Day Trip!
We kicked off the week last weekend by taking a day trip to a nearby city to enjoy some things our wonderful little town doesn't have. First we hit up a couple of bookstores. We made a number of purchases at a decent sized used bookstore (how can we resist?!), then browsed Barnes & Noble just for fun. We ate at a Chick-fil-a (highly popular), then enjoyed a first for all of us: a semi-pro ultimate frisbee game! (Daddy has played on ultimate teams and even coached a high school team for awhile.) So much fun! It was a really close game, but the home team won. We explained the sport to the girls, and they loved cheering--especially Goose--regardless of whether they knew what was going on. They proved pretty entertaining for some of the other spectators as well.

Women of Faith
With all the excitement of Nana visiting, I completely forgot to write about the Bible study the girls and I started a couple of weeks ago (we still have a daily Bible time even if we ditch formal lessons). A while back Bug commented with disappointment that there weren't very many girls in the Bible. I had to agree that there were more male major players than female, but I pointed out that there were actually a lot of girls in the real Bible who simply weren't featured in the Bible storybooks we've been using. We decided that for the big girls at least it was time to set aside the kiddie version of the Bible and dig into the real deal. (We still read stories from the preschool Bible storybook too, because the fun pictures are more engaging for Goose.) I finally found the time to do a little research and bookmark a bunch of "girl stories" from the Old Testament to get us started. So far we've read about:

• Eve
• Rebekah
• Shiphrah & Puah
• Jochobed & Miriam
• Rahab
• Deborah
• Jael
• Ruth
• Hannah
• Abigail
• Queen of Sheba
• Widow of Zarephath

The girls have really enjoyed it, and it's made them pay attention to other stories and see how girls of faith played a part even when they weren't the main character. For example, when we read about Naaman being healed of the skin disease in Goose's storybook, they pointed out how brave the slave girl had to be to tell her master about the prophet who could ask God to heal him.

Holy Week

Of course, this week we paused our study of girls of the Bible to focus on Holy Week. It kicked off on Palm Sunday when the girls unexpectedly processed in and played in the children's bell choir! They had missed church on Wednesday to spend some extra time with Nana, so we didn't have a heads up, but they handled it beautifully! The bells are color coded, so whenever the choir director held up a particular color card they knew to ring their bell. All three girls rang the same color, and R, a 12-year-old babysitter-in-training, helped guide them through it. 

For our morning Bible time we've been reading through all the events of Holy Week, using the Bible storybook and the real Bible. The girls and I also made our traditional shopping trip for fresh flowers. I let them each pick out a bunch to divide into vases and distribute around the house when we got home. We went to church the evening of Good Friday: while the grown ups watched  The Passion of the Christ, the kids dressed up in biblical costumes and watched The Jesus Film for Children. Since the kids' movie was significantly shorter than ours, they followed up the resurrection scene with a celebratory dance party.

On Saturday to further prepare for Sunday morning we dyed Easter eggs and made resurrection cookies--pecan meringue cookies that vaguely resemble rocky tombs are "buried and sealed" in the oven overnight. The next morning when you bite them open they're empty inside!  (Someone from church gave me the recipe, but you can find it here ). Easter Sunday meant treats for breakfast, new dresses for church, an egg hunt after the worship service, and an afternoon spent enjoying a potluck dinner and lots of hanging out time with friends! He is risen!

The girls are so excited about chocolate bunnies for breakfast!
Our Easter Sunday breakfast table also featured dyed eggs
and resurrection cookies and was decorated by a few of the
vases of flowers.

The Three Rs
For Monkey and Bug, we made a few changes in our formal lessons for math and reading this week, and it's definitely been a good thing! In our math lessons, I realized that we've reached our limit for new concepts at the moment, and we really need to focus on math facts. The girls are usually pretty quick to pick up new concepts, but I realized they still have to think about every little thing. Going forward is going to be a lot easier if we speed up that processing! So this week we've focused on two things: place value/reading two-digit numbers and sums less than 10. To help with this, I actually got a subscription to Education.com to get unlimited access to their thousands of worksheets. They have some really colorful and fun ones that will make drilling the facts a little more interesting. The girls are making progress! I got the occasional protest that "This is boring," but reading numbers is getting easier (less attempting to read them backwards: so 52 is "fifty-two," not "twenty-five"), and they've been excited about more and more simple addition problems that they just know instead of having to count out. 

I also realized that all the joy had gone out of our reading lessons.

Unrelated to the 3 Rs: This is what
happens when a trio of little girls on
the sunny West Coast is feeling
inspiredby Frozen to "make a snowman."

All three of us were bored and frustrated. Monkey even declared at one point that she "hated reading" [followed by melodramatic slump onto couch]. Since I know how much they both love books, something had to change! I decided to blame the easy readers. While they were technically composed of words they girls could sound out or know by sight, they were neither imaginative nor particularly well written. I banished them to the recycling bin, and no one complained. Instead I combed our shelves for thoroughly enjoyable, real books that just happen to be relatively easy to read. I also added several of those books from the used book store to the stack. Then I designated a book shelf in the hallway as our reading lesson shelf. I explained to the girls that these were the books we'd use for reading lessons now since they were all books I knew they could read. They are welcome to read them by themselves at any time, but I request that they be returned to this particular shelf when finished. (The contents of the shelf with change with their skill level and just to add some variety.) 

So, at the beginning of every day, I ask each girl to chose a book from the shelf. I take the books and write a list of potentially challenging words (because they're long or an exception to the usual phonics rules or simply unfamiliar). When it's time for reading lessons, we read through the list of challenging words (usually multiple times) before tackling the book itself. On occasion, I've also read the book to them first if requested. At this point I've also allowed repeat readings of the same book, since it's definitely improved their confidence and number of sight words. The joy is back! Reading lessons have been so much more fun and successful this week, and they're definitely reading more pages/words than they've been willing to previously.

Monkey has read:
Inside, Outside, Upside Down
Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
Where Is Spot?

Bug has read:
Snug House, Bug House
Go, Dog. Go!
Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

Writing lessons continue as usual. Bug has spent more time concentrating on particular letters that are giving her trouble using tracing worksheets. Monkey decided to write a research paper about cobras this week. They both copied Matthew 28:6, and they still like coming up with random lists of words they want to know how to spell.

Goose learned the letter J this week, and she's starting to explore the concept of addition. I'm not doing formal lessons with this, but it's just been coming up. For example, at dinner she's been noticing things like if two of us are drinking juice and three of us are drinking milk, then we have five drinks total.

A Bit of History
We finally had time to do a history project this week. We read about and looked at many samples of ancient Greek pottery and the paintings on them. Then we did our own versions. First the girls painted background colors on Chinette plates. Once those dried, they went back and drew pictures and patterns on them using dark markers.

We also spent some time reading through our DK Eyewitness book. We covered the sections about what Greek homes were like, what women's lives were like, and how kids were raised.

The girls and I enjoyed a spontaneous field trip when we spotted this cruise ship anchored off the coast while we were driving home from Walmart. We took a detour to walk down the closest pier where we got to watch a surfing class, a couple of sailboats, the ferries going back and forth from the cruise ship, and the day's catch of all the fishermen lining the pier.