Cosplay at the Library!
We skipped the usual story time at the library this week, and showed up on Saturday afternoon instead to participate in the library's Star Wars Day! The girls were very excited about dressing up, and the librarian had a great story time. They also got to do some coloring sheets, make pool noodle lightsabers, and participate in "Jedi Academy" (you gotta love a melodramatic librarian willing to wield a lightsaber and teach a crowd of kids a few moves).

A padawan, Darth Vader (minus the mask), and Princess Leia
(thrilled her hair was long enough to do the double bun look)

Music Milestones
The girls have been doing wonderfully and really enjoying their weekly music lessons. Goose is moving through songs faster and smoother, and her teacher recently incorporated the black keys into her songs! Bug's love/hate relationship with violin has actually been leaning more toward love lately! She even added a new song to her repertoire this week. Monkey is still loving the drums. Her assignments have gotten a lot more complex lately, so she and I scoured the house and managed to dig up enough drum pads/pot lids to create a whole drum kit propped up with pillows on the couch. She also been asking me to turn on music, so she can practice keeping the rhythm to actual songs.

Little Runner

Daddy found another 5k for Goose to run. She was thrilled to have another race to run so soon, and she was amazing! In addition to being the littlest runner, she took 6 minutes off her time for a new personal record of 35:08! She has informed us of several things: Daddy will not be able to keep up with her when she's 7, she's going to run marathons when she gets bigger, and she's going to be a famous runner someday.

The Three Rs
The three Rs continue as usual, and everyone is making progress. Goose begged me for more worksheets this week, and I happily obliged (I found some fun dot-to-dot, maze, and hidden pictures sheets in addition to the usual math and letter recognition topics.) Bug was thrilled to reach about 20% of the way through third grade math. That number's a false high, though; Khan asked her 7x1, then declared that she'd "mastered" the 7 times table. Um...no. In reality she does know the multiples of 1, 2, 10, and 11, and she working on memorizing the 5s. Monkey's at 97% in Early Math (kindergarten through second grade). Just a few more skills left to master! Of course, both big girls are still doing math facts work for addition and subtraction outside of Khan Academy.

For reading, Bug is basically on her own: I help her find books to choose from as requested, make her keep a list of the books she reads, and have her write a book report on one of them every couple of weeks. Monkey seemed to reach kind of a plateau in her reading skills, so we've added some sight words flash cards to our routine. Having a larger repertoire of words she doesn't need to sound out every time would really help her out. Of course, once Monkey had brightly colored sight word flashcards, Goose wanted some too! I found a set of kindergarten ones, and picked out a few of the "funny words" (e.g., was, said) and the words with short vowel sounds, which she recently added during her reading lessons (she only had a before). That has really opened up her possibilities for words she can sound out, and she is thrilled.

For writing, the big girls have a selection of assignments to do each week (a combination of grammar and composition activities). Now that the visitors are gone and we're done traveling for a bit, we've also started doing a spelling unit every week again. Goose has a lot of worksheets for tracing and writing letters, and she enjoys copying her weekly verse from Awana.