Q & A
My days consist of an endless stream of questions, and it really struck me this week how far Monkey and Bug have come from the simple, "Why?" Here's a sampling of the questions the entourage has asked me (and I have attempted to accurately answer) this week:

• How does my body move?
• Who invented the toilet?
• Can anything really scrape the sky?
• How do birds land on cacti?
• What's the quadratic formula?
• Stars make an explosion or storm when they die, right?
• Do blue and orange make purple?
• Why do we have to get shots?

Library Day
Thanks to a well-child doctor appointment for Monkey and Bug (a whole learning experience in itself), we missed the actual storytime this week. Fortunately, we still got there in time to visit with some of our favorite friends, and of course, we came home with a ton of books:
Where is Coco Going?
Barn Cat
Silent Lotus
Are You Ready to Play Outside?
The Adventure of Louey and Frank
Brave Wolf and the Thunderbird
Pocahontas
Jackson Pollock
Claude Monet
The Christmas Star
Black Cat

Choosing Careers
I imagine when you ask most 5 year olds what they want to be when they grow up, you get answers like cowboy, princess, or firefighter, and this provides fodder for cute dress up and pretend play. Bug and Monkey seem to have been cut from different cloth: This week they decided they want to be an architect (Bug) and an artist (Monkey), and they are now seriously pursuing these careers (I imagine I will help them seriously pursue hundreds of careers before they actually find a real one).

Bug has been intensely building for weeks now, creating miniature versions of the Great China Wall, a variety of skyscrapers (with wider bases, so they wouldn't tip over), and--her most involved project--a Lego house complete with a floor, four walls, two windows, a door, and furniture (she noted that the roof had to be imaginary, so she could play with it). She even figured out that if she made the walls out of single-wide bricks instead of double-wide bricks there would be more room inside, that she needed to overlap the bricks at the corners so they wouldn't be wobbly, and that she needed to add stools under the windows after realizing she'd installed them too high for the Lego figures to see out of. After completing the house, she informed me that she wanted to build real buildings when she grew up; she wanted to be . . . "What was Uncle K?" "An architect?" "Yes! I'm going to be an architect!" I told her about the magazines with floor plans for houses in them, and her eyes just lit up! We did a bookstore trip for that and several other things, and she's spent a long time poring over the drawings in the magazine and in a book about skyscrapers we happened upon.

After Bug kept talking about her career choice, Monkey figured out what she wanted to be: An artist! "Because I like to draw and paint, and I can make pretty pictures or scary pictures! I'll practice a lot more now!" Of course, being a child of her parents, she also requested books that would help her learn to draw and paint. Fortunately, I still had a book about drawing techniques left from my college studies of graphic design, which she's very excited about. I also suggested she study famous artwork, and both she and Bug have been avidly looking through my books about art history and famous paintings. She wanted to get a book about a famous artist from the library this week, so I pulled out the first four artist biographies I came across and told her to pick one. She glanced at the covers and grabbed for Jackson Pollock with no hesitation! Anyone's who's seen Monkey's artwork will understand why he held such attraction for her.

I found the girls upstairs drawing and made my usual request: Tell me about
your picture. Bug's on the left is inspired by our history lessons and her explanation
is detailed and factual: "It's two Indians on horses hunting buffalo, and a teepee with
a fire inside, and two flowers and an Indian outside." Monkey's on the right gets
breathless storytelling: "It's at a fancy party--all the colored pieces are guests--
and the bad guys come--that's all the brown spots--then the Ninja Turtles come--
that's the green lines zooming around--don't worry, Mommy, nobody gets killed."

She loved going through the book and speculating about what emotions he was feeling while painting different works. Monkey was particularly excited about his energetic and experimental painting method, so we decided to do a "Paint like Pollock" project. We headed outside with a long sheet of paper, a variety of paint colors, and anything we could think of to paint with: feathers, cotton balls, pipe cleaners, foamy shapes, Popsicle sticks, and straws. All three girls got involved and had a blast!

