Today Jackson did a buddy reading activity in lieu of academic games. He came together with Yanuell, a younger student to read books about ocean habitats and the animals that live there. Jackson was immediately excited with the subject matter and frequently made text to self connections with his own experiences on the water. Jackson's enthusiasm when sharing his personal stories got Yanuell especially excited as well. Jackson and Yanuell leafed through several books looking at the illustrations and discussing before finally deciding on a book called, Down, Down, Down: a Journey Through the Ocean's Layers.

Baylie began her session by playing a game called Wingo. Wingo is a word bingo game that involves word building with blends and digraphs. Baylie did an excellent job sounding out the different words to determine whether they were actual words or nonsense words. We followed Wingo with a game called A to Z Junior. The game is a fast-paced naming game that involves many different categories. A to Z helps develop recall speed, decision-making skills and build vocabulary. Baylie and I collaborated together to try to see how many spaces we could fill on the game board. She really enjoyed playing several rounds of the game. We ended the session with an addition math game that involved playing cards. A deck of cards is assembled in a game board and each player rolls a die to see how many spaces they move. When they land on the designated card - the player must quickly add the number on the die to the number on the playing card. During the game, we discussed doubles facts and doubles plus or minus one. Baylie was challenged with the speed of the game and some of the addition facts so this is a game that we will play again to build her skills. It's an extremely fun way to help build speed and recall with adding.

Jackson began his session by playing a game called A to Z Junior. The game is a fast-paced naming game that involves many different categories. A to Z helps develop recall speed, decision-making skills and build vocabulary. Jackson really enjoyed playing several rounds of the game and performed extremely well once he developed a game-strategy. In addition to A to Z Junior, Jackson played Riddle Master, a reading comprehension game that involves the use of both context clues and inferencing. Each player navigates the game board by reading passages and answering questions. During the reading of passages, we worked on some phonics skills to help Jackson decode unfamiliar words in addition to looking for context clues to successfully answer the questions. Jackson did extremely well and was quite happy to win the game.

Baylie had a wonderful hour filled with group Valentine's Day activities. She played Valentine's Day Bingo masterfully and won. She also made a beautiful beaded bracelet as a Valentine's Day gift. To end the hour, Baylie learned a new song called, I'm Going to Mail Myself to You. The song is a very funny piece about a person wrapping themselves up to send in the mail as a Valentine. Baylie did an excellent job learning the song and hand motions all with a big smile on her face.