, we're throwing in the towel and going to back to pull ups all the time. Poor Goose went from stopping making progress to getting worse in the last week or so, so at the end of this week she and I had a conversation about how she seemed to be really struggling with this and maybe she wasn't quite ready yet. She readily agreed that pull ups sounded like a great idea. Now that we've actually had most of a day with no underwear, she's actually had to two completely successful incidents! I think maybe just the stress of all the accidents was getting to her.

Pool Party!
On Friday Daddy had the day off and we ditched our lessons in favor of attending the Command Summer Bash. The girls were really excited to get in the pool (a fun zero-entry one). They all practiced jumping in, and Monkey and Goose brought their goggles and practiced actually swimming and going under water. Goose got a kick out of having such a huge area of really shallow water to run around in. They also played in the bounce house (with a slide!). Even Goose jumped in after her sisters with no hesitation--that's a first! We enjoyed a cookout for lunch and got to hang out with some of Daddy's co-workers and their families.

Other Projects

We made fancy hats!

This looks like a random mess they made, I know. But it isn't!
This is a very carefully planned, complex piece of machinery.
I never figured out what it did exactly, but they informed me
that they were making a machine, which they designed on
on the fridge using different shaped magnets to represent
each piece. Then they built it on the playroom floor,
occasionally referring back to their "blueprint" on the fridge.