Marcos and I used this time to get know each other and to determine how far along he was in his Social Studies class. Marcos was very animated and energetic and showed me one of the SPICE charts that he prepared. He indicated that he had studied the Mesopotamian and Indus civilizations and had been using handouts from a book entitled "Foundational Civilizations". Assessments consist of SPICE charts prepared on a Keynote format. Marcos shared with me his experience at his former school, The Weiss School and that some of his favorite movies were The Matrix and the Hunger Games Trilogy. He enjoys his Tao Kwando training and was very good at reciting excerpts from "Friends". I shared with him some of my lessonplan objectives and the need to interject study and organizational skills into the class as well.

Today we wrapped up our unit on places in a community and community helpers. We read two clue-style books in which we had to guess the community helper being described. The first, Clothesline Clues to Jobs People Do”, by Kathryn Heling and Deborah Hembrook, showed the uniforms and special clothes people wear in their jobs. When it’s time for work, who wears what? We also had fun with the book, Whose Hands Are These?, by Miranda Paul. This rhyming style book described jobs for us to guess. In conjunction with these books, we added helpers to Danny’s Interactive Notebook. Danny colored the helpers and underneath each one, he wrote about their job. For example, he wrote that the mail carrier brings the mail, a veterinarian takes care of animals, and a police officer keeps us safe. Additionally, we continued our enrichment project based on the historical fiction novel, The Knight at Dawn by Mary Pope Osborne. Today we began our research report. We began writing the report by discussing that this book takes place in the past as we are working to expand the concepts of history and long ago. Danny was introduced to the children’s dictionary today! We looked up “Middle Ages” and “knight” in the dictionary. I showed Danny how the words are in alphabetical order and also briefly showed him the guide words at the top of the page. We will explore the dictionary further as we progress with this project. Danny is again typing his project. We worked to formulate six sentences for an introduction and to define “knight”. Danny typed each sentence as we went, working on using two hands and multiple fingers.

We began Social Studies today by reading the informational book, Places in My Neighborhood, by Shelly Lyons. This picture book captures the people and places that are part of our community. We then worked on writing descriptions for various places in our community in an interactive notebook flip book activity. (A grocery store is where we buy food. A school is a place to learn and grow. A zoo is a place for animals to live. A hospital is where we go when we are sick or hurt. A restaurant is a place to go out to eat. Finally, the post office takes care of our mail.) This was a lengthy activity as Danny and I developed the sentences together and he wrote them. We also colored the small pictures associated with each location. As we have been discussing time, we added the month “October” to our months of the year booklet. Danny added this to the page for the fall season. He colored a pumpkin to add to the page and drew a spooky ghost! We also watched the Brain Pop Jr. learning video about time to the quarter and half hour. This definitely makes telling time a bit trickier! We worked through the easy quiz together. We will watch this video several more times to delve deeper into understanding. We ended the day with chapter 3 of our historical fiction novel, The Knight at Dawn. In this chapter, Annie and Jack see the castle a bit closer. They watch as the knight on the horse goes across the drawbridge, over the moat and into the castle. They wonder if there are crocodiles in the moat as Jack has read in the book. Danny did a nice job with follow-up comprehension questions after the chapter.

Henry continued with the lesson on Florida disasters and resources. We read a passage on the barometer and how it is used to predict the weather and an article on Max Mayfield who was director of the National Hurricane Center and what he did in that position. We also read an article on Henry Flagler and watched a video on how he lead the way in developing the state of Florida.

This week completed our time researching the culture of Russia. Yanuell chose to bake a traditional apple cake, Sharlotka, typically eaten this time of year as apples are in abundance. This cake was also one of the only desserts with fruits, since for many, apples were the only type of fruit preservable over winter. Yanuell began by dicing 4 large apples and placing them in a greased baking dish. In the mixer, he beat 4 eggs and 1 c. sugar until light and fluffy. Then 1 c. flour, 1 t. vanilla, 3/4 t. baking soda, and 1/4 t. lemon juice were beaten into the egg mixture until well combined. The batter was poured on top of the apples and placed into a 350 degree oven. While the cake cooked, Yanuell watched videos about the history and interesting facts of Russia. Yanuell was very excited to take the cake home for his dad and I am hoping it was cooked through and enjoyed.

