Our Thanksgiving Tree (thank you Meredith :) ). We wrote on each leaf something that we were thankful for. Lucia was especially grateful for the sun and Elodie for our dog, Fendo.

The girls enjoyed looking at this book. They learnt all about chaps and saddles and cowboy hats - great photos.

For a small look at the Mississippi River and its big impact on life for some people

I created a mini workbook on consonants at the end of a word. The girls sounded out each word and circled, ticked or wrote down the sound they heard at the end.

Elodie also wrote the all the numbers from 1 - 100 in a chart - the first time she has written them all down and she was very chuffed :)

I gave Lucia a worksheet with letters on and she had to circle all the ones she knew. Her favourite thing to draw is a circle so she ended up circling them all and then circling the circles and then circling the circles of the circles. It was all very circular and she was chuckling by the end :)

Today we did various pieces of work on alphabet sequencing. We made LONG alphabet caterpillars.

Capitals - an alphabet turkey, just right for our Thanksgiving week.

This afternoon the girls had some friends over for a craft hour. They made...

...spider boxes...

...flags...

...and stamp pictures

Two months or so ago, for several reasons, Elodie became quite reluctant to pursue her reading. She was progressing nicely but everything became too overwhelming and the barriers went up. I thought a good deal about how I could tackle the problem and decided, considering her character, to let it drop completely for a while and allow her to pursue other avenues. We kept up with her flash cards and individual words but let the books sit on the shelf for a while without her actually realising I had made this decision. This continued for about 6 weeks.

I kept the very first Primary Phonics book she completed last year on her desk and, as off-hand as I could manage, told her she could read it on her own when she was ready. One night she asked if she could read it to Dominique as a bedtime story which she did and which Dominique thought was great :) She then asked for the first 4 books in her bed and told me the next day that she had read them all to her teddies for which she got a big hug :)

For the past week she has seemed ready to be able to tackle the books again so at lunch time today I popped book 8 in front of her and told her to read me the first sentence after she had finished her mouthful. She nodded vigorously at me and chewed away looking at the page. She finished and read the first 3 sentences, so beautifully that I grinned! It was great and she was so pleased with herself.

She is also enjoying working out how to write words - i.e. she wrote mud. She wrote book as 'bk' - very interesting as (for our Bedfordshire UK accent) it is phonetically correct! All in all she's doing well and by the end of the book at lunchtime today we were both grinning :)

I let the girls choose their own work during quiet time. Elodie chose to sew beads and make me a necklace and Lucia decided to make Easter egg jigsaws.

Elodie's turn to deseed some lupin pods and plant them in her flowerpot. Lucia working on her letters.

The girlies making chocolate finger log cabins for our Pioneer theme, part of our USA project

Elodie and Lucia's chocolate finger pioneer log cabins, complete with marzipan pioneer figures

Dominique's beautiful attempt. She's so wonderful :)

Elodie and Lucia made lollipop stick pioneer log cabins this morning. A little too brightly coloured perhaps but they had fun all the same. A nice way to start the day.

Playing fun games with their lollipop stick cabins and various creatures.

I made a pilgrim bonnet for the girls to wear. Elodie wore it for most of the morning.

Elodie showing me the washing line which she assembled as part of our pioneer-living role play.

Lucia planted some lupin seeds a couple of weeks ago. They are growing beautifully and she is very proud.

Lucia's lupin and her cactus which Nanny Mo gave her for her 4th Birthday, both growing nicely on her desk.