Kindergarten
I feel like I've been getting a lot of questions lately about where Monkey and Bug go to school or, if the person knows we homeschool, what curriculum we're doing. I never really have a good answer for the latter. My answer, "Well, I have a phonics book we're doing, and a playgroup we're in, but mostly I just let them do their own thing, . . ." Isn't exactly an accurate description of how much I think they're learning and always leaves me feeling just a bit guilty that I don't have more intentional activities with them. So, this week I decided to look up the education standards for kindergarten--just to see what I really needed to teach them in the future--and, boy, do I feel validated! They are well into the kindergarten material for math and language arts, and they've all but completed the science standards (I still need to go through the standards for social studies, fine arts, and health & PE).

In light of these findings, I've started a new method of record keeping (don't worry the blog will continue). I now have a binder, divided by subject. Each section includes the list of standards, a list of resources they girls have been using to complete the standards, and whatever else I feel I need to keep in there (the language arts section, for example, includes several suggested reading lists for kindergartners I've run across). I love this blog as a creative outlet for me that lets family keep tabs on us, and as a weekly rundown of their activities and progress. The binder gives me a bigger picture of what they've learned, what we need to work on, and how we're going about it. Also, I can now tell people, "Well, we follow the [ABC] standards using the resources that work best for my kids for different subjects." So, here's what they've been up to this week:


Library Day
Still no storytime (but it starts up again next week!). We sat on cushions in the kids' section and read lots of books, and the entourage chose to bring these home:
Oregon's Journey
Truman's Aunt Farm
A Ball for Daisy
My Little Car / Mi Carrito
Brave Charlotte and the Wolves
Snow Rabbit, Spring Rabbit
Four Seasons Make a Year

"This month is confused!"
Said Bug this week when the weather went from almost 80 degrees one day to 30 degrees two days later! Perhaps compounding the confusion for the girls is that we've been talking about the passage of time alot--using clocks, their calendar, and books about seasons. They know from books and the calendar that January is winter, not spring, but they spent an afternoon this week looking for all the signs of spring in our yard--flowers on the shrubs, new grass and weeds in the backyard, etc. They asked when we're going to go to the beach. Then, two days later they ask if it's going to snow. It's one of those weeks when I'm actually glad I'm not one of those moms who's organized enough to have all the summer clothes put away.


Pet Rocks
The girls discovered a bag of polished stones in the craft drawer this week and created a whole menagerie of pet rocks. They also discovered that they were using washable markers, so they could change how their pets looked, and this project kept them occupied for quite a while. Not to mention how much fun they've had counting and sorting them, putting them to bed, etc.

Reading
Last week's practice in sounding out particularly helped Bug this week. She's been much more confident in tackling new words and reads a new sentence or two almost everyday. She's also added the sounds n and f. Monkey continues to need more reinforcement of the sounding out concept, but she succeeded several times this week in sounding out words all by herself and even read another sentence or two.

Math
This week I restarted being more intentional about practicing counting with the girls. Goose has almost conquered reciting 1-10 (she still forgets about the number 6), but it's mostly Bug who's been practicing with her. Monkey and Bug are confident up to 15, and we're working on sorting out the last few teens. I've also started teaching them to count by tens. They understand that the numbers go 1-9 then start over, but they can never remember what number prefix comes next. Using an abacus, a menagerie of pet rocks, dried beans, and toothpicks we also verified that they are capable of adding and subtracting using manipulatives (keeping all our numbers smaller than 15, of course), and can even solve problems like: Given a set of rocks, how many more do they need to make 10?

When they were done counting, they got got out the playdough.
The addition of toothpicks and beans made for some neat creations!

States of Matter
I'm not sure what initiated it, but Monkey and Bug have been very focused on sorting out solids, liquids, and gases. They've been going through the house finding samples of each, but my original definitions fell short, since Bug was quite convinced that a blanket was a liquid. We cleared things up by first reading from a lesson about liquids on Chem4Kids.com, watching a kids' music video of They Might Be Giants singing "Solid, Liquid, Gas," and finally applying the definition first hand by pouring water into a container and then attempting to pour a blanket and seeing a that while the water filled up every space, the blanket did not. Next we followed water through all three states: we filled a small container with water and put it in the freezer; we checked on it periodically until it turned into ice; then popped it out into a saucepan, melted it to liquid again, and boiled it away to steam. Then Bug proposed her own experiment to figure out how many glasses of water it would take to fill the container. She kept track of her results by writing tally marks on a piece of paper.

Opposites
All three girls have been obsessed with opposites this week. For Goose this means enacting them: up/down, in/out, on/off, etc. with potentially annoying results like when she decides to illustrate on/off with the reading light I'm attempting use. (In that case, she learned that being considerate of others takes priority over practicing fascinating new concepts.) For Monkey and Bug, the obsession means coming up with endless lists of opposite and trying to sort out that things like light and dark are considered opposites, while table and chair are not.

Potty Training
For the past couple of months, Goose has been telling me when she needs a new diaper, "practicing" going on the potty chair like her big sisters, and begging for underwear. So this week I agreed, and we started potty training. I attempted the 3-day method, which Aunt A and I pulled off with much success with her big sisters. I confess I wasn't able to give her the hyper-vigilance we gave her sisters (I'm doing it solo this time after all), but by day 6 we determined that Goose's brain had outpaced her body's ability to get to the potty in time (only two instances of real success--all the pee in the potty, not the floor--during the entire week). On day 4 of staying home, we were all going a bit stir crazy (Picture Bug lying spread eagle on the living room floor, wailing, "I just want to get out of the house! I'm tired of stepping in peepee all the time! I just can't take it anymore!" Oh boy, can I sympathize!) I decided to put Goose in Pull ups, so we could resume our normal out-of-the-house activities, then back into underwear when we were home. By Friday, Goose wasn't making any progress, she wanted to stay in Pull ups, and increasingly told me to "Stop staying that!" (regarding reminders to tell me if she needed to potty) and "Don't follow me!" (regarding my trying to stay within arms reach to rush her to the potty). We discussed how frustrating it was to have accidents all the time and how we would try again when her body was a little bigger. I told her that I would leave her alone about it, but that she was still welcome to try going on the potty, which she's done several times since then, so I feel good about the decision to back off.

While potty training itself wasn't a success, the entourage did enjoy the first three days of just staying home with me not trying to accomplish anything other than sticking to Lucy. We put together lots of puzzles (Bug even conquered the big floor puzzle!), built lots of towers, castles, houses, etc. (I rearranged the playroom a bit, so all the various blocks and building materials are in one corner; this has inspired alot of architectural creativity), colored dozens of coloring book pages, sang lots of classic preschool songs, and read lots and LOTS of books (interestingly, a great deal of nonfiction this week on subjects ranging from shapes, colors, and opposites to geography and ancient history). I also came up with several fun cooking projects we could do together that the made the days just a little more exciting: We made chocolate chip cookies and even Goose got more involved in the process than usual (Bug even let her help hold the electric mixer). We made, built with, and obviously ate Jello Jiggler blocks. And, after reading the book repeatedly, we made green eggs and ham for dinner one night.

Reading
We missed a few reading lessons this week in my attempts to stay focused on Goose, but both Monkey and Bug got to read new sentences this week. During the latter part of the week, I realized they were depending mostly on sight reading (with just limited letter sounds to work with the same words do keep coming up, but they would do things like interchange "the" and "that" because the first sound is the same). So we spent the last couple days of this week using the white boards to review sounding out skills, which seems to have been productive.

