Craig was absent today.

Henry left early today.

This morning we read, Washington D.C. by Joanne Mattern. We read that in 1791 we only had 13 states and Florida was not one of them. Washington D.C. became the capital in 1800. We saw various memorials and museums, read that the government works in the capitol building, and that the president lives and works in the White House. We continued Danny’s flip page project in which he cut out a picture of the Washington Monument and wrote facts about it on the four flaps. Danny’s facts about the monument included that it is white, it is 555 feet tall, it was made for (in honor of) George Washington, and that you can go up to the top in the elevator. After lunch, we read about the Lincoln Memorial. Danny then completed his flip page activity writing about the memorial with facts such as: it was for our 16th president, it is white, he made the slaves free, and he was Honest Abe. We are working on sentence development, sounding out words, capitalization, and punctuation. It takes cueing and repetitions to guide Danny through these writing projects. With ample time, he is able to complete the task. In Danny’s Geography textbook, he had fun finding the four states that start with the letter A and colored them red. Danny worked very hard today!

Craig and I looked to the text to discuss historical events since the 1960s. We learned about the 5 themes of geography, defining and citing examples of each. Craig needs to continue to review the fundamentals - latitude, longitude, continents, landforms, etc.

Charlie was absent today.

This morning we continued our studies of American Symbols. We read, Bald Eagle by Lisa M. Herrington. After reading facts about the at once almost extinct national bird, Danny completed his flip page activity for his Interactive Notebook. This project integrates language arts components through writing. We discussed four facts to write about. We worked together to sound out words, use capitalization and punctuation, and sentence development. He wrote about the white feathers on its head, that it is a strong flier, they eat fish, and they stand for freedom. Danny then colored his bald eagle with markers. Next, in his Geography textbook, we read about how the 48 states make up the continental United States while two states do not border the others. Danny had fun coloring all 8 states that start with letter M! Finally, we ended our session with a Florida Studies Weekly on Rights and Responsibilities. We read about various rights and responsibilities with regard to voting, school, worship, and the environment. For example, we read that we have the right to own land and cars and we have the responsibility to not harm or take things that belong to others. We read briefly about how the president is in charge of the country and our governor (Rick Scott) is in charge of the state. Additionally, we read about how the Constitution tells us about our rights. Additional vocabulary we discussed included: leader, state, vote, and respect in a word search format (which provides for excellent visual scanning and focus). Danny scored a 7/8 on this activity work.

Henry did a lesson on the middle colonies today. We discussed the colonies of Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, and New Jersey and compared and contrasted each colony. We discussed their trade, what they farmed, and how they differed from the New England colonies. We read an article about how people were more tolerant of those of different religions so there were many different types of religions in the middle colonies. We talked about the Amish and how they still exist today much the same way they did in the 1700's and watched a short National Geographic video on the Amish. He took a quiz at the end of the lesson and scored 100%.

Marcos watched a documentary on Hiroshima and the dropping of the atom bomb today in social studies.

Craig and I reviewed his Quiz this morning. We finished reviewing in our afternoon class. Craig knew many of the answers when I questioned him on each topic. He was able to earn more points on the Quiz this way. Afterwards, we looked at Life magazines from 1961 and 1964 about the Vietnam conflict, communism, and the assassination of JFK and Robert Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald. We did a short geography review. Craig learned about the different American landforms and regions around the country. He located these on a map. He matched descriptive words to the regions and reviewed land and water descriptions. We read a news article about the upcoming 2020 census, that will be online for the first time. We looked to topographical maps and learned how to "read" contour lines. Craig completed exercises to demonstrate his understanding of these. We read a news article from CNN about the death of Linda Brown and the continued significance of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Finally, we read a Newsela article about student activism and proposed gun legislation. Craig had some strong opinions and ideas on this subject. We discussed the 2nd Amendment, weapons versus hobbies, mental and criminal background checks, minimum age requirements and wording of legislation creating "loopholes". We discussed various issues related to gun control.

Today we started our day reading a chapter from The Magic Treehouse book "Mummies in the Morning" which she loved!

We began our studies of "Life Long Ago" in StudiesWeekly, reading through the articles available. We learned about how children's lives were different, what they did for fun, how they dressed, and even where they worked! Jayne successfully completed the mini assessments on each topic on the computer. Later we sorted through a "Then and Now" cut and paste about clothing.

At the end of our session we scheduled a time with Ms. Elise and planned out an interview to be conducted with Ms. Judie on Friday about her time as a school-aged child. We know that in order to learn about the past, we need to learn from people who were there!