Jonathan watched a Discovery Video on holidays around the world. He focused on Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Chinese New Year. After each holiday he recalled three facts he learned. He created. poster for each holiday and added symbols and facts.

Jonathan practiced making change by looking at a menu. He practiced adding decimals by finding the total of two items. Then he used a specific amount of money to find the change. Jonathan completed IXL problems on making change as a review. Jonathan read a money read aloud book on YouTube.

This morning we began with our daily language review. We have been enriching the editing portion (capitalization and punctuation) of this activity over the past few weeks by reiterating the verbiage for possessives, contractions, sentence type, subject/predicate, and verb tense. Next, we finished our novel, Polar Bears Past Bedtime by reading chapters 7 - 10. We examined similes throughout our reading. After each chapter we completed comprehension and critical thinking tasks. This included answering recall questions with details from the text, finding adjectives to describe the Northern Lights, drawing his own polar bear mask like the characters in the story, and solving anagrams to unscramble words from the text (for a higher level of difficulty, the word bank was not provided). We watched a Brain Pop Jr. learning video about Facts and Opinions. We discussed the terms “confirm” and “verify” for facts and how the word “favorite” indicates opinion. Jonathan scored a 5/5 on the follow up easy quiz. We then completed our assessment for Polar Bears Past Bedtime. Jonathan was tasked with answering fact and opinion questions related to the novel as well as sequence events from the story. He scored 15/15 on these tasks. To enrich our study, we practiced Jonathan’s novel-based spelling words as well as read non-fiction passages with pictures about narwhals and the arctic fox. Religion: Jonathan recited the Hail Mary and Our Father prayers.

Jonathan's idea was to draw our best surprise drawing ever!

Jonathan began his lesson with the How Stuff Works web site taking a quiz on recognizing animals where they are swimming at times that place them out of their ordinary habitat. This quiz focuses on the fact that many animals that would not be normally characterized as good swimmers, can acutally swim when there is danger or a reason is presented which requires this skill. Some of the surprising animals were the squirrel, the sloth, and the tiger. Jonathan studied each animal and used process of elimination to pick the correct animal out of the four choices. He looked up animlas that he did not know using his ipad and reported the animal as the correct choice or not. Jonathan continued in this activity by looking at animals in the sea. This led him to research the dugong, the olive sea snake, the geoduck which is actually a type of shellfish that has a much larger body than shell. Jonathan works well on these quizzes and enjoys the challenge to test and add more to his already very broad knowledge of animals.

Jonathan watched a video on the White House on Discovery Channel. Jonathan read an article about the White House. Jonathan created a poster about the White House with some fun facts. Jonathan watched a brainpop video on the president. He completed the quiz. Jonathan read Arthur Meets the President at the White House. Jonathan picked three things he would want to change in the world if he was the president.

Jonathan did a review game of double digit addition for speed and accuracy. Jonathan solved multiple word problems on making change by looking at a toy store. Jonathan used subtraction with regrouping for each problem. Jonathan read the book, "Bunny Money" and reviewed his counting money skills. Jonathan completed multiple IXL problems with making change. The problems gave the amount and Jonathan had to decide if the change was correct or incorrect.

It is Word Work Wednesday! We used the word “standard” to focus on today. We found the definition and part of speech in a dictionary packet, the guide words on the top of the dictionary page, identified a synonym (normal) and antonym (rare), and used the word in a sentence. We reviewed guide words and discussed how the first guide word is the first word on the page and the last guide word is the last definition on the page. For literature today, we read chapters 4 – 6 in our novel, Polar Bears Past Bedtime. In our reading we used context clues to help us understand the meaning of “gaze”, “retreat”, and “hind (legs)”. We worked through comprehension and critical thinking questions and tasks after each chapter. We inferred the game the characters were playing (tag) based on our knowledge of touching a person and running away and then also saying “you’re it!” We then explored the feelings the characters must have had when they were on the cracking ice and recalled the details from the text of how the polar bear was able to come on the ice as well as what the humans learn from animals. We identified similes in our reading and discussed how they help us “see” the story better. Finally, we completed a cause and effect activity from chapter 6. To enrich our study, we read non-fiction articles about harp seals and polar bears and discussed them. We learned about the blubber on the seals’ bodies that keeps them warm and that polar bears do not hibernate! We also practiced novel-based spelling words. This is a nice, challenging list! For writing today, we discussed ways to continue on in his story. Yesterday, he had written an abrupt ending. We talked about ways to wrap the story up and Jonathan actually decided he wanted to extend the middle of the story, so he continued writing from there. We discussed how he can “end” the first day of the story and then how to transition to the next day. I could see the wheels turning and he wrote and wrote! We will read and discuss what he wrote in our next session.

Jonathan started his lesson by learning about the red wolf. He learned that these wolves became endangered in the 1980's and were extinct in the wild. After breeding in zoos under lab conditions, four pairs of these wolves were returned to the wild. Today there are 80 red wolves in the wild in protected lands. They do not have any predators. Jonathan spent the rest of the class studying snakes using "howstuffworks.quiz. " In this activity, Jonathan was given the characteristics or the biomes of the snake in the picture and he had to choose the name. Jonathan did very well knowing many snakes of India, Africa, desert areas, and woodlands of the US. Jonathan read about each snake during the activity. He also worked on his drawing showing the red wolf in its habitat.

Jonathan watched three short videos on the US mint and how they make money. He took facts from those three videos and created a poster about the US Mint. Jonathan learned fun facts about money and the US Mint from the Kids Us mint website. He viewed the 50 state quarters. He imagined he was an "artist" and drew a design for Florida and New Jersey.