Doctor Visit
Goose had her two year old well check this week, and she was very brave! We had talked a lot beforehand about what was going to happen, and I had recently weighed the girls on the scale at the Y, so that at least was a familiar experience. She also spent most of the visit clutching her "Daddy Buddy," a stuffed superhero with Daddy's picture on it. And, she is definitely Daddy's girl--very healthy, but tall and skinny!

Time
This week we hung the girls' calendar on the back of their easel in the playroom, and they have loved having ready access to it. The month of January is almost entirely covered in marker, and they have been very faithful about taking turns crossing off the days and talking about what day of the week it is. Particularly motivating this week was counting down the days until Saturday when Miss K, our new babysitter, came to stay with them while I got a morning out of the house to myself (it was lovely, and the girls had a great time too).

Bug also started wearing her watch again this week and has been asking what time certain things will happen and keeping track of how much time is passing. She can't actually tell time yet, but she's getting a much better sense of how it passes.

"Jobs"
I noticed this week that the girls took on recurring interest/roles. Bug decided to create games this week. She  drew several board games on large pieces of paper, and recruited Goose and I to play with her. I admit the object of the games were kind of lost on me, but the process was fun. She also figured out the ideal procedure for putting puzzles together (corners, edges, then inside pieces). Monkey was an event planner this week. At one point she actually took Goose and I on a tour of the house, showing us all the fun things we could choose from to do on our stay-at-home day. She also planned several "birthday" parties for either Goose or Bug, complete with picnics of play food spread out on a blanket in the living room or on the playtable, elaborate Duplo block cakes (so that she can actually "cut" slices with a plastic knife), and presents to open packaged in little paper boxes from their Tear-agami book. The only problem occurred when Goose wanted to tear into the "cake" before Monkey had declared it time.

Back to Church
After so much travelling, we finally got back to activities at our own church. Sunday we had the usual classes and worship service with the extra fun of a potluck luncheon followed by participation in an assembly line to fill hygiene bags for the mission team to Haiti to take with them in a few weeks. The girls, including Goose, probably filled a half dozen bags each and were very excited about sending things like new toothbrushes and washcloths to people in Haiti. Wednesday night suppers at church also started up again. Bug did not want to go to her class, but I'm taking it as a sign of increasing emotional maturity that she didn't have a meltdown about it. I got us to church about 10 minutes early so the girls had some time in their classroom without all the other kids, we had talk about how she usually enjoyed the different activities (projects, stories, etc.) , and their teacher got them involved enough in some pre-class activities that Goose and I were able to leave without incident--well, except that Goose desperately wanted to stay with Miss K and all the other kids.

Library Day
Another library day with just us and the librarians. The girls even commented on how quiet it was. This week we stayed to read books, and the girls even introduced the librarians to our current favorite book, How Do You Wokka Wokka? by quoting some of it to them. The librarians were impressed and even looked up the book for potential use in a future storytime. We came home with these books:
Bears: Polar Bears, Black Bears, and Grizzly Bears ("what do you want to learn about" book)
The Gingerbread Man
Toddlerobics
Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed
Whooo's Haunting the Teeny Tiny Ghost?
Dancing Granny
My Teacher for President

Zoo Day
I decided to take a last opportunity for a mini-roadtrip before potty training Goose, and we headed to the zoo one day this week. That membership has definitely been worth it! We've probably made a half dozen trips to that zoo, and we continue to have new and exciting experiences. When we arrived we could actually hear the monkeys from the parking lot! I think they must be enjoying the cooler weather, because we couldn't remember hearing them before. Once we arrived at their exhibit, we observed their enthusiastic activities and their breakfast menu for a bit, and then Bug informed us that "Actually, they're apes, not monkeys, because they don't have tails." Bravo for the little zoologist! We checked out their sign and discovered that they were indeed apes--siamang gibbons to be exact.

My monkeys watching zoo monkeys--no, I mean, apes!

We happened to go on the zoo's storytime day, so we got to participate in a storytime about animal ears. I was very proud of Bug for being willing to speak up and answer questions that the reader asked of the group. This week we also discovered the vulture's nest (It's huge! The vultures themselves, however, were hiding; although we got to see one later.), and an exhibit of mole rats we hadn't seen before. This was particularly interesting in light of one of our library selections this week since the exhibit included naked mole rats. We spent a particularly long time in the aquarium, since we've usually rushed that experience on our way out of the zoo, and the entourage spent great deal of time observing the komodo dragons: noting particular features (scales, long claws, holes instead of "normal" ears), noticing that we could see their necks expanding as they breathe (followed by putting our hands on each other's chest to feel us breathing), and comparing the komodos to their toy dragons (forked tongues--yes; fire--no; wings--no, but they have 4 legs instead of 2, so the komodos would be better at walking and climbing). The entourage was holding up particularly well, so we decided to stay later than usual and watch a bird show featuring local predatory birds, including those vultures that we missed earlier.

No zoo visit is complete without climbing on the statues!

Reading
The girls continue making progress! Reading her first sentence seemed to be a breakthrough experience for Monkey: now she usually requests having a sentence to read (which means I end up composing them out of the words involved in that day's lesson), and she's even been sounding out words without assistance! Bug has gotten far enough in the book that her lessons usually involve reading a sentence, and she added a new sound this week (o as in ox).

Goose has been taking shorter or no naps at all this week, so she's been up and about for more of our lessons, and she doesn't want to be left out! She doesn't have the articulation or pencil control to do many of the tasks, but I figure I can at least start teaching her the letter sounds in the order they're presented as long as she's requesting lessons. So far she's worked on m, s, and a (as in apple). She can match up letters to sounds with reasonable accuracy during a lesson, but I've yet to ask her anything outside of that context. She also likes to "wite yetters!" (write letters) by practicing scribbles on her white board.


Topics of Discussion This Week

• Evergreen plants (defining and excitedly identifying them)
• Attributes of God (how big, strong, old, etc., He is)
• Calendars (usual activities for months and weeks)
• Medicines and pharmacies (different meds for different sicknesses, how the pharmacist knows what to give people, etc.)
• Banking (We deposited checks into their savings accounts this week, so we talked again about how banks work and what savings [as opposed to checking] accounts are for)

Stay-at-home Days
After all the excitement of Christmas and traveling to see family, the entourage and I enjoyed several stay-at-home days this week. They had plenty of time to play with their new toys and settle back into the familiar routine. The additional Playmobils, fairies, and family dolls were quickly incorporated into the usual pretend play. We read lots of the new books and even managed to find shelf space for all of them!

Hard at work painting dinosaurs

Maybe the biggest sign that they just needed stay-at-home days was the brevity of this weeks library day. We were in and out in less than 30 minutes! They didn't even want to stick around and read books. They quickly located a favorite airplane book (Airshow about a girl their age who attends an airshow with her family; it features labeled drawings of lots of airplanes including a number of military ones that are always favorites) and a copy of The 20th Century Children's Book Treasury, which they picked because they remember reading from it at Grandma's house.

