Back to School

Well, we did it!  We managed to make it through the morning in a pretty organized fashion and complete all but two items on the charts.  (Rachel practices violin during nap time or in the evening and Ruby has to make it to the end of the day with no accidents...so far, so good, even with a trip to the library!)
It was a crazy morning and I wasn't super organized, I knew I just wanted to try to get some things done at the table all together.  We did handwriting all at one time...Ruby drew straight lines which looked like circles, so we decided to talk about what a circle is instead of a straight line (seriously?!?!  I thought a straight line would be the easiest place to start!)...Ford did a review of all his numbers and finished his first time through the green handwriting book (he wasn't really ready for it when we got it, but I wanted to see what he could do with it and now he's ready to start from page 1 and really focus)...Rachel did lower case b today and wrote the sentence "B is for backpack."  I love that there is a sentence to read on every page and Rachel practices writing it starting with a capital letter and ending with a period.
Then we decided to have a little art time.  On Friday night, we watched a Tinkerbell movie and now are on quite a fairy kick!  So, our art time consisted of drawing fairies, making fairy crowns, making fairy wings, and looking through Rachel's fairy book.  Art time is hard because our supplies are in one room and our table is in another and even if I brought everything to the table, somebody would ask for something else to use.  It wouldn't be so hard if Ruby didn't try to climb on the table every time I walk out of the room for five seconds.  We'll get there....you know, to the house in the country where everything's laid out better :)
Ford and Ruby managed to entertain themselves for a little while so that Rachel and I could work on her math.  We attempted twice in January to start this new book and she really wasn't understanding place value, but today, she really got it!  I love watching that light bulb come on!!!  She gets the tens place, the units place and even the hundreds place!
Then we played Pixie Hollow for a little while and blocks and run around and crazy games...you know, play time!  As we were starting to get a little antsy, though, I thought maybe a trip to the library would be fun.  It's too cold to go outside and we don't get a lot of time to look for books when we go for story time, so we packed up and went up to the local library.  We got lots of help from our super nice librarians to find all kinds of Tinkerbell and fairy books....we've definitely all done our reading for today!
It's been a pretty great day, so far.  As I type this, though, not one kid is asleep and they all three need a nap today!!  We didn't get home until late last night, but that didn't stop anybody from waking up bright and early this morning, so if no one falls asleep soon, we could be in for an early night!!
I'm sure there are things I've left out of today (like Ford reading us his Blue Mountain book or Rachel crossing off her day on the calendar), but that's pretty much a typical day at Ingram School for now.  Who knows what the afternoon holds???