Weekend at the Pinnacles

We survived a family first this past weekend: camping! Admittedly, we had a rough start Friday evening that involved getting the tent halfway up only to have it start really raining. The tent was assembled successfully, but Daddy and I and the inside of the tent were pretty soaked (the girls watched this process from the car). We decided to do a little exploring of the park via car while praying that the rain would stop. It did . . . kinda. Enough to get a fire going and roast hot dogs; although the s'mores that followed were a bit damp since a light rain kept coming and going. The girls were SO excited about cooking their own hot dogs and marshmallows though! Daddy also took them for a walk after dinner with a break to listen to the ranger talk  about the local wildlife we might see. (I stayed at the campsite to "tend the fire," i.e., enjoy a little peace and quiet.) They definitely paid attention to the ranger because the next morning they successfully identified a large bird outside the nature center as a condor! A mountain lion had apparently left a deer carcass in a nearby creek bed overnight, and the condors were feasting on Saturday.

Fortunately, the rain clouds cleared up, and Saturday was gorgeous and wonderful! These girls proved themselves little troopers once again! We spent the morning/early afternoon completing a 4 mile hike--only Goose had to be carried and only for the last tenth of a mile. For this weekend and future adventures, we got the girls each their own "hiking pack" (adult fanny pack re-purposed as a kid's shoulder bag), equipped with their own water bottle, snack, lightweight waterproof jacket, headlamp, mirror, whistle, and signal light. We explained that those last three items in particular were in case they got lost and made sure they knew how to use them. Having their own hiking packs and survival gear definitely upped the seriousness of the expedition for them and added to the sense of accomplishment. They even got to use their new headlamps, since the trail we hiked involved walking/crawling/climbing through a series of unlit talus caves. The trail took us up to a beautiful reservoir where we admired the scenery and observed (but did not feed) an incredibly brave ground squirrel. At a few points along the trail we stopped to watch some rock climbers, and the girls were inspired to do their own bouldering along the way.

That hike really wore everybody out, and we happily spent the rest of the afternoon/evening just hanging out at the campsite. It's always fun to listen in on the girls playing, and this weekend proved particular interesting since we didn't bring any toys--there were no complaints; they relied entirely on their imaginations fed by good stories and good lessons to entertain themselves: They gathered little pebbles and pretended to be Hansel and Gretel dropping the little white stones around the campsite. They pretended the woods were full of Leafmen, and that Queen Tara (from Epic) joined forces with Queen Elsa (from Frozen) to fight off the bad guys with their combined powers. They noted the similarities and differences between our tent and the Tabernacle; at some point I'm pretty sure I even heard them staging a sacrifice (don't worry, no actual animals were harmed in this reenactment). They formed their own Native American tribe, danced around the campfire, and invented their own language. They pretended to be the ducks from Make Way for Ducklings and followed Daddy around in a nice neat line quacking as loud as they could. They observed a colony of ants consuming something and tried to figure out where the anthill was. They adopted a rather large rock, which they carried around for awhile in whatever play they were doing. Et cetera, et cetera.

They learned all kinds of other useful things: how to open and close the bear safe and why we put things in there, how to light and thoroughly douse a campfire, how to roast hot dogs and marshmallows and what to do if they catch on fire (blow them out and eat them anyway), how to make a s'more, how to properly enter and exit the tent in order to get the least amount of dirt possible in it, the importance of the "leave it better than you found it" principle, and how to find your way out of a sleeping bag (poor Goose was quite distressed when she woke to discover she had burrowed herself into the foot of it), that campsites are awesome places for star gazing (we located the big dipper and decided we needed to learn more constellations before we go camping again), and that Daddy is really good with a small air rifle but that the rest of us could use some practice (Monkey was the one other person who succeeded in knocking a little juice bottle off the tree branch. We even let Goose sit in my lap and shoot off a few pellets--she was pretty excited).

We made pancakes and packed up Sunday morning, and made it home by lunch time. Overall, a great trip! The girls are already excited about next time!

Tentacles!
Some friends of ours had this past Monday off from school (They've recently decided to home school next year, and the entourage is SO excited!), so we decided to meet at the aquarium to check out the new exhibit: Tentacles! It was a great exhibit, and we learned all about octopuses, squid, cuttlefish, and nautiluses. Most of these creature are amazingly good at camouflage, so we had fun playing "spot the cephalopod" as we approached each new tank.

