Gracyn completed her morning work and she wrote two beautiful sentences about her daddy. She read her favorite story on Raz Kids about Animal Costumes. Then we watched Magic School Bus video about weather. Gracyn really learns a lot and these stories are fun!
"Mindful Monkey, Happy Panda" book; stretches; recap of yoga class this year
Lesson Outline
Today we only had 30 minutes due to a storm in St. Louis. We read the new book, "Mindful Monkey, Happy Panda" and talked about keeping our minds in the present. We then talked about Gracyn's favorite times in yoga class this year. We did some stretches with arms, legs, and waist.
Today was my last session with Gracyn. We ended by doing all of our favorite things: stretching, Gymnastics ABC alphabet and some of our favorite songs. I had a lot of fun working with Gracyn over the last several months!!
Today we tackled Lesson 16-4, “Two – Question Problems”. This lesson focuses on providing a problem to solve to arrive at a number needed in the next problem. We worked through all of the practice problems which integrated the use of one addition and one subtraction problem to reach the conclusion. Gracyn did a great job with these. Additionally, we worked on Lesson 16-5, “Making 10 to Add 9”. In this lesson, we took addition problems in which 9 was one of the addends. We then moved one counter to the other addend to make it a ten and then added. For example: 9 + 4 becomes 10 + 3, then solve. We worked through all of the practice and word problems practicing this skill. We also completed puzzles 5 and 6 in her “Sudoku for Kids” workbook to work on concentration and logic skills.
In following up with Gracyn’s studies of George Washington last week, we reviewed highlights of his life through discussion. We then watched an Animated Hero Classics learning video about George Washington. This video illustrated George’s role as a General during The American Revolution.
Today Gracyn and I watched a video on Helen Keller. We talked about how difficult it would be to live blind and deaf. Gracyn learned Helen Keller was the first blind and deaf person to go to college. Gracyn then took a quiz and scored 100%.
Gracyn enjoyed a Memorial Day coloring sheet. She wrote that she will always remember the soldiers. In Raz Kids she read the level e story: "Kangaroo and Bear". She read it fluently and with great prosody! In science we enjoyed a great Magic School Bus video on the digestive system.
Today Gracyn and I completed her morning work and writing. I gave her free writing today and of course she wrote about her family. Gracyn spent the rest of our time with "show and tell." Mom let her show me videos and pictures of her softball game.
We continued our biography studies by further examining two courageous American women. First, we read “Rosa Parks” by Wil Mara. We discussed Parks’ courageous act and read about her life overall. We talked about higher level vocabulary words such as defiance and boycott. Additionally, we reviewed her timeline in the book and noted that 7 key events in Parks’ life were noted. We then watched a brief You Tube video that gave us a tour of the Rosa Parks Museum in Troy, Alabama. Next, we read “Helen Keller” by Sean Dolan. We also watched an Animated Hero Classics Learning Video that spotlighted Helen Keller’s childhood. The video gave us a visual representation of the challenges and struggles that Helen, the Keller Family, and teacher Anne Sullivan experienced during the beginning of Helen’s training to communicate. We both agreed that Anne had a very tough job at first and we celebrated when Helen finally began to have success.
In math today, we continued on with Lesson 16-2, “Doubles Plus One”. We completed practice and word problems found on pages 487-488. We worked on tricks to memorizing the doubles facts and looked at how by changing one addend by one, the sum then increased by one. We looked at our answers and determined if the sums were even or odd. We found a pattern that the doubles facts all had even answers, while the doubles + 1 had odd answers. We continued on to Lesson 16-3, “Doubles Plus Two”. We worked through the practice and word problems found on pages 489-492. Similar to the doubles + 1 activities, this practice uses doubles + 2. I reminded Gracyn once she memorizes her doubles facts, she will be able to use those to help her with doubles + 1 and doubles + 2 for quick addition problem solving. She showed good progress today! She completed a + 3 math addition drill in her workbook. She scored a 100% and completed 25 problems in 5 minutes. We ended our math time with a fun math-based book entitled “Busy Beavers: Counting by 5s” by Megan Atwood. We practiced counting by 5s to help the beavers build their dam.
