Horseback riding in Wolf Laurel, NC

Our trip to Tennesse was a dream come true... We found a stable that would let Emma trail ride on her own horse! She needed to demonstrate her ability to control the horse to David our trail guide and the owner of the stable! She was great with her horse, Bud. And she also did well communicating with David, this however she found more personally challenging than dealing with the horse!

Then is was off to see the Mountain trail in the glory of spring. We got to cross two streams on horseback, have a snack on a mountain rock out cropping and eat a Ramp freshly picked by our guide. What a wonderful day!

Emma the Engineer

WE got this marble construction set for christmas and until this session of use Emma has asked someone to build it for her.

It is a completely open ended construction activity, there are no instruction, just assemble the pieces to create a marble run. Her style of construction was WAY different than what she had seen done by her Dad and older brother and brother-in-law. The three of them assembled a complex structure THEN added the marbles to see what would happen sometimes successful and sometimes they did not work.

Emma would assemble a very small section, run the marbles, make adjustments to get the results she wanted, then add more to the structure. She spent several hours using this method till she achieved two "Y" shaped runs that had complex variations in their flow.

After using it off and on throughout the day I was very surprised when that evening she was ready to disassemble it. She said "next time I will just experiment again!"