Of course, we had to revisit some favorite spots, too. I was proud of the girls when we went through the jellyfish exhibit: Monkey and Bug were excitedly telling their friends the different species of jellyfish and explaining the whole life cycle. We spent some time in the kids' sections about ocean mammals and the kelp forest. In fact, we got to the kelp forest just in a time to watch a bit of a program with a diver in the tank before we headed for home.

Library Day
We were a bit late for storytime this week, but we made it in time to hear most of the books about growing things. We came home with these books:
The Boy in the Garden
Jungle Baseball Game
Englebert Joins the Circus
Boys' Team
Cat the Cat, Who is That?
The Cardboard Piano
Dig Hole, Soft Mole
Little Flower
Going to the Zoo

We went to the library last week too, but I completely forgot to write about it. I forget the theme for storytime, but we came home with these books:
At the Beach
Out of the Way! Out of the Way!
Argus
Library Mouse: A Friend's Tale
Kathy's Hats: A Story of Hope
Miss Spider's Wedding
Tillie and the Wall
Bringing in the New Year
Have You Ever Done That?

The Three R's
Major milestone for Goose this past week! Early in the week when Daddy was reading them a bedtime story, Goose jumped in to read the word "cat." Daddy told me about it and suggested that she might be ready to start really learning to read instead of just doing the preschool "letter of the week" lessons. I wasn't going to push it (she's only 3!), but I wish you could have seen her little eyes light up when I asked if she was interested! Not only was she interested, but she wanted to start right now! I obliged, of course. She did the first three lessons in Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Lessons this week, and she had me do some repetitive reading with her. I read and she repeated Ready, Set, Skip! and Kitty Up! multiple times this week. She was so excited to report to Daddy that she "could really read now!" She also did lots of counting as usual, and I confirmed that she knows the numerals 1-10 out of order.

For reading this week, Bug read Inside, Outside, Upside Down and Are You My Mother?  and Monkey read Where's Spot? and Inside, Outside, Upside Down.

For math, we continued our focus on place value and sums less than 10. I threw in a little work with fractions and occasionally asked them what time it was just to keep those skills fresh. Progress is being made! In fact, by the end of the week, Bug had proved her competency with her place value skills, and I gave her some skip counting connect the dots activities to do instead. Monkey also did some more than/less than problems which helped reinforce the place value knowledge.

For writing this week, Bug continued practicing some problematic letters, and Monkey did a report about armadillos. (For the record, family members, I keep suggesting letter writing as a good project, but nobody's biting. I'll keep trying.) I introduced the concept of spelling as a subject this week. We're not doing spelling lists at this point; I'm just trying to convince them that they are capable of sorting out how to spell some words themselves. They really enjoyed a cut-and-paste activity that had them connecting different beginning sounds to ending syllables (i.e., adding dr, th, s, and w to ink).

Real Greeks
We didn't do any history projects this week, but Monkey and Bug did some ancient-Greece themed coloring sheets while I read to them about famous real Greeks instead of the famous mythical ones. The DK book has a section of blurbs about people in the following categories: statesmen, writers and artists, thinkers, and scientists.

Super Novas
In keeping with our spontaneous science "curriculum" we learned about super novas this week. As we were getting out of the car after Wednesday night church, the girls were asking about stars: How far away are they? What are they made of? And this led to Bug inquiring about what would happen if one exploded. When we got inside, we Googled it, and watched a YouTube video of what does happen when a star goes super nova and admired lots of still shots. Daddy came home at some point in all this and stepped in to help explain things too.

Day Trip!
We kicked off the week last weekend by taking a day trip to a nearby city to enjoy some things our wonderful little town doesn't have. First we hit up a couple of bookstores. We made a number of purchases at a decent sized used bookstore (how can we resist?!), then browsed Barnes & Noble just for fun. We ate at a Chick-fil-a (highly popular), then enjoyed a first for all of us: a semi-pro ultimate frisbee game! (Daddy has played on ultimate teams and even coached a high school team for awhile.) So much fun! It was a really close game, but the home team won. We explained the sport to the girls, and they loved cheering--especially Goose--regardless of whether they knew what was going on. They proved pretty entertaining for some of the other spectators as well.

