Analise and I used the wall map in the dojo to locate the continents. WIthin 3-5 minutes, she had 5 of the names and location memorized. We began learning about Australia today. We watched live footage of the Red Kangaroo and did a dot painting of a kangaroo silhouette. Analise memorized a fact that she will use to present her Australia patchwork project to her peers.

Annalise and I are still working on our 5 senses. Today, we went in depth into the sense of sight and smell. Together we read The Sense of Sight by Mari Schuh. This showed the parts of the eye and how the eye works. We turned the lights on and off and watched each other's pupils to see how they got bigger and smaller with the light. We also closed our eyes and tried to do basic tasks such as put a jacket on, turn the lights off, and write a number on the dry erase board. From these activities Analise understood how important our sense of sight is. Next, we read The Sense of Smell by Mari Schuh. For an activity to correlate with smell, Analise smelled 6 different smells without looking at them. Honey, pickle juice, garlic powder, coffee grounds, ketchup, and cinnamon. She had to write down what she thought the smell was, whether she liked it or not, and then what it actually was. She guessed coffee and ketchup correctly, only liked the way ketchup and cinnamon smelled, and loved the way the honey tasted.

Analise and I read Green Eggs and Ham. We discussed the rhyming and the overwhelming theme evident with each flip of the page. She loved this story! We connected ourselves to the text by making our own green eggs (no ham:) and deciding if we were like the character in our willingness to try green eggs. Analise was not, she enjoyed them and shared them with a friend whom equally liked them! Analise enjoyed cooking step by step and we documented the process as we cooked. As a follow up, we played a beginning sound word matching game using green egg yolk cards.

Phonics - identify pictures by circling the correct word - long i sound spelled i consonant e. Complete pg. 167. Complete pg. 168 - complete crossword puzzle using words with long i sound, then write a sentence using word(s) from the puzzle. Begin drawing and coloring pictures in "My Dream World" booklet. We will finish tomorrow.

Analise has shown a lot of interest in drawing in the last week. Today, she made her own picture book. Step by step Analise drew a cat, sunflower, paw print, and fish. She took a lot of time making sure that she followed the steps just right and in picking out the perfect colors. In the end, we made up a little story to go along with the pictures. It went like this, The cat went to smell a flower, he left a paw print behind as he went to eat a fish. Analise was very excited to finish and taped it to her door for everyone to see. It was very cute!!

Analise worked a little more today on her 2-D shapes. She finished the book that she began yesterday which covered hexagon, rectangle, circle, square, and rectangle. To relate real world objects to our lesson we went on a shape hunt. Analise played detective while looking for shapes around the building. We had a very hard time finding a hexagon and were very excited when we found one on the recycling box. Analise has a very good understanding of the names, sides, and corners of 2-D shapes. We will start 3-D shapes on Monday.

Today, we went more in depth into the sense of touch and the sense of taste. First, we read The Sense of Touch by Mari Schuh. Analise learned how we sense things with our skin and how feelings such as hot, cold, soft, rough, smooth, and prickly are all felt by sensors under our skin which travel through nerves to our brain. Our brain then tells us how to react. Analise and I went on a touch hunt to feel as many different touch senses as we could find. Next, we read The Sense of Taste by Mari Schuh. Analise understood that our tongue has 4 main kinds of taste, salty, sweet, sour, and bitter. To accompany the lesson I had Analise try pretzels (salty), marshmallows (sweet), lemons (sour), and coffee beans (bitter). She took one regular bite and one bite while holding her nose to understand how smell and taste work together. Analise decided that she loved sweet and salty, liked sour, and did not like bitter at all. She thought it was amazing that our tongue has 10,000 taste buds.

Reading - go online to Reading Eggs...Analise chose to read "The Large Lizard" then answered questions about it...she scored 80%. I believe she could have scored higher, but she hurried through it.
Asia - Analise wanted to learn about and see pictures of the baby animals in different parts of Asia.

Phonics - pp. 163-164, use words with long a sound spelled -ay or -ai to fill in blanks, so that sentences read correctly...complete sentences using clues such as, blocks are tall, long, and others are short, helping to see what the word "looks" like, example - they - first two letters are tall, next letter is short, and last letter is short.
Writing - copy upper case and lower case C's....write sentences where all words start with the letter C.

Analise and I started our morning by reading The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns. This story allowed us to discuss shapes that appear in the real-world and to see what happens to shapes as they get more sides. She really enjoyed the idea that if she puts her hand on her hip it makes a triangle. After the story, we used playdough to form the sides of 2-D shapes on a shape mat. As we made a circle, square, rectangle, triangle, hexagon, and trapezoid we went over how many sides and corners each shape had. Analise then began to make a shape book to keep as a reference.