To celebrate the last day before spring break and St. Patrick's Day, Gracyn had extra time at the playground. Then, the kids all had an ice cream party together before Gracyn left school early.

We went through place value (ones, tens, hundreds, thousands) by playing a game with the number blocks, then we practiced her mental math again.

Today, Gracyn beautifully composed a complete improvisational piano suite including the pieces "Summer Storm," "Falling Leaves," "Winter Storm," and "Spring Break." Gracyn also learned about the trill, and "call and response" style. We also reviewed several previously-learned pieces, as well as note values and names.

Today we went over parts of the body. We colored and labeled all parts of the body and sang the head, shoulders, knees, and toes song in Spanish.

Gracyn and I finished 'A Little Princess'today and were both sorry to come to the end. Gracyn was able to recount the big events in the story and determine the overarching message. We worked on possessive nouns and reviewed common and proper nouns. She read 'Katie Woo, Katie's Noisy Music' for guided reading with our focus on decoding words with affixes and pacing. We also played a game of Bingo with contractions.

Gracyn took the unit assessment today which covered numbers to 1,000. This assessment focused on the understanding that the three digits of a three-digit number represent amounts of hundreds, tens, and ones. Also, counting on and back by 10's and 100's, recognizing number names, and comparing numbers was covered. She did a great job and fully grasped all of the concepts. Then, we played shamrock race triples. We took turns rolling two dice and multiplying the sum by 3. A counter was placed on the correct answer and the first to make it around the board won.

Gracyn did a lesson on the monarch migration and the diminishing population of the butterfly. To begin the lesson, we discussed that one female monarch can lay up to 500 eggs ( one at a time) in its short life. It lays so many eggs because the survival rate from egg to butterfly is very small, only about 1 in 100 will make it to adulthood. Knowing that, we talked about why our chrysalis didn't survive and I asked if she wanted to look at it under the microscope. She was all for it so she observed it wings, head, eyes, abdomen, and legs close up. She commented it was creepy but cool. Especially its eyes. After that we discussed how the fourth generation of the monarch can travel up to 3000 miles to Mexico for migration where it meets up with millions and millions of other monarchs and hibernates. Once there, it knows to go to the exact tree that it's grandparents went. It's stays until spring and then begins its journey back. We watched a short video on the migration and learned how millions of monarchs are dying each year due to deforestation and herbicides. We read a book called, "The Threat to the Monarch Butterfly" and discussed what she could do to help the monarch population. She decided she could plant some milkweed so the monarchs have a place to lay their eggs.

Today we did a yoga art project of painting peace rocks. Gracyn was very creative in her color choices and designs. At the end of class, Gracyn practiced some gymnastic moves over the large exercise balls.

Our read aloud story became extremely exciting today when Sarah's misfortunes were reversed by 'magic'. Gracyn and I noticed the words that the author used to show emotion and to create feelings in the reader. For guided reading Gracyn read a Katie Woo story, focusing on pacing. She continued to work on the final draft of her narrative. Our word work was writing words with three letter beginning blends.

This afternoon, Gracyn and I watched a Brain Pop Jr. learning video about Lewis and Clark. We learned about how Thomas Jefferson signed the Louisiana Purchase and sent this team, along with the Corps of Discovery on an expedition to the Pacific Ocean. Clark handled the maps and navigation, while Lewis gathered information about plants and animals he observed on the journey. They met Sacagawea and her husband Charbonneau along the way and they accompanied them on the rest of their trip to serve as translators. Gracyn scored a 5/5 on the follow-up easy quiz and we discussed the information presented. We looked at pictures of Lewis and Clark's real maps, journals, and animal sketches online. In her social studies textbook, we read pages about the community and its helpers. We discussed the terms producer and consumer. We then read a bit about Henry Ford and how he made the first affordable car. In preparation for an upcoming field trip, we also read a little bit about butterflies. We looked at pictures of various butterflies and caterpillars. We were excited to learn that many of them can be found in Florida. We discussed that adult butterflies do not bite and are not harmful. However, in discussing the young butterfly (caterpillar), they can cause stings and eat quite a bit on our plants! Gracyn then wanted to search for some pictures of butterflies to print for a display outside of her room.