The past two weeks were happily split by a visit from Nana! So, I'm going to write about our regular weeks events in this post, then post again later about the long weekend we spent with Nana. We've been busy!

Library Days
Last week we managed to squeeze in a quick trip to the library before driving to the airport to pick up Nana. We didn't have storytime, but we checked out these books:
Babies on the Go
Geraldine, the Music Mouse
Bedhead
The Ugly Duckling
A Snowy Day in Bugland
The Princess and the Pizza
The End
The Pigeon Needs a Bath
Someplace Else
Rhinos who Play Baseball

I also scoured the shelves with our study of Ancient Egypt in mind and found these great books, which we'll keep for several weeks at least:
Egypt in Spectacular Cross-section
Voices of Ancient Egypt
The Crafts and Culture of the Ancient Egyptians
Hatshepsut, His Majesty, Herself

Storytime is back this week! There's a new children's librarian doing storytime, and she is a fantastic storyteller, who obviously loves what she's doing. This week's theme was colors, and she had some great favorites to share--Pete the Cat and His New Shoes, Mouse Paint, etc. The girls were even willing to participate in a color hokey pokey that involved putting paper shapes of specific colors in and out instead of body parts. We came home with these books:
Hattie Hippo
Alphabatics
When Papa Snores
The Night of the Goat Children
Fenwick's Suit
Lola Reads to Leo
The Rubber-legged Ducky
Rhinos who Rescue
Boy, Bird, and Dog
Edward in the Jungle
A Flea Story
First Flight

Art Class!
Earlier this summer I was thrilled to discover that the little rec center near our house offers inexpensive classes for little ones! I signed all three girls up for a once a week art class (3-6 year olds--perfect!) this month. They were really excited to get started! Then for some unfathomable reason Goose became very anxious the minute we walked through the door. I tried to reassure her, but Bug was more effective: She pulled Goose aside and explained how she was usually scared about a new class and a new teacher too, but if she was brave and participated she always had lots of fun and made new friends. And besides, she and Monkey would be right there with her the whole time! Goose tried to cling to me when I led her into the classroom, but Monkey and Bug each grabbed one of her hands and steered into a spot on the carpet between them. I love seeing these sisters stick together and help each other out!

They did indeed have a great time, and Goose told me afterward that she calmed down shortly after I left and had lots of fun. This week they talked about and read a story about primary colors and how they make all the other colors, then they got to experiment with actual paints and methods of applying and mixing them--finger paints, sponges, brushes, etc. The actual paintings were left at the center to dry until next week, but they had the kids draw with primary colors using crayons, so they would have something to bring home this week too. Of course, we couldn't leave the rec center without playing on the playground for awhile!

Back to Swimming Lessons
The girls are now signed up for swimming lessons two afternoons a week, and they had their first session on Wednesday. They are actually in three different levels at two different (back-to-back) times. This is the first time Bug and Monkey have been officially separated for anything, and I was so proud of them! They went their separate ways with no hesitation! We'd been talking about it a lot to prepare them, and they all seem to have great teachers again.

Goose is an Angelfish (the second level in the 3-5 age group), and she handled her first day beautifully. In addition to the usual blowing bubbles, starfish floats, and practice paddling, she even followed her teacher's instruction and took a flying leap from the side of the pool into the "deep" end (4 ft). She came up grinning when her teacher plucked her out of the water and helped her paddle back to the wall!

Monkey is a Goldfish (the first level in the 6-9 age group). She's much more fearful of the water than her sisters, but she only freaked out once--her teacher let go when she was practicing a back float, and she dunked under water for a split second. Fortunately, she calmed down without my intervention and finished out the class. We had a serious discussion about how the very purpose of swimming lessons is to teach her how to go underwater and handle herself safely.

Bug is a Penguin (the second level in the 6-9 age group), and she was very brave! She's in the "deep" end for the first time, and at first she was the smallest and least skilled in her group by a long shot. Fortunately, another young 6-year-old joined a few minutes late, and she proved to be at the same skill level as Bug, so she has a buddy after all. They spent most of their time practicing their freestyle stroke back and forth across the width of the pool with their teacher supporting them. Bug admitted afterward that at one point she teared up a little because she couldn't swim nearly as well as the big kids, but she said she calmed herself down and kept going.

