The kids all get along great (most of the time), and have figured out how all 3 littles can play together on the seesaw :)
They also spend lots of time riding bikes and playing in the creek and such.
The insect unit we've been doing has been soo much fun! Hard to believe it's almost over, though I think the next unit will be fun too.
I had never received the results from the standardized tests that the girls took in April, AND nobody responded at all to the e-mail I sent in May. So I finally remembered and found time to call the testing place on Tuesday (I tend to think of things like this at midnight or thereabouts which isn't very helpful). They were able to e-mail me the results that same day, so we finally could see how the girls did. As I had told the girls was likely, I chose not to tell them their scores. We have enough issues with competition as it is, and I see no reason for this to be one more area where one feels superior and one feels inferior because of different numbers. BUT we did tell the girls some general information. They both had their lowest score in language mechanics and they both had the highest scores in math concepts and applications, with language comprehension close behind. So . . . basically they're great at applying and comprehending information but not as "good" at the rote memorization stuff that I've never asked them to memorize. I'm happy with that!! Their overall scores were 76% and 93% respectively, so while very different, neither of them is anything to sneeze at! Considering we have not in any way "taught to the test" or even attempted to make sure they have learned things that are typically taught in 3rd grade :)
Wednesday afternoon, the girls decided to rearrange their room abit and set up their American Girl dolls (and Little Bit's Dora doll and LaLaLoopsies) in the corner instead of the dollhouse and stuffed animals (the dollhouse and stuffed animals are still sitting in the school room waiting for me to make time to put them in the attic storage area) the boys decided it sounded like fun to help so all 5 kids spent a good part of the afternoon working on that. Eventually J started just getting into stuff, so I brought him downstairs and read him stories for the last little while, but overall it worked surprisingly well, and the girls love having their dolls set up again.
Wednesday evening, Penny and another friend, Denise came over to watch Master Chef with the girls and me, it made for a late night for the girls since Master Chef was 2 hours long, but we all had fun :)
Thursday the girls had their year-end homeschool evaluations. We are so incredibly blessed to have an evaluator who loves the girls and is 100% on board with our hands-on, organic way of learning. The girls excitedly told her about things they were learning, and Sassy gushed about Life of Fred math. Little Bit, not to be outdone, took Miss Karin upstairs to show off their doll corner :)
Sabbath afternoon we headed to Great Valley Nature Center. Awhile back I purchased a Groupon deal that gave us a membership to Great Valley Nature Center, and reciprocal benefits to various other nature centers and science museums, so Sabbath we finally headed over there to check it out. It's small, but was great!! Not busy, the woman there seemed to enjoy telling us about things, and answering the girls' gazillions of questions as much as they enjoyed asking them. She let the girls hold and pet some of the animals and pulled others, like the legless lizard out for them to see up close.
As we were walking around the grounds, after visiting the nature center, we saw this tiny baby painted turtle in the grass. I told the girls to go get the lady from the nature center, and she came down and confirmed that it was a painted turtle (I couldn't think of the exact name, but knew it was something like that), and was no more than a couple days old. She let the girls pick it up (that's MiniMe holding it in the picture) and then suggested they carry it over closer to the pond to let it go so it wouldn't get stepped on.
We also saw TONS of tadpoles and several frogs at the pond and in the wetlands near the pond we saw a baby snapping turtle not much bigger then the painted turtle. It hid back in the brush before I could get a picture though (and we didn't pick it up LOL).
So, it was a great day! We'll definitely be heading back to visit again!
And that was our week!
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