Mercer began to brainstorm what he wants to do for his watercolor painting. He looked at images of places that he wants to visit in other regions and chose one to paint. He then prepped his watercolor paper. I helped him to use the ruler to measure out a one inch border around his paper. then he added a light grey wash to the entire page.

Mercer worked on finishing his color theory drawing. He added final touches to the last snake he drew and went over the blending he did in last class. He finished all the outlines and a section of the wood that hadn't been fully blended. He then added highlights using a white ink pen to create shine in the eyes of the snakes.

Mercer continued to work on the outlines of the snake. We went step by step to add a thicker outlines to show depth in certain spots and continued to work on slowing down and being exact with where we put lines. He then added final touches to his tertiary colors drawing.

Lesson 2 Gravity and the Solar System: We learned that gravity is a force of attraction between all objects in the universe due to their masses. Then we learned about Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion: planetary orbits are elliptical, planets move faster in their orbits when closer to the sun, and the distance of a planet from the sun to the time it takes to go once around its orbit. Next we learned about Newton’s law of universal gravitation and the formation of the solar system.

Mercer played a game of chess against another student and teacher. He uses excellent strategy and sets up the opponent in a clever way, thinking 4 or 5 steps ahead. He is looking forward to the chess tournament next week.

We finished reading the last chapter of, "The Indian in the Cupboard," he decided he liked the book's version of the story better.

We watched the movie version of our literature book, "The Indian in the Cupboard," comparing and contrasting the movie with the book.

We learned how the planets and sun formed from the protoplanetary disk. We did some review problems in his book.

Work on adding outlines to each of Mercer's snake drawings, focusing on slowing down and controlling the micron pen.

Mercer opted to play a game of chess with a classmate that he won easily.