Women of Faith
With all the excitement of Nana visiting, I completely forgot to write about the Bible study the girls and I started a couple of weeks ago (we still have a daily Bible time even if we ditch formal lessons). A while back Bug commented with disappointment that there weren't very many girls in the Bible. I had to agree that there were more male major players than female, but I pointed out that there were actually a lot of girls in the real Bible who simply weren't featured in the Bible storybooks we've been using. We decided that for the big girls at least it was time to set aside the kiddie version of the Bible and dig into the real deal. (We still read stories from the preschool Bible storybook too, because the fun pictures are more engaging for Goose.) I finally found the time to do a little research and bookmark a bunch of "girl stories" from the Old Testament to get us started. So far we've read about:

• Eve
• Rebekah
• Shiphrah & Puah
• Jochobed & Miriam
• Rahab
• Deborah
• Jael
• Ruth
• Hannah
• Abigail
• Queen of Sheba
• Widow of Zarephath

The girls have really enjoyed it, and it's made them pay attention to other stories and see how girls of faith played a part even when they weren't the main character. For example, when we read about Naaman being healed of the skin disease in Goose's storybook, they pointed out how brave the slave girl had to be to tell her master about the prophet who could ask God to heal him.

Holy Week

Of course, this week we paused our study of girls of the Bible to focus on Holy Week. It kicked off on Palm Sunday when the girls unexpectedly processed in and played in the children's bell choir! They had missed church on Wednesday to spend some extra time with Nana, so we didn't have a heads up, but they handled it beautifully! The bells are color coded, so whenever the choir director held up a particular color card they knew to ring their bell. All three girls rang the same color, and R, a 12-year-old babysitter-in-training, helped guide them through it. 

For our morning Bible time we've been reading through all the events of Holy Week, using the Bible storybook and the real Bible. The girls and I also made our traditional shopping trip for fresh flowers. I let them each pick out a bunch to divide into vases and distribute around the house when we got home. We went to church the evening of Good Friday: while the grown ups watched  The Passion of the Christ, the kids dressed up in biblical costumes and watched The Jesus Film for Children. Since the kids' movie was significantly shorter than ours, they followed up the resurrection scene with a celebratory dance party.

On Saturday to further prepare for Sunday morning we dyed Easter eggs and made resurrection cookies--pecan meringue cookies that vaguely resemble rocky tombs are "buried and sealed" in the oven overnight. The next morning when you bite them open they're empty inside!  (Someone from church gave me the recipe, but you can find it here ). Easter Sunday meant treats for breakfast, new dresses for church, an egg hunt after the worship service, and an afternoon spent enjoying a potluck dinner and lots of hanging out time with friends! He is risen!

The girls are so excited about chocolate bunnies for breakfast!
Our Easter Sunday breakfast table also featured dyed eggs
and resurrection cookies and was decorated by a few of the
vases of flowers.

The Three Rs
For Monkey and Bug, we made a few changes in our formal lessons for math and reading this week, and it's definitely been a good thing! In our math lessons, I realized that we've reached our limit for new concepts at the moment, and we really need to focus on math facts. The girls are usually pretty quick to pick up new concepts, but I realized they still have to think about every little thing. Going forward is going to be a lot easier if we speed up that processing! So this week we've focused on two things: place value/reading two-digit numbers and sums less than 10. To help with this, I actually got a subscription to Education.com to get unlimited access to their thousands of worksheets. They have some really colorful and fun ones that will make drilling the facts a little more interesting. The girls are making progress! I got the occasional protest that "This is boring," but reading numbers is getting easier (less attempting to read them backwards: so 52 is "fifty-two," not "twenty-five"), and they've been excited about more and more simple addition problems that they just know instead of having to count out. 

I also realized that all the joy had gone out of our reading lessons.

Unrelated to the 3 Rs: This is what
happens when a trio of little girls on
the sunny West Coast is feeling
inspiredby Frozen to "make a snowman."

All three of us were bored and frustrated. Monkey even declared at one point that she "hated reading" [followed by melodramatic slump onto couch]. Since I know how much they both love books, something had to change! I decided to blame the easy readers. While they were technically composed of words they girls could sound out or know by sight, they were neither imaginative nor particularly well written. I banished them to the recycling bin, and no one complained. Instead I combed our shelves for thoroughly enjoyable, real books that just happen to be relatively easy to read. I also added several of those books from the used book store to the stack. Then I designated a book shelf in the hallway as our reading lesson shelf. I explained to the girls that these were the books we'd use for reading lessons now since they were all books I knew they could read. They are welcome to read them by themselves at any time, but I request that they be returned to this particular shelf when finished. (The contents of the shelf with change with their skill level and just to add some variety.) 

