Piece of cake

What a better week we're already having!!!  We got so much school work done today with such great attitudes.  Ruby wasn't 100% perfect or entertained, but she had a much better day than she's been having!  Ford started his new math lesson today with a video from Mr. Steve (his "math teacher"!) who told him that this week's lesson would be a piece of cake.  Ford thought that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard and sure enough, the lesson was easy peasy!  He learned about the Magic C today in his handwriting which was fascinating to him and also a piece of cake!  After we'd been doing school work for a little while, Ms. Gail called to see if she could bring us some leftovers from Will's birthday party including, what else, but four pieces of cake!!!  We were really cracking up then about things being a piece of cake!
Rachel zoomed through handwriting and math (a new lesson on squares, rectangles, and skip counting by five which she can already do, but I like her doing some review practice).  We started talking about predictions today in Language Arts.  Her favorite thing was when we got out the story paper.  I had started a story for her and let her predict what would happen next and finish the story.  She loved writing about a girl who finds pixie dust in the woods and is able to fly!  I'm pretty sure she's also decided to be a fairy for Halloween...the girl is a planner!  We did an assessment for Social Studies today where I just asked her a few basic questions about the Geography we've been doing.  She was able to easily answer all seven questions.  I was so proud!!  I really had no idea if she'd be able to answer the questions in a way that someone else could see she understood the concepts, but she did great!  For Science today we talked about rainbows.  We made our own rainbow by putting a mirror into a bowl and filling it with water.  Then we shined a flashlight on the mirror and it put a rainbow up on the wall.  It was pretty cool and all of the kids loved it.  They were amazed that all rainbows don't come in that "normal" arch shape.  We had fun drawing rainbows with the colors in the right order but not shaped like arches.  Surprisingly, though, Ford stuck to the arch.  I think he was afraid to get it "wrong".
We had a great time all together, too, exploring our new calendar that has a place to change the month, a place for day of the week labels, numbers to change every month, a special square showing where Fall begins (and lots of other holiday squares), and a place to show the season and the weather!  I think we will enjoy using that calendar together every day!
Ruby and Rachel played so nicely together after getting our school work done.  They dressed up like princesses and had their own ball in the living room with ballerina music.  Ford and I were able to build a pretty cool track for the engines while the girls danced.  I was able to finally get the laundry put away after everyone felt entertained.  Then we saw Ms. Vanessa and decided to have a picnic and ride bikes (we had to get that sugar energy out from the cake!).  Now everyone is asleep or resting.  I am so thankful for a better attitude in myself today as well as better attitudes in the kids.  We're definitely making some progress!!