Religion: This morning Jonathan read the Hail Mary from his prayer booklet in his We Believe textbook. We then reviewed the Unit 3 vocabulary flashcards which includes words such as sacrament, grace, and parish. Language Arts: It’s Word Work Wednesday! Today we reviewed the 8 WOW words that we have covered so far. Jonathan was provided with a word bank and completed fill in the blank sentences using context clues to support his recall of these higher-level vocabulary words. He scored 8/8 on this activity. For literature today, we began with a non-fiction passage about dolphins. This gave us some nice information about how dolphins and people have a lot in common. The passage included the terminology of warm-blooded, phonations, and pods, which we discussed. Jonathan then identified text features such as title, caption, and boldfaced words. Jonathan was then tasked with recalling and writing three ways that people and dolphins are similar, in which he used evidence from the text for assistance. Jonathan practiced his novel based spelling words. He was excited to get the bonus word “oceanographer” correct today! For grammar today, we continued our study of prefixes. We worked through an activity in which Jonathan used root words and added the prefix non-, pre-, or re- to the word based on the context. We discussed the meaning of each prefix. He did a great job! For a bonus activity, he used the clues to form the words retrace, nonfiction, and prepay. He then wrote a sentence using each word. For writing today, Jonathan was tasked with writing a short story pretending that a boy has discovered his pet can talk! He was very excited to get going on his story and seemed to be swirling with ideas! He began writing his first paragraph and we will pick up on this activity in our next session.

Jonathan started his lesson today reviewing the tundra. He worked on a flashcard for the word "tundra" and he took a quiz about the tundra and received a 90%. Jonathan began the next biome being the rainforest. Jonathan learned about the fact that the tropical rainforest has half the species of animals in the world. He also learned that 40% of the rainforest has been cleared away for other uses. Jonathan learned that the soil in the rainforest is fragile and very thin. There are so many plants in the rainforest that all the nutrients are used up. Jonathan learned that the rainforests give the world 40% of its oxygen. Jonathan worked on habitat drawings while he was studying the animals. Jonathan labeled forest floor, understory, canopy, and emergent. He did a short study of the blue morphos , the butterflies in the rainforest that light up an iridescent blue. Jonathan will be continuing with a few more biomes tomorrow.

Jonathan was introduced to the three types of communities, Urban, suburban and rural communities. Jonathan watched a short video about each community. Jonathan answered questions based on the video. Jonathan told me three things about each community. Jonathan drew a picture of each community and I had to guess which one it was and why. Jonathan completed IXL problems on the communities. He identified the community based on the picture and compared the communities in multiple questions.

Jonathan practiced two digit regrouping by solving six problems as a mini assessment. Jonathan was introduced to how to count money with decimals. Jonathan solved word problems based on a toy store. Jonathan added the amounts and applied his regrouping skills. Jonathan was given a sum and Jonathan had to rearrange the numbers to create the money problem to give it the correct sum.

Today we will add exercises and drills to challenge Jonathan's form and memory.
Begin with jacks, followed by upper block, front kiosk, punches, roundhouse kick, burpees and situps.

Finish with a self-defense combination upper block/punch/front kick.

This morning I enriched our daily language review by also having Jonathan label words with apostrophes as contractions or possessives as indicated. We then practiced Jonathan’s novel-based spelling words. We enjoyed reading the rest of chapter 1 as well as chapters 2 and 3 today. Morgan le Fay told Annie and Jack they need to be Master Librarians to help her collect books. We worked through comprehension and critical thinking questions after each chapter. We also discussed the words velvet, hatch, lapped, and command. Jonathan first tried to determine their meaning as used in context of the text and then we discussed to confirm or correct together. For grammar today, we read through a list of prefixes and their meanings. The list was color coded and we discussed each example word, identifying the root word and the prefix. We discussed how root words are used on their own without a prefix, but prefixes are added to a word. We then practiced using the prefixes by adding the prefix un- or dis- to a list of root words. We then answered questions using some of the words we made. We also played half of Jeopardy (3). This version focuses on irregular past tense verbs, prefixes, pronouns, and possessives or plurals. Jonathan answered questions of increasing difficulty in each category. As we have been studying elements of non-fiction books, Jonathan took his final assessment on the subject. He sorted features of books between non-fiction and fiction. He scored 15/16 on this activity. Finally, since we read an article yesterday about a boy packing for a trip to the moon, Jonathan and I discussed five things he would take to the moon. With a little prompting, he came up with: a basketball, a Magic Tree House book, his Pokémon cards, 2 Pokémon stuffed animals, and some snacks.