Fancy History
Early this week Monkey and Bug woke up with a craving for making beaded necklaces, so being a good homeschooling mom I pulled out the beads and string . . . and the history book about Native Americans. While they worked on their creations (even Goose managed to string a few beads), we looked at all the different colors, shapes, and uses for beads from decorating clothes and baby carriers to being exchanged as currency.

Later this week, we decided to do some YouTube searching and found lots of good videos of Native American dances. They had fun admiring all the elaborate costumes, and they particularly liked the shawl dances and hoop dances. Of course, we got a couple of relevant books from the library this week too: a folktale that introduced them to Thunderbirds and another retelling of the Pocahontas story.

From Blood Cells to Outer Space
Inspired by the Magic School Bus, we continued talking about the solar system and we jumped in depth into some anatomy and physiology topics. The sporadically ask me to review the names of all the planets and key characteristics (Jupiter has the big red storm, Saturn has rings, etc.). They occasionally decided to go spinning around the living room pretending to be planets in orbit. They also asked if we could specifically review the earth's and moon's orbits by acting them out with balls and a flashlight.

Last week they had watched an episode in which Ms. Frizzle and her class took a tour through a sick classmate's body to explore the immune system. This inspired a number of questions that weren't addressed in their little kid-level body books. So, at the bookstore we found a great grown-up anatomy book with lots of colorful pictures and diagrams. This week we studied the immune system (they wanted to know all about antibodies, helper t-cells, etc.), the nervous system (different kinds of nerve endings, how impulses get to the brain, cross synapses, etc.), and teeth (baby teeth vs. permanent teeth and the why and how they switch). Monkey in particular has spent a lot of time just flipping through the pages and studying the diagrams.

Lessons
Of course, we did all the usual lessons too. Bug's getting even better at sounding out the words in her head, and her reading comprehension is really improving. Monkey even did double lessons a couple days this week, which meant she read a list of sounds, a list of words, and a brief story all in one day. She's also getting better at being able to tell when she needs a "brain break" before finishing the lesson--this means more gets done with less agonizing!

For math this week, we mostly worked with the addition flash cards I made--not using them like traditional flashcards, but I hand them each a small stack to work through however they wish. For the small sums, they can usually just tell me the answer, and they use a variety of manipulatives to work through the others. Bug really likes using the abacus, and Monkey uses whatever's close at hand--bits of felt from the felt board, screws from the play workbench, etc. Daddy also did some extra math, discussing positive and negative numbers and explaining the quadratic equation at their request (that came up because of a kid's CD, Brain Beats that includes a song about it). Funny note, when they asked about it in the car, I had to confess that I didn't actually remember it despite the fact that I studied when I was a big kid. I admitted that once we got past arithmetic Daddy (who taught high school math) would take over teaching math. Bug reassured me that once Daddy taught it to her, she would teach it to me and maybe I'd remember it this time.

One day this week, the girls decided to play restaurant, and they had quite the set up complete with a couple of little tables and a menu board that they wrote and illustrated themselves. In the midst of that I reviewed money values with them, so they could actually figure out how many coins to hand over based on the prices they wrote on the board. Lessons in handwriting and math--done!

Saturday's Outing
We got the girls out of bed early this Saturday to join a bunch of Daddy's coworkers for a busy and fun Saturday morning. Monkey and Bug went with Daddy to participate in a highway clean up, while Goose and I stayed behind to clean up the playground (cleaning the playground wasn't part of the official plan, but it helped Goose feel better about not participating with her sisters). All three girls were really excited about doing their part to keep God's world clean. Once the clean up was done we stuck around for the dedication of two memorials and a really tasty barbecue lunch. The girls made a couple of new friends, and I ended up following all five kids around while they explored the edge of the lake: watching boats, identifying geese and hawks, chasing butterflies, determining whether the thing floating in the water was a baby crocodile or a stick, and examining the sap dripping from a tree that had some of the bark ripped off. I did manage to keep them all from actually getting fully into the lake, but I think they all ended up muddy--just one of the hazards of being inquisitive little kids!