Meanwhile, back in Mountainville…

We’ve been back for a bit now and life is perhaps starting to settle in a smidge of a routine.  I hesitate to say that because I’m sure it will spin out of control on me again at any minute!  This is what we’ve been doing recently…

We are learning about the sun, moon, and stars in science class.  Elaine and Nolan enjoyed making some moon crafts (complete with glitter – one of my least used craft items because of the mess!)

Elaine’s

Nolan’s

Then we conducted a project to visualize the size difference between the sun, the earth, and the moon.

The large make-shift paper circle represents the sun (54.5” wide).  Ours is about three inches too small because that’s just how it worked…

A mini-marshmallow (1/2” diameter) represents the earth.  The sun is 109 times larger than the earth, so we lined up {almost} 109 mini marshmallows across the center of our “sun” to visualize the vast size difference.  It was very helpful that we had just visited the planetarium at the Creation Museum, which explained the vastness of the galaxies from a Biblical perspective. 

If the sun is the paper circle, and the earth is a marshmallow, the moon is a button (like the tiny ones on a men’s dress shirt collar).  Elaine has the marshmallow, Nolan is showing the button.

Button moon

Marshmallow earth

Science class is always fun when you get to eat the experiment!

This is our resident groundhog.  He lives under the deck of what used to be a swimming pool.  Just about every morning we see him crawling out of his hole or sitting on a stump in the sun.  I took this pics at 39x zoom.

Nolan got a second-hand bike with training wheels and has been learning to ride to keep up with his sister, who can now mount, start, steer, and even stop all by herself.  You have no idea what an accomplishment this is for her – she did it without learning on training wheels first!  I’m having trouble imbedding the video, but you can view it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6-PwV63epA&feature=youtu.be

We also discovered a lot of tulips on the property where we are living.  Nolan found the first open tulip and he was soooo amazingly excited!  He exclaimed to me, “Mommy!  Look!  It hatched!”  I got quite a smile out of that one!!!  Nolan also got to share some exciting news with several people this week, but I’ll let him be the one to tell!  And, he finished a preschool math book today!

 

This kid, has turned into a general, all-around, I-can’t-keep-up-with-him troublemaker!  He is always pulling the dishtowel basket off the shelf, getting into the fridge when it’s open, pulling dishes out of the dishwasher, and crawling into the bathroom (I know – ewww, yuck!) at every turn.  (It’s not my fault.  Four little people keep leaving the door open!).  But he almost always smiles and skipped his middle-of-the-night feeding the last two nights.  Still not eating solid foods, though!

That’s all that is new for us.  Oh, yeah.  And we are house hunting in the Bronx.  That is exciting news to my soul.  Please pray for us to find just the right place!