712.

Today was back to routine, for the most part, since it was still kind of half day due to dance. But today was Babe's first day with the 45 minute block of individual work while I worked with Bubs and Z and it ended up being pretty awesome. She had a worksheet to keep her busy the whole time. I love when things work out. Knock on wood.

I had Babe start with Math and we reviewed two-color combinations very quickly. I brought out the connecting cubes and had her make as many two-color combinations with those as she could.

Then for a quick review on counting coins, I put five piles of coins in front of her and had her count how many cents were in each pile. She did so perfectly!

We then went into the new material, covering ordinal numbers. As previously stated, Babe has been reading and preparing calendars since she was three, so she knows all about ordinal numbers. To reinforce the idea, I had her grab five of her stuffed animals and line them up as if they were in a race.

I then asked her which place each stuffed animal was in. I had her move some of the animals around and she was able to tell me their new positions in the race.

After completing her worksheets, Math was done.

Our new routine for Bubs and Z is that after I do Math with Babe, I give Babe some work to do by herself while I go in the "classroom" for a period of time. Today I handed Babe a color-by-number of the Presidential Seal. Then I was off.

Bubs today picked the shadow matching bin first. She did this very well and was pretty much done in a jiffy!

While Bubs was working with that, I had Z doing the three-piece puzzle of each vehicle. He impressed me so much with this! He actually finished it all correctly! It took him a bit of time, but WOW! I was very surprised.

Bubs' second bin choice was the rice bin. She successfully sorted everything in that bin to the correct color. She loved working this task!

After bin work, I brought out the flashcards again and practiced each word with them. Then I had them go find the matching toy around the classroom. It's like a big hunt for them. They love it. When they were done, I gave Z the train card and Bubs the car card and told them to go across the house to the playroom and get a matching toy. They both did!!! That deserved major high fives! I then went over the pronunciation of each vehicle again. After successfully saying each word, the work was put away and free-play was started. It was time to head back to Babe and see her work.

It was perfect timing, because she was just finishing up the Seal when I walked out there.

Perfect!

While Bubs and Z played, I had Babe match up the vehicles and their word cards again, which she did so successfully. Then I challenged her with taking away the word cards and having her try to spell each of them. Out of nine cards, she only got four wrong! Not bad! I had her put back the word cards under the matching vehicle and correctly spell the ones she got wrong.

Once this was done, it was time for outside play!

After lunch, Babe and I had another discussion on presidents. I like reviewing little details everyday so the facts stay fresh and imprinted in her mind. I will be easing up a little now because of the new month, so I told Babe we were concluding our heavy discussions on presidents by writing a letter to our President now.

"You know Barack Obama's phone number?!"

So cute.

I told her that I wanted the letter to have a few things: one or two sentences about her, one or two sentences about what she learned about, a thank-you to the President for something, and a question she wanted to ask.

"Can we send a bone to Bo?!"

I actually thought about sending something for Bo, but I told her that when someone sends a letter to the President, it goes through lots of people before it gets to him, and those people test the letters and make sure there is nothing that would hurt the president in it.

"Well it would only be a cookie..."

"I know, but some people are really mean and might try to trick the President and send a cookie that could make Bo sick. How about if I let you draw a bone for Bo on your letter?"

She kind of understood after that, but was bummed she couldn't send a real cookie.

This is the letter she came up with.

I was very surprised she said her favorite president was Roosevelt, since she knows the least about him. I thought for sure she'd say Lincoln! But she impressed me with the facts she remembered about Roosevelt, so he made it into the letter.

She was so so so excited to draw the bone at the end of the letter.

The letter took nearly an hour to write, so by the time she finished, it was time to get ready for dance.

And that was Tuesday!