Gracyn reviewed and wrote her new spelling words. She completed her morning worksheet and then wrote a beautiful 1st grade quality sentence "I had fun shopping for shoes with my mom." We are starting a unit on the ocean today. We completed a KWL chart together on the ocean. Then we watched a video on animals that live in the ocean. We completed the first sheet on fish. It was super cute! She had to choose a fish and decide where she would live and how much she would swim. She also read a story in Raz Kids level E today. She is doing really well with her reading!

Today we continued Topic 15 by completing pages 52-54. We reviewed today’s date. We went through the months of the year and the days of the week. Exercises on these pages utilized calendars and asked questions which required us to find information on the provided calendars, such as find how many months have only 30 days, how many months had 5 Fridays, and what day of the week was the first day of a given month. We also used a word bank to label a field of calendars in chronological order. Gracyn completed a +1 drill sheet in her workbook (page 11). She is quite fluent in +1. She was reluctant to try another +2 drill as she realizes these are more challenging; however, she has agreed to try one in our next session. As a work completion reward, we continued reading “Thumbelina” by Hans Christian Andersen. We were nervous for Thumbelina when she was taken by the old toad woman who wanted Thumbelina to marry her son. We were happy the fish helped her escape. Thumbelina has lived alone among the flowers through the summer and fall. We left off at this point and made predictions that the winter may be hard in the cold.

Today Gracyn took her spelling test and she got a 100%! She was so proud of herself. I read her the story "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" and then she completed a listening response sheet. We completed her morning work as well. She had another ABC order activity. She knew that she had to write the alphabet out and then underline the first letter of the words. She was able to identify which words go in order. In Science we reviewed the life cycle of the Butterfly. This time we were able to draw the life cycle ourselves. She read me a level D story in Raz Kids about animals. We ended our time watching the Magic School Bus video on plant growth.

Today in math we went back to Topic 15, which she had previously started. This unit deals with time and using the calendar. We completed pages 49 – 51. These problems focused on various concepts such as how long activities take, elapsed time, days of the week, occurrence of the day of the week within a given month, and finding particular days targeted in the month on a calendar. We will continue to work through this Topic to give Gracyn the practice she needs in these areas. We watched a Brain Pop Jr. learning video on “Time to the Quarter and Half Hour”. In this video, the characters Annie and Moby attended an event that had scheduled times for activities throughout the day. These activities took place on the quarter hour and half hour. They displayed clocks and written times to reflect various points throughout the day on the quarter and half hours. Gracyn completed her first +2 addition math drill in her math workbook (pg. 13). She scored a 25/25 in 3 mins., 33 seconds. She has not memorized these facts and used her fingers. We talked about how she could just count up by twos to get the answer. We spent the last minutes of our time by reading part of the classic fairytale, “Thumbelina” by Hans Christian Andersen.

We watched the final portion of a Nest Learning Video about "The Wright Brothers". This video provides an animated retelling of the invention of the first flying machine. We watched their final failures and then their successful flights. The video also included real footage of early flights. We discussed the competition they faced and how some close to them were pushing them to fly and make their place in history. However, the Wright Brothers chose to continue working on the plane for a safer, more effective flight. We then discussed inventions we'd like to see made.

Gracyn completed her morning work and writing. Today she wrote that her favorite food her mom makes her is tacos! Yum! Gracyn then completed a fun adjective/noun worksheet. She had to pick one adjective and place it with a noun. It was silly! We wrote "hungry teacher, quiet fish, and tall man." It was a lot of fun. She completed another ABC order worksheet. She wrote out the alphabet first and then was able to order the words in the right order. In reading she read the Raz Kids level E book about The Rodeo.

We only had 30 minutes for class today, due to Internet problems. Gracyn was eating breakfast, so we decided to not do an active class today, but concentrated on how to do neck rolls, shoulder rolls, and other upper body warm-ups. She then wanted to see some pictures and videos of babies doing Itsy Bitsy Yoga from my classes, as Gracyn's family is hosting a baby shower today. She enjoyed seeing the pictures and videos and we talked about the benefits of Itsy Bitsy Yoga.

Today Gracyn and I had fun doing some songs and movement together. We started by dancing to a few songs to get our muscles warm. We then stretched all of our muscles. We continued with our "Gymnastics ABC's", a game where we find a movement for each letter of the alphabet. Gracyn is starting gymnastics classes tomorrow, she was very excited about that!

Today Gracyn and I worked on the months of the year and the coordinating numbers.

Gracyn and I completed a worksheet from last class in which she draws the object that is listed in the box. Next, we worked on a matching sheet in which she matches a word with a picture. Then, we did a listening exercise where I say a word and then she shows me the object. After that, I read Gracyn a Spanish book called De la Cabeza a los Pies. We finished our session with a repeat of the listening activity that we did earlier.