Today Danny and I continued with our study of where we live. We constructed a large poster flip book to provide a better visual aid for learning his planet, country, state, and town. We searched and printed pictures of each from the Internet. Using four poster circles in decreasing sizes, we glued one picture on each circle with Earth being on the largest circle and his town (North Palm Beach) on the smallest to represent their respective true order. We will review with our flip book until Danny is able to name each, in various ways, independently. In our Florida Studies Weekly (week 11), we learned more about Earth. We read about globes and maps, the green and blue on each, and that we live in the continent of North America. Additionally, we looked at four landforms: deserts, beaches, valleys, and mountains. Danny was later able to identify each picture when named. He then completed his follow up two choice question assessment, yielding a score of 8/9 on today's lesson. We also have been studying about the passage of time. In preparation for some more detailed timeline study, Danny completed a worksheet to sequence four pictures of a little girl making a gift for her Dad, boxing it, wrapping it, and giving it to him. Danny did a great job with this! Next, we read part of a book entitled, Tick Tock by James Dunbar. This book reminds us that time is something that we can sense but cannot see or touch. The author discussed our heartbeat as a way of measuring time as well as clocks. He shared estimates to better help with grasping the concept such as it takes an apple two seconds to fall from a tree, in 25 seconds an ant could run across two of the book pages, and a flying fish can stay in the air for up to 20 seconds. In continuing with time, we watched electronic readers on Pebble Go about food and also clothing comparing long ago and today. We watched a Brain Pop Jr. learning video about Winter Holidays. Danny enjoyed Annie and Moby giving us information about Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, and New Year's Eve. We then discussed and worked through the questions in the easy quiz together.
Finally, I will be incorporating a new component in little bits of our sessions. I gave Danny a winter themed detailed coloring book (often referred to as "adult coloring books"). He will utilize colored pencils to color more intricate and smaller spaces. This requires a great deal of attention and focus, while also providing very beneficial fine motor strengthening as needed in handwriting. We will use this for quick work breaks or the last few minutes of our sessions.