They're Getting So BIG!
All the girls hit big milestones this week. Goose is now in a toddler bed instead of a crib. They are all very excited about this development, and Goose has handled the new freedom superbly. In fact, she wanders out from naptime or nighttime with less frequency than one of her older sisters! This is one of those cases where I think it's been really helpful to have them all in the same room, and she can just follow her big sisters lead (or get dragged back to the bedroom by them, which I'm pretty sure has happened on at least one occasion). A couple of days after Goose's big switch, Monkey and Bug switched from 5-point car seats to "big kid" booster seats. The only catch is that while they can't buckle themselves in anymore (we're working on it), they can unbuckle themselves. Fortunately, that hasn't happened while we've been on the road yet, and we had a long and serious preventative discussion about it (with the threat of putting them back in car seats if it becomes a problem). So far, so good, and they are loving the additional freedom to wiggle!

Reading
We started daily reading lessons back up with much success! Monkey and Bug jumped right in with enthusiasm. Bug read several more sentences this week and added a new sound (c as in cat).
Monkey read her first complete sentence this week, and she also added a letter sound to her repertoire (i as in sit). Bug also wrote another email to Daddy and spent a fair amount of time on the desktop computer just typing away at a string of seemingly random letters in Word.

Fractions
Bug was rummaging through the game cabinet this week and came across the set of fraction bars we bought a while back. I agreed to open up the rest of them (only 1 through 1/4s were loose) and explained how they worked. She very quickly understood that the number on the bottom of the fraction means it takes that many parts to make up a whole bar. I also showed her that you can play around with them and use different fraction pieces to make a whole (so, 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/4 still makes 1). I walked away and she spent another 5 or 10 minutes arranging them on her own.

Calendar
I decided we needed to start intentionally working on the concept of time--not telling time on clocks but the concepts of days, weeks, months, and years. To this end we bought a calendar for the entourage that has a new coloring page every month. We sat down one day this week and compared my calendar to theirs, talked about all the months that make up a year, what month we're in now, how each day has a number, what today was (and crossed off the couple of days in January we'd already passed), and what the names of days of the week were. This last item was followed by countless renditions of the days of the week song (to the tune of "The Adams Family"). My plan is to mark important days in each month as we enter it, and to keep up the habit of crossing off days and noting which day of the week it is.

Christmas Money!
Perhaps the highlight of the week was taking the entourage to our new favorite toy store (small, local place that stocks all--and only--my favorite brands). We discussed their budget and that they may see things they wanted that they didn't have enough to buy. They listened patiently, and it must have sunk in because they didn't have any problem accepting that several items were out of their price range. We spent a long time browsing the store and playing with the various items out on display before they made any decisions. First, they decided to split the cost of two things to share: a set of three bathtub boats and a big box of Marbleworks. With the money they had left they bought a couple of wind up toys (the obsession with automatons continues!) and several plastic figures from a bin they've admired for a long time. Goose was particularly excited about her purchase from the figure bin--a shimmery, purple, five-headed dragon, whose first act in pretend play was to attempt to eat the fairy figures her sisters bought. Don't you just love little sisters?

Merry Christmas!
We had two Christmases as usual this year: one with Daddy's family and one with mine. It was great fun to see family we don't see very often, and the girls enjoyed admiring and, when appropriate, playing with the grandparents' Christmas decorations. The girls have lots of great new toys to play with and, so typical of the entourage's interests, practically a whole bookshelf of new books to read. Two of their favorites, How Do You Wokka Wokka? and Orange Peel's Pocket, are already being actively memorized so they can "read" them themselves.

While not technically new experiences, none of the girls remember trying the traditional holiday foods from the two households in previous years. For Christmas Eve, Daddy's family serves tamales and Mommy's family has crab soup (a twist on the traditional Irish fish or oyster stew). "New" foods were tasted and thoroughly enjoyed along with an abundance of Christmas treats. At Grandma and Granddad's house, they also helped with decorating the gingerbread cookies. Even Goose decorated quite a few; although we still need to work on not smashing the lids of sprinkle containers into the frosting on the cookie.

Christmas Secrets
This was the first year that the entourage did any Christmas shopping. I had taken the girls shopping for Daddy and the grandparents before we started travelling, and Nana even took them shopping for me once we arrived at our first stop. I was very impressed that the girls managed to keep all those gifts a secret until they were opened considering how excited they were about the purchases. When they burst through the door after shopping with Nana, Bug exclaimed, "Mommy! We bought--um. . ." Monkey finished for her, "Something we can't tell you about!"

Dogs
Each house we visited was also inhabited by three dogs: three little terrorists (wait, I mean, terriers) at the first and an australian shepherd and a couple of mid-sized mutts at the second. By the end of our first visit, the girls were finally starting to tell the dogs "No" and stand their ground (or at least keep moving) a little better. Bug even approached the dogs on her own and tried teaching them that they could lick her hands, but not her face. They fared much better with the bigger dogs at the second house, since those didn't bark as much or try to jump on them (herd them, yes, but that doesn't seem to bother the girls as much). Goose was brave enough to not only tell them no if necessary (particularly to Jojo, who seemed to regard a crumb-covered Goose as a walking snack bar), but even told me she was playing games with them when she was swinging her feet at the dogs nosing around her chair for dropped food.

Granddad's Office
Bug in particular has been interested in surgery and anesthesia lately, so one of the highlights of this trip was getting to visit the office of Granddad, a general surgeon. He has an operating room with a real operating table and the big lights and everything for in-office procedures. He showed them where everything was and how it worked and demonstrated the various positions for the operating table. He also had a Playmobil version of an operating room, which they had fun with as well.

Travelers
This trip involved a total of 20 non-consecutive hours of driving time. Overall, the entourage did beautifully. We had a few incidents of arguing/hitting/hair pulling, but once Bug got it through her head that she was allowed to physically defend herself when I couldn't adequately discipline from the driver's seat, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction seemed to kick in, and they left each other alone or at least played nicely. They watched more movies (Muppet's Christmas Carol, Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer, and Finding Nemo), listened to music, and had a blast playing with some of their new toys (little wooden family dolls, Playmobile people, and fairies were particularly popular in the car). And of course, they take full advantage of the fact that I allow additional treats for entertainment purposes when we're traveling.

(Note: Lots of pictures were taken over the holidays; however, none of them by me, which means I don't have any to post at this particular moment. Sorry!)

Library Day
No story time again this week, but we did go to another movie showing! This one was much more manageable: Charlie Brown's Christmas. It's only 30 minutes, and since we own it, they've seen it multiple times already. They love it, though, so they we were pretty excited about seeing it on the big screen. Oh, and the fact that the librarian gave them each their own bag of popcorn with some M&Ms tossed in was also popular.

We were travelling at the end of the week though, so we didn't check out a pile of books this time. Instead they picked out just one from the bin of paperbacks that aren't in the library system (they're actually there so the toddler's can look at books without parents having to worry about the kids tearing them up). They picked out The Donkey Prince, one of Grimm's fairy tales, beautifully illustrated. It's been interesting reading because it's the second time recently that the girls have run across a storyline in which the main character is rejected by society for being different (Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer being the first). This is completely puzzling to them. Why being different would be a bad thing simply doesn't work out in their minds, and I love that. Although I kind of hate that they have to be introduced to the concept through stories that are supposed to be teaching acceptance.

More Cookies!
We made gingerbread cookies this week to take with us on our Christmas travels. Monkey and Bug are experts now with cutting and decorating (I do the scooping and rolling out at this point). They were a little more intentional with the decorating this time, and they are definitely devoloping their own styles: for example, Monkey created a one-eyed pirate gingerbread man (then gleefully made him one-armed as well after he baked), while Zoe carefully placed a single "pearl" on each arm of a snowflake.

