We finished our Sun study last week. After no sun for several days, the week ended in 100+ degree weather. We had plenty of sun to study. We had such a great 6th day. Our 6th day of each unit is a book day. This week we read Bear Shadow by Frank Asch. Bear tries several ways to get rid of his shadow. After reading we went outside to act out what we read. We tried and tried to get rid of our shadows. We ran and ran, we climbed up the fort, and we hid behind things... our shadows always caught up to us. We also got out sidewalk chalk and drew our shadows. We did this first at 11:30 a.m. so we could see how short our shadows were. Then we did it again in the evening and drew our tall shadows.

We also got to make a sundial. We went out every hour and marked where the shadow was. We got to see it the next few days and check on the time.

We really enjoyed our week studying the sun. Although our sun unit is officially over I have a feeling we will be learning a lot more about the sun. My girlfriend, Laila, told me about the telescopes at Griffith Observatory. They have them set up to see the sun and solar flares. I have also got some solar paper we haven't used yet... We are just having too much fun!!

So this last Monday we started the Moon. So far we have learned that the moon does not have its own light. The sun reflects on the moon and shines light down to us. Just like we can reflect Jesus' light onto others. Our words to remember this week are, "I am the light of the world". We have read about the phases of the moon and are watching the moon change every night.

After that HOT weather last week, we had crazy weather yesterday. It poured, the wind was crazy, and we had a huge thunderstorm. Neither of the kids enjoy thunder. Zachary would not open his eyes. Emma would not uncover her ears. So the three of us sat on the couch, Zach with his head between the cushions and Emma with her hands over her ears and we waited for the storm to let up. I finally turned on the news to see what was going on, only to find out there were tornados, yes I said tornados, two miles from our house!!! Now... we are not in Kansas, we are in California. We just don't get tornados. In fact Dan had told Zachary just the week before, we don't have tornados in California. Boy was daddy wrong. Of course the first thing Zachary wanted to know this morning was if there was going to be more thunder today. Me, without an answer to that decided it would be jammy day. It's been a cold drizzly day and we have been in our jammies all day!!

So, today in our jammies we made a moon cake!!

Here are Emma and Zach after mixing the "moon sand" (flour, sugar, salt, cocoa). We then put craters in the sand and poured butter in one, vanilla in another, then baking soda and vinegar in the third (fun!). Then we added milk and mixed it together to make mood mud.

Then we added moon rocks (marshmallows!!). Our moon cake baked during nap time and....

We couldn't wait to try it. It was out of this world yummy!!

And by the way, no tornados today. Not even thunder. Just sprinkles. A perfect day to spend in our jammies. Now we couldn't do that at a traditional school : )!!

Just one more note... this is our newest family member, Fred Slinky Caterpillar.

Daddy brought him home from work early last week. He has brought more excitement than I could have ever imagined to our house. One morning, the kids and I were surprised to watch Fred climb out of his fur and have a brand new furry coat. I had no idea that caterpillars molted (those new encyclopedias came in handy!!). We are just watching and waiting to see if Fred is going to turn into a butterfly. We are having so much fun watching one of God's beautiful plans right here in our own home. Well now, I guess we get to watch three... Dan and I get to watch our two little ones every day too!! Isn't God Good!!!

We have been very busy the past couple of weeks. We went camping with our church at Silent Valley on May 2nd - 4th. Grandpa Noack came with us and we had a great time. It was a beautiful weekend. The weather was great and it was so nice to be out in God's wonderful world. It was nice to get away from the house for a couple of days too. We have two camping trips planned in June and we are looking forward to both of them.

In the mean time we are still working on our S-s-s-sun unit. Zachary and I are both getting into the swing of how school is going to work. We are both having fun and enjoying the time together. Of course Emma is tagging right along with us, but she gets a bit sidetracked at times. We checked out several "sun" books from the library and the kids are enjoying one in particular, "Sun Bread". It is a cute book, but not easy for me to read because Dan and I are watching our carbs right now and the book talks way to much about good fresh baked bread... yummmmm. Anyway, we are enjoying our library. I've figured out how to go on-line and reserve books from the whole county to be picked up at our library. This way I can look at the recommended reading list for our unit and reserve the books ahead of time. I think this is going to work out very well. Between that and our new encyclopedias, I should be able to keep up with Zachary's thirst to read. We have also been reading the Little House on the Prairie books. We are on the third book, Farmer Boy. We usually will read a chapter before nap time, just him and me, after I put Emma down. I'm finding how important it is for me to have one-on-one time with him. He is such a special boy... I don't want to miss a moment of him growing up.

