Birthday Celebration and More

We're almost to the end of August, and it's been a busy month.  Laura is doing well at school.  She's loving spending every Tuesday in OE (the gifted program) and learning great, new things.  This week, she aced a quiz over some of the bones in the skeleton (i.e. femur, clavicle, patella.....and her favorite-phalanges!).  She has tested into the Advanced Content math group for the first unit of math, so she is getting supplemental math work that is more challenging than the basic standard for unit 1.  This week, her teacher began differentiating the kids' spelling words by ability.  Laura made the top group and aced today's pretest on words such as predict, flatten, contact, etc.  On top of that, she has been tackling some more challenging chapter books for her required reading for school.  It is great to watch her take off like this, and we are excited to see what else she will learn this year.

Cliff and I have settled into our class schedules for the semester, and things are going well.  We've also been reading up on the state's pre-K standards in preparation for Nathan's home preschool experience.  He seems very excited to be a big boy and do school work like his sister.  We have been printing out suggestions for great projects to do with him and are excited to teach him more and more new things.

In the midst of all of this, I had a birthday, the kids and I spent several Sundays shopping in Warner Robins while Cliff rehearsed with an area band, and we took our August trip to Six Flags.  Also, Laura got the big news that, in addition to being a Polichinelle with her Ballet II class in this winter's Nutcracker performances, she and 3 of her friends were selected to take on the additional role of Bon Bon.  She is very excited, partly because she gets to dance two dances, and partly because the costumes for each of these roles are very, very pretty. :)

Laura took this picture of us at the restaurant on my birthday.  I think she did a nice job!

The kids love when we go to restaurants that serve rolls to the whole table!

Cake at home for dessert after dinner out.

With Laura and Daddy back at school during the day, Nathan and I have returned to our own activities at home.

Learning the states with his states puzzle.  He already knows GA, OH, NC, SC, FL, IA, NE, IN, CA, UT, and MI ("That's where they make cars.")  This kid is a real smarty pants!

Gina