Jonathan started his lesson by studying the grasslands biome. He studied four different types of grasses found in the grasslands. Each one was researched by name. Jonathan learned about Rhodes grass, Bermuda grass, sedge grass, and many others. Jonathan drew animals of the grasslands in his pictures. He made a flashcard for some of the new plants. The next biome we studied was the savanna. Jonathan made a flash card for the baobab tree. He studied its unique adaptations and learned that the tree has a very large trunk which stores water in the dry savanna. He learned that this tree can be thousands of years old. Jonathan drew animals and plants of the savanna and made a flashcard for the baobab tree. The third biome Jonathan studied today was the tundra. Jonathan learned the vocabulary word and concept for permafrost. He learned that the average temperature in the tundra is -18. degrees F. Jonathan studied the antlers of the caribou and found out that the animals shed their antlers every year or every few years. When they are shedding, the new antlers come back looking red because they are still growing the fuzzy covering on the antlers. Jonathan learned about the ptarmican bird in the tundra and made a vocabulary card for this animal. He has worked on getting new plants and animals into his drawings so he can expand his knowledge of each biome. Jonathan ended the meeting by watching a short video on the tundra. One of the concepts taught was that it is known as the Land of the Midnight Sun. The vocabulary word Summer Solstice came up in this discussion. I attempted to use the
whiteboard that is part of MS Teams. Jonathan's mom is working on downloading this part of the program so that Jonathan can look at it next time. We will work on the full discussion of the cause of the Summer Solstice.

Jonathan reviewed counting coins by solving problems on an online game. Jonathan reviewed addition with regrouping by solving problems on an online game that gave him the place value blocks to create the problem. Jonathan watched a brainpop video on mass. Jonathan completed the short quiz after the video on mass. Jonathan solved IXL problems on mass. At the end, Jonathan was introduced to adding with decimals to get him ready for tomorrow adding coins.

Jonathan was introduced to the concept of Biomes. Jonathan took notes on vocabulary words: tundra, taiga, temperate forest, desert, savanna, tropical rainforst, and grasslands. Jonathan drew a page of the desert biome. He included animals from that biome including a snake, grasshopper, and meerkats. Jonathan listened and interacted as I read from the web sites on three of these biomes. Jonathan read the questions along the way while I read the answers to the content area. Jonathan took a quiz at the end of the desert unit and got 100%. Jonathan also read from a website: readworks.org. He read a three page article about the Grand Canyon to continue with work we did last week about canyons and caverns. Jonathan has shown excellent understanding and background knowledge on the topics today.

Religion: Today Jonathan chose a prayer from his booklet and read Grace Before Meals. We then reviewed his Unit 2 vocabulary with a word scramble activity. He remembered all 6 of the terms. Language Arts: This morning we continued with some enrichment activities for our literature study of Midnight on the Moon. We read a narrative fiction piece (3rd grade level) from readworks.org entitled, What Should We Take to the Moon? This article tells of all the things a young boy is packing just in case he gets to go to the moon. We discussed the meanings of vocabulary terms from the story: authentic, arrange, and possession. We then worked through comprehension and critical thinking questions from the story. Some of these questions asked Jonathan to infer and draw conclusions from snippets of provided text. These provide a nice challenge for him. He scored 8/10 on this activity. Next, we watched a video about the International Space Station from Sci Show Kids. This video gave us a tour around the space station and showed us ways the astronauts care for themselves with special body wipes (instead of showers) and how they have to exercise for two hours each day so their muscles don’t get too weak in the absence of gravity. Finally, Jonathan took his final assessments for this novel, which included a 15-question whole book test (15/15), and an analysis of words from the book in alphabetical order (5/6). Jonathan showed me the cover of his non-fiction writing project, The Amazing Amazon, which he had started on Friday and finished over the weekend. It is bright and colorful and reflects his awesome creativity! He clipped all of his pages together to put the book in order for final publication. He was praised for all of his hard work on his writing and I encouraged him to read the book with his family for homework. Our final activity of the day involved starting our next novel of study, Dolphins at Daybreak (Magic Tree House #9) by Mary Pope Osborne. We started with a spelling pre-test of challenging words such as vessels, curious, strength, sparkled, and our bonus word, oceanographer. We will practice the words he missed throughout the week. We then began reading chapter 1, but will have to finish it in our next session as time just flies when you’re having fun!