Gracyn and I finished making a quill. We discussed who might have used one and related this to Presidents' Day. We planned a calendar for February and marked important events. We followed a lesson from The Mailbox about "Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type" by Doreen Cronin. Gracyn illustrated a prediction based on the book and wrote a caption. She made predictions and answered reading comprehension questions that made her think. She imagined what might happen next.
In today's lesson, Gracyn practiced writing the hour and minute hand onto clocks to show the given time. Then, we used the white board to draw clocks to help her solve more difficult time related word problems. Gracyn understood the concepts of the clock and could tell an exact time but has not fully grasped elapsed time which we will continue working on. We spent the last few minutes of our time working on multiplication facts 0 - 2.
In arts and crafts, Gracyn made a twisted critter out of pipe cleaners. She took her time browsing through different critters until deciding on a peacock. She took bright blue fluffy pipe cleaners and wrapped them around a pencil to make the head and body. Then, Gracyn chose three different colored striped pipe cleaners to twist into a tail. Black was used for the beak and legs. The pieces were all assembled onto a pencil as if the peacock was perched. Gracyn followed the step by step instructions carefully and as a result, had an adorable peacock.
Gracyn and I began planning for her fiction story. She created her characters, chose a setting and decided on a problem. She also began to think about events and came up with a fabulous moral. She read a Raz-Kids story for guided reading, great job. Our word study was syllables, open and closed.
We read 'Ada Twist, Scientist' for our read aloud today and made inferences about character actions. Gracyn read 'Pigeon Needs a Bath' for her independent book and we talked about the characteristics of fiction stories. Gracyn and I fleshed out her plan for her fiction story and she began writing her rough draft.
Gracyn continued her animal project today. We continued reading books and finding facts on the snow leopard. She added three interesting facts she learned from her research to her report as well as the snow leopard's habitat. Her report is almost finished then she will start working on her poster.
Gracyn had another great session. Just like last week, she was very focused on the skills we worked on. She continues to improve on her cartwheels on the beam. We also worked on her walkovers on the spotting block and added in back handsprings. Gracyn has requested to try to put together a "gymnastics show" to perform for a select audience near the beginning of March. We will start to work on some routines for this.
Gracyn practiced telling time to the hour and to the half hour. Determining the difference in the minute hand and hour hand was reviewed. We also went over how many seconds are in a minute, how many minutes are in an hour, that every number represents 5 minutes, and half way is a half hour or 30 minutes. To correlate with the lesson, Gracyn and I played a game called playing with time. We each took turns drawing a card with time related questions. If answered correctly, we moved ahead the number of spaces indicated on the card until the first player reached the finish space.
We began with "Batter Up" the piece we began last week. We reviewed A-B-C-D-E in middle C postion and steady counting. We also played through the previously learned pieces "Knuckles" and "Jingle Bells."
Today, Gracyn began a new unit on how to tell and write time. We reviewed telling time to the hour. Gracyn looked at where the hour hand pointed and wrote the time. We also worked on telling time to the half hour. When the hand was halfway between 2 numbers, Gracyn looked at the hour before and after to determine which hour the hand was half past. Finally, on the white board, Gracyn completed two-digit addition problems with regrouping and also tried three-digit addition with regrouping.
