Ancient Egypt
We finished the biography of Hatshepsut this week. We also read through several pages in the Spectacular Cross-section book and got to explore in detail the layout and contents of a temple compound, a pharoah's tomb, and a worker's house. This week we also decided to get our mummified apple going. The girls are pretty excited to see how he turns out!

Right: Our un-mummified apple face and all the necessary equipment
Left: The girls insisted we put up a note, so no one would accidentally eat him.

The Three Rs
First sessions with Goose continue to pay off! This week she and I did some simple math with Legos (patterns, counting, adding, comparisons), read a bunch of pre-reading skills and alphabet Bob books, and she started working on a dry-erasable workbook about writing. She was particularly proud of her work in it, and I was pretty impressed too!

Monkey and Bug are reading their way through the Little Bear stories we have. Monkey finished A Kiss for Little Bear and started "Little Bear's Friend." Bug finished "Little Bear's Friend" and "Duck, Babysitter" and started "Owl's Party."  In watching Monkey read this week, I realized that one of major reasons she's reading so slowly is not actually her reading skills--it's because she's studying the illustrations instead of the words! These books have lovely pictures and I want to encourage her to enjoy them; however, it's counterproductive for her to get so caught up in them halfway through a sentence that she forgets what it's about. So, this week, she and I started beginning her reading lesson by flipping slowly through the pages she's going to read and closely examining the pictures, talking about them, and conjecturing what might be happening. Then we tackle the words--much more focused!

Both big girls finished their first math workfolders this week! This accomplishment comes with no other reward than getting the folder refilled, but they were both excited to hand over a stack of completed sheets and get a fresh stack in return (Actually Bug got a whole new folder itself, since hers got covered in sticky jelly spots somewhere along the way. Oh well, hazards of homeschooling!)  Bug finished up with multiplication, counting money, and subtraction. Monkey worked on counting by 5s, addition, subtraction, and fractions. Outside of the worksheets we spent several additional sessions tackling the concept of telling time. For some reason this has been really challenging for them! One of the activities that seemed to help them grasp the concept was drawing a timeline of a day on the board, so they could place daily events with hours of the day and sort out that the hours repeat and clocks are always moving--they don't just jump from one hour or quarter hour to the next.

Writing this week involved more creative writing since both big girls chose to do writing prompt activities, and I had them do journal entries (I'm still having them dictate the journal entries to give them practice composing something longer than they're willing to hand write themselves at this point). Monkey also did a worksheet about verbs, and Bug did one about nouns. Of course, we completed another unit of spelling, and adding this subject is definitely paying off! Both girls have noted with excitement when they spot their spelling words in their reading lessons and they can just know them as sight words. We've been making a special point of working on writing neatness with Monkey--she's very capable of writing neatly but frequently doesn't take the time.

Bible Quizzing
At home we're studying King David, and we'll be doing that for awhile. Not only does he have a lot of stories, but I found a resource online that matched up stories to Psalms he wrote while the events were happening. The girls and I have been pretty fascinated by the pair ups and matching the events to David's emotions and prayers.

Monkey and Bug memorized Psalm 7:10 for this week. They had all the kids (grades 1-5) in the same class this week, and that got mixed reviews from my two. Monkey enjoyed it: I think the faster pace helped keep her interest, and she had a big kid assigned to her who was really good at helping her spell things and write in a few answers when she had trouble keeping up. Bug--not so much: She was frustrated with not being able to keep up herself and annoyed that her assigned big kid wasn't doing his job (his "just follow what they're doing on the board" instructions were less than helpful for a beginning reader/writer).

Library Day
I think this week may be our record for fastest library trip. We were running late and missed story time, the library was absolutely packed with kids, and Goose was not handling herself well. We grabbed this stack of books and made a hasty exit:
Ladder to the Sky
They Were Strong and Good
So Many Bunnies!
Emergency
Brave Martha and the Dragon
The Apple Doll
Code Blue
Captain Abdul's Little Treasure

Art Class
Everybody trooped into art class with no hesitation this week, and they had a great time. They got to do lots of painting and strung color wheel necklaces. They also got to bring home their artwork from last week's session:

Monkey's art

Goose's art

Bug's art

Swimming Lessons
Bug accomplished a major milestone in swimming this week: she swam the width of the pool with no assistance! Monkey has gotten brave enough to do the dead man's float for a little while--with her whole face underwater (this is a big deal). Goose is having a blast as usual and being completely fearless in jumping in and following all her teacher's instructions.

Jujutsu
I know I haven't mentioned it in a while, but Monkey and Bug are still participating in and enjoying their jujutsu classes once a week. They're getting very good at rolls and are starting to have some actual katas memorized.