California Sunshine!
The sunshine was back this week, and we really took advantage of it! We actually got out to the beach twice this week (perks of discovering beach 

I also helped the girls master the art of making towers with
wet sand and empty cups. Bug was extremely proud of her
little building with a feather in the top for a flag.

access with free parking only a 5-minute drive away). The girls had a blast of course, but here's the educational side of things: examining kelp in various stages of drying out, getting up close and personal with mole crab skeletons, identifying various coastal birds and trying to guess which lone feathers belong to which kind, noting the different properties of wet versus dry sand, and checking out the effect tumbling around in the surf has on sticks, stones, and glass. (This, dear readers, is why I've yet to bother spending money on a science curriculum.) The real fun for me was watching how characteristically different the girls played when given complete freedom: Goose immediately and industriously buried herself up to her waist in sand (then leapt out of it before I could snap a photo), Monkey found a piece of driftwood and experimented with creating large designs in the sand, and Bug planned and executed a major project--recruiting and instructing her sisters in digging a boat-shaped hole big enough for all of them to sit in at once.





A sampling of Monkey's lessons outside

At some point I looked up
from my work in the kitchen
to see Monkey on the porch
rail contemplating how to
get up on the roof. She
decided their wasn't a feasible
route and clambered down
eventually.

We enjoyed the fresh air by doing some of our lessons
outside too--sitting on the bench on the front porch for reading lessons and covering the front sidewalk with math and writing lessons. Whichever girls weren't actively doing lessons were riding their scooters around. Eventually lessons ended and they migrated to backyard to enjoy several more hours of daylight.

The girls and I also finally found a homeschool playgroup! It turns out our pastor's family is part of a group that meets at a local playground, and his wife Miss K invited us to join them this week. The girls were really excited about getting to play with their friend K3 (K2 and K1, her big sisters, were involved in an organized gym class at the time). They decided the biggest climbing structure was a volcano, and they made it their mission to "rescue all the people" (just pretend people, they clarified for me) by escorting them all down the "emergency slides."

Library Day
The storytime theme was sounds this week, and the librarian had a really fun selection of books picked out. Of course, she also had a fun selection of participation-requested songs and games, which my girls chose not to do. I've been trying to at least get Goose--usually my extrovert--to jump in, but no luck yet. We found lots of good books to take home though!
The Butterflies' Promise
Dewey: There's a Cat in the Library
Abuelos
Moo in the Morning
Mrs. Spitzer's Garden
Alphabet Explosion! Search and Find
Rhinos who Rescue
Uno, Dos, Tres = One, Two, Three
Joshua James Likes Trucks
Loving

The Three Rs
This week Goose learned the letter E and continued practicing counting. Bug even took it on her own initiative to help Goose practice writing letters with very nice results. Monkey and Bug also made up some games to help her review colors.

Monkey continued reading Ten Apples up on Top for reading, and now that she's got her numbers down (at least through 20), we went back and practiced addition again. She was pretty excited about how much easier those problems are now! She's also successfully using the number line to help her solve problems. She and Bug continued copying Bible verses from their envelopes of hearts for writing.

A sample of their writing lessons this week (Bug's on the left; Monkey's on the right)
I feel I should note here that Monkey's work wasn't sloppily executed. She likes
experimenting with letter forms (making them wobbly, tall, etc.) and creatively arranging
the lines of text. At some point we'll have to work on useful legibility, but not yet.

Bug finally finished the Little Bear collection of stories just in time to return it to the library, and she read the first 20 pages of Are You My Mother? She is finally piecing together how much all the hard work is paying off when she suddenly realized how much she was reading "the fast way" now! For math this week, she really solidified her addition skills--adding multi-digit numbers and adding three numbers together. She also struggled through the process of learning to work on her own--actually completing nine problems of increasing difficulty then having me check her work rather than having me at her elbow for the whole process. By the end of the week, she was actually excited about the challenge and wanted to try figuring out on her own the ones she got wrong before I walked her through them.

Little Ninjas
Monkey and Bug definitely consider themselves ninjas-in-training, and they're working hard for their jujitsu class. Daddy helped them come up with a plan to work on their front and back rolls--the skill they're most struggling with right now. They've actually remembered on their own to do 10 front rolls and 10 back rolls every day. They take turns, watching each other work through them and offering tips. Bug even came up with the idea to keep track of how many they do with the abacus, so they don't have to try remembering what number they're on.

History
We're still studying the pioneers. We looked through the Discovery Kids magazine some more and spent lots of time looking through the spreads about what they did for fun--especially when lots of families could get together. In our Little House on the Prairie readings, we learned about digging wells and got to see the Ingalls' reaction to their first (fortunately, peaceful) encounter with Native Americans (who we studied not too long ago). While the Ingalls are settling into their new home, my girls are still taken with the idea of the covered wagons, which keep appearing in their pretend play.