This morning, Gracyn watched a short video on the life cycle of snow. It showed how water vapor grows within the cloud, freezes into an ice crystal, grows six branches with arms, and begins to fall as it grows heavier. For a fun snow activity, Gracyn mixed together Mad Lab magic snow with water and placed it in the freezer for 10 minutes. While we waited, Gracyn colored a snow globe picture. Once done, we went outside with the chilled snow mixture to have a "snow ball" fight.
Gracyn continued her unit on living things today. We reviewed the characteristics of living and non living things and she gave examples of each. She went on a scavenger hunt outside and made a list of the living and nonliving things she saw. We began discussing how plants and animals can be alike and different. We watched a video on the venus flytrap and how even though it's a plant it eats bugs.
Our session began with Gracyn selecting our books for her partner/guided reading, independent reading and reading aloud. She read "Pigeon Wants a Puppy" and we read ""Hooray Fly Guy". Our read aloud was "Lovable Lyle" and we had a dual focus of inferring and determining the author's message.Gracyn did a very good job with both strategies. We also noticed the features of this fiction story and contrasted them with her own non-fiction book.
We started our lesson with Jingle Bells. We then learned a section of Jolly Old Saint Nicholas. Next we added an additional phrase to part two of the Knuckle Song. We also went over the first page of Old Macdonald, played on the white keys.
Gracyn's lesson covered how to model and draw 10 more and 10 less. She drew base ten blocks to represent the tens place and single cubes for the ones place. Then, using mental math, she quickly determined the numbers that were 10 more and 10 less than the given number. Gracyn also completed a unit 7 review so I could determine if any material needed to be re-examined. She has done very well with this unit. We moved very quickly but I believe she is ready for the test tomorrow.
Today we did a new partner yoga pose and took pictures. We also did part of the Christmas yoga song that included poses (Gracyn was not too interested in this). Gracyn also practiced a difficult pose, the firefly.
Gracyn began our lesson reading a phonics story featuring -s blends. She sorted the words into categories and added words with the same features. Her instructional reading was a new Fly Guy story with the focus of using context clues to determine unknown words. She continued to work on illustrations for her book and we read "Deck the Halls" together.
Gracyn read two Pigeon books for her independent reading time, she reads this series with prosody and joy. We read "Verdi" for read aloud and noticed the author's message. She was able to identify and connect to the lesson. She worked on her book illustrations and we discussed the elements of her non-fiction book.
Gracyn and I began with some follow-up questions to our Magic Tree House book, Dinosaurs Before Dark by Mary Pope Osborne. Gracyn answered questions about if she liked the book, if it were real or not, as well as if it wasn't a real story, were there any parts that could be real. Gracyn wrote in complete sentences and was thoughtful in her responses. Next, we completed a Christmas themed worksheet which reviewed proper capitalization at the beginning of the sentence and proper punctuation at the end of the sentence. Finally, Gracyn read a level one reader, Merry Christmas Ollie!, by Olivier Dunrea. In this sweet story, Ollie and his gosling friends are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Father Christmas Goose. Gracyn did a great job using prior knowledge and sounding out skills to tackle tricky words. We talked about chunking parts of words together to help us sound out the whole word.
This morning, Gracyn continued creating Christmas presents. She was very busy working on three different projects that we began last week and will finish next week. She took her time planning and making her art projects that she is very excited to wrap and put under the tree.
