Monday, March 16, 2015

Library Day
Even Monkey participated in storytime this week! Miss C said those magic words, "new Mo Willems' book," and Monkey came running over from the toy tables where she usually listens in. She loves Willems' particular brand of clever silliness, and she even decided to stay for the rest of the books. We kept the history and science books from last week, along with the book of poetry and a couple of story books the girls weren't done with yet. Here are the new additions to the mountain of books in their room:

Just for fun:
Bringing in the New Year*
Teach Your Buffalo to play Drums
Piglet and Papa
Monster, Be Good!
Just Me and My Mom
Next Stop, Grand Central
Alphabeasties and Other Amazing Things
The Noisy Way to Bed
Lucky O'Leprechaun Comes to America

The big girls decided (in light of my overflowing book tote) to bring their own totes to the library and check out books just for themselves--solo reading and topics of interest.
Bug's books:
Look! Look! Look!
Fox and His Friends*
Dodsworth in Tokyo*

Monkey's books:
Hooray for Amanda and Her Alligator*
Degas and the Dance: The Painter and the Petit Rats
Invitation to Ballet: A Celebration of Dance and Degas
     *solo reading

Art!
The topic of interest this week was clearly art appreciation. Bug's pick, Look, Look, Look! followed three mice as they explored different ways to look at a painting on a postcard (shapes, colors, patterns, etc.). Monkey clearly wanted to study Edgar Degas, and Bug and Goose joined her. We read the books Monkey checked out, and they spent quite a bit of time poring over the pictures. Monkey also spent time studying a Google Image search of Degas's self-portraits, and Bug took the time to look through a series of art e-books that included Degas as well as Picasso (their artist pick from last week). Monkey even pulled from her art studies for her writing lessons. I also found some free printable coloring sheets that reproduced Degas and Picasso paintings for the girls to color.

As usual the girls created lots of their own art--mostly drawings using crayons or markers, but a few collages as well after Goose's shapes activity.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!
It rained on our parade, but we didn't let that stop us!

St. Patrick's Day is a big deal here. Over the past couple of weeks the girls and I read a storybook about the historical St. Patrick and some of his legends along with several leprechaun books that clued them into the whole luck, leprechauns, rainbows, and gold phenomenon. This Saturday we attended a St. Patrick's Day brunch hosted by someone from Daddy's office--lots of really yummy food and a tableful of fun crafts activities for the kids while the grown ups socialized. From there we walked to the parade route, and this was quite the event! The parade was over an hour of floats, drum and pipe bands, regular bands, clowns, dancers, historical reenactors, policemen, firemen, sailors and soldiers. (Monkey was particularly enthralled by the many drum lines.)

At the Y
The girls had a blast at gymnastics this week, and Monkey jumped right in this time and participated in everything! They were even brave enough that I could go exercise while they were in their classes. They're all working on balance, flexibility, and strengthening exercises and getting to use more of the equipment. Monkey and Bug were excited about getting to use the trampoline bridge this week, and Goose's class got to play hopscotch.

We missed last week's swimming opportunity, but we made it this week! All three girls are getting to be better swimmers. Even Monkey has gained enough confidence to push herself to swim farther solo. Goose didn't even use the floaty at all! She practiced floating and swimming with me, and she used a kickboard the rest of the time. Bug repeated her performance fetching rings from the bottom and swam solo for the distances her sisters used their kickboards.

OUTSIDE!!
It actually "warmed up" this week! (By "warmed up" I mean consistently above freezing, and even into the 40s a few days) The girls have been SO excited to see the snow melting away and finally being able to play outside without getting seriously bundled up. To celebrate we did a bit of neighborhood exploring and found a playground within walking distance. It was muddy, but it was fun!



