[Terribly late posting, but this is from last week.]

Library Day
No story time again this week, but the girls enjoyed their library time as usual. They picked out a ton of books this week, played math and reading games on the computers, did a few coloring sheets, and Goose made a new friend at the toy table. Here's the stack of books we came home with:
Old Bear and His Cub
Rocky the Cat Who Barks
The Rainbabies
All for One
The Guest
Two for Stew
The Rumor
Fancy Nancy: Bonjour Butterfly
If It's Snowy and You Know It
A Penguin Story
Wemberly Worried
Yoo-Hoo, Ladybug!
Francis Woke up Early
The Mightiest Heart
Ant and Grasshopper
Hop on Pop

Bug's additional book:
Fox on Stage*
(She also kept the Fox and Fancy Nancy books from last week)

Monkey's books:
Just Behave, Pablo Picasso!
Biscuit*
I'm a Frog!*

History
For our history studies this week, we read about Molly Pitcher, Betsy Ross, and Penelope Barker. We also watched a couple more episodes of Liberty's Kids and learned about the Declaration of Independence and the first 4th of July, as well as the early loss of New York City to the British. The episode about the Declaration was supplemented by studying one of those aged copies of the Declaration written in script with all the signatures at the bottom.

Choir
The girls sang in church this past Sunday! (Well, two of them did--Monkey rehearsed beautifully, but panicked at the last minute when she couldn't see me. We're coming up with a game plan to deal with a pattern of performance anxiety.) The choir quoted Psalm 100, then sang two songs. At choir practice, they learned about their next scripture passage, Psalm 23, and were introduced to the song they'll be singing in church in about a month.

The Three Rs
So our usual "lesson days" when we spend the morning focusing on the three Rs got mostly hijacked this week, but those days certainly weren't wasted! One was a sick day--we watched Liberty's Kids, Epic (along with the mini documentaries in the extras that taught the girls about the plants, animals, and natural processes that inspired the film), read most of the library books, finished reading a graphic novel, The Mouse Guard, that we'd been reading at bedtimes, and by late afternoon people were feeling up for playing computer games that involved both math and reading skills along with some troubleshooting computer skills. If you can ignore the vomit I had to clean up, it was actually a lovely day and the girls learned a ton! Another lesson day was replaced by a visit from Aunt E! More on our time with her later.

Goose is still very actively teaching herself to write. In fact, she spent several nap times copying her sisters' spelling lists, and her hard work is clearly paying off as her letters continue to get more legible. She can't always tell me what the letters are, but we're working on that.

Speaking of Goose and her letters, she's still determined to learn how to read by sight reading, but at least this week she proved she could transfer her knowledge of a particular word from one book to another. She asked for an additional reading book from the library, and we found Hop on Pop (lots of good rhyming words and sight words). She's still reading the Bob books and the Dick and Jane collection. The big girls are also mostly reading through the books they checked out from the library.

I don't think I actually did any formal math with Goose this week, but she's always counting things, noticing shapes, and looking over her sisters' shoulder while they play games or work on Khan Academy. She's clearly soaking it all up. Most of the big girls math practice this week involved playing games on Starfall that included some of the skills they've been working on in Khan Academy. In KA itself, Bug is up to 47%, and Monkey to 53%.

Outside Classes
Oh, and everyone is still taking gymnastics classes, their separate music lessons, and joining me in the pool for a weekly swim session. They're all continuing to build skills and confidence, but no major milestones to report this week.