Handwriting for Birthday Cards

We did some real world handwriting today to make birthday cards.  March is birthday season around here.  Grandpa's birthday is today, Mac's was on  Tuesday, and yours truly will be the ripe old age of 37 next week.  Rachel made the cutest cards for Mac and Grandpa.  I had written out "Happy Birthday, Grandpa!" and "Mac" on a piece of paper so she could see how to spell everything.  While we were focused on that, Ford had a piece of construction paper out and was writing his own version of Happy Birthday.  I was shocked when I realized that he was actually writing the words with upper and lower case letters on his paper.  He's a great copier!!  Unfortunately, the letters weren't exactly in the write order, but it made for a super cute card.  Don't worry, he turned both of his cards over and drew trains on them!!  Appropriately, our buddy Mac loves Wolfpack red, so Ford drew James the red train for him who just happens to be #5 which is how old Mac will be.  Ruby just wanted to trace her hands and draw all over the paper, but her cards always turn out pretty cute, too!  I forget how much fun it is to just throw out some paper and crayons or markers and let the kids just color.  We ended up coloring and drawing for a long time.  If I wasn't afraid of Ruby drawing on all of the walls and furniture, or more likely, eating all of the crayons and markers, I'd just leave them out all the time for everyone to use.  We'll be there soon.
Ford was so proud of himself when I asked him to count from 0-20 today.  He yelled every single number with a huge smile on his face and made it through perfectly.  I love watching him when he's so proud!  Rachel finished up her lesson on +1 and will take the test tomorrow.  I'm sure she'll do great.  Next week she's going to start counting to 100 which she can pretty much do but I'm excited that it will lead us into talking about the 100th day of the year (instead of the 100th day of school).  I think we will all start making our own collections of 100 things...could get interesting!!
We've done a lot of reading and a lot of playing today and everyone was so worn out that Ford actually asked me if he could take a nap :)  Normally, we just rest for a little while on violin/art day, but since he woke up at 5 and asked for a nap, they are all snoozing right now.  I'm just going to have to make sure everyone is up and in a good mood before we need to leave.  After our activities this afternoon, we'll head over to celebrate Grandpa's birthday!  The kids are excited...they just love a reason for cake but they love Grandpa and Hobo will be there, so it could get pretty wild!!!