Pleasant and sunny day

JD LOVED the devotion today. It was called “This is National Make up Your Own Holiday” day. So JD and I came up with “No spelling Test” day. The devotion of course tied this in with religious holidays help us remember what God and Jesus did for us.

We read two more chapters out of “Tales of Fourth Grade Nothing” by Judy Blume. JD really likes this book. It’s very humorous. I also did a verbal book report with him on “Hero’s Don’t Run.” He will have three days next week to produce a creative way of presenting the book report. (With my help of course.)

The geometry lesson wasn’t too tough today. I was called “net.” For example…when you cut a cereal box down until it is all flat and all the pieces are still attached to one another. It’s kind of hard to explain. There were 2-D figures (flat) and we had to figure out what 3-D shape it made. JD did not like this lesson at first but he did when once he got familiar with it. It was interesting to watch his mind and fingers work at the same time. He was folding an imaginary cube to see if the 2-D picture they had would actually fold into a cube.

JD did his Dance Mat typing today. He worked on level one, stage two. Today he learned “E” and “I.” I looked over at him and he was NOT looking at the keyboard. FINALLY! I caught him making good choices and made sure to take THAT opportunity to praise him.

The edit/rewrite lesson time was used to type a paper on “No Spelling Test” day. This is what he came up with. “Today is “No Spelling Test day.” The devotion said “make up your own holiday.” This makes me feel happy because I did not want to do it anyway and because I didn’t study my spelling words. Some kids probably will like it too, because they might not want to do it or they might not have studied their spelling words either. All of my spelling words were in pairs. The first four letters were the same. They were words like growl and growth.” (I had to give him more ideas because apparently “type a paper about the holiday” translated into give me only two sentences. So we collaborated together and he typed the rest. We edited it together and he fixed the errors.

The health lesson today was about “What causes diseases.” It was kind of a repeat from the last lesson covering: washing hands, cooking meat properly, keeping refrigerated items cool, and immunizations. There are only three more health lessons left and then I will use the remained “health” lesson times to do additional language arts lessons. After all, the assessment is right around the corner.

We finished up early today because we declared it “No Spelling Test” day. Spelling has been a big headache for both of us. For me it’s frustrating because I want him to take responsibility to study his words without reminders. For him it’s because he hates doing spelling. I hope I can find a fun way to teach him. When he is typing things on the computer he will often say, “How do you spell…oh never mind.” I have told him repeatedly to “just type your thoughts and go back and edit later.” If he would just catch onto this it would be less frustrating for him.