Reading/Writing
Reading lessons continue, if sporadically at this season, but the girls are doing well and still enjoy the mix of methods (out of the book, on the white board, or with juice can lids). The newest addition to their learning literacy: emails to Daddy! They knew I wrote to him everyday, but they only recently realized that they could do that too. At this point, they think up what they want to say and ask me how to spell each word, which they hunt-and-peck to type on the computer. In addition to the joy of communicating with Daddy while he's gone (they were SO excited when they each got an email back!), they've also learned about punctuation (I'm sticking to just periods and question marks right now). I haven't started pointing out rules of capitalization yet, but Monkey noticed that the names needed to be capitalized and I showed her how to do that. I am so looking forward to using writing as a means to teach grammar and spelling!

Mother's Helper
Can I just take a moment to say how much I dearly love our current church! When I broke the news to my Sunday school class about Daddy's sudden departure, I got not only an immediate outpouring of sympathy and prayers, but a retired military doc verified that I had his phone and told me not to hesitate to call (he makes house calls for milspouses!) and another couple said their kids were out of school for the holidays already and would I like to borrow their 12-year-old daughter one morning to watch with the girls so I could get Christmas/travel preparations done? Yes, please!

So, Miss C came over Thursday morning, and the girls had a blast. They told me beforehand that they were going to be shy for a little while (perfectly acceptable response to meeting someone new), but it took them all of 5 minutes to decide she was awesome and to dismiss me to my work. Miss C is one smart girl--she arrived bearing fairy coloring sheets and a new set of markers. I also overhead them building elaborate castles out of blocks and reading books. The girls were even willing to give her goodbye hugs! (Meanwhile, I had a highly productive morning and actually got to relax a bit in the evening instead of packing and cleaning like crazy.)

"Over the river and through the woods . . . "
The girls were amazing travellers on Friday. We had no meltdowns, no fighting, and only made two stops in a six hour drive to Nana and Papa Bear's house! They watched some DVDs (part of Tarzan, part of a Muppet Christmas Carol, and all of Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer), they played games on their iPods (and even shared with Goose!), they colored mini activities books I bought for the trip, we talked about the geography we were passing through (through great big cities, over several lakes, up and down a couple of mountains, and past waterfalls and cliffs dripping with icicles--Bug has decided she wants to take up rock climbing when she's big enough). We also listened to CDs of international Christmas carols and a kid's CD featuring the music of New Orleans. A day in the car is never a wasted time!

Bye Daddy
As Bug so poignantly put it, we had to "say a very sad goodbye to Daddy" this past weekend. Monkey and Bug are old enough (and have gone through this enough) to realize what's going on and  process it all a little better this time around. They were sad before he left, but they responded by getting in extra wrestling time and giving him good long hugs at the airport--even Goose gave him a long hug without hesitation (she's hit that stage where she often refuses hugs, especially goodbye ones, so that's a big deal). When we got home, I overheard the girls explaining to their buddies (stuffed animals) about Daddy being gone and Bug put on a Daddy shirt to help her feel better. Daddy keeps coming up in conversation, especially at moments that they wish he was around for: making and eating Christmas cookies, going to see a living nativity, etc. This time though, instead of having "I miss Daddy" meltdowns about it, they tell me I need to make sure to write him a message about it--a much more cheerful way of missing him.

Before he left, we talked about how Daddy would be missing Christmas this year, and I suggested that we buy and fill a mini stocking for him to take with him. It made me happy when the first thing they thought of that he would need to celebrate Christmas was a nativity set (small enough to pack and not breakable, they said. We found an ornament at the Christian bookstore that fit the bill). We also filled it with the requisite chocolate Santas and candy canes.

Christmas Movies & Music
Part of our Advent celebrations that I don't think I've mentioned yet is that we've watched Christmas movies every morning instead of their usual shows during our morning milk and snuggle time (and yes, Mommy has caved and frequently let them watch more than the usual 30 minutes because I love Christmas movies). Their absolute favorite: The Nutcracker, not a kiddie cartoon version but a full length ballet version designed by Maurice Sendak, full of color and drama. We also went to library and checked out a storybook version and a DVD of a televised version from the 60s. They found the 60s version a disappointment since it skipped some of their favorite parts: the moment when Clara rescues the Nutcracker by whacking the Mouse King with her shoe and the part with the Chinese dancers from the Land of Sweets. The Sendak version also had particular attraction for them because one of Drosselmeier's gifts is a toy castle full of miniature dancing automatons (thank you, Hugo Cabret, for inspiring that particular obssession!). We now own a wooden nutcracker, and the girls often request the Nutcracker music, so they dance and pretend to Clara and Drosselmeier.

We also went to the library for a showing of Polar Express. It's the first time the girls have gone to see a movie somewhere, and much as they loved it, it'll be awhile before we go to a real movie theater since I spent the entire hour and a half answering questions. They were also big fans of the hot chocolate and cookies that the librarians provided.

Of course, our house has been full of Christmas music, not just the Nutcracker Suite, but a pretty eclectic collection of other Christmas music. One of Monkey's favorite things lately has been rocking the air drums along with A Twisted Christmas. One of my favorite Christmas music memories from this year though was watching all three girls dance up and down the grocery store aisles singing "Jingle Bells" at the top of their lungs. Monkey and Bug even had real jingle bells strung on their clogs.  

Christmas Cookies!
We baked lots of cookies this year! We made enough rolled out sugar cookies, peppermint snowballs, and M&M cookie bars this week to pass out plates to about a half dozen neighbors plus a big plate for the librarians and, of course, lots of leftovers for us! The girls helped me measure and mix. Monkey and Bug even cracked eggs and manned the handheld mixer on their own (with close supervision, of course). They all pitched in to cut out and decorate the sugar cookies. Those activities actually held their attention longer than I expected because we decorated them with sprinkles before cooking them (I didn't have to deal with icing, and they could switch back and forth between activities). Obviously, beaters and bowls were licked and cookies sampled for quality control purposes. The girls had a great time walking around to pass out cookies and were even brave enough to say Merry Christmas and pass out the plates themselves.

COOKIES!!!

Monkey and Bug hard at work smashing candy canes.

Library Day
No storytime again this week, but we had a great time reading lots of stories. This week we came home with these books:
Let's Say Hi to Friends who Fly!
The Duckling Gets a Cookie
Mother's Day Mice
Mary Veronica's Egg
The Nutcracker
The Night Tree
Babar's ABC

Living Nativity
While running errands one day this week, we spotted a church near us advertising a living nativity. It also happened to be next to a pretty elaborate Christmas lights display. We decided--ok, Bug decided and informed me that we should come back when it was dark. We had a great time. The girls watched the living nativity and listened to the church choir sing carols for a long time while enjoying complimentary hot cocoa and Christmas cookies.

Seeing the living nativity inspired this scene of "Joseph," "Mary," and "Baby Jesus."

Lessons
Confession: with all the Advent festivities, we haven't been doing reading lessons as consistently this week. We worked in a few, and the girls did a great job. Monkey even read a few words all by herself! They've also gotten more adept at memorizing books and then "reading" them to Goose, which she loves.

We haven't done anything resembling formal math lessons in a while, but all the baking involved lots of counting and measuring, and Goose still loves counting anything or nothing. At some point in the car this week Bug even spontaneously counted all the way to 50! She only needed prompting after 19, 29, etc. I think that's a record.