Entering Ancient Egypt!
We began our unit on Ancient Egypt last week. We got a good introductory overview of the era between reading the new DK poster and watching a video from the library. They touched on all kinds of topics: mummies, architecture, agriculture, religion, clothing, food, etc. We also started reading a picture book biography of Hatshepsut (the girls are intrigued by the girl pharaoh with the fake beard). And of course, we did our usual kick-off activity: an Egyptian feast! Tasty and popular as usual!

Our Egyptian feast: flat bread, lentils, dates, figs, raisins, grapes, melon,
cucumber, lettuce, and boiled fish with onions and lemons

Bible Studies
At home we read the book of Ruth and started reading about Samuel. Monkey and Bug memorized their first verse for Bible quizzing: Exodus 3:7. They'll memorize one verse every week, for a total of 20 verses this school year.

The Three Rs
Goose had been insistently interrupting her sisters' lessons lately, and I'd been trying to appease her by squeezing in activities and worksheets with her between working with the big girls. It was no fun for anybody and turned my interactions with Goose into a distraction and an afterthought, rather than an actual focus. Then I remembered some brilliant advice I'd read on countless blogs about homeschooling with preschoolers: Spend some one-on-one time with the preschooler first! I was amazed at how instantly this solution worked. Now our morning routine is that everybody eats breakfast, everybody listens to our daily Bible readings, everybody gets dressed, and then Goose gets 15 minutes of my undivided attention for her choice of activities. Of course, she still needs my assistance occasionally, but she's much more polite and patient with her requests since our day starts off with everyone respecting her time with Mommy. We spent a couple of days building block or Wedgit towers (with my throwing in some counting and patterns practice), but mostly she's wanted me to read stacks of Bob books from the alphabet and pre-reading skills sets. So, she's been working on letter recognition and letter sounds, patterns, sequencing, and shapes. She spends most of her time while her sisters are working either playing with the sister who isn't doing a lesson, coloring her own projects while they work, or playing in her own little world of pretend with figures and stuffed animals.

The big girls have been very busy too! For reading Monkey chose Hop on Pop and You are My Sunshine. Bug also read You are My Sunshine and some of 1 Fish 2 Fish. After that I decided I needed to give them fewer options with books that would give them practice with more commonly used words and full sentences rather than the pared down picture books they've been sticking with (they're wonderful books, but they weren't providing the repetition of frequently-used words or the challenge necessary for the girls to actually improve their skills). So, now Bug making her way through Little Bear's Friend and Monkey is reading A Kiss for Little Bear. Poor Bug was really struggling with performance anxiety related to reading lessons, but Daddy came up with a solution that worked beautifully at the end of this week: she pre-reads her lesson silently to herself before sitting down with me. Now she can approach our time together knowing that she can read most of the words and can pinpoint the words that she's struggling with ahead of time. Monkey's doing great--a confident, if still (age-appropriately) slow, reader.

Since we had two half weeks with an exciting interlude in the middle, I opted to do a larger review spelling list instead of attempting to conquer two or even one new list of words. This weeks' spelling test involved 12 words and each girl only missed one. At this stage, these spelling tests aren't just about the spelling words themselves, but the whole concept of a test--being handed a numbered page and asked to prove their knowledge without me helping them or checking each word as they complete it. They also continued doing grammar worksheets about nouns and verbs. At this point they both have trouble remembering those actual terms, but they both fully get the concept of categorizing words into person/place/thing or doing/being. Monkey didn't do anything resembling creative writing this week, but Bug wrote a story a few sentences long and only had to ask me to spell two words for her! She was incredibly proud of herself.

Both girls are still steadily working through their math workfolders. Bug worked on addition, counting money, fractions, and reading graphs. Monkey worked on addition, word problems, counting by 5s, and fractions. We spent a little time with their addition flashcards too.