Henry read articles on current events today. We looked up articles on the computer and he chose an article about a giant pumpkin contest that just took place in California and how the winner grew a pumpkin that was 2,300 lbs and won $16,000. He chose another article about the fires in California. The article explained the devastation that is occurring because of the fires, the cause of the fires, and why they are burning so out of control. We looked on the map to find where the fires are taking place. We discussed how this compares to the natural disasters we have been studying about that take place in Florida and why fires are so much more prevalant in California.

Henry continued learning about natural disasters that occur in Florida. We discussed how Florida sits on limestone and how limestone is a natural filter and keeps the water very clean and pure but
how sometimes the limestone can erode and cause a sinkhole. We researched and looked at pictures of different sinkholes that have occurred in Florida. We also continued reading "The American Jungle" by Harvey Oyer. Henry really seems to be enjoying the book and what it was like to grow up in Florida in the late 1800's.

Today we reviewed Christopher Columbus by reading the book Columbus Day by Christina Mia Gardeski. We discussed the information about his journey. We completed a flip book activity for Danny’s interactive notebook in which we colored and applied the three ships from Columbus’ journey into his book. Under each ship we wrote a fact Danny had learned about Columbus. These facts included: that Columbus was an explorer, he found a way to a new land, and he sailed with three ships. We also reviewed the concept of history as we discussed in our Florida Studies Weekly yesterday. We were reminded of ways we can learn about history and Danny completed a follow up activity in which he completed a sentence that he could use books to learn about history. We are working on gaining the understanding that history is important to tell us about how people lived in the past. In further exploring the past, we began reading the second book in the Magic Tree House series, The Knight at Dawn, by Mary Pope Osborne. We read chapters 1 and 2 and Danny wrote responses to follow up comprehension questions after each chapter. In the start of this historical fiction novel, Young Jack and Annie reflect on their unbelievable journey in a magical tree house to the time of the dinosaurs. They sneak back to the tree house just before dawn and point to a picture of a castle. After the tree house begins to spin and spin, they find themselves in a different tree, staring at a castle. We will examine castles and knights for our historical research.

This morning we began with a review of Danny’s U.S. Facts and Fun materials about Johnny Appleseed. We read the passage and Danny answered follow up questions. He scored 5/5 on this task. It was interesting to see how this man spread apple seeds over several states! Next, we discussed the concepts of past, present, and future. We discussed how Danny should write a sentence about something he’d do in the future. I instructed him with the use of “will”, but he then generated the rest of the sentence himself and sounded out all of the words, with some help on “park”. He then wrote the month, today, and yesterday. In discussing safety within the community, we talked about secrets. We determined that if a secret can hurt someone or something, then he should share it with an adult. Danny completed a task in which he had to write down a good secret. He wrote that his secret is his Halloween costume! We then moved on to a new Florida Studies Weekly segment entitled, What is History? We read that history is important events that happened in the past. Some of our history has become family traditions, especially in the way we celebrate holidays. We can learn about history in books, on the computer, at museums, tv, and school. This booklet also had a brief overview of Christopher Columbus. We then watched a Brain Pop Jr. learning video about Columbus. We saw that the King and Queen of Spain paid for his exploration in 1492, as they wanted power and to control trade on what they thought would be a shorter route to Asia. Columbus ended up in the Americas and actually found a new world instead. We saw that Columbus made mistakes by calling the natives living there Indians, taking their food and gold, and making the natives slaves. We discussed the terms explorer and voyage. Danny listened to two passages about Columbus and answered true/false and two-choice questions for assessment of comprehension in which he scored 10/10.

Henry began a new lesson on Florida's natural disasters and resources. We read an article together about the different natural disasters that occur in Florida such as hurricanes, tornadoes, thunderstorms as well as natural resources such as soil and climate and what grows in Florida. We discussed Hurricane Andrew and he did an activity where he plotted the longitude and latitude of the hurricane from August 21-26 on a map. After he plotted the points, he answered questions about the map. We also continued reading "The American Jungle" by Harvey Oyer.