Manic Wednesday

Really rough day today. Ashleigh was in one of her moods and really didn't feel like participating much at all. The only thing she wanted to really do was draw pictures of cats on her papers. This is an issue we have with

some of Ash's artwork

her, she draws cats on almost everything. Garrett, whom I expected to balk the most with all the reading and writing we are doing this year, seems to be adjusting fine and is willing to do just about anything I've asked of him so far.

It took us much longer than usual to get through our morning drill due to Ashleigh's obstinance but we managed. Today's drills covered words that rhyme with rug, ending sounds, our typical addition and subtraction review, and skip counting odd numbers. Garrett has a good grasp of the skip counting but Ashleigh is still struggling with it. We made a number line to help her out which seemed to help.

For reading today, the kids worked on words with the "AT" blending (hat, cat, pat, rat, sat, mat, fat). They read aloud two simple poems which used these words and then practiced writing them. I had a good laugh with our reading lesson yesterday, as a friend posted a picture on facebook in regards to trying to read with a 1st grader. The picture was so true and was definitely a fair representation of what our reading lesson was like today.  However, we managed to get through it.

We continued with lesson 2-2 in regards to basic addition for our math lesson today. The kids worked independently today with 16 math equations and both did a great job, although Ashleigh at one point wanted to once again be difficult. After a few dirty looks towards mom and a few tears, she manged to complete the assignment on her own as well.

We completed our final lesson in regards to habitats and should test over it tomorrow. We reviewed all four

habitats that we have covered (forest, wetland, ocean and desert) and then discussed how the arctic where polar bears live is actually considered a desert due to the low levels of rain. We completed a worksheet as a review.

Finally, the kids got a surprise in the mail today. We are a part of a post cart exchange this year and they received their first post card today. Today's post card came from Arizona and had a very nice picture of the desert in bloom. First we looked at the picture and I asked the kids to determine what type of habitat the picture showed. Then we looked up the State of Arizona on our map. Finally, we read the wonderful lesson that was included on the back of the post card about Arizona being the 48th state and about the climate and primary industries of the state. Our post card sender stated she is a 4th grader named Julia who plays the flute and wants to be a paramedic whens he grows up. It was a nice surprise lesson for the kids and I think the post card exchange is going to be a wonderful addition to our curriculum this year.