After getting home from our Christmas travels, we settled in for three or four solid stay-at-home days to rest and get back into whatever qualifies as a normal routine these days. (I have lots of Christmas pictures to sort through, so that post with come later. I'm late posting as it is! This entry is for Tuesday through Friday of last week!)

Three Rs
I didn't have new folders ready for the big girls, but the three Rs were made a little more exciting this week with the additional resources acquired over Christmas. Reading lessons with the big girls featured the new Fancy Nancy books. Bug read Fancy Nancy and the Dazzling Book Report and Fancy Nancy Sees the Stars. Monkey read Fancy Nancy and the Boy from Paris. Goose has started official reading lessons, too! I've begun How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and she's learned the M and S sounds along with activities that build sounding out skills.

For math this week, for the big girls I drew up a few worksheets that reviewed all the basics they've been working on: skip counting, multiple digit addition, subtraction, fractions, telling time, and creating graphs. We also practiced counting money (thanks to the addition of Christmas money and the allowance I forgot to pay them while traveling) and ran through some addition flash cards. For Goose's math lesson this week, I pulled out my new deck of WonderWoman playing cards. First, I tested Goose's number recognition for 2-10 and her ability to put them in the right order (flawlessly, I was impressed). Then I pulled in the big girls and taught them all how to play War (comparing numbers) and Go Fish (finding matches, counting). That pretty much exhausted my repertoire of card games--they loved it, so I need to find some other easy ones to play.

For writing this week, I had all three of them write thank you notes/pictures for Great Grandma and Granddad. We also played with our new story cards (Monkey lined up about a dozen cards and got particularly creative and detailed) and our Xoom Cubes (although we didn't actually play the games yet, but we had a good time practicing building short words; Bug even pulled out some tricky ones like "know"). All three girls dictated journal entries, and the big girls started a new spelling unit (it was a short week, so we'll test it next week).

COLD!
Now that we're in the throws of a New England winter, I've been hearing a lot of "I miss the beach!" out of the girls (and I'm inclined to join them). The day after we returned from our travels it was 1 degree outside with a wind chill temperature of -24 when Daddy left for work. Once it had warmed up a little (10 degrees), I bundled up Monkey and Bug and had them join me outside for a couple of minutes just to experience "real cold" (Goose opted out of this activity; she watched from the window while wrapped up in a fleece blanket). We didn't last long, but we were outside long enough to admire the ice and put a chunk of it on the back stoop so we could watch it melt (it too a few days). At least the snow is pretty! The girls were really impressed when the predicted 50-mile-per-hour wind gusts picked up and the dining room window had a temporary white out.

Bible Studies
For our first thing in the morning readings, we've decided to continue reading the Gospel Luke, since our Advent readings ended in Luke 2. We continued working on Chapter 12 in their quizzing books, and they're memorizing Exodus 15:11.

Crafting & Cooking
The girls were thrilled to get lots of craft supplies for Christmas! They've been busy constructing any number of projects from the odds and ends we've now collected, making origami insects, and creating designs with Monkey's new spirograph. Bug (inspired by the frigid temperatures) has also started knitting a scarf on one of her looms.

Monkey and Bug both expressed an interest in really learning how to cook some things on their own, so this week they each took turns being in charge of lunch for a day with me present for consulting. Monkey fixed burritos filled with black beans, corn, and cheese and a side of canned pineapple. Bug cooked scrambled eggs with cheese and pulled out various leftovers for sides--carrot sticks, corn, garlic bread, etc. This process involved them both locating all their ingredients and utensils, using the stove, and practicing skills like shredding cheese and cracking eggs.

History 
Our studies of Colonial America continue. My original intent had been to do this study chronologically--looking at the early colonies in the order they were established, then moving on to events of the Revolutionary War. Well, that plan has been officially scrapped in favor of centering our at-home studies on whatever travel plans we have coming up. I also realized the Liberty's Kids series that outlines events of the Revolutionary War includes 40 episodes, and I'd like to spread out our viewings, so we can talk about things and study some of the characters as they come up rather than doing a marathon TV watching session.

So. . . in light of the long weekend Daddy has coming up, we're now studying Pennsylvania with a special focus on Philadelphia! I went through our DK book about the Revolutionary War and tagged all the references to Philadelphia and Valley Forge, and the girls and I have read a few pages already. We also watched the first two episodes of Liberty's Kids. The girls have learned about the Intolerable Acts and the Boston Tea Party, the State House in Philadelphia, and the Continental Congress, and they've been introduced to Benjamin Franklin, Sam Adams, and Phillis Wheatley. Home schooling win: my 6 year olds can now explain "no taxation without representation."