Favorite Conversation of the Week:
Bug: "[Monkey] called me funky! What's 'funky' mean?"
Me: "Um . . . I guess it means you're a little weird."
Bug (racing back to the playroom): "I'm not funky! I'm a LOT weird!"

[Faithful readers, please note: this post covers only through this past Friday. It's just late being posted.]

Happy Advent! 
Our family got to light the first Advent candle at church! Well, we left Goose in the nursery, but the big girls were with Daddy and I (toddler + flames + microphone + large crowd = almost guaranteed disaster). Monkey and Bug did beautifully. I was very proud of them for not freaking out despite being in front of a couple hundred people. It helped that we did a lot of talking about what was going to happen, and we put up all our Christmas decorations, including our own advent wreath the day before.

We also started our advent study, which the girls love. It has a really brief devotion, a prayer, a Bible, and a short activity for each day. The first activity was making a paper chain to count down the days until Christmas, and the girls have been really good about taking turns pulling apart the links and counting how many are left. Now that we've done a week of them the girls have even enjoyed pulling out the book and looking back at the days we've done.

The entourage was very excited about all the Christmas decorations! With a few delicate exceptions, Monkey and Bug put all the ornaments up on our Chrismon tree. This meant of course that the tree was only decorated for the first 3 feet, but the next day they noticed the uneven decorating and pulled up a few stools and rearranged until they were satisfied with the distribution of ornaments. They also helped me find spots for all the nativity scenes (Daddy and I collect them, so the living room currently has 15 made in various sizes, styles, and materials. There are no doubts about the reason for the season in this house!).

Speaking of Christmas decorations, remember the cardboard and fabric "tree" from last week? Well, Daddy and I talked about eventually getting a second "real" tree for the girls to decorate with their handmade ornaments. It turns out "eventually" is this year. We ran out of room on the fabric tree in no time, so Daddy went out and bought the girls an inexpensive tree and a string of colored lights. They were thrilled to decorate yet another tree!

Nana!
Nana arrived on Monday for a coincidentally well-timed visit. (It turns out Daddy departs for another "big trip" this coming weekend, so she got to see him before he leaves, and Daddy and I got a date night that involved Christmas shopping for the entourage.) The girls were very excited about this visit; they've been telling me for weeks that it had been a long time since they'd seen their Nana and Papa Bear! (Papa Bear couldn't come, but he was missed.) The highlight of this visit was going to see Christmas lights--not the ones on random houses, but a 100 acre farm near us that puts up displays made of more than 5 million Christmas lights. They charge admission to take a hayride tour through a life-size nativity scene, scenes of classic fairy tales, moments in history, and Christmassy things like Santa's Workshop made out of lights. The farm also had a Santa's playhouse themed playground that they got to run around on. Their favorite part though--getting to walk into Cinderella's castle made entirely from lights:

RIP Oswald
The morning Nana left, we went upstairs to get dressed and feed Oswald and discovered the poor fish belly up in his bowl. Monkey and Bug were really upset. We've encountered dead frogs and birds, and Nana's dog died a while back, but this is the first time something/one they really cared about died. Planning his "funeral" definitely helped. They picked out tissue paper to wrap him in and chose the spot to bury him (somewhere the sun reaches). They even pulled out trowels to help dig a little grave beside the house and found a good flat stone for a grave marker. Bug commented that she thought he would like it when it rained because then he'd have water underground. Goose had been raptly watching all this, and once we patted down the dirt and placed the stone on top, she cheerfully announced, "All gone Oswald!" That pulled grins out of her big sisters. Monkey and Bug wanted to "sit with Oswald" for a little while when we were done, so Goose and I went around the corner to give them a moment.

Goose is 2! (almost)
Daddy's going to miss some major events while on his big trip, and we realized the one thing we could easily celebrate early was Goose's birthday. Since she's still oblivious and it's right before Christmas we were just doing a family birthday celebration anyway. We made her a chocolate cake, and she got to open presents. Like her big sisters she freaked out a little about the sing Happy Birthday and blow out candles part, but she loves her new toys! (Sadly, I wasn't with it enough to remember to take photos.)

Reading
The girls continue to do very well with their reading lessons. Bug got to read several complete sentences this week (in addition to all the usual tasks) and added the sound "th." This is a very difficult sound for her to make (it comes out as an "f" when she talks), so being able to read it with correct pronunciation was a huge triumph. Monkey also added a new sound this week, "d," and she's requested a combination of white board and juice lid activities for her lessons (keeping up the variety is going to be key in this kid's education!). Monkey and Bug even requested that I make a set of juice lid letters for Goose, since she keeps requesting her own reading lessons.

Bug has also started writing much more recently. She occasionally pulls out paper and practices all the letters she can think of at the moment, or she ask me how to spell things (mostly family members names). It's interesting: she can write letters that I've never actually showed her how to. I don't know how her technique is, but her finished product is definitely improving!


Quotes

• Bug [munching on apple peelings]: "We're your vacuum cleaners because we clean up the mess you make in the kitchen. You have some cute vacuum cleaners!"
• Monkey has been experimenting with interjections lately. Among her favorites: "Oh jets!" and "Blasted rats!"
• Benefits of not talking down to your preschoolers: Having your almost 2-year-old ask, "My beverage?" about a questionable sippy cup or having one of your 4-year-olds say, "Well, acquire some!" after you inform her that we do not own any markers.

The closest we'll get to a full family Christmas photo this year.
Aren't we a cute bunch?

Goose Counts!
I've done very little to attempt to formally teach Goose to count. In fact, I'd only worked on the concept of 1, 2, 3. Then sometime in the car this week, Goose suddenly started counting and got up to 9! (Well, she skipped 6, but that was her only mistake!) It turns out Monkey and Bug had decided to take on that responsibility themselves and by the end of the week Goose was counting up to eleven (over and over and over). If they keep this up, I may never have to sit down and actually teach Goose anything! (They've also been trying to teach her read but more on that below!)

Reading
I decided we needed something to add a little more variety to reading lessons (sometimes we do them straight from the book, sometimes I write them out on their white boards). This week I took a bunch of the frozen juice lids I've been hoarding and made them each a set of letters they've done in their lessons and a set of word endings (at, am, eat, etc.) to share. This turned out to be a great idea. Not only have they enjoyed doing their regular lessons by moving these around, but they have loved making "silly words"--stringing together letters and syllables and getting me to help them sound it out. They've also started using the lids to attempt to teach Goose how to read. They use the lids like flashcards and hold one up and get her to repeat the letter sound. She loves it!

I also realized this week that some of their dragging through lessons is probably boredom with the repetitive sections rather than actual struggles with the concepts--particularly for Bug. A couple of times this week Bug asked to skip the "practice sounding out" section (which she deemed silly and boring almost from day 1) and go straight to reading a list of half a dozen words and a sentence all by herself. She zipped through it like a pro! Until this week I'd been making her plod through all the sections with me, but since she so obviously grasps the concept of sounding out, it looks like I can give her a pass on those. Monkey isn't reading words by herself yet, but she's really improved on the rhyming games, so she's getting closer. One of these days she'll probably pull a typical move and just take off without warning like she's been doing it forever!

