Today we logged in to Office 365 and used Outlook to send an email. We then played chess online against the computer on Chess.com to build mouse and keyboard skills.

Ben was excited to talk about a recent trip to the Daytona 500. He was tasked with describing the trip in his journal. CUPS strategy of editing was utilized. After practicing individual cursive letters learned, Ben worked hard to write short words in cursive. He did well proofreading and editing a passage for capitalization for days, months and holidays. He also did well choosing the correct irregular verb to complete given sentences. Ben brainstormed an extensive list of holidays. He determined Christmas is the best holiday and wrote three reasons why.

Today we played three chess matches. We looked at the benefits of castling and the cons tied to it. We played a match without our strongest pieces to work on improving the secondary pieces in achieving checkmate.

Ben continues to learn and practice cursive letters. He did well on a subject-verb activity that required him to know whether to add s or es. Ben added pictures to the text he wrote last week describing which totem animals he chose and why. He enjoyed listening to the story 'Bartholomew and the Oobleck'. In the story, the king orders his magicians to create a new substance to fall from the sky called oobleck. Ben made oobleck and then described the steps to make it, and wrote how each sense perceived it and a series of adjectives describing the oobleck.

Ben is building keyboard and mouse skills and practicing the login process for Office 365. Today he worked on email and PowerPoint files.

Today we worked with the chessboard. I showed Ben my strategies and pointed out his stronger plays. We played two games and had a stalemate on the last match.

Ben is progressing in his ability to write cursive letters. He continues to practice capitalization and subject-verb agreement. Spelling rules for plural verbs were reviewed and practiced. Ben wrote a paragraph on why he likes chess. The CUPS strategy of editing was utilized. Additionally, Ben worked on a totem animal project in which he chose three totem animals after researching totem animal meanings. Ben wrote a sentence explaining why he chose each animal.

Ben continues to make progress with all Microsoft Office applications including Outlook, PowerPoint, and Teams. He has created a presentation and has been importing pictures into his file.

Today we continued working on playing full drum beats with both hands and the right foot. Ben also began to use the chords shape as we ended playing the piano working on a simple four chord song.

Ben continues to learn and practice cursive writing. He did well on proper noun capitalization and subject-verb agreement activities. Using his graphic organizer, Ben completed his opinion essay on why the McLaren is the best car. We got ready for an experiment Ben will conduct to determine how different materials affect the speed at which a toy car goes down a ramp. Today, we assembled the materials and wrote the hypothesis. On Thursday, Ben will conduct the experiment, write the findings and write a conclusion.