Library Days!
Yes, plural "days." We were at the library twice this week. One afternoon, we joined a small group to watch the Magical Moonshine Theater Company put on a puppet show, Coyote Sings, a Southwestern Native American folktale accompanied by Mexican folk music. They did a fantastic job, and the girls and I had a great time. We returned the next day for our usual storytime and book gathering, only to discover that storytime is on hiatus while the librarians plan the summer program. The girls had fun playing with the library toys among a much smaller crowd of kids, and we came home with these books:
Alicia's Tutu
Play Ball with Me!
The Incredible Shrinking Teacher
So Sleepy Story
Star of the Circus
Froggy's Baby Sister
Pezzettino
Hurray for the Fourth of July
A Teeny, Tiny Baby
The Surprise Family
Lissy's Friends

The Three Rs
For math this week, Bug is back to skip counting (by 5s and 4s) and double digit addition and reviewing making 10s. Monkey is still drilling single digit addition, practicing place value, and we did a special review of the teens since those were the only double digit numbers she was consistently mixing up. Goose can count up to 20 now, but only has number recognition for 1-10.

This week Bug read Are You My Mother?, Inside Outside Upside Down, Kitty Up, and The Very Hungry Caterpillar; Monkey read Dimity Duck and One Fish Two Fish; and Goose is now up to lesson 5 in the textbook, so she has the sounds m, s, a (as in apple), and e (as in eat).

For writing this week, Monkey decided to do reports on anacondas and lily pads, and Bug wanted to copy Bible verses. (She's been copying them out of a photo album of memory verses I made for them ages ago, but haven't added to recently. She's requested more verses, so I guess I know what my weekend project is going to be!) For our spelling day this week, I found an activity sheet that asked them to change out the beginning letter of a word to make a new word (e.g., pan becomes man).

Historical Music
We spent some time studying ancient Greek music this week: we read an article about it, looked at depictions of musicians on ancient pottery, listened to samples of what current musicians think it sounded like, and made our own lyre from a coat hanger, rubber bands, and the bottom of a raisin box.

We also spent some time reading from the Eyewitness book. This week we covered the sections on the cities of Athens and Sparta and on Greek warfare (weapons, armor, tactics, etc.).


A Very Beachy Day!
We experienced a bit of a heat wave this week, so we decided to hit the beach Friday morning. We spent about two hours there: building sand castles and dribble towers, drawing in the sand, examining mole crabs and kelp, watching/chasing birds, discussing why God gave those birds long legs and long beaks, discussing tides and trying to figure out if this one was coming or going, jumping/dancing in the edge of the waves, and being chased by waves. By the time we returned to our car, we were tired, hungry, and very, very sandy!

After lunch, a nice nap, and a quiet afternoon, we headed back to the beach! A different beach this time for a spur-of-the-moment bonfire complete with hot dogs and s'mores with a bunch of other people from our church. The girls had a fantastic time playing with their friends and chasing a poor ground squirrel while the grown ups chatted around the fire (and were told by beach patrol to take the fire down a notch--oops). It was our second very late night in a row (OCF is Thursday night), but very well worth it!

For the record, these faces are not disgruntled; these faces are stuffed with
freshly roasted hot dogs.

The view from the cliffs above the beach (by the potties). One
of those distant bonfires is ours!