Halloween

We don’t go in for scary and gory, but Halloween is a fun social event. This year we joined a couple of other families for a lasagna dinner before heading out into their friendly neighborhood for trick-or-treating. The kids were cute, they had a great time, they were thrilled with the piles of candy we came back with, and they were drenched! Seriously, I think it rained more in that one day than it has rained in the entire year we've lived here!

Library Day

Another good day at the library! We came home with these picture books:

Zomo the Rabbit (they were excited about finding another trickster tale; this one from Africa)

Strega Nona Takes a Vacation

Little Cloud

In the Leaves

I am Kermit the Frog

Thank you, Amelia Bedelia

This week Goose was the one who wanted to learn about something in particular, and we found these two books to satisfy her curiosity about airplanes and prep for our upcoming trip:

Plane (kids’ book diagrams and descriptions of all the parts of a passenger jet)

Plane Song (rhyming picture book about different kinds of planes)

We picked up two fun math-related books:

1 Hunter (counting)

One Hundred Hungry Ants (multiplying/dividing)

I also found two more books about ancient Egypt:

How the Sphinx Got to the Museum

The Egyptians (general knowledge of ancient Egypt, but it came with a CD of games and activities for us to try out)

The Three Rs

This week Monkey finished reading Snow and almost finished “Grandmother and Grandfather Bear.” Bug read “Grandmother and Grandfather Bear,” “Mother Bear’s Robin,” and most of “The Goblin Story.”

For writing this week, Bug did a couple of story starters and Monkey completed a worksheet about capitalization and a fill-in-the-blank exercise about toys. They both also had to pick a picture book and write a short book report along the lines of “This book is about . . . . I like it because . . . .“ For spelling, the girls are now about halfway through Fry's first hundred words, so I decided to do a little assessment and see how much they actually remember. We went through ten words each day, and I was pleased with how they did (neither were perfect, of course, but some of those words are tricky).

Both big girls were excited about getting a new stack of math sheets to work through! In fact, Monkey decided she really likes math right now and chose to do three pages every day (I require two). Monkey practiced skip counting by 2 and 5, addition, telling time, reading and making graphs, fractions, and estimating measurements. Bug practiced multiplying by 2 and 5, telling time, making and reading graphs, counting money, and estimating measurements. I also had them practice addition flashcards.

Other Updates

• For our home Bible studies, we finished reading the stories about Elisha and started reading about Isaiah. Monkey and Bug memorized Proverbs 21:2 for Bible Quizzing, and all the girls are learning about Exodus at church.
• This week for history we read a book about the discovery of King Tut’s tomb—the process as well as what was in it.
• Swimming lessons continue, and everyone is making progress. Even Goose can swim freestyle solo for a few strokes now!
• Monkey’s loose tooth finally came out! Sadly, she refused to pose for a gap-toothed-grin picture.

Big Trip Preparations!

The packing and planning continues for our temporary move to the East Coast. The girls are handling it well—they’re excited about the airplane rides and the high possibility of snow at the other end. Our cat, however, seems to feeling the stress of an upcoming disturbance in his world. He’s been more skittish around Daddy (the “alpha cat” whose responsibility it is to stuff him in a carrier when necessary) and even more snuggly and playful with me (I think in his mental hierarchy we’re equals). Kitty’s new favorite place to hang out: the pile of stuff that’s coming with us instead of going to storage (he’s probably going to hate us when he finds out he doesn't actually belong in that pile—he’s going to live with a local friend while we’re gone).