Ethan began his session by playing a game called Pirate Treasure Hunt: Context Clues. Players make their way across a tropical island in a search for gold treasure. While moving through the island, players read leveled story cards and use context clues from the passages to answer questions. The first player to successfully find the treasure and answer their question correctly wins the game. This game is a very fun, highly motivating activity designed to build and reinforce reading skills. It is an awesome activity for Ethan because it involves reading, competition, and comprehension skills. He shined throughout the game and was able to find all context clues to support his answers. After completing the game, we moved onto to the Funbrain math website to build math skills. Ethan worked on building both addition and subtraction skills as well as strategy.

Yanuell was a bit nervous to start a new class with a new teacher. So, we decided to spend this class time getting to know one another. Yanuell and I spent sometime watching video clips on different species of sharks, which he was very interested in and excited about. We discussed around 40 different types of sharks and some interesting facts about them. In addition, we used a globe to identify countries that are known to have certain types of sharks. He was very responsive and did a wonderful job participating in this lesson.

Bailey participated in a school wide President’s Day themed afternoon.

Ethan decided that he wanted to read and discuss books for our session today. I introduced him to fractured fairy tales which immediately peaked his interest. I pulled the original version of the Three Little Pigs in addition to The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and The Three Little Wolves and the Big, Bad, Pig. We started with the original story of the Three Little Pigs which Ethan was familiar with. After reading, we discussed the story, the characters, and the slight variations to the story that we had heard over the years. We then read The True Story of the Three Little Pigs written by A. Wolf. Victim for centuries of a bad press, Alexander ("You can call me Al") T. Wolf steps forward at last to give his side of the story which is that he was 'framed.' The character development for the wolf is hysterically funny and Ethan easily identified with the humor. He was able to verbalized the reasons why he liked this book so much and they all revolved around how humorous he felt the wolf's character was. After our reading and discussion, we ended the session by reading The Three Little Wolves and The Big, Bad Pig by Eugene Trivizas. This story puts a different spin on the fairy tale and sets the pig as the villain. However, this book has a happy ending where everyone becomes and friends and learns to live together happily. Ethan really loved some of the different elements that this book offered, especially the amazing houses that the wolves were able to create.

Yanuell was excited to begin his session by playing a game of Blokus. The game focuses on abstract strategy with transparent, Tetris-shaped, colored pieces that players are trying to play onto the board. It encourages creative thinking and has received a Mensa award for promoting healthy brain activity. The goal of this game is for players to fit all of their pieces onto the board. When placing a piece it may not lie adjacent to the player's other pieces, but must be placed touching at least one corner of their pieces already on the board. The player who gets rid of all of their tiles first is the winner and strategic thinking helps as you block moves from your opponent. Blokus is a catalyst for spatial thinking, as players form images in their mind before placing the pieces on the board. Being that this was Yanuell's first official time playing Blokus he did extremely well. He was able to play the entire game without getting frustrated and making great moves. He was quite proud of himself with his strategy and game play! After the competitive match of Blokus, we changed our focus to addition war. Yanuell played against Ethan and myself and was able to show off some super addition skills!

Ethan began his session playing a game of Blokus. This game focuses on abstract strategy with transparent, Tetris-shaped, colored pieces that players are trying to play onto the board. It encourages creative thinking and has received a Mensa award for promoting healthy brain activity. The goal of this game is for players to fit all of their pieces onto the board. When placing a piece it may not lie adjacent to the player's other pieces, but must be placed touching at least one corner of their pieces already on the board. The player who gets rid of all of their tiles first is the winner and strategic thinking helps as you block moves from your opponent. Blokus is a catalyst for spatial thinking, as players form images in their mind before placing the pieces on the board. Ethan is especially good at forming images in his mind before laying them down on the board. He is able to visualize how best play his pieces in his mind and can also strategize how to block opponents. After a competitive match of Blokus, we changed our focus to addition war. Ethan played against Yanuell and myself and was able to beat both of us with great cards and super addition skills!

I planned academic activities for Ethan during his absence.

Ethan had an awesome academic games session playing a new game called Blokus. Blokus is an abstract strategy game with transparent, Tetris-shaped, colored pieces that players are trying to play onto the board. It encourages creative thinking and has received a Mensa award for promoting healthy brain activity. The goal of this game is for players to fit all of their pieces onto the board. When placing a piece it may not lie adjacent to the player's other pieces, but must be placed touching at least one corner of their pieces already on the board. The player who gets rid of all of their tiles first is the winner and strategic thinking helps as you block moves from your opponent. Blokus sometimes comes to an end because there are no more possible moves. Blokus is a catalyst for spatial thinking, as players form images in their mind before placing the pieces on the board. Children and adults can play together for hours of competitive fun. It was absolutely amazing to see Ethan play this game! His ability to spatially see the board and what places to put his blocks to advance his play as well as block the opponent was astounding. It was impressive to watch him play and I'll look forward to playing again with him.

During Stephen's music class, we played academic games during Mr. Kevin's absence. We played a reading comprehension game, hangman, and also math computer games on the Sheppard Software website. Stephen worked very hard and did a great job.

For Bobby's music class today, we played academic games during Mr. Kevin's absence. We began by playing team Scrabble against Jackson. Bobby had a great time building words, practicing phonics skills, and adding up his word scores During the Scrabble game, we discussed different phonics strategies to build longer, higher-scoring words. Bobby did a fantastic job and won the game. After Scrabble, Bobby played computer math games on the Sheppard Software computer site. He worked specifically on multiples and multiplication facts.