So as I was saying we are still studying the sun. We are supposed to make a sundial and trace our shadows with sidewalk chalk... but it's been so cloudy we have had to put that off. Instead we went outside to see our shadows were missing, why?? Because the sun is behind the clouds. So today we charted our grapes. Zachary has been watching and charting how long it takes for grapes to turn into raisins. This is our second attempt since our first got left outside while we went camping and disappeared. Probably a happy bird out there somewhere. Anyway, he is on day eight and was happy to see the grapes starting to wrinkle up and get "squishy". He drew them on his chart and we went on to play with our new globe. We shined a flashlight on it (the sun), and learned how when it is sunny where we live it is dark on the other side of the world. I had to explain to Zachary that the sun does not go into the ocean at Nana & Papa's house in Oceanside. It just goes around the world. I think that concept is going to take awhile to grasp. : )

Here is Emma's turn at being the sun and Zach's turn to spin the world. This, of course, also sparked a chorus of "He's got the Whole World in His Hands".

Our curriculum gives some great ideas for turning learning into games. Here is a great example of the old game concentration. This version is matching up upper case and lower case letters. When you find a match you get to keep the card. Zachary has done a great job learning his lower case letters. He sometimes gets his v & w confused, his b & d confused, and his i & j confused... but he is doing very well. He can always guess his way to the right answer.

Zach also just started using his Rods. They are of different lengths and are a start to math. Right now he is learning to find the right length to make pictures and letters. He has gotten a bit distracted while playing with these, but I think as he becomes more successful at it, he will concentrate more. We'll see. Here he made the "snake" the "7" and the "sun". Of course, all "S" words.

We were also all very happy that Emma got her cast off last Thursday. They doctor took more x-ray's and found out that she had fractured it. He says it is healing very well and that she can go back to dance. She still favors it a bit, but is walking on it and doing very well.

I had a beautiful Mother's Day. We spent the night at my mom's house and went to church with her in the morning. We enjoyed the morning there and then went up to Dana Point to walk around the harbor. We then drove up Coast Highway to Costa Mesa and spent some time with Grandma and Grandpa Noack. Grandma was doing very well. She had a good time seeing the kids and had lots of smiles for them. I am such a lucky mommy. I have two beautiful and healthy children and several wonderful mother's in my life. My mom, who goes without saying... is the best mom in the world. Dan's mom who, even in her current state, can give us all wonderful close feelings. I also have my Nana and my Grandma, who have both been very influential in my life. All these women have relationships with our Lord Jesus Christ, and I am so lucky to be part of the wonderful line of women in my family. God is Good!!

We started the first day of our first unit today. It is S-s-s Sun. Our words to remember are "Jesus is the light of the world". There is a lot more to do for school now.

We are going to be counting to one hundred, one letter each day we do school. We put popsicle stick in a jar and when we get ten of them we rubber band them and put those in a box. Then we start again with one popsicle stick, this way we learn ones and tens all the way to one hundred. Zachary also has a "Hundred's Chart" which he will write the numbers as we go. Zachary counted to one hundred for the first time last week (with a little help). I think this is going to help put something he can see physically to his counting.

We also started learning the letter Ss and the sound that it makes, /s/. Zachary colored and cut out some pictures of words that started with S. He also traced a tactile "S" with his finger each time he would say the word with the /s/ sound. Then we put them in an envelope for another day. I also got out a plate and shaving cream and let him draw the letter S in the shaving cream. This went over big, and the kids smelled great afterward. I know we will be doing this more!

With this unit we are also learning about the sun. Last night I decided to search on National Geographic Kids and Discovery Kids on the computer to see if they had anything that would help us research the sun. I found that the Discovery Kids channel was having a one hour special on the sun at 2:00 a.m. the next morning (only a few hours away!) I was able to DVR it and Zachary and Emma watched it this morning while they ate breakfast (amazing how God works!!). When it was over I asked Zach what he liked best. He said the Hubbell Telescope that is up in space. Who says kids don't learn anything good from TV? We also purchased some used encyclopedias last weekend. Zachary and I looked up sun and took a look at the pictures.

