We reviewed up/down left and right.

Gracyn and I planned a fun day today. We first completed the first step in making a 3D globe to hang from the ceiling for Earth Day. We discussed why Earth Day is important in our last class. We read about conserving natural resources and recycling. Gracyn made a globe by paper mache-ing a balloon. It will harden overnight and she will paint it and use Mod Podge to finish. When the globe was put aside to dry, we took a trip to the library. Our goal was to find books about communities and community helpers. We found these, and more (of course). We also found a book about bees (There is a story in this week's "Time for Kids") and another about families. We can look at these together when Gracyn goes to New York. We also checked out "Make Way for Ducklings" since we did an activity based on the book last week and it tells the story of a community helper. We have been discussing New York and the "skyline".

design fundamentals. Gracyn finished her Eastern bluebird painting today. She also worked on some new ideas for "fashion" design. Fun art time today. Very creative.

Gracyn was doing her "testing" today, so she did the testing instead of her piano lesson today.

Gracyn was administered standardized testing.

Stanford Achievement Testing.

We started looking at multiplication tables, for the 1's, 2's, and 5's. We created some flashcards with these up to 10.

Today, Gracyn reviewed how to break apart a one to make a ten in order to make adding easier. A single-digit was added to a double-digit by breaking apart the ones to make a ten. Then, the sum was quickly found by adding the tens to the remaining ones. Quick pictures were drawn as visual aides. Finally, we played a game called What is the Sum? We took turns moving around the board solving addition problems and tallying the number of correct answers.

Gracyn's lesson today focused on repeated addition and how to write an addition sentence for problems with equal groups. She drew pictures of arrays and used addition to find the total amount of equal groups. The correlating multiplication sentence was also determined. Then, Gracyn solved word problems pertaining to related facts, equal amounts, and recognizing addition and subtraction key words.

Today Gracyn and I went Shopping! We played a board game and used skills in reading comprehension, counting, and budgeting. She did very well and is a good listener - all her answers (and all but 1 were correct) were given after hearing the paragraph, not reading it aloud. She paid close attention.