So, at the beginning of every day, I ask each girl to chose a book from the shelf. I take the books and write a list of potentially challenging words (because they're long or an exception to the usual phonics rules or simply unfamiliar). When it's time for reading lessons, we read through the list of challenging words (usually multiple times) before tackling the book itself. On occasion, I've also read the book to them first if requested. At this point I've also allowed repeat readings of the same book, since it's definitely improved their confidence and number of sight words. The joy is back! Reading lessons have been so much more fun and successful this week, and they're definitely reading more pages/words than they've been willing to previously.

Monkey has read:
Inside, Outside, Upside Down
Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
Where Is Spot?

Bug has read:
Snug House, Bug House
Go, Dog. Go!
Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

Writing lessons continue as usual. Bug has spent more time concentrating on particular letters that are giving her trouble using tracing worksheets. Monkey decided to write a research paper about cobras this week. They both copied Matthew 28:6, and they still like coming up with random lists of words they want to know how to spell.

Goose learned the letter J this week, and she's starting to explore the concept of addition. I'm not doing formal lessons with this, but it's just been coming up. For example, at dinner she's been noticing things like if two of us are drinking juice and three of us are drinking milk, then we have five drinks total.

A Bit of History
We finally had time to do a history project this week. We read about and looked at many samples of ancient Greek pottery and the paintings on them. Then we did our own versions. First the girls painted background colors on Chinette plates. Once those dried, they went back and drew pictures and patterns on them using dark markers.

We also spent some time reading through our DK Eyewitness book. We covered the sections about what Greek homes were like, what women's lives were like, and how kids were raised.

The girls and I enjoyed a spontaneous field trip when we spotted this cruise ship anchored off the coast while we were driving home from Walmart. We took a detour to walk down the closest pier where we got to watch a surfing class, a couple of sailboats, the ferries going back and forth from the cruise ship, and the day's catch of all the fishermen lining the pier. 

Nana's Here!
We got to have a long-awaited visit with Nana last week! We ditched our formal lessons in favor of playing tourist and getting in some quality time with Daddy's mom. Here are the highlighted activities:

Everybody loves a morning at the beach! The girls started out just playing in the sand and building sand castles, and they slowly inched toward the waterline in search of better building sand and treasures to decorate with. By the time we left all three of them were soaked up to their knees! It was so much fun to see them get braver at their own pace.

Our West Coast girls!

Monkey and Bug progressed from timidly checking out the surf shoulder-to-shoulder
to gleefully being "chased" (and occasionally caught) by the waves.

Nana's visit was the occasion for a couple of movie nights too. First, the girls got to introduce Nana to their current favorite film, Epic, while Mommy and Daddy got a real date night (whoohoo!). Later in the week we all watched Frozen together (it really is as good as the hype; we were impressed). I was also reminded of why lately I have only watched movies with the girls that I've already seen. Since I couldn't give them a detailed summary beforehand, we had to stop the movie several times to explain what was going on, assure them it was a Disney movie that had to have a happy ending, and give them a chance to calm down.

It's Nana, so of course we had to hit up the local shopping hot spot: Cannery Row! We explored all the neat little shops, and even stopped for create-your-own ice cream sandwiches at the Nestle Tollhouse Cafe. Yum!

The sea lions at Fisherman's Wharf were particularly lively the morning we visited. They were swimming through in the water, bumping each other around on the floating platform, and making so much noise! As usual there were a few otters playing around the corner, and the harbor seals basking on the rocks just a short walk away. We actually got to explore the rocky beach near the harbor seals, and the girls found some gorgeous shells that hadn't been broken yet. We topped off the morning with sea food by the water and a trip to the candy store for dessert.

"Look, Nana! I can be a harbor seal on a rock too!"

Then there were all the moments of just good quality time: reading books, playing at the playground down the street, introducing Nana to friends at church, taking her to watch their jujitsu class, building with Marbleworks, Skyping with Papa Bear and Aunt S, etc.

