Gwendolyn and I spent the first portion of class conducting a verbal quiz in conversational/question-and-answer format. I asked many open-ended questions requiring Gwendolyn to explain why or to explain cause and effect. We looked to the historical atlas to observe changes in Europe after World War II. We read from the text and learned about the United Nations, the Truman Doctrine and the Marshal Plan. We looked to photos of damage to London from bombings, the United Nations' duties on Pinterest, and a short movie on BrainPop about the Cold War. We discussed the Cuban Missile Crisis and the concepts of containment and oppression. We also listened to the Rosie the Riveter song. We began discussing why the U.S. was involved in the Korean War.

Ethan copied a definition of Economics today.

Today Arianna read aloud as part of her work. We learned about the history of Earth Day through a PowerPoint presentation. She read many of the slides herself. One of the things she learned about was a mission to complete one billion "acts of green". She learned that the work we did cleaning up the park was an act of green so we logged it into the website.

We started to read an article that compares economic systems. I want to provide Jackson with a foundation related to economics before he focuses on Capitalism and the Stock Market in particular. I want Jackson to finish the reading on his own and complete the short quiz at the end of the reading in preparation for our next session.

This morning we reviewed the globe. We colored a partial diagram of the globe in which the land was green and the water blue. We used a satellite photo of Earth to help us. We then began painting a paper mache ball of Earth in honor of the upcoming Earth Day. We completed the blue portion and will do the land in our next session. Next, we played a fun board game of wants and needs. We performed different tasks depending on the board space. These included things such as labeling the photo as a want or need as well as simply naming a want or a need. Danny really enjoyed the game and did a nice job. At times, he needed prompting for the open ended demands of stating a want or need. Then, we reviewed our FL Studies Weekly packet on this topic. We attempted our follow up assessment, however Danny exhibited some confusion between the meanings of the two words. We then took a step back to examine the topic further. We discussed what each word means and looked at some pictures to decide how they would be categorized.

Marcos continued to work on graphing the percentage of people that died in the wars. He identified how many years each war lasted.

This morning Danny and I continued discussing wants and needs. We read the book, Lily Learns about Wants and Needs by Lisa Bullard. In this book, we learned about wants and needs in terms of ways to perform physical activity (buying a new bike vs. playing at the free park), foods at the grocery store, and in the hospital. For example, we saw that patients 'need' doctors and medicine to get better, and some 'want' televisions to watch while they are there. Danny then completed a picture sort in which he scored 6/8 on differentiating needs and wants. Finally, we continued our Click Clack Animals booklet that we began the other day as a fun way to examine wants and needs. We first reviewed the Click Clack Moo: Cows that Type book by Doreen Cronin. Danny did a great job generating ideas of things the animals might want! Danny decided that the ducks want a diving board, the pigs want a hot tub, the horses want pillows, and the goats want a pool! He initially said the goats wanted grass but we discussed that grass is their food, so therefore is a 'need' for them. Danny did an excellent job in sounding out words today! We've been working on initial consonants but today, I encouraged more and he delivered! I provided the individual sounds and Danny worked to provide the letters. We sounded out t-u-b for "tub", he gave me p-i-l for "pillows", and he told me the d and v in "diving" just to name a few! I wrote the words on the wipe board and he copied them into his booklet. We sent the booklet home in his backpack to enjoy at home. (The Click Clack Moo story is available as a shared reader on You Tube.)

Stephen took the first 10 minutes of class to prepare for the interactive online map quiz related to the 50 states of the USA. He attained 98% when he completed the quiz. Great job today in class. Stephen was provided an overview of the Stock Market game for the remainder of the class. I will email Stephen a link that will allow him to register and participate in the Stock Market game.

In this lesson, Gracyn listened to Make Way for Ducklings. She will be on the lookout for nature in the big city now! In addition, she completed an Earth Day genre word ladder.

In this lesson, Arianna was a good citizen who helped take care of the Earth! We spent about 30 minutes picking up trash at the park. After a good hand washing, she completed a graph on recycling and a word search on Earth Day.