"In this house we obey the laws of geometry!"

Dear Miss S.,

Square

Please excuse Mary Grace.  It's all her Dad's fault.

At lunch we were going over her homework.  I couldn't help but notice that she had done an excellent job on her worksheet, where she wrote an X over each square and colored in each rectangle.

"Did you know," said her father, "that a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn't necessarily a square?"

"What?" said Mary Grace, her little mind completely blown.

Rectangle

"A square is a parallelogram with four equal sides and four right angles, but a rectangle is a parallelogram with four right angles - that doesn't mean that the sides can't be equal."

"Parallelo-??" Mary Grace's eyes glazed a bit.

"Do you think," he said to me, "that the second week of school is too soon to send a note to the teacher telling her she's wrong?"

I couldn't say anything.  I just laughed.

"So let me get this straight..." Mary Grace said.

Next week:  Dodecahedron

"At school, a square looks like this and a rectangle looks like that."  I tried to make it better.  I really did.

"Oh no, there are no special rules for school.  In this house we obey the laws of geometry!" BJ declared.  "So much for this being an 'excellent' school district!"

So please don't count her as incorrect if she colors in the squares AND writes an X over them.

It's all her father's fault.

And technically, he is right.

Warmly,

Amy