By the end of the week, these girls were worn out! Nana left Friday morning, and we decided to take it pretty easy that day. I decided we'd pick lessons back up again on Monday, but we spent lots of time snuggling on the couch reading books before meeting our homeschooling friends at the playground. Everybody even got in a nice long nap that afternoon--which is particularly good since we had a friend's super hero birthday party to attend that evening!

Love Homeschooling Moments
While some days in the homeschooling life devolve in battles of the wills to get simple things done, I had a number of "this is why I love homeschooling" experiences this week:

Relationship building: One day Bug offered to lead Goose's lessons. Goose thought this was a brilliant idea! Bug read her their favorite counting book, then supervised her completing a collage for her letter of the week. Besides watching the sweetness of the big sister/little sister interactions, this came me some solid one-on-one time with Monkey, who was thrilled to have me all to herself for a little while. I know this sounds weird as a bonding activity, but I spent most of that time teaching her how to unload the clean dishes from the dishwasher. She was extremely proud of being able to genuinely help by learning a new "grown up" skill.

Freedom and flexibility: Thursday morning started off with a big disappointment for the girls that I was powerless to fix. What I could do though was ditch the normal routine and come up with a plan B that we all really enjoyed: After an early lunch, we each packed an "artistic bag" and headed to a local art museum location we haven't visited yet. Monkey currently wants to be an artist when she grows up, so I suggested she do as many artist do and bring a clipboard, paper, and drawing tools to copy the artwork or find inspiration in the museum's garden. She loved this idea! And of course, her sisters wanted in on the fun too. Goose brought her camera, Bug couldn't decide so she brought coloring materials and a camera, and I brought my notebook and pen.While the gallery itself was between temporary exhibits, it hardly mattered. This location features a formal rose garden, a shaded rhododendron garden with winding pebble paths, a duck pond (complete with territorial goose; we hissed back and he wisely realized he was going to lose that fight), and several courtyards with permanent statuary, lovely plants, a fountain, and fun painted tiles.

We decided to settle in the rose garden for a while, and the girls had a blast admiring the flowers and discovering all the discreet stone animals among the rose bushes. Monkey and Bug found good spots at separate bistro tables and set to work on their drawings, while Goose went snap happy all over the garden. At some point Monkey told me she "needed some time with just God" and asked to go to the opposite end of the garden and for me to please keep Goose from following her. I was happy to help, and Monkey seemed to come back much refreshed by a little solitude and personal devotional time. It was an afternoon well spent!

little artists hard at work

All-in-one learning: I love it when something the girls are spontaneously interested in pulls together so many skills from academic subjects, and we have a great time doing it! This week it all started with The Moon Might be Milk, one of our library books this week. First, we enjoyed the story about a little girl and some animals speculating about what foods the moon might be made of (literature), then at the entourage's request we also discussed what the moon, stars, and sun are really made of (science). At the end the book includes the recipe for Granny's sugar moon cookies, which the girls asked if we could make. I agreed on two conditions: they get all their chores done (it was cleaning day) and they had to read the recipe themselves. It's amazing what a trio of little girls can accomplish with the right motivation! Monkey and Bug worked together to read the recipe (reading) and figure out the measurements (math: measuring & fractions). Even Goose got to help out by dumping things in (fine motor skills) and by accomplishing occasional tasks like "We need a tablespoon. That's the biggest spoon in that box. Can you find the biggest spoon?" (math: comparisons). Just being able to exactly follow the instructions given is a good math and science skill, not to mention all the life skills they got to practice: how to set the oven temperature, how to use an electric mixer, how to crack eggs, etc.

How Science Happens
At this stage "science" isn't a subject that happens in a curriculum sort of way, so it doesn't get much specific focus here, but that doesn't mean the girls are clueless on the topic. Here are a few ways science happened in our house this week:

