Flash cards are great!

SPELLING

I wanted to make spelling a little more interesting and fun this week.

JUPITER

This week in Science we started learning about Jupiter and it's four closest moons: Lo, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede. Lo is the closest moon and is very colorful due to the many volcanoes and sulfur. In fact, Lo's volcanoes are the very hottest of anything in our Solar System next to the Sun. What is interesting is that the next three closest moons are rocky moons covered in ice. Ganymede is the largest moon in our Solar System. There are more than 63 moons orbiting Jupiter.

So here is a craft the kids did. This is Jupiter with its closest moon Lo.

Part of the lesson was how we get these pictures from satellites. So the kids made a rocket!

Pocket Chart

The story of the U.S.A book 1 we are using for our third grade is great because the chapters are short and after each chapter are multiple choice questions, true or false, fill-in-the-blank, and discussions. Each chapter, however, is packed with information and sometimes even after going through all of the questions, my son has a hard time retaining some of the info. So I made a chart with six windows; he opens the window, reads the paragraph and does the activity. This was so much fun for him and he was excited to show his Dad at lunch!

The story ends with Captain John Smith teaching the colonists to work. He taught them to cut down trees for houses and to grow crops. Out of 105 settlers in Jamestown, only 38 lived. Many more would've probably perished for their laziness as well. The settlers just needed a little guidance from someone who was motivated.
So we ended our morning session with building our own houses.....

Letter "T"

On each flower are stickers of things that begin with the letter T: truck, teddy bear,trees, tomato and taxi.

While our son was at the computer, I sat with our daughter to do some letter T tracer pages, coloring and tractor cards where she learned about size difference. She cut out shapes of different sizes and made her own tractor as well. We also practiced putting sounds together to make words with these level "A" readers from Scholastic. I read the book to her first and then she reads them back to me, although she has them memorized, I ask her to point to and follow the words. This way, obviously she can start to recognize the letter sounds and sight words.