Next was time for our activity. I blindfolded Zachary and had him walk around. I asked him questions like, is it hard to find your way? can you get to the stairs? Then we took his blindfold off and asked the same questions. We talked about how the sun helps us. We also talked about how Jesus is the light of the world. Jesus also helps us find our way.

We had such a great time this morning doing this. All together it took about an hour and fifteen minutes. Emma did great too. She worked on a puzzle and then joined us for the activity. She didn't want to be blindfolded, but she wanted to wear the blind fold like Kanga (Pooh bears friend). Of course that took me a little time to figure out, but she knew what she wanted. We are looking forward to another day in Our Father's World.

By the way, Emma's foot is doing well. She just started walking on her cast while she holds on to something, but she mostly crawls around the house. I don't think we really want her walking too much. It can't be too good for her since her cast is so thick on the bottom. She is not complaining a bit. Baths are a bit tricky, but she is managing very well. Thank you to everyone who has kept her in your prayers.

We finished our last day of creation today. It was more of a review day because we actually did day 7 a couple days ago. The kids are doing awesome. They both love to go through their creation books and tell us the story of creation. I knew Zachary would do well at this, but I am amazed at how much Emma is picking up. Here are the kids showing off their favorite pages from their books (they both like day 4 best, the sun moon and stars, probably because they got to use the glitter glue!!).

We started the day today at the orthopedic surgeon. Emma's foot is not healing and our doctor referred us to the surgeon. She had a cast put on today (bright pink, of course) and has to wear it for 2 weeks. They are going to take more x-rays then, and hopefully she will be all healed up. This is no good for her dance career... : ). She's taking it like a trooper though. It didn't hurt that Nana met us at the doctor this morning to keep us company. A little Nana attention goes a long way!! Nana came home with us afterward and played and then helped us with school today. We finished up our creation mobile and hung it from the light above the stairs.

Notice the BIG pink foot... Anyway, we are really enjoying doing school and are looking forward to starting a new unit on our next school day. Creation was an introduction to the curriculum. I'm very excited, as teacher/mommy, to get started with the next lesson. And I'm very excited to share it with our friends and family.

God Bless!!

We just completed our first day of school this week. We are on the 6th day of creation. We finally made it to the animals and people!! We have had a busy week. Emma twisted her foot on Monday. We took her to the ER and had X-rays done. They said it was not broken (thank God!), but it maybe fractured. We were able to get a copy of the X-rays and took them to her doctor on Tuesday. She looked at them and called the radiologist at the hospital. They are both thinking it is a sprain. We are going to give her a few days and hopefully she will start healing. As of today (Thursday) she still can not stand on it. She is being a real trooper. It's tough on her not to keep up with Zachary. It's also tough on my back carting around a 30 pounder, but hopefully things will better soon.

Last week we had a playdate where the mom's each made a learning game and duplicated it, one for each child. Then we got together and exchanged our duplicates. It was a lot of fun. Now we have several new learning games for the kids to play with. They are made so that, with a little help to start, the kids can complete them on their own. I'm hoping these will work great for Emma while Zachary and I have some one-on-one time for his lessons. Here is a picture of Emma using one of them...

I've been trying to figure out how to get Zachary to slow down and enjoy coloring time. He would rather scribble and get to the cutting and pasting. I found out last week that if I turned on music while he colored, he took more time to do it. Today, when it was time to color, he asked if I would please turn on his music. He must have enjoyed the way it felt to him last week! I'm thinking that it's very cool that he noticed!!

Tomorrow night we are going with Ameriprise to a Storm baseball game. We look forward to this every year. Zachary is more excited about the fireworks after the game than anything else.

Well, today is Monday. I was hoping to do our third day of school last Friday, but we had T-Mom's in the morning then we took daddy out for lunch. When we got back I had work to do, so the day ended before we got to do school.

T-Mom's has been a wonderful thing, for me especially. It is like a MOPS group, but it is at Trinity Church in Redlands. It is every other Friday, so it's not too much of a commitment. They have wonderful childcare for the 2 1/2 hours. The mommies get together, about 8 to a table, and have a wonderful brunch (each week 3 rotating women at each table bring an item for brunch), conversation, prayer, a speaker, and usually a craft. I've been going to this group for about a year and a half and it has been awesome for me. I only wish I knew about it as soon as Zachary was born. You stay with the same table for the whole year, so you really get to enjoy creating relationships with the women. One of the best parts is that my high school best friend is at my table. She lives about 45 minutes away, so it is a great way for us to keep in touch and see each other too. Anyway, this is a great social thing for the kids too, so I plan on attending until they get too old (5 or 6 I think).

