Today was a good day for the kids and I.  I actually wasn't expecting the day to turn out this good, honestly.

Tomorrow we have our first meeting with our new social worker.  We are starting the Foster Care process over again.

I was a cleaning machine.  I want to make a good impression, you know?

Usually when I get this obsessive about the house very little schoolwork gets accomplished.  Bad attitudes and my frustration fill the house on days like these.

Today I had an idea.  While I did my cleaning Chloe followed me around with a pad of paper and a pencil and she wrote out  all of the products that I used for cleaning.  This was her handwriting practice today. 

Then we did some reading in our Mary Jane book.  It was the chapter where the Kewpie doll gets tangled up in the wash. 

Then we gave Sadie's doll a bath.  (She peed on it during her nap the other day and I hadn't had a chance to wash her off yet- - this was pure coincidence).

They helped me think of a way to "make a mop" out of our broom.  We wrapped the dish towel around it and fastened it with a refrigerator clip.  They were very proud of their "invention."

When all the work was done we did some math with our bear and frog manipulatives.  Then I got another idea.

Sadie and Nevie are still learning colors and Caibry is working on phonics.  I laid out a huge sheet of paper (it's actually graph paper I found at a recycling store back in MI.  The whole pad cost me $2.  If you live near Ann Arbor MI check out the Scrapbox.)

They sorted out buttons and manipulatives by color.  For Caibry he had to separate the phonetic sounds for each color and segment them. 

I'd hold a color behind my back and say "I'm holding a color that starts with "p"."  He had to figure out what color was in my hand. 

The coolest part was when Sadie held up her button and said "red". 

Chloe has been learning North, South, East and West.  We've also been looking at the states.  I decided to borrow a Konos idea and we made a sculpture of the United States with Floam.  Oklahoma was pink because it's where we live.

All in all, it was a very good day.  Someone must have been praying for me.