Olivia is finished with her kindergarten phonics book, which means she can read words with normal short vowels. She's also about a month away from being done with the first grade book (and normal long vowels). Good thing I picked up the second grade book at the last conference! In other school news, she's progressing well through her math lessons, and I expect we'll be starting subtraction in the next week or two.
Gretchen wants to learn to read. She's actually pretty interested in all of Olivia's school work, choosing to hang around and shout out answers while Olivia works rather than going to play. Since she's showing such interest, I've been working on flashcards with Gretchen to improve her letter recognition. She gets 20-23 letters right on the first try each day, but they're not always the same letters. :-P
Kaitlyn likes to get out the dance recital tutus, put one on, and dance to my video recording of Sweet and Sassy. She's actually not too bad. Unrelated, she has a few phrases I wanted to get down: First, when something that's missing has been found, she says, "There she is!" It doesn't matter if it's a person or an object, the pronoun is "she." I assume this is from us playing peek-a-boo with her when she was smaller. Second, when being buckled into her carseat, Kaitlyn complains that the straps are too tight, saying, "Too more!" or "Too good!" Gretchen always prompts us to pull her straps tighter using the words "more" and "good," so that's probably where Kaitlyn got it. Third, Kaitlyn would make an excellent Latina. Her preposition of choice is "a," pronounced "ah." She uses it mostly instead of "to," as in the following example: "Gretchen give blanket a Kaitlyn." Other times it is just added into a sentence unnecessarily: "Gretchen hit a Kaitlyn head."
Murry offered to watch the girls over Memorial Day weekend, so Bryan and I had Friday afternoon until Monday afternoon without kids. Jacob, Katya, and Zach came down for part of it, and Kara visited as well, so games were played (after everyone slept in sufficiently). Katya and Kara helped me box up dad's "keep" books in the basement according to author, and then we organized tiny shoes onto a shelf so that the next sizes will be readily available. Side note about the shoes: I have approximately twenty pairs of size 8 little girl shoes in my basement right now.
The garden is fully planted. We mulched the strawberries so that there's less weeding to do. I can't tell what baby broccolis (started from seed) look like, so we may be mulching that bed as well if they don't make it clear that they're not weeds soon. Bryan has started building an enclosure to keep bunnies and birds out. He has posts in the ground and now we just need to run clothesline and attach a net.
Upcoming activities: We have a wedding, water safety classes, and VBS in our future. Also trips to Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Oh, and a baby, although that will probably be sometime after the next update. :)
Pictures and Videos:
Vimeo password: BarhorstBrewed
Sweet and Sassy at Home
Pajamas and Popcorn
Little ballerinas:
Someone broke into the pantry and stole the chocolate:
Olivia's haircut:
Coloring pictures of themselves:
Kaitlyn, wearing my skirt. ...On her head:
Gretchen was apparently exhausted. That's a table she's sleeping on:
Gretchen saves all the maple seeds:
The necklace Olivia bought me for mothers' day:
Dancing in a hula hoop:
Pretty girls:
Making camp gifts:
Our first attempt at rag curls:
Walter also puts "ah" in front of everything.
ReplyDeleteAh, another generation of pictures of curls:)
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