Gracyn read 'Poppleton' for her guided story today. She read fluently with improved pacing. For word study we worked on improving her use of visual clues in reading unknown words. She read a passage without pictures to practice using visual and context clues. Our shared story was 'If You Give a Mouse a Cookie' and we noticed the way the story was organized.

Gracyn did a shaving cream science activity today. She put shaving cream on a baking tray and spread it around with her fingers all over the tray. She added different colors of food coloring to make a design and took a spoon and swirled all the colors together. She took a piece of card stock paper and placed it on the shaving cream color mixture. She let the paper sit for a few minutes then peeled the paper off the shaving cream. She took a scraper and scraped the shaving cream off the paper. She was left with beautiful colored marbled paper. She did this a few more times experimenting with mixing different colors and using different types of paper to see which type gave the best results. She found the construction paper was too thin and did not do well and the lighter color paper worked better than the darker colors.

Since Gracyn missed her art class this week due to the field trip, she requested to do an art project. She created yoga art with markers, focusing on a spring theme (tree pose, lotus flower, and heart-opening love poses). During our active part of class, we used the large exercise balls and other equipment to do airplane balance and flips. We did the rabbit pose and Gracyn created the "rabbit roll." I also taught Gracyn the grasshopper pose.

Gracyn worked on naming the notes on a Major C scale by recognition on a piece of music and on the piano. She also worked on enrichment sheets to reinforce this lesson. We listened to the DO RE MI song on YouTube, in hopes of learning to play this on the piano.

'Teeny, Tiny, Toady' was our read aloud today, we noticed the way the author and illustrator placed the words in the illustration to make the book more fun to read. Gracyn read a short story on the laptop and answered detail questions about what she read. We practiced the strategy of skipping unknown words and reading on to look for meaningful clues. We also did some word study with cvc and cvce words, compounds, and categories.

Gracyn and I read about Earth Day, which is in April. We discussed different ways people can conserve resources, renewable and nonrenewable, and recycle. She made a poster to display in the school and a "Love Your Earth!" picture. She completed a fill-in-the-blank activity explaining causes and effects of certain daily practices - waste, pollution, and using nonrenewable materials, depleting resources. We discussed communities and she completed a map activity "In the Right Direction", creating a map of the community like the one described in "Make Way for Ducklings". We will go to the library in our next class to take out books about community members - librarians, policemen, mail carriers, etc. Gracyn created a picture of her family and captioned it "My family likes to play outside." We reviewed our discussion of Lewis and Clark, their expedition, the Sacagawea coin and looked at entries and drawings from their journal. We also discussed what we learned from Butterfly World - facts that we were unaware of before our trip.

Gracyn drew quick pictures to help her solve problems pertaining to equal groups which is the foundation for multiplication. She read through word problems and determined the information she needed to use to answer the problem. We used skip counting and repeated addition help solve. Also, the vocabulary associated with drawing and interpreting the information was reviewed.

Gracyn made a batch of thumbprint cookies in our baking class today. She separated 2 egg yolks and measured butter and sugar before beating these ingredients in the mixer. Then, flour was added and mixed until just combined. The dough was rolled into 1 inch balls and placed on a cookie sheet. Gracyn used her thumb to make an indent into each ball. Strawberry jam, Nutella, and Fluff were used to fill each hole before baking and then handing out to schoolmates.

To continue with this week's butterfly theme, Gracyn made a lacy butterfly in arts and crafts. She used water color paints to brightly paint four paper doilies for the wings. Glitter was also used to make the wings shimmer. We used a clothes pin for the body which was also painted. Once dry, the doilies were folded to look wavy with a center point that attached to the body. The clothes pin was used to hold the wings all together along with a piece of silver pipe cleaner for the antennae

Gracyn read a new Katie Woo story with a focus on fluency and noticing compound words. We finished watching the movie version of 'A Little Princess" ( we started it on the bus ride to Butterfly World) and discussed the similarities and differences with the book. Gracyn gave an explanation for which version she liked better and supported her opinion with details.