design fundamentals. Gracyn will be reviewing her "elements" of art for the next several weeks. She will be using Lines,Shapes, and Forms to create art pieces to show the use of these elements.
In this first lesson, Gracyn and I spent some time getting to know each other and talking about God, church, favorite stories, and especially the upcoming events of this Holy Week: Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter. She completed a word search of the Bible - beginning terms/books. I was pleased with her ability to remain attentive during the last hour of her last day on campus!
Gracyn participated in the school-wide birthday party and compliment circle for fellow schoolmate, Danny. During the time we had remaining, Gracyn and I went through her New York supplies and packed up her backpack. Also, we added two double-digit numbers together by breaking apart the addends into tens and ones. Then, the tens were added and the ones were added before adding the two together. This strategy helps to eventually solve problems using mental math.
Gracyn finished her standardized testing today. She worked very hard and did a wonderful job. As a reward, she wanted to make one last arts and crafts project together before she left for New York. I painted both of Gracyn's hands hot pink and then stamped her prints onto paper. These prints made the bodies of two flamingos. Then, Gracyn painted the necks of the flamingos to form a heart shape between the two. She added orange legs and beaks. A multi-colored polka dot frame was made around the picture using a round brush along with a red heart in between the flamingos.
In this lesson, Gracyn listened as I read to her regarding some first communities in the medieval times. As she listened, she colored pictures of castles. We had a good discussion about the fairness of the lord of the manor and his unfair treatment of his workers.
Gracyn continued building her spinning motor today that she began on Tuesday. She connected one end of two wires to a D battery with a rubber band. She connected the other end of the wires to two paper clips. She set the coil she made on Tuesday on the paper clips and put a magnet under the coil. When everything was connected properly, the coil was supposed to spin continuously. It didn't spin so Gracyn thought we needed to sand more of the enamel off of the coil so the wire would be more exposed. She sanded both sides of the wires and put it back together. She put the magnet back and gave the coil a push and it started spinning around and around without stopping. We discussed how the side of the coil that she sanded was attracted to the magnet but the other side with the enamel was not attracted to the magnet which caused it to spin. She was very impressed with her invention.
Today we made yoga cookies with yoga pose cookie cutters. Gracyn was very helpful and did all the baking and cleaning up. She was also generous in offering the cookies to other students. She added her own touches to the cookies, adding sprinkles in the dough and creating extra shapes.