Bug has been looking at the word books again lately. Of course, when the girls were toddlers they loved them for vocabulary building purposes, but now she looks at them to see how the words for different things are spelled. I haven't bothered testing her, but I imagine she's learning a number of sight words that way.

Preparations for Advent!

The anticipation is building, and the girls have been counting down the days until Advent when we get to put up all the decorations and start our Advent study. Of course, the rest of the world doesn't wait for Advent, so the entourage has already been coming home with fun handmade ornaments. Our big tree is a Chrismon tree instead of a typical Christmas tree, so we had to find a different home for those cute decorations. This year I had the girls come with me to the fabric store and pick out fabric that looked like a tree. We brought it home, wrapped it around a big cardboard triangle, and I added loops of ribbon to hang things from. The girls love having their own "pretend tree" upstairs.

We started our Christmas shopping this week. The girls helped me find gifts for my family's gift exchange, and they are very excited about the stocking stuffers they picked out. (So no, the entourage doesn't believe in Santa Claus, but they are really stoked about being sneaky like St. Nicholas was and putting secret presents in the stockings when nobody's looking--my family's tradition.)

This week the girls and I also went shopping for Christmas dresses! This was the first year that I didn't even attempt to coordinate dresses, and I'm so glad I didn't have my heart set on matching little girls. Monkey and Bug's dresses actually clash, but each girl got a dress that made her eyes light up--even better! Before we set out I told the girls the dresses had to cost less than a certain amount and be machine washable. Bug spotted her dream dress almost as soon as we walked into the first store: red velvet with white faux fur edging. A quick glance at the price tag revealed that a life lesson would have to be learned very quickly. Bug took the news far more gracefully than I expected, and I told her that we'd be visiting several more stores that might have the same dress for the right price. We talked about the dress and about what she really liked about it. She told me after an unsuccessful next stop that while she really liked that dress, she "might have to get a different one and just deal with it." This mom's prayers were answered when the last store on my list had the right dress for the right price! Finding Monkey's dress wasn't nearly as heartwrenching. After perusing the first store's offerings, Monkey decided she wanted one with roses like several of the dresses there, but she wasn't really excited about any of those particular ones. The next stop however had the dress: a pink tiered, sleeveless number sprinkled with sequins and featuring three roses at its empire waistline. I assumed I would be picking Goose's dress since she was just running around the racks seemingly without paying much attention to the dresses. Suddenly, I hear her yell "Mine!" and look up to see her clutching a sparkly silver dress with big black polka dots. Everyone came home very happy, and since our family's been asked to light the first Advent candle at church this coming Sunday, the entourage has a special occasion to pull out those dresses. (Pictures will hopefully be coming in my next week's post.)

Library Day
The storytime "Christmas" theme this week was "Naughty or Nice," but I'm pretty sure all the books she read were about naughty kids--redeemed at the end and always loved by their mommies, of course. For this week's craft they made Christmas tree ornaments from triangles of patterned cardstock and popsicle sticks with sparkly pom poms at the top for stars. The girls loved this craft and happily made one for home and one for the library's tree. We came home with these books:
There's a Bird on Your Head!
Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten
Dora Goes to School (Monkey and Bug have lately been very curious about school and very relieved that they don't have to go.)
The Christmas Bird
When Africa Was Home
Dogs
Farms (The previous two are Eyewitness books that Goose picked out, full of lots of great photographs. The girls have been particularly interested in Farm, which is mostly about the history of farming from Stone Age humans poking in the dirt with a stick and catching wild sheep to modern farmers with full-size tractors and milking machines.)
Aircraft (their "what do you want to learn about?" book. Monkey's favorites: the flying boat and the stealth fighter jet. We've also been making lots of paper airplanes this week and revisiting the subject of aerodynamics.)

A Sample of Questions I've Been Asked This Week:
How do spiders build their webs?
Why do bugs die?
How do space ships get to space?
How do submarines move?
How do clouds stay up there?
How big is God? And what does He look like?
What's a spirit? (When I attempted to answer this one and confessed I didn't really understand it either, the girls were quiet for a minute, then Bug offered, "Maybe we'll understand it when we get to heaven.")
How does God get us to heaven?
Will we be able to walk there?
Jesus is God, right?
Can God do everything people can't do?
Do animals worship God, too?

We bought a new winter hat for Goose this week (her pick). Just too cute not to share!

Library Day
We skipped storytime at the library this week in favor of having our own time with fewer kids running around  (well, really Mommy wanted to clean on Wednesday before family arrived, so we went on Tuesday). We had a lovely time sitting in the beanbag chairs reading with just the entourage, and spent lots of time looking for books. Our "what do you want learn about this week?" was a little more involved than usual. Monkey wanted a book about ice cream. The kids section didn't have any, so she helped me track down the Dewey decimal number in the adult section. However, the one recipe book we found didn't meet her criteria (no pictures). Bug also had a little trouble with her topic of choice; we couldn't find a book specifically about Christmas trees, but from the holiday section she found a great book that talks about Christmas traditions from around the world. Goose also decided that we absolutely had to bring home The Dangerous Book for Girls. I don't know where she found it, but she spent most of our library visit clutching that massive book to her chest (I suspect it had to do with the sparkly cover). The girls are a bit too young for the book yet, so they didn't spend much time with it, but we did determine that's it's a book we'll need to buy someday, so we can keep it.
We came home with these books this week:
The First Thanksgiving
The Invisible Mistake Case
Christopher Counting
Jack in a Box
We're Going on a Bear Hunt
The Alphabet Tree
Arthur's Teacher Moves In
The Best Picnic Ever
The Dangerous Book for Girls
Christmas around the World

Visitors!
It was a visitor filled week for the entourage! Last weekend Aunt A and her boyfriend, Mr. M, came to visit, and the girls had a great time with these grown ups who had nothing better to do than read books, build with blocks, help with puzzles, etc. Aunt A and Mr. M had to leave Sunday, but Aunt A was back on Tuesday to be here when Mommy's family gathered at our house for Thanksgiving. Grandma, Granddad, and Uncle N arrived Wednesday night, so the entourage had even more playmates to choose from! I think some of the highlights were wrestling with Granddad and sitting on the couch with Grandma to read from her anthology of 20th century classic kid's stories.

Happy Thanksgiving!
The girls have been preparing for Thanksgiving by checking out books from the library about the first Thanksgiving, talking about what it means to be thankful, and what we were thankful for. The girls don't have a great understanding of time in terms of how long ago the first Thanksgiving happened, but they were very excited about hosting our own feast! They all helped with the baking on Wednesday (lots of measuring and dumping, counting scoops, and smelling spices), although we sent them to the park with Granddad and Uncle N while we were cooking Thursday morning. As expected, plenty of delicious food was consumed; though I think the cranberry ice was probably their favorite.

Thanksgiving with Mommy's family involves a traditional after-the-feast walk in the woods. This year we delayed the walk until Friday morning and went to a local nature park with a stroller friendly trail. At some point though we left the stroller behind in order to explore a narrower trail; we admired some huge leaves, talked about how leaves decompose and turn into dirt, and finally laid eyes on the creek the park is named for. Goose did a particularly impressive job walking the whole way while holding Aunt A's or Grandma's hand.

