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!!