This afternoon, we continued our in-depth research into Russia. Yanuell printed out a map of the country. Then, he colored a picture of the flag and found the meanings of the white, blue, and red colors. Research into the celebrations and traditions were recorded along with traditional foods and clothing. He also printed out a copy of the Russian alphabet to add to his binder. Finally, Yanuell watched traditional Russian folk dances which he thought were very impressive.
Marcos is working on the Mandate of Heaven project for the lesson on Ancient China. He will discuss how the “Mandate of Heaven” affected the a dynasty of Ancient China and also determine how it gained and ultimately lost the Mandate of Heaven. He is enjoying the assignment. The assignment is due at the end of the week.
Henry took a quiz today on geography and map skills. He also continued the lesson on Florida history and regions and completed a crossword puzzle by answering questions on what he has read. We looked at a timeline on when Florida became a state and the events in the years before and after that took place. He answered questions by looking at the timeline and interpreting the data. We continued reading "The American Jungle" by Harvey Oyer and used the timeline as a reference as we read through the book.
Yanuell and I began our first World Cultures lesson together with the country of his choice, Russia. We started reading through books from the library and writing down quick facts such as capital, continent, population, and language to put in his binder. Today, he focused on the wildlife of Russia. The Pika, a close cousin to rabbits, was an unfamiliar animal to Yanuell that we researched more. He printed out pictures of his favorite animals and pasted them onto the wildlife page of his binder. We will continue more in depth research of this country next week.
Henry continued with the lesson on Florida regions and history. We read a story in Studies Weekly on the first governor of Florida and what year Florida became a state. We also began reading the book "The American Jungle" by Harvey Oyer. Henry seemed to really enjoy the story. He also did an exercise with longitude and latitude and finding different places on a map using coordinates.
Danny and I began with a book called Working with Others. Together, we discussed how to work together to resolve differences. In his interactive notebook, Danny completed the cooperation paper writing his interpretation of the word, coloring the picture, and glueing it to the page. Then, we read the storybook Swimmy which correlated with the cooperation lesson. We moved on to his community helpers lesson by reading the book Career Day and completing the garbage collector helper from his interactive notebook.
Henry finished making his morse code bracelet. He wrote a secret message and made it out of beads using morse code dots and dashes. He hung it on his door to see if anyone could figure out the message.
Henry began a lesson on Florida history. We discussed how people used to communicate in the past before cell phones, texting, and even land lines. We talked about how Morse Code used to be the main way to communicate and looked at a Morse Code chart of dots and dashes. He watched a video on the history of Morse Code and then did a Crack the Code activity where he was given a message in Morse Code and had to use the key to figure out the message. He came up with his own message and is going to make a bracelet using beads for Morse Code dots and dashes to make a secret message.
This afternoon, we began with a book about empathy and compassion entitled, How to Heal a Broken Wing, by Bob Graham. In this story, a pigeon living in a big city crashes into a glass building and gets hurt. He lays on the street, being ignored as numerous people walk by, until a young compassionate boy insists to his parents that they take him home. They feed and care for the bird until he is able to be released. We discussed how the bird must have been hurting, as well as feeling sad and scared until he was rescued. But, because the boy chose to care for another in need, the bird was saved. We then read the final story from The Berenstain Bears: Good Deed Scouts Help Their Neighbors by Jan and Mike Berenstain. This story was entitled, Help the Homeless and focused on the Good Deed Scouts fixing up an old abandoned house to make it a home for the homeless. Even though the bears were afraid of the spooky old house, their compassion guided them through the challenge. These two books provided a lesson in compassion as we continue discussing qualities of a good citizen. We colored the flip picture for Danny’s Interactive Notebook and he wrote, “we feel sad for others when they are sad or hurt”. As we have been discussing time, we then watched a Brain Pop Jr. learning video on Calendar and Dates. Annie and Moby showed us that a calendar is a tool to organize our time and help us see when events occur. We reviewed the days of the week and that there are seven days in a week. We saw that we can find the date of the same day from week to week, by adding 7 to the number. Additionally, we reviewed the months of the year and saw various ways to write the date. We went through the easy level quiz together and discussed the questions. We then continued working in his Florida Studies Weekly packet on Time. We reviewed past, present, and future. We performed calendar tasks in his packet by finding and marking targeted dates provided. Danny then wrote a sentence about something he did yesterday (in the past). He wrote, “I play iPad”. He matched two pictures each for the seasons summer and winter. (He was able to tell which words were which, on his own!) Finally, he scored a 5/5 on his assessment for this Florida Studies Weekly study on time.
Henry reviewed current events and read articles of interest on what is happening around the world. He read one article on a recently discovered white giraffe in Africa and another article about a 110 million year old perfectly preserved dinosaur found in Canada.
