During the first segment of the session, I used Atticus' chapter 6 summary as a foundation for a grammar and spelling lesson. His summary content was very good, however. I demonstrated proper use of capitalization for proper nouns, the proper use of the apostrophe, and the conventional use of the comma for a series of three or more items. After Atticus made these edits to his paper, he took a quiz on chapters 4-6. During the final segment, we read an Iroquois creation story and compared the Iroquois creation story with the creation story of Genesis.
Today, Atticus completed writing and illustrating the following vocabulary words: vascular tissue, xylem, phloem and stomata. We read a passage about how Harry Houdini slowed his breath down in order to have enough oxygen to survive being buried alive for 30 minutes. We read about the human respiratory system, underlining the following vocabulary words: pharynx, trachea, bronchi, lungs and diaphragm. We discussed how both plants and animals (including humans) move materials (like gases and liquids) through their bodies.
This morning, Atticus and I reviewed and corrected a few of the problems from this weekend's homework on using the properties of equality to solve addition and subtraction equations. Then, we reviewed last night's practice and problem-solving homework on writing and solving multiplication and division equations. Finally, Atticus took the lesson's quick quiz, scoring a 90%. For homework, He was assigned correlating practice problems from our recent lessons.
Atticus worked on his mural sketches. He worked on two characters and one drawing of a fish. Once completed, he will choose one and we will make a final drawing that will be drawn into the school mural. We focused today on line work and detail. We talked about how small lines can dictate how a face emotes, so it is imperitve to take it slow and capture all the line.
Atticus reviewed chapter 18 and its key events before proceeding with chapters 19-21. He had previously predicted what the outcome of these chapters would reveal but was eager to read how the events unfolded. As predicted, Melody made the Quiz Kids team, the first student in the area to get a perfect score. Whether this accomplishment improves Melody’s relationships at school is yet unknown, but Atticus predicts more challenges ahead.
We continue to work on gleaning the main idea of a chapter by first studying the chapter titles and then locating textual support . After discussing how the plastic Indian Chief dies of fright after being brought to life by the "magic " cupboard, we noted how this incident heightens Omri's sense of parental responsibility toward Little Bear. We further developed this theme by reading and comparing the juxtaposed conversations between Little Bear and Omri and Omri and his father. After reviewing plot elements, Atticus used the remaining class time to prepare a written summary of the reading. He is doing well with these written assignments .
Today, we began learning about moving blood. Atticus read three different friends' opinions about how blood gets transported to different parts of an animal's body. He chose which friend he agreed with most and explained why in his science workbook. We performed a lab activity in which we placed a fresh leaf in a cup of water, waited 30 minutes, then observed little CO2 bubbles on the exterior of the leaf. Atticus described and illustrated the phenomenon, then explained why he thought it was happening.
