Gracyn began today doing an ocean inference activity. She chose her favorite ocean animal out of the ones she has been studying and made a inference chart. She put facts on the bottom of the page and colored a picture of a scuba diver to put on the top of the page. Behind the scuba diver she drew a picture of her favorite animal. The activity was for someone to read the animal facts on the bottom and guess what animal she was writing about, lift the scuba diver and see if the guess was correct. She also read a page on seahorse facts and answered written questions about seahorses.

Today was Gracyn's last yoga class for the year. She did her favorite movements which were primarily backbends, being upside-down in any fashion, and flips back and forth. She has greatly improved in many of these movements, due to lots of practice. I hope she continues with gymnastics and yoga instruction, as she has great aptitude and potential in these areas.

Gracyn is using this time as a "music appreciation" time. She loves to sing, so we have been listening to "The Voice" for kids. We also review her keyboard note recognition and notation.

Gracyn and I finished "The Boxcar Children' and talked about the family and possible future adventures they might have in the series. We worked on vowel teams for word study and spelled words with consonant digraphs. She read several more pages of 'Flat Stanley' for guided reading.

Today we covered the 40 days following the resurrection of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit. Gracyn then watched a video about the ascension entitled Jesus: A Kingdom Without Frontiers.

Gracyn continued yesterday's lesson consisting of equal parts. Today, she drew the division lines within the shapes. Gracyn was given the words halves, thirds, and fourths along with a shape. She drew the lines to represent the correct equal parts of the whole. Then, she colored in one part of the shape to show 1/2, 1/3, or 1/4 of the whole.

Today in arts and crafts, Gracyn drew animal faces. I drew step by step pictures on the white board that Gracyn copied to make cute animals. She made an adorable zebra, giraffe, and elephant. Once the faces were drawn, she thought of very creative accessories to embellish her animals such as earrings, blush, and hair bows.

Gracyn's lesson consisted of dividing shapes into equal parts. She was shown shapes that had been equally divided. Then, Gracyn determined how many equal parts there were in the whole and wrote halves, thirds, or fourths to name the equal parts. Next, Gracyn tried a new online math game at prodigygame.com. I've set this game to align with Gracyn's lessons and skill level. If she would ever like to play at home her login name is GracynH58 and password is green76.

Gracyn and I read 2 more chapters of 'The Boxcar Children' and noticed details that point to the climax of the story. We worked on vowel teams for word study, using the words in sentences. Gracyn began reading the original Flat Stanley story for guided reading.

As this was our last scheduled session before summer break, we worked hard to finish our Magic Tree House book #2, The Knight at Dawn, by Mary Pope Osborne. I was so impressed as Gracyn remembered the word "precipice" in recalling where Jack fell. We read chapters 8-10, in which we began with Jack in the moat! Annie jumps in behind him. They are then saved by the knight on his black horse. In the dark, they found their way back to the treehouse and hoped they had the correct book to get back home! We then went through the follow-up questions for each chapter and discussed the answers. Gracyn did a terrific job with her recall. Our vocabulary building focus included: tread (water), slapped the reins, and cantered. Finally, in our follow-up questions, we were led to a discussion of body language and how at times the character's actions let us know their intentions or feelings without using speech.