Liberty
No, I'm not talking about our Revolutionary War studies! The girls have been making some big strides in confidence and self-sufficiency lately. Khan Academy has helped with that for lessons--Bug got herself logged in and started accomplishing tasks while I helped Monkey with her reading in another room. The big girls have also been leading lessons with Goose--helping her practice counting to 100, counting by 10s, and simple addition, and reading pre-reading Bob Books to her and doing repeat readings with her of familiar stories (I haven't asked them to do any of this; they're just so excited that she's finally able to learn this stuff and that they have the competence to teach her). At the grocery store, the girls have helped us get through that errand faster by getting themselves to and from the bathroom without me and by finding items on the list (I can now say "I need 2 cucumbers, 3 tomatoes, and 4 oranges" and have them all appear in the cart already bagged a few minutes later while I find other items). At home, cleaning their bathroom really is their job now. I remind them it needs to be done and I'm available for assistance and advice if requested (not much anymore, actually). They work out who's doing what and remind each other how to do different things (Let's be realistic--I also step in occassionally to referee). They've also realized recently that they're capable of getting lunch going--pulling things out of the fridge, helping each other serve it up, etc. This is all so awesome!

History
I forgot to write about our history studies last week, but here's what we've covered since I last wrote: We finished reading Heroes of the Revolution and learned about George Washington, Deborah Sampson, Haym Salomon, Paul Revere, and John Paul Jones. We watched a couple of Liberty's Kids and covered the Second Continental Congress and the Battle of Bunker Hill. We also started a new book that the girls love called Voices of the Colonies. It follows an errand boy through Boston in during the day or two leading up to the Boston Tea Party, and allows the various townspeople to talk about their jobs (printer, baker, milliner, dame school teacher, barber, etc.) and their opinions on the controversial Tea Tax.

Music
The girls had a great time in choir this week. They're learning several songs for Palm Sunday and memorizing Psalm 100 (they've got verses 1-3). I think they're enjoying the new divisions by age group, and Miss V had a great craft this week that everybody got into. I'm not sure what the original craft idea looked like, but it involved pastel-colored felt, cotton balls, googly eyes, patterned scrapbooking paper, and lots of craft glue.

Goose is still going strong in her piano lessons! She was able to check off one song and add a new one, and she now plays notes A-F (around middle C). She doesn't always feel up for practicing when she has the opportunity, but she does really well when she's in the mood--enough to keep up with her teacher's expectations for progress!

Bug has developed a love/hate relationship with violin. She likes the instrument, and she definitely likes having "violinist" as a personal identifier, but she's really struggling with being a beginner violinist--that she can't do it right every time and that it's taking longer to get to more interesting music than she wants it to. The good news: she got a new bowing rhythm this week! Her teacher was also impressed with her independent work on reading music--I found free printable music paper, and she filled in what notes she can play with notations about which strings and how many fingers to put down.

Good news for Monkey: We found a drum teacher, and she starts lessons next Wednesday! Hooray!

Three Rs Update
Everybody's reading books! I've noted above what books Monkey and Bug are reading, but even Goose has been reading books this week--the first three Bob Books! This involved her learning three sight words--and, the, on and five new letter sounds--d, c, h, o (otter), and g (goat). She's also expressed boredom with the sounding out exercises in the text book, so I think I'm going to start moving faster and skipping some of those and finding other ways (letter/syllable cards perhaps?) to practice rhyming skills.

Giving the big girls the instruction to simply "write something" is working very well, and they've even been coming up with their own topics instead of using the jar. Bug summarized an article from Kids National Geographic one day and wrote descriptions of Goose and I on the other days. Monkey chose to focus her writing on her studies of Degas this week: one day she described one of his dancer paintings, one day she wrote about his self-portraits, and one day she asked if she could dictate a longer composition about which paintings she really liked and why.

Monkey and Bug continue to do math facts worksheets in their binders and complete tasks in Khan Academy. Khan Academy groups kindergarten through second grade math all together as Early Math, and both big girls have mastered about 30% of the skills (basically, they flew through a kindergarten's worth of skills in two weeks). Goose did most of her math learning this week with her sisters' guidance (I have heard the three of them chanting the numbers 1-100 more times than I care to keep track of). I also introduced a fun preschool/kindergarten geometry activity: I cut shapes out of construction and gave her prompts like, "What shapes would you use to build a house/car/snowman, etc.?" At some point she started requesting particular shapes to build her own things, and her sisters introduced her to more advanced shapes like rhombus and trapazoid.

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