Story Time and Violin

We had a great morning today at Ingram School.  We were able to start our work early and were already at the table doing handwriting by 7:30!!  These kids love putting stickers on their charts!!  Since we've made Fairies our theme for the week, I had Rachel write "fairy" in lower case letters and Ford was able to write it in upper case letters.  I was really proud of Ford's writing, because he usually sticks to F-O-R-D.  I also had Rachel write "Tuesday".  I like having her practice her days of the week and practice using a capital letter and the rest lower case.  Then, Ruby and I made some T's for Tinkerbell.  She actually did a pretty good job doing a straight line today, once I told her we were writing a T for Tinkerbell!!  Rachel and I did some more place value work and she did a great job.  I think tomorrow we'll try a game with it if we get a chance.
Tuesday is our day for story time, so we went up to the library to hear about bears and made a cute little bear that goes in and out of a styrofoam cup like his cave for hibernating.  I figured that counted for reading and a craft :)  Oh, and speaking of reading....my friend, Amanda, who teaches elementary school brought us some early reader books yesterday.  Rachel read FOUR of them today without much assistance at all.  I was so proud of her!!  It was an extraordinary day for Rachel.  After we left the library, we went to our church and ate lunch.  Then she had a violin lesson today instead of Thursday (her teacher had to reschedule this week).  Her teacher could tell she had been practicing very hard and decided she could put the bow on the strings today....Oh my goodness, that little girl's face LIT UP!!  She played that violin so well and was so proud of herself.
The day went downhill from there.....I guess being out of the house so much this morning, threw Ruby and Ford off because they would not settle down for a nap.  I finally gave in and just had them get up.  It was a super nice day outside and I thought we'd benefit more from getting out in the sunshine.  We had a great time playing fairies (of course!) and pirates and swinging and using machines in the sandbox, but these kids were EXHAUSTED by dinner time!  Allen and I decided after dinner, we'd just have a little movie night (I was kind of hoping they'd fall asleep during the movie, Ruby had already fallen asleep while he read her a story before dinner!).  They all managed to stay awake for the entire hour of the movie (another Tinkerbell, of course!) and then pretty much went straight to sleep after that.  Poor Ruby just crashed, though, and had one of those fits that people don't write about because it makes things seem kind of crazy in your house.  Let's hope they all get some good sleep tonight and take a nap tomorrow!!