Wednesday, September 18

We began our day with celebrating Constitution Day! It was actually yesterday but I had forgotten until watching Jeopardy reminded me. :) So, in honor of this momentous day, we read, We, the Kids and watched a School House Rocks video on the Preamble. These both helped the kiddos to understand the complexity of the Constitution and better understand the meaning behind this document. Then, we worked on an Ohio Studies Weekly about the US Constitution. Ask your kiddos if they know what this document is about. (On a side note, they are auditioning for Kids Jeopardy right now if you'd like to register your child. You have to register them and then they take an online test on September 25. Just google Kids Jeopardy!) In Math, we learned the standard algorithm for subtraction. We visualize this with base-10 blocks so if your child is practicing, they may be talking about trading in for longs or flats--this is what they are doing. Maybe they could explain their thinking to you. In Wonder, we got to a really emotional part--Daisy isn't doing so well and Mom is headed to the emergency vet. Uh-oh... For Reader's Workshop, we created a school with a "Dream Theme" as well as read silently and some met with me for a Guided Reading Group. In Writer's Workshop, we used proofreading marks to edit our Book Reviews and made sure we had good 4th grade sentences for revising. Finally, we sorted our words by short vowel sound in Word Study. Hopefully, after this second week of short vowel practice, we are getting better at spelling words on our own in our everyday writing--at least when it comes to the vowel.