A Hop, Skip, and Jump
The entourage has been actively working on some gross motor skills lately. Monkey and Bug are learning how to skip. After a brief demonstration Monkey took off with aplomb, but it's a little more challenging for Bug. She decided that she needed to get steadier on hopping on one foot first, so she's been practicing that. Goose has been doing a lot of hopping herself (with two feet at this point), and practicing jumping off of things (like Daddy's back when he's lying on the floor). Monkey and Bug have also been trying to teach Goose how to climb in and out of her crib (she hasn't succeeded yet, but I'm expecting that to happen any day now).

Advent Comes Early
I've always been firm about the household Christmas season beginning with the first Sunday in Advent: we break out the Christmas music after church and put all the decorations up in one afternoon. This year, however, I broke down and decided it was worth it to pull out a few things early, so the entourage has a better understanding of what Christmas really is. We can't go anywhere without seeing signs of commercial Christmas with its focus on Santa, presents, and desserts. Santa seemed particularly confusing, and Bug wanted reassurances that he was "just in stories, right?" We also marveled that the couple of Christmas books they found at the library last week completely failed to mention Jesus (who has a party and forgets about the birthday boy, right?!) So this week we dug into our storage boxes and pulled out our Christmas books (a handful of nativity books and a St. Nicholas storybook), a Veggie Tales nativity set, and our iTunes Christmas library. We also visited the local Christian bookstore to purchase a kid's Advent study that we're all very excited about. The holiday season is a little more balanced now.

Project
Inspired by all the Christmas preparations, Bug decided she wanted to do a Christmas project and flipped through our craft books until she found the inspiration for these wreaths.

Playground
It's been awhile since the entourage got to play at our favorite playground, so one morning this week we got out the door early enough to fit in some playground time after running a few errands.

Hooray for fall leaves!
(They've been disappointed that our little maple sapling didn't produce enough leaves to play in,
so they were thrilled with all the leaves falling at the park!)

Haircut!
Goose finally had enough hair to warrant a first haircut! Sadly, I failed to take any photos of the actual event, but she was a very brave girl! She was obviously nervous about it, but she didn't actually cry until they broke out the hair dryer.

Reading
Reading lessons continue, but it was definitely a week of "slow and steady wins the race"! Monkey is slowly improving her sounding out and rhyming skills, and I let her add a new sound before the curriculum introduced it. Bug added two new sounds this week (d, i) and is sounding out three and four letter words all by herself. She's even dealing with the concept of silent letters (the English language is so confusing!). Both girls had some tough lessons to get through this week, so we reviewed a couple several times before moving on. Bug has also been actively memorizing more picture books and reading them to her sisters after bedtime.

Games
Monkey and Bug watched me assembling a deck of Magic cards and suddenly remembered that they hadn't played in a while, which means of course that this week involved a lot of Magic games. Bug even developed a more sophisticated strategy. She realized that it's really fun to have a long line of winning cards and that she can increase her odds of having that if she plays her highest card, so every round now involves Bug eyeballing her hand and picking out the biggest one, then adding up the numbers and comparing it to the cards Monkey and I have thrown down. Monkey, like me, doesn't care much about whether or not she's winning or losing. We have fun admiring the artwork on the cards and talking about what all the creatures are supposed to be. Both girls are improving their math skills, of course. There are even some low number cards that they've realized they don't even need counters to add up.

We also played several rounds of a Peter Rabbit board game. At the moment we play this by taking turns rolling the dice and seeing who can get to the bunny supper at the end first (math skills: recognizing numbers, counting, one-to-one ratio). Important lessons in playing by the rules and good sportsmanship were also learned. Just a note: anyone who's argued against an original sin nature has obviously never witnessed a preschooler who's just grasped the concept of winning attempt to cheat at a simple board game!

While those are the only two games we've really played this week, all three girls pulled out lots of others to play with: building and making patterns with UnoStacko blocks, sorting and mimicking the motions on a set of Eric Carle animal cards, fishing with a magnetic pole and fish, identifying the objects on Memory game cards, and lining up and identifying the letters on Scrabble tiles. So much fun!

Germs
All three girls got nasty colds this week, and poor Monkey even spiked a fever for 24 hours. The health and science lessons learned here were, of course, all about germs, how they spread, what we can do to keep that from happening, and what we can do to help our bodies get better and keep from getting sick in the first place. As a result we missed several of our usual activities (library storytime, church night supper, the homeschool playgroup, and a visit to the Y).  For some of those days, the girls only had colds, but declared that they just weren't up for playing with friends. They definitely validated the declaration by spending a large part of the time lounging around the living room, listening to lullaby music, and looking at books. We also watched some extra TV: at Monkey's request we saw the VeggieTales The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything and more 1940s episodes of Superman (also a particular favorite of Goose).

Monkey was feeling yucky, but Bug and Goose asked me to pull out the camera, so they could "cheese"!

Daddy Date All Day!
The entourage got to spend almost all day with Daddy on Saturday (Mommy took a day of personal retreat to hike at a local state park--absolutely lovely). Daddy and the entourage headed to a nearby larger city to shop for cleats for Daddy for ultimate frisbee, eat lunch at a restaurant (a big deal in this household), and run around a children's garden. The entourage loved the children's garden! Although Daddy admitted it will probably be prettier if we go back in the spring.

Election Day
The entourage came with me to vote, and I prepped them ahead of time, so I didn't have to try answering all the questions while actually voting. I explained that all the grown ups get to cast a vote to say who they think should be the next leader of America, the person who gets to make the rules. Among the litany of questions:

• Why am I voting for that one? (Because I think he'll make better decisions--I chose not to get into partisan politics.)
• Will the one who doesn't win be sad? (Probably)
• What will he do instead of being President? (I don't know--probably make speeches and write books.)
• Will we get to see them [the candidates]? (No, but we looked at photos later.)
• So, who won? (This immediately after I cast my vote. I explained that everybody has to vote first.)
• Will we go somewhere later to find out who won? (No, we'll just look it up online. This was met with disappointment. Bug thought there should be a party.)

When we got home they were still trying to sort out how this whole voting thing worked, so I held a mock election: An Animaniac figure and a fairy doll campaigned for leader of the playroom. We used pennies to vote with, and the fairy won by a landslide.

Projects
This is the project the entourage did with our homeschool group this week. Miss J brought her girl's favorite current favorite book, It Looked Like Spilt Milk, to share, and conveniently it just happened to be one that we checked out of the library the day before! The entourage was excited about a book they were familiar with and they loved making their own fun shaped clouds out of cotton balls.

Top to bottom: Goose, Bug, and Monkey

The entourage also chose to pull out our own craft supplies this week, and I love seeing their artistic skills develop! They went for multi-media pieces this week, using crayons, dot paints, and tempera paints.

Bug was the most prolific artistic today with one experimental abstract piece (using a paint brush to make prints), a field of many colored flowers, and a school bus full of people.

Goose created the painting on the left (with remarkably little paint on herself!).
Monkey made the other two experimenting with prints and layering colors.

On Beyond "Why?"
Life with the entourage has involved answering a plethora of questions from the moment they could utter the word why. Now that Monkey and Bug are older though, they ask more in-depth questions, and they stick with a particular curiosity for longer than a single question. These are the random things that sparked their interest this week:

Sumo Wrestling
At some point this week, Bug pulled out my set of wooden sumo wrestlers to play with (a leftover from a childhood partially spent in Japan). She was intrigued by the idea that there were real ones, so Monkey, Bug and I spent about 20 minutes watching YouTube videos of sumo wrestling matches and training stables. Monkey was mesmerized. Talking points during the viewing included: rules of the sport, the special clothes (or lack of them) required for this and other sports, the purpose of referees, the significance of trophies and traditions, and the importance of training and perseverance in sports and other endeavors.


