Today we will review all our basic karate techniques and make sure that Jonathan is doing them correctly.
The following techniques are done: basic punch, upper block, knife hand block and front snap kick.
Do a simple combination of block-punch-kick.
Mat work to include stretching, rolls, sit-ups, leg raises and boat pose.
Do 4-5 rounds of the exercises and warm down with a quiet meditation. “I have a gift to share with the world”.

Today in our daily language review we focused on possessive, plural, or contraction with words that had a “s” on the end. We also worked on labeling sentence types. Finally, we examined rhyming words in a set of words that had the same vowel sounds. For literature today, we continued our study of Midnight on the Moon. We read chapters 3 & 4 and completed comprehension and vocabulary questions after each chapter. Our vocabulary today focused on clumsily and buggy, for which we used context clues to help us define. Jonathan then drew a picture to match the sentence using buggy to help him “see” the word as well. Next, we finished the spelling pre-test for our novel related words. Some of the words Jonathan will practice this week include astronauts, scientist, widened, and diagram. We enjoyed watching the Sci Show Kids Video about where Earth comes from as well as a NASA virtual tour of the moon. These helped us “see” and understand more about the setting of our novel. Finally, for writing today, we began working on Jonathan’s glossary for his non-fiction book. We alphabetized the 9 words we’ve chosen, which was a little tricky due to carnivore, canopies, and camouflage. Jonathan then wrote the definitions for the first four words using images from a children’s dictionary.

Jonathan started his lesson by reviewing a web site which discusses all of the causes of weathering of rock. Jonathan has already discussed earthquakes and volcanos. The topic today was about how ice jams, flash floods and sandstorms can affect the weathering of rock. Jonathan read from different web sites. He developed a drawing to depict two of the subjects that we discussed. Jonathan learned the Arabic word Haboob, which means sand storm. He developed an excellent drawing and labeled it with the causes of the sandstorm, showing the cumulonimbus cloud and the warm air rising, creating an updraft which lifts the sand into the air. He read about various reports of sandstorms rising anywhere from 50 feet into the air to 1000 feet into the air. Jonathan wanted to study the impact of the sandstorm on life. He reviewed pictures of the sandstorm moving into a town in places like Arizona and New Mexico. Jonathan also heard me tell him about the great "Dust Bowl" period in the 1930's in America where the drought was so great and the crops were all dead from lack of water. Jonathan then studied flash floods. We discussed the presence of levees on the sides of the Mississippi which were meant to hold back the flooding of the river when the waters rise due to a hurricane. We discussed the incident of Hurricane Katrina where the levees did not hold and much water flooded the city of New Orleans which is below sea level. Jonathan told me that he was born during Hurricane Sandy. He was aware of the flooding and sand damage that took place during this natural disaster. We discussed the causes of flash floods. Jonathan then made an outstanding picture of a house in a flood. He showed the house more than half under water and the presence of a boat being used for transportation. Jonathan made tiny flash cards to add onto his picture for discussion. He wrote about levees, flash floods, and floods. We discussed the concept of hail. Jonathan was on a web site with me showing the sizes of hail stones. The information also included the fact that hailstones do not get larger by going above the thunder cloud, but rather being tossed within it. The hail stone can move up and down, but it can also move from side to side. The hailstone will finally drop when it is heavier than the updrafts. The largest hailstones witnessed were the size of large grapefruits. There was also a statistic of 8 inches in diameter. Jonathan learned the meaning of the vocabulary word diameter. Jonathan was very immersed in this entire lesson.

I checked in with Jonathan to see how he did with the challenge. Jonathan was excited to show me his work that he had completed. We used the rest of the class to have him complete the final three characters with poses with which he came up. His work was placed on the student site, on his portfolio page.

