Best Yet

What a nice day! The was easily the smoothest, most pleasant day of the year so far. Not that the others were bad, but this was just about perfect!

We keep working diligently through our Thinking Maps, and today we worked on the Brace Map. This is not an easy map for the children to either understand or make, at least at first. The Brace Map works on the skill of understanding the relationship of the whole and its parts. It only applies, however, to things which are tangible, which can actually be put together or taken apart. We talked about this at some length until I felt they had the idea. I then challenged them to create their own. As always, the topic was something about them. Now the assigned topic here in the training manual is "My Best Outfit." I find, however, that most of the boys, and even a few of the girls, hate writing about this. As a bit of a slob myself, it's not an easy topic for me, either. So I gave them the option of writing about "My Favorite Meal" instead, and most of them seemed to enjoy that one.

I then had to change my plans when I runner reminded me that I was supposed to send selected students to the auditorium to discuss possibly being in orchestra next year. Almost half of the class qualified for this privilege, so I gave the remaining students the option of correcting math or working on Writer's Workshop. It was pleasant and quiet and productive.

After recess we did a little review for the math test, touching on all the important points. We then read a chapter from the social studies book on bodies of water in California. Dull, but important stuff for understanding the state. We looked at our mealworms again after lunch. Many had died, but a couple had changed into beetles or were in the process of doing so. We also read a short, and frankly pretty trite, story from the Scholastic magazine. We continued with our kickball tournament in PE. After PE, we came in and took the math test. We'll correct it soon and get the results on the gradebook.

Home Studies: (1) Do independent reading. Remember, students should read for at least 15 to 30 minutes daily and write about a half page summary in their journals. (2) Do the short vowel and Characterization worksheets on the Open Court Reading story. (3) Do the questions on the Adaptation chapter we read yesterday in the Science book. I added some page numbers to the questions to make this even easier.