Business as Usual
While we did our official beginning-of-the-year breakfast several weeks ago, this is the first week that we actually returned to the usual fall routine. Karate is still going, and mid-week church activities and our weekly homeschool group have started back up. We even managed to consistently do our formal lessons first thing every morning!

I've even been a bit more organized for Goose now. I printed up ABC and number coloring sheets for her to work on while her sisters are busy with their work, and I've made a point to do more Goose-specific read-alouds in the morning (the kind of books the big girls had read to them repeatedly when they were 2, but that tend to get passed over now that they're 5). Goose knows the ABC song, so now we're trying to work on more letter recognition, and Bug has been really on top of teaching Goose her numbers (she can count objects accurately up to at least 6).

Goose and Monkey also worked on their names--Monkey in actually writing hers using a worksheet I made that removes one additional letter from her name each line until she's written out the whole thing; Goose colored in/traced her name on an outline version. Bug's real name is actually really short too, so she's mastered it already and she did her own thing while I worked with Monkey.

Monkey and Bug continue their reading lessons. They know all the basic phonetic sounds now, so they're just plugging away at actually sounding out words and picking up on common sight words. In fact, just to satisfy my curiosity I printed up a checklist for each of them with the twenty most common words. Bug knew 17 of them--many of by sight and some by sounding them out. Monkey knew or sounded out 5, but then decided to dig her heels in and refuse to sound out any more (we had a small bug perched nearby issuing less than encouraging comments about ones Monkey had to sound out that she just knew. Serious discussions were had with both of them). I've managed to get Monkey back to reading from the textbook or at least from Bob books (a set of easy readers that correspond pretty nicely to our curriculum), so her lessons will be a little more systematic now.

They were really into math this week! In addition to spontaneously breaking out into sums (confirming aloud at random sums up to 10), they each did at least three pages a day from their math workbooks (they each have ones for numbers, math concepts, addition, and subtraction--at this point I let them choose which they work from). They've both been working a lot on actually writing numerals this week. Monkey also spent time on measuring activities and shapes pages (not just identifying standard shapes, but doing activities like figuring out which shapes were put together to create 3-D shapes, i.e., two circles and a rectangle make a cylinder). Bug chose to spend time working on subtraction problems and counting money.

Finally their favorite subject--history! Our studies of Native Americans continues. We read through the book about Pocahontas several times, and we even managed to find some coloring sheets that were more historically accurate than the plethora of Disney ones out there. The girls were particularly excited about finding one that pictured her as a child and one with a grown-up Pocahontas with John Rolfe and their son Thomas. We spent lots of time perusing the DK book, of course (it's organized by geographic region instead of by topic, which is what the girls would prefer since they tend to ask about subjects not places). This week we looked at different Native American masks--and made our own obviously. Then we studied all the different styles of clothing and the pictures and patterns they decorated them with. For this subject, we went with the classic paper bag vests and construction paper & feather headdresses. For the bases of the headdresses, the girls suggested we use the crowns they made at church earlier in the week. It all worked beautifully! (Unfortunately, the pictures did not turn out--they won't open on my computer. Hopefully, I can get this sorted out for next week's post.)

Library Day
There's no storytime yet (it starts up next week), but these girls were desperate to get more library books since we never made it to the library last week after returning from our trip. I got in touch with a friend and we met up for a playdate at the library Tuesday. The kids had fun playing and looking at books, and Miss M and I got to chitchat. Of course, we came home with lots of books:
Time to Sleep, Sheep the Sheep!
There Is a Bird on My Head!
Leonardo the Terrible Monster
Turk and Runt
The Tiny Tortilla
Night Rabbits
Pocahontas
How Thunder and Lightning Came to Be (a Native American folktale)

Dragon Club Members!
Monkey and Bug were super excited about getting back to their karate classes this week! They were invited  join Dragon Club, an extra 15 minutes of class for a select group of students to learn weapons (nunchucks and bow staff) and "kicks & tricks" (a bit more advanced combinations plus a little gymnastics). They actually picked up on the nunchuck routines faster than we anticipated they would.

Church: Study & Service
All the regular activities have started up again at church. On Wednesday, the girls and I enjoyed a church night supper with a couple of other members, then Monkey and Bug went cheerfully off for the pre-k and kindergarten Bible study (where they studied the story of King David and made those crowns). Poor Goose was the only one in the nursery. There wasn't even a nursery worker at first, but after waiting awhile I dropped her off in the class with her sisters, so I could get to my own class. The nursery worker did eventually appear, but she decided to keep Goose in the pre-k class anyway (curious to see what happens next week).

On Friday I took the entourage to assist a couple of other moms and I with setting up the fellowship hall for a potluck luncheon happening on Sunday. They were thrilled to have a real job to do at church. Bug learned how to properly set a table and took over the task of placing the forks and spoons. Monkey and Goose handled the centerpieces--for a football-themed event this involved setting out megaphones, mini-footballs, and confetti on every table (I was impressed with how little confetti ended up on the floor actually). All three of them helped us set out plates, and we grown ups were impressed how quickly we got the job done!