Jackson is currently reading the short story version of "Flowers for Algernon," written by Daniel Keyes. The story is presented as journal entries written by the protagonist, Charlie. As such, Jackson is reading what is in Charlie's head and in Charlie's own manner of writing, including misspellings.

Today we worked on Valentine's cards and distributed them. Also, we crafted a heart and titled it "What I love the most" and learned vocabulary used on Valentine's Day. We also learned and talked about the history of chocolate, starting from the Spaniard conquistadors, then the cacao bean export, and the exclusivity of Spain. We discussed the marriage of Luis XIX of France and one of the Spanish princesses that led to the European love of chocolate and chocolate houses. It arrived in the US in the mid 1600's and we discussed how the Industrial Revolution helped Hershey's to build its first factory back in 1879 making all the varieties of chocolate we consume today.

We played a science board game in which we answered questions on meteorology, geology, and oceanography.

Great lesson. I taught Jackson several drum beats and talked about how most songs are set up in phrases of 4 measures. Also, Jackson played on the guitar two songs and I played drums, so we jammed together.

Jackson did 10 problems from the Factoring the Difference of Squares practice sheet.

Jackson completed the Kinetic and Potential Energy problem sheet and we experimented with Charlie's RC car including potential and kinetic energy, energy transfer, electrical energy, heat energy, etc.

Jackson completed 10 problems from the Multiply Special Products problem sheet from Ch. 5.6.

Jackson read and edited several short paragraphs. He corrected punctuation, spelling, and grammar errors.

I introduced Jackson to the classic puzzle game of Towers of Hanoi. The game requires concentration and perseverance.

He is learning to factor out a GCF from a polynomial and then factoring quadratic expressions.