• Monkey rediscovered and was enthralled by a field guide of rocks and minerals. I spent a long time reading her the names of different samples throughout the book as well as reading and explaining the sections "The Earth" (describing different layers, plate tectonics, earthquakes, and how mountains are formed) and "The Rock Cycle" (explaining how elements and minerals are processed in the Earth to become different kinds of rocks).
• Bug inquired about how we get honey (she knew bees made it, but who's the middle man? what's the process?). I gave her a quick explanation of the top of my head, and later we found a How It's Made episode that went into details.
• Monkey decided she wanted to do a research paper about monkeys for her writing lesson one day. This meant reading up on monkeys in the Animal Encyclopedia, then, of course, getting sidetracked by the moles on the opposite page and learning all about them too.
• All three girls noticed and closely examined the various stages of calla lilies outside our front door--at one point we had new buds, fully bloomed lilies, and wilting lilies all on the same plant. Similar things were noted as we reveled in the many varieties of flowers at the art museum gardens later in the week.
• We also had discussions about what the moon and sun are actually made of after reading The Moon Might Be Milk. Monkey and Bug were highly disappointed in the little girl's grandmother when she never explained what the moon's really made of and left the girl thinking it was a sugar cookie.
• Our making the moon cookies should also be considered an early foray into experimenting since we followed the process described and confirmed the hypothesis--the recipe does make yummy cookies that look like the moon!
• Segueing nicely from our baking experience, the girls asked to watch an episode of The Magic School Bus, and we found one that delved into the chemistry involved in baking.
• After a reading of Doctor DeSoto, we discussed which animals Dr. DeSoto would or would not treat based on their diet and whether or not they actually had teeth.

Things like this come up all the time as the girls explore the world around them and ask a constant stream of questions, and of course, when one girl asks the others are always listening in too.

History . . .  Well, the Fictional Parts Anyway
So, I'll confess, my own interest in the ancient Greeks we're studying is mostly in the ancient Greek mythology, and these little girls didn't fall far from the tree. We did read several sections in our library book Ancient Greece Revealed that deal with historical fact: archaeological evidence of the really ancient Greek civilizations then the revival around 1200 BC, what the Parthenon looked like and what it was for, the Olympics, what Greek warships were like and how a naval battle would have gone down, and what Greek theater was like.

Mostly though, we read lots of the Greeks' fiction: Aesop's fables, Jason and the Golden Fleece, and descriptions of mythological monsters both in books and online. On Friday night we even let the girls watch Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters with me. Daddy and I watched it several nights earlier, and I made sure the girls had heard of all the mythical creatures involved and knew something of their traditional back stories. Of course, my literary analysis brain kicked in, and the girls and I compared the "Jason and the Golden Fleece" story to the "Percy and the Golden Fleece" story.

One of the girls' favorite parts of our history studies this week, though, was putting on our own little Greek play. We chose one of Aesop's fables ("The Lion and the Mouse"), they figured out who would be which character (Bug was the Lion, Monkey was the Hunter, Goose was the Mouse, and I was the Chorus and read all the parts), they each made a paper plate mask to represent their character, and finally we put on the show! So much fun!

Miss Independence
This week before the big girls' jujitsu class, a tearful Monkey said she was just too tired and could we please tuck her in to bed and not have her go to class today. We agreed, and the poor girl really did stay in bed for the next two and a half hours! (I guess the poor girl really needed her rest, and I am so thankful she's self-aware enough to make the request!) This of course, left Bug attending class solo. There are very few instances in which Monkey and Bug have done anything separately, and she was anxious about it. She and Daddy talked about how she probably didn't really want to miss out on something as fun as jujitsu class just because she was a scared. It proved to be quite the confidence building activity for her! She successfully partnered with someone not her sister (and made a new friend!) and was the only student in her class to successfully sneak up on her instructor during one of the activities. She came home excited about the class, and even suggested to Monkey that sometimes they should be partners with other kids in the class instead of just each other.

Three Rs
Goose: counting to 20, the letter I

Bug: math (telling time, place value, fractions, multiple-digit addition, skip counting), reading (Dot, I Broke My Trunk!, cookie recipe, composing sentences with paper words), writing (note to Grandma, Bible quizzing, random word list--she asks me how to spell whatever words she's interested in writing)

Monkey: math (telling time, place value, fractions, single-digit addition, introduced multiple-digit addition), reading (easy reader, I Broke My Trunk!, cookie recipe, sort rhyming paper words), writing (note to Grandma, research paper about monkeys, random word list)

Library Day
Our schedule this week required that we visit the library a couple of days early, and therefore not at storytime this week. The girls thoroughly enjoyed having the children's section to themselves for a change and had a great time playing with the building toys and a set of bumble bee puppets that were added recently. As a result, I ended up picking out most of the books this time:
I Broke My Trunk!
Little Bear's Friend
Whistle for Willie
Mirette on the High Wire
Dog Number One, Dog Number Ten
Doctor DeSoto
The Moon Might Be Milk