Paying It Forward.

Spelling- We went over list 16 today, which ended up turning into a great grammar lesson on synonyms, homonyms, and antonyms! There are some tricky words on this list (influence, certificate), but although the words are longer in length, the kids are doing a great job applying the rules they know to spell them correctly! All of the work we have done is really adding up!

Poetry- I am completely impressed by the kids' quick memorization of the poem “My Shadow”! Everyone has the first stanza down pat... and some have much more! We will be making another awesome video with this after we have it completely in our memories. They are already super excited! ("Hooray!" for positive motivation!)

Grammar- We had a tough lesson today in grammar. After playing an exciting review game where we wrote parts of speech on index cards and took turns swapping out cards to form silly sentences, we moved on to something new. We have already mastered picking out the subjects, verbs, and the adjectives and adverbs that describe them. Now, we learned that the noun that is the subject is actually called the “simple subject”. For instance, in the sentence “Hot chocolate warms cold children.”, the word “chocolate” is the simple subject. However, if you use all of the words that describe the subject, such as “hot chocolate”, then we call this the “complete subject”. When diagramming, the complete subject is the simple subject, as well as everything “hanging off” of it! Also, we learned that everything in that describes the verb and the direct object is called the “complete predicate”. In our previously mentioned sentence, the complete predicate would be “warms cold children”. When diagramming, everything to the right side of the line dividing subject from verb is the complete predicate. This was a tough concept for them, and we will be working on it much more!

Reading- I loved the letters that the children wrote from Lady's Macbeth's doctor to Macbeth! They are showing such an understanding of the book! Today, we finished the entire book. It was hilarious to see the kids' reactions as the witches' predictions ended up coming to be! We did have a very interesting conversation today. Macbeth was told by the witches that “None of woman born can harm Macbeth”. As the story unfolds, we learn that Macduff was not technically “born” of woman as he was from his mother's womb “untimely torn”. This led to a wonderful discussion on Cesarean sections and the reasons why a baby might need to be taken prematurely via c-section in Macbeth's day. Excellent!

Math- We were introduced to the concept of division today. Using multilink cubes, we took a large group and divided it into smaller equal groups. Then, we wrote the division problems that we created on the board. We learned how 20 divided by 4 is 5, and 20 divided by 5 is 4. We then connected the fact that 4 x 5 = 20. I love the way that multiplication and division are discussed together. It makes so much sense! As we continue to delve into these concepts, it would be very helpful to be drilling multiplication tables at home!

 
Social Studies- Today, the kids learned more about colonial occupations. They took the occupation of their choice and began their big projects! We took cereal boxes and covered them with paper. These will be used to display all of our information. We will be working at home and typing up all of the information that we want to add to our box. Print it out, cut it out, and paste it to the back side of the box. The front will have the name of our occupation and a picture (printed or self-drawn)! The kids are so excited about this creative way to show what they are learning!

 
Writing- We turned in our “Pay It Forward” papers today! Great job! I am sending them to Ms. Sharon and we will be revising and editing our rough drafts. I am so pleased that everyone is getting the hang of the brainstorming/rough draft/final copy process! We will get back to these with fresh eyes after the break!

Art- The class worked with clay today (on a secret project...Shhhh!).  It didn't dry completely, but we hope to have it by Thursday.  If not, I'll meet up with you sometime before Christmas!

Music- We learned a new song today! “Go Tell It On The Mountain".  The kids also learned another part to "Be Still and Know"!  This was our last class for the semester... so practice, practice, practice and we will see you back in January!