Learning

                                                     ...And Growing up so fast!
 Rachel and I were talking yesterday and we realized she is only 3 months away from turning 4 years old! Rebekah is already halfway to 13 months! I am so blessed to spend time with my girls and see all they are learning each day and all the new skills that adds up to, even in a week. Here are a few of our milestones this week:

Here is Rebekah sporting her first real ponytail. We have attempted this before and the ponytail holder just slipped right out. I love how her little ponytail makes a shadow on the wall behind her!
Another thing I have really seen with Rebekah this week is how much more interactive she is becoming. She is also starting to actually play. I watched her yesterday as she took the dinosaur figure that she had just watched Rachel play with and move it up and down like it was running. It is so neat to watch as she is learning all about the world around her!

Rebekah calling the cat. His name is Tiger and she stands at the door and calls Ti, Ti

Rebekah "singing" along with her Bible song book

Loving her sister

Playing with Dad

Playing baby dolls and "reading books"

Wearing big girl (2-piece) PJs

Our little engineer built this all on her own this week

Rachel in her new school desk

Rachel is learning lots of new things as well. We are working a little each week on writing her letters and numbers. Over the past two weeks, we have started playing a game with writing her letters: she picks 4 or 5 words she wants to spell and we sound out how they are spelled and she writes them down. We have spelled Basketball, Hairbrush, Tag and Tree among other words. She even wanted to spell vacuum cleaner (yes, she came up with that totally on her own) one day. We decided we would wait until another day for that one!
An addition to the girls room this week is the big school desk in the picture above. One of the local colleges had a furniture sale back in the summer and I was able to get two of desks they were selling for $1 each! So now that we are doing school regularly, we moved the desk into their room for Rachel to have a special spot to sit while she is learning.

The yellow page above is what Rachel wanted to spell yesterday. She wrote tag and tree herself. We have also started working on lowercase letters this week as she has gotten more used to making uppercase letters. Then she said, "Mom, I want to write I Love You". You can bet this is one piece of paper her Mom will be keeping!
The paper with start of the alphabet above Rachel did totally on her own. Last Sunday night before we left church, Rachel got out her markers in her Dad's office. She told me she was going to work on her letters until we were ready to go. When I went to help her put away the markers, this is what she had written!
On the orange page is an example of a day when we play the spelling game

 This blue page is my favorite so far. Yesterday, after the spelling game, Rachel said "I know, Mom, I can write my Gopher Buddy Bible verse." I am helping her with some of her letters but she is getting better and better at them each time we write together. I am so very proud of her for wanting to write her verse and for her hard work in doing so!

I am so thankful for each day with my girls and the opportunity to get to teach them, play with them, watch them grow and love them. They are so much fun and I am so thankful God blessed us with them! I pray of all the things we teach them, that we will teach them God's Word faithfully and to love Jesus most of all!

“And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.  You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."
                                                                   Deuteronomy 6:6-9