Gracyn made observations today on the seeds she planted. She wrote and drew pictures in her seed journal of the changes to the seed and compared the seed that is kept in the dark to the seed in the light. She also began a new lesson on different landforms found on Earth.

We watched National Geographic's 5 Myths About Pirates That are True. We learned about different components of a map - the compass rose, the key or legend, symbols, land and water. We looked at the globe, made a compass spinner game and labeled Gracyn's classroom with North, South, East and West. We also looked to the Presidential election wall and decided how Gracyn can contribute. She is making a campaign poster to vote for Barbie as President! We also reviewed her vocabulary words.

design fundamentals. Today was our first session together for art. Using the "elements" of lines and shapes, Gracyn drew a picture of a clown and then added color. Good results. She listened and followed directions very nicely.

Gracyn had a very productive day. We finished the Sudoku puzzle that she brought home over the weekend and worked on her math addition skills using the numbers 0-18. She completed lesson 1.6 which covered the concept that addends can be added in any order and the same sum achieved. We also went over the chapter's vocabulary words which are addends, sum, plus and add. Gracyn worked on a challenging 0-100's chart puzzle. The chart was cut into many pieces and she placed them all in order. When finished, Gracyn said, "That was really hard, we need to take a picture." We completed the lesson by reading Math Fables Too by Greg Tang.

We began by reviewing last week's material. Gracyn played and identified the two and three black-key groups, high and low tones, and demonstrated the correct hand position. We reviewed finger numbers and the abbreviations R.H. and L.H. We then moved on to the white keys and the musical alphabet. Starting on the lowest note, Gracyn played and identified all of the white keys on the piano. We then went over middle C, and Gracyn located additional C's on the keyboard. Next we discussed half notes and quarter notes, and Gracyn played through three pieces while counting the half notes. Finally we reviewed last week's piece, "Two Black Ants".

Gracyn and I went to the library and selected books to read this week, she made some really good choices. Our read aloud today was a Junie B. Jones book. She did a sound sort for 'ch' and wrote the words for the sort. We read and illustrated the sight word poem, Books.

Today's read-aloud was 'Owen' and our strategy focus was on making connections to what we read. We worked to solve words by using beginning and ending parts and we worked on recognizing high frequency words. Gracyn read the poem 'The Frog' and we read a 'Frog and Toad story together. She also read a story on Raz-Kids.

Gracyn and I cut out squares from a construction paper. I asked her to choose five consonant letters and one vowel. With these letters she has to figure out as many words as possible using the consonants on her squares and the vowel. I gave her a small notebook that she can write down all the words that she got. She had so much fun doing this activity.

Today, Gracyn used dry erase markers to practice writing numbers while focusing on making sure they were facing the correct direction. Then, we completed Lesson 1.4 from Go Math. This lesson focused on using a bar model to solve addition problems. Word problems with missing information were presented and Gracyn had to determine what information needed to be found. It took a few problems for Gracyn to grasp the concept but was fairly fluent by the end. We finished by playing a game called Roll the Dice. We each had to roll 2 dice and write down the 2 numbers to make a math sentence. The player with the highest total won. Once again, Gracyn had fun winning the game.

Today we went further into the Five Senses. Graycn cut out different pictures and pasted them to the appropriate sense. We looked at different optical illusions and discussed our sense of sight and how it is used in science. She labeled a diagram of a girl and each of her senses. We also checked on our seeds from yesterday and she drew a picture in her seed journal of what the plant looked like today.