Religion: Today Jonathan read the Our Father prayer from the prayer booklet in his textbook. We then reviewed the six vocabulary terms from Unit 2. This included words such as Church, Apostles, and Temple. Language Arts: Jonathan declared that it is Moon Monday, since we are starting our new Magic Tree House novel, Midnight on the Moon today. We started our session with our daily language review and proofreading sentences. With this, we looked at possessive and object pronouns. We discussed the sentence types of declarative, interrogative, and exclamatory. Additionally, I spent a little more time discussing the imperative sentence with him and we went through some examples. Next, we wrapped up Jeopardy (7) from the other day as Jonathan had about 5 questions to complete. This focused on homophones, tricky spelling words, and contractions. As we have been discussing text features, we read about important words. We read a passage about sharks that included bold words and words written in italics. We talked about both types of ways to mark important words and highlighted each with two colors to demark them in the text. We practiced reading italicized words with different voicing to help show the emphasis. We will continue to practice this skill in all of our oral reading. Jonathan then read the four pages of his animals in the rainforest non-fiction writing piece. We identified words that are “important” and should be in his glossary. He used a dark crayon to write over these words and make them appear “bold”. Some of the words he chose are: decurved, omnivore, nocturnal, and mollusks. Finally, we enjoyed reading the first two chapters of our book. In one portion of dialogue in the book, the character Annie spoke three words written in italics. We discussed why these words were being emphasized and worked to execute this orally. After each chapter, we completed comprehension and vocabulary related questions. We used context clues to help with the meanings of “gasped” and “chamber”. As we wrapped up our session, we started a spelling pretest for words related to our novel. We will finish this in our next session.

Jonathan started his lesson by studying a vocabulary quiz about Earth's crust and volcanos. Jonathan downloaded a page with 15 definitions. He also was sent a word bank. Jonathan read each question and considered choosing the correct word from the word bank. Jonathan practiced the test wiseness skill of checking off words that he already used. Jonathan read definitions where the word was unfamiliar. He read about a seismograph. Jonathan also consulted a diagram of a volcano on his screen in order to answer the question about the "vent" being the place in a volcano where steam and gas are released. Jonathan reviewed web sites we studied to remember the vocabulary words: hypocenter, epicenter, and fault line. Jonathan referred to his notes made last week on the Earth'c core to answer the questions on the inner core, outer core, and mantle. Jonathan also referred to the diagram of the volcano to answer the quetions about magma and lava, distinguishing one meaning from the other, magma being molten rock within the volcano, and lava being the molten rock that cascades out of the volcano and down the side of the mountain. Jonathan participated in a virtual lab titled: Which type of Earth Change (earthquake, erosion, flood, weathering) will cause the greatest impact? Jonathan saw three large lasagna pans of dirt with the dirt heaped up on one side. On the first pan, he visualized and explained to me what would happen if you gave that dirt 6 squeezes out of a spray bottle. Jonathan told me that this test simulated rain. The second test we reviewed involved two icecubes on top of the dirt pile. We discussed what would happen if the spring weather suddenly became very warm. Jonathan drew a parallel to the concept of floods as a way of weathering soil caused by spring floods. On the third tray of dirt, Jonathan visualized blowing six times through a straw. Jonathan correctly made the parallel to the straw blowing as being wind blowing. He explained to me that the wind would move the dirt to another side. The last type of weathering we talked about was simulated by rocking the whole pan of dirt back and forth six times. Jonathan then told me that this was a simulation for an earthquake. That would be the method of the greatest weathering of soil. Jonathan began to watch a video about the horizons of soil. We will continue the study of soil tomorrow.

I told Jonathan the story of the Rainbow Serpent and showed examples of Aborigine symbols. We each drew and decorated a surprise drawing.

Jonathan and I came up with a list of six characters that he would draw for the challenge. I gave him three characters and he came up with the remaining three characters. Jonathan was tasked with completing three of the characters by his next class.

Jonathan and I reviewed the landforms we discussed yesterday. Jonathan and I watched a second landform video and reviewed mountains, hills, plateaus, canyons, and plains. Jonathan drew a landform on his virtual whiteboard and I had to guess which landform it was.

Jonathan and I reviewed regrouping addition with two digits. Jonathan solved six problems as a quick assessment. We focused on not forgetting all the steps and paying attention to silly mistakes. Jonathan and I reviewed money by watching a brain pop video. Jonathan was introduced to the bills. Jonathan counted the money I presented on my virtual money website. Jonathan played an ABCya game on money. He was presented with an amount and had to come up with the correct dollar bills and cents.