"First Day of School"
As year-round learners who are constantly soaking up information and who informed me that I needed to teach them to read when they turned 4 years old, declaring a first day of school just because "they're old enough" seemed pointless--especially since over the past year since that declaration we've slowly added a number of other academic subjects.  However, I stole a great idea from a fellow homeschooling mom's blog for turning everyone else's first day into a fun milestone for us: When the public school kids dragged their feet to the school bus on their first day of school this Tuesday, we loaded up into the car and headed to IHOP for a scrumptious breakfast and discussion of our own educational efforts.

My little foodies: Monkey and Bug decided to ditch the kids menu in favor
of splitting a Belgian waffle topped with cherries and vanilla cream. Goose
went for the chocolate funny face pancake that her sisters (quite cheerfully)
helped her eat.

We talked about all the things they're learning at home (reading, math, history, etc.) and the fun activities we have coming up (home school group, Wednesday nights at church, etc.). We talked about things they're going to be doing in the future (handwriting, studying locations along our cross-country trip in February) and what some of their favorite things are that we should do more of (history projects, visits to the zoo). We also talked about kindergarten--that kids their age would be going to school now and that if anyone asked, yes, Monkey and Bug could say they did kindergarten at home. At some point later in the week Bug gleefully announced that "We don't have to go to school! We learn ALL the time!" Home schooling win!

History
Monday turned out to be a sick day--only Monkey, fortunately, and she wasn't terribly sick, but it was just easier to declare it a general sick day and make lessons optional for everyone. They really wanted to do history though, so I pulled out a more involved lesson that actually turned into two back-to-back topics. We started out studying the Chinese invention of printing. We read about it in our Eyewitness book, then created our own "woodblock" print of their names using a sheet of Styrofoam and tempera paints.

From there of course they wanted to just paint, and they asked about what ancient Chinese paintings looked like. We watched a slideshow of traditional Chinese paintings (thank you, Google Images) and got out their brushes and paint palettes. Bug even picked a favorite painting of flowers that she wanted to emulate.

Later in the week we learned about Chinese medicine. I think they were a little weirded out by the idea of acupuncture, although they thought the maps of acupuncture points were pretty cool. The idea of herbal medicine definitely had more appeal, and at bath time they pretended to make an herbal soup, so they would stay healthy (fortunately, they knew better than to actually drink the bathwater).

Lessons
They didn't actually do much in their workbooks this week, but we did a lot of spontaneous math problems. Monkey and Bug would just start asking me to verify simple addition problems with sums less than 10. Monkey and I also spent some time doing math with their abacus, and Bug created a few of her own dot-to-dot activities (draw dots, connect and count them, figure out what the picture looks like afterwards). Bug also decided to intentionally do math during our grocery shopping trip, and she helped me figure out the cost of all the produce.

For reading Bug has continued reading from her textbook, and she reads more and more "the fast way." Monkey asked me to write a few sentences for her to read, but mostly she likes to pick a book for us to read together. I get her to sound out a word or two on each page, and we do repetition reading for the rest. Monkey has also been making letters out of found objects a lot--necklaces, blocks, string, etc. She has yet to spell any real words this way, but she has fun sounding out what she does put together.

Home School Group Kick-off Party
Our home school group is starting up again! This year we had a kick off party at Monkey Joe's--a warehouse-sized place with huge bouncy house things, included a massive bouncy pirate ship. We got there just as it opened for us, so the girls could explore the place before it turned into complete chaos. The timing turned out to be perfect: They played on the smaller things for about 40 minutes until the actual meeting started, at which point they were really ready for a rest. They were perfectly content to just sit quietly for the 20 minute meeting. Afterwards we ate the lunch we brought, and they were brave enough to experience the larger bouncy things. While the girls were too busy having fun/being overwhelmed to make friends with the other kids, I got to chat with friends from last year and meet a few new people with kids the same age.

Karate
Because the girls will have to miss several classes over the next couple of weeks, they went to an extra class this week in order to have enough lessons to qualify for yellow belt testing next month. No complaints from them though--they still initiate their own practices almost every day at home, and Goose has been insisting on going with them to watch their class (she practices with them at home). This week they even spread out a flat sheet on the living room floor, so they have a "mat" to bow on and off. They've particularly been practicing some of their new skills: hook punches, upper cuts, and side kicks.