Narration

Dd6 has begun narrating to her stuffed animals. She has two favorite lizard-like stuffed animals, and she is telling them all about SCUBA diving right now. She watched a video on SCUBA diving last night. She seems to be a little blocked when narrating to me, but when she's just having fun with her stuffed animals, she's a wonder at regurgitating details. I'm not going to interfere with this new development at all! Also, I'm glad she found patient objects of her lengthy, fact-filled discourses; human beings don't enjoy her retelling after a few minutes. She's very thorough.

Summer!

Evening outings to the park, morning outings to the library, midday reading time in the shade of the living room, and a little formal instruction thrown in each day. I love summer!

This summer, I'm putting a focus on learning songs. The morning routine now includes learning a new song. We've learned "Haensel und Gretel", "Yes, We Have No Bananas", "Here Comes the Oxcart", and "Hoppe, Hoppe, Reiter" so far, and the girls are starting to get into it.
Well, to be more precise, dd4 energetically wants to keep doing "Yes, We Have No Bananas" each day.

Miscellaneous

1) Dd6 just finished her 1st grade math book. She enjoyed learning math with Digit the Clown and Cecilia the Seal. She is quite solid on procedural math at the first grade level. She still doesn't know all her addition facts to automaticity, though. I think that at least she knows enough of them now that she'll want to play some of the fun online math fact games out there. We'll start the 2nd grade math book--this BJU Press worktext--next Monday. For now, she can bask in a milestone reached (and get a reward...I told her we'd celebrate by doing something special, and she decided that she wants to go pick something out at the thrift store...good thing I just bought that 30 gallon toy bin...).

2) Dd4 is ready to learn to read in earnest. We do one or two lessons from Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons each day, and it's been perfect for her. Since she's only four years old, we skip the letter writing exercises. Her motor skills are behind her verbal skills, and I see no reason to push her on writing while reading instruction is going so beautifully. After all, she's quite young, and I wasn't doing formal schoolwork with our oldest at this age.

3) Dh is learning all sorts of new things: he helped put up a wall on our porch last week, he's installing our water heater now with help from a more-experienced friend, and today is the first official day of his first term as a student of Western Governor's University. He is working towards a Masters in Instructional Technology.

4) Dd1 has a little over 8 months left of being the "baby of the family". Those digital E.P.T. early tests are impressive. Of course, there could easily be a miscarriage at this point, but I'm glad that there was a happy reason I threw up Saturday night...at first, I thought it was food poisoning.... :/