So... my intentions were to do school this morning, but I slept in and work started faxing over by 9:00. The kids went down for their naps at 1:30, but Zachary never did go to sleep. (I did lay down with Zach and read one of our "chapters", as he calls it. We have been reading the Little House on the Prarie books. We are on the third book, Farmer Boy.) When work slowed down I decided to try school. Well, lets just say, school is for mornings. I was frustrated, Zachary was tired and amp'ed up from the day. I can tell that school is meant for when we are all "fresh" in the morning.

We did complete Day 3 and learned that God made the seas, the land, and the plants on the third day. The kids did pretty good for the conditions, but now it's after 5:00 and I have no idea what's for dinner and we have Bible study tonight at 7:00... and I still haven't put my contacts in or gotten a shower today : ). This just goes to prove, some days are better than others. AND... tomorrow is another day!!

By the way, tomorrow is Emma's dance day. Then after dance we are going to the movies to see Horton Hears a Who. I am looking forward to spending that one on one time with the kids.

Today was our second day of school. This one didn't start quite as early as the first one, but it did start at the library. Our Moreno Valley library has story time on Wednesdays. We took the time this morning to go and to return/checkout some more books. Zachary earned a free In & Out cheeseburger for reading the books we brought back (you had to be 4, so Emma missed out on that).

Today we learned about the second day of creation. We learned that God created the air and the water. He put the water above and below the air (oceans and clouds). Here are my little ones "above" the air and "below" the air (by the way, we had a long talk about only doing this when mommy told them too).

Both the kids looked at me as if I were crazy when I told them to pretend to be rain water and get "above" the table (which was the air), then I told then to pretend to be the ocean and get "below" the table.

Note to self, get real cotton balls, cotton pads just don't look right as clouds! Hey, it was fun anyway.

Well we did it, we started!!

We started our first day of Kindergarten today. Our first couple of weeks is on creation. Today we learned that God made the light and the darkness on the first day of creation. We read Genesis 1: 1-5. Zach colored and cut out the "Creation Number" for our Creation Poster on the wall. Then we reviewed the alphabet. Zachary totally surprised me by doing sign language for the first five letters. I had gotten him an alphabet sign language poster. I guess he has been practicing in his room. He about blew me away. I can already see how his education will be self-guided. We reviewed some lower-case letters. I have never done this with him, but he knows most of them just from "reading" to himself (really looking at books, which is his favorite past time - by the way, thank you to everyone who has supported his habit).

Then we started his "Creation Book". We made the first page which shows light and darkness. Emma is making one for herself too. She doesn't want to be left out of anything. This will be a great way for her to learn her ABC's by sight too. Lastly, we learned the song, "This is My Fathers World". I guess it will be our theme song since it is also the name of our curriculum. You can go to their web site and see the curriculum, what a great program it is, and hear the song. www.mfwbooks.com

Here are some photos of Zachary's 1st day!!

I'm planning to start homeschooling tomorrow!!

As a family we have felt called to homeschool for the past couple of years. My kiddos are 4 1/2 (son) and 2 1/2 (daughter). We have had a lot of time to research curriculums and get things organized. Now... are we ready...???

We have decided to use My Father's World (MFW) for our curriculum. We purchased the pre-school package awhile back and have really enjoyed "Playing" with the games. Both my kids love the music and "school" time. They are both constantly asking to "do" school. I didn't want to start too early, but I've decided that I'm the only one holding back at this point. They are ready to go. I've have purchased the "K" package and have poured over the teacher's manual. After looking at the year as a whole, I am so excited about what lays ahead of us!!

I've decided to take it slow to start. I'm really good at going gung-ho at things from the start, and then petering out... Obviously education is something I'm not going to be able to do that with. So, we've decided to "gracefully" approach starting. We are going to try to homeschool three days a week. The MFW "K" curriculum is a 6 day unit study, so it will work our perfectly doing each unit in two weeks. I figure since my son is not turning 5 until July, we don't really have any pressure on us. We can take 2 years to do "K" if we want to.

I figured this blog was a great way to document our days and be able to share them with friends and family. I am also hoping to get words of encouragement from other homeschool families (I know I'll need it!!).

So, here we go. I'm sure I will be repeating my personal mantra much more in the upcoming weeks...

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!!!