Surgery
Out of the blue, Bug started asking questions about surgery and anesthesia (deep thoughts from the carseat). I answered what I could while driving, but during our lessons time at home I finally had the chance to satisfy her curiosity. We found a great site with a virtual tour of the surgery suite at a children's hospital, so the girls got to see everything from the waiting room to the recovery room with cartoon staff people explaining what would happen at each stage. They seemed particularly concerned about the patient being put back together, but I was able to allay their fears by showing off my own surgery scar. Who knew having two c-sections would be so educationally helpful? (Note to Granddad: If you're up for a show-and-tell session, your grandkids would love to see some real surgeon's tools!)

Track Races
The entourage organized races around our downstairs one evening this week, and Daddy picked up on the fact that they were saying "March! Set! Go!" at the beginning of each race and declaring that they were each the winner at the end. His attempt to set them straight on proper terminology and logistics led to watching clips of women's track races from this summer's Olympics, explaining things like starting blocks and starting guns, relay races verses regular sprints, etc. They also discussed good sportsmanship and perseverance after watching one runner trip and stop running.


Reading
I had a breakthrough idea this week, and reading lessons got much easier! Monkey was still interested in learning to read, but completely failing to be engaged by the actual lessons. So, I made a simple change: instead of us sitting and staring at rather crowded black-and-white pages, I started writing out the relevant parts of the text on her white board in the marker color of her choice. You would think I'd flipped a switch in her head! She loves it and is progressing much faster now. While Bug had never been put off by the original format, she decided the new one looked like more fun, so we've been doing her lessons on her white board too. Bug is now back up to the lesson in which we decided to go back to the beginning, and she conquered it without a hitch! She has even sounded out words entirely by herself without my promptings about what sounds come first, second, and third.

Monkey also decided to jump in on the sight reading part of reading lessons. We added the word and to their reading vocabulary this week. In addition to finding the words in picture books as I read them, I had them pick out a couple of pages from a chapter book, I made copies for each them, and had them circle the words they knew and tell me what they were as they found them.

Library Day
The storytime theme this week was colors with some fun books about mixing them. Sadly, the craft was unrelated. Starting this week, the kids will be making ornaments to put on the children's section Christmas tree. This week's ornament only involved gluing two paper circles together with a loop of paper between them at the top, so a ribbon could be strung through to hang it on the tree. It didn't really involve any creativity on the kids' part, so the entourage lost interest pretty quickly. They were supposed to make two (one for the library and one for home), but they were only willing to make one, and I ended up slapping three more together to leave for the library. Oh well, we did come home with a stack of great books:
Milo the Really Big Bunny
Thanksgiving
Time to Sleep, Sheep the Sheep
Snowed in with Grandma Silk
It Looked Like Spilt Milk
Peek! A Thai Hide and Seek
How an Egg Grows into a Chicken
The Human Body (the previous two were our "what do you want to learn about?" books)

Halloween
So on the afternoon of Halloween, the entourage settled on their costumes: Monkey was a firefighter wearing a princess dress, Goose was a purple butterfly fairy, and Bug was The Greatest One (an everyday dress and tights plus a police vest, superhero cape, and fairy wings). They were very excited and pretty darn cute! Of course, when it came to the actual trick-or-treating, it took them three houses before they would say "Trick or treat" instead of glaring at our neighbors over their thumbs. Once they got the hang of it though they were golden, and they had a lot of fun joining their friend LA in finding all the houses on our street with lights on.

Reading
Reading lessons continue, and even Goose joined in for a lesson or two this week! She thinks pointing to letters and repeating their sounds is a great game, but of course she doesn't actually remember them 30 seconds later. Bug has displayed an interest in learning to sight read, so I've added learning Fry's 1000 words to her reading plan. We have the first ten words on flash cards and she knows two of them now (the and of; she's very proud of this, and wrote her name on the back of the cards so everyone would know that she learned them). She's been asking me to point to words as I read them (much to Monkey's displeasure), and if I'm reading without pointing she'll occasionally ask "Where does it say . . . ?" She got a huge kick out of helping me read several books this week by reading her sight words and sounding out the words I find that she's covered all the sounds for in her phonics-based lessons. Monkey digests her reading lessons in much smaller bites, and she'd rather know an entire book than have me point out specific words on a page. Almost every day, she and Goose snuggle up on the couch under a reading light with a stack of books that she has memorized or almost memorized, so she can "read" to Goose, who loves it. Monkey has also started pulling out their favorite counting book and is attempting to teach Goose her numbers (she's almost mastered 1-3).

Music
Monkey and Bug have recently been requesting to listen to "bad guy/good guy music." They're talking about our iTunes library of instrumental music that's a combination of classical pieces and movie soundtracks. They take their cues from the music to guide their pretend play (when the bad guys are coming, when the good guys are winning, etc.).

The girls have done a lot of dancing this week too, though sadly, I failed to ever catch them on camera. Goose even requests that I turn music on and will call out dance steps for her big sisters: "Turn 'round. Turn 'round. Bounce! Bounce! Bounce!" It's funny though, some of the moms in our neighborhood have been taking their two year olds to dance classes, which at least one of them confessed was just chaos set to music. Maybe it makes a difference having more than one kid, but I just can't see taking two year olds to dance class. They can get the same benefits (gross motor play, rhythm practice, and appreciation for different styles of music) just by turning on a Pandora station and having some fun. And it's free! And besides, you don't need to teach a two year old to dance. Any healthy toddler knows how to (as Bug recently put it) "shake that business!"

Library Day

In a nod to Halloween, the theme this week was pumpkins, and we came home with some cute suncatchers to add to the fall leaves the girls made at home last year. Goose lost interest pretty quickly (the contact paper kept sticking to her fingers), but Monkey and Bug did a great job (the fall leaves are completely covered only because we did them in multiple sessions). We came home with these books:
Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
You Can't Take a Balloon into the Metropolitan Museum
Mice (Our "what do you want to learn about?" book)
Night Rabbits
Airshow
Spider Storch's Carpool Catastophe
Teasing
Ten Rosey Roses

This is what story time looks like for the entourage: Monkey and Bug in  rapt thumb-sucking mode and me responding to Goose's questions and comments (apparently one of the librarians had a camera last week)

Intrepid Explorers
This week Bug pointed out that it had been awhile since we'd gone for a walk in our neighborhood to gather things for our Collection (a bin full of things from outside that sits on the shelf next to our big magnifying glass and handheld microscope). So, Monkey and Bug each grabbed a bucket, and I took my camera (for things too big to bring home) and Goose, and we set off for adventures. First we searched for all the red maple trees on our street (based on leaf shape and color; they picked this activity because the one in our yard is turning). At the back of the next cul de sac, however, we decided to leave the sidewalk and head into the woods. In addition to a dismaying amount of trash, which the entourage insisted we collect to throw away properly because "God doesn't like trash in His world" (score 1 for learning stewardship at an early age!), we discovered a pond and a large meadow on the other side of a bunch of "spiny trees" (thorn bushes). The girls were really excited about the meadow: "We made it into the sunshine!" They immediately proclaimed themselves Heidi and Peter and went frolicking about with their imaginary herd of goats. Science, theology, literature . . . I love a good walk!