Gracyn continued the unit on Oceans today. We reviewed the octopus facts we read on Thursday and read a book together called "Amazing Animals: The Octopus". She learned that a female octopus lays eggs only once in its life and when it does, it lays up to 100,000 eggs. We discussed how only about two of these eggs will make it to adulthood and the others will mainly become food for other animals. After the female lays the eggs, it goes off to die. She also learned that an octopus can regenerate its arms if it loses one and that some octopuses can be as small as an M&M and others can be up to 16 feet long. She drew a picture of an octopus and colored it, and then wrote three of the facts she learned on her paper. She also began watching a The Magic School Bus episode called Dive Deep.
This morning Gracyn and I reviewed chapter 4 in her Magic Tree House book, The Knight at Dawn. This chapter described the feast. Next, we read chapter 5, "Trapped". The children end up in the armory. They encounter a row of standing suits of armor with no helmets on them. Jack ends up putting on a helmet and the visor slams shut! He couldn't get it open and then is grabbed by someone! We discussed vocabulary concepts such as: halt, armory, and visor. Gracyn helped me write complete sentences to three follow-up questions. She did a nice job with her recall of the material. We finished up our session with an Earth Day themed activity. I read statements to her and she used the bold words in the sentence to form a contraction. She had a little difficulty at first with deciding which letters to eliminate, and we worked through writing them together.
Gracyn completed the Mid-Chapter Checkpoint today. This consisted of breaking apart a number to subtract using the number line, drawing quick pictures of tens and ones to find the difference, and solving vertical 2-digit subtraction problems. Then, we made up our own subtraction word problem scenarios while Gracyn wrote the addends vertically to solve.
Today, Gracyn and I worked on opinion writing. Gracyn picked a location in her neighborhood that she thought was the best. Then, she had to give reasons to support her opinion. After planning, Gracyn wrote her opinion and support reasons in a paragraph. Gracyn added illustrations, to add to her paragraph. Great work today, Gracyn.
Gracyn and I continued reading and discussing 'Just Grace'. We practiced reading and writing words with the cvc and cvce patterns. She read a Raz book at level J with accuracy and comprehension. We are also working on sentence composition.
In this second lesson on economics, Gracyn learned about needs and wants. She listened to a lesson and then watched a video on happiness and how it doesn't come from having lots of stuff.
Gracyn and I read and discussed the next 12 pages of 'Just Grace'. She completed the Raz quiz that she started Friday. She also read another level I book on Raz and successfully completed the quiz. We worked on words with b's and d's in them to works toward automatic recognition of those letters and their sounds.
