First week of January

This week we started back to school after our Christmas Break.

Shelby got to start a new Explode the Code book and Handwriting without Tears.

We also started a Math Unit on Decimal Placement. We created Decimal Street with a "Units" house, "Tens" house and "Hundreds" house. We used our blocks and 10's sticks to understand what Place value is. Next week we will start with the Hundreds. Shelby really started to grasp the concept of Place Value. Before she would try to add the numbers together instead of seeing it as an individual number. Now she can show me with 10's sticks and units the number 38 (for example) and if I show her the number with blocks she can write the number 38 in an instant. We have finally broke through a wall she was having. Hopefully this will really help her with her addition and subtraction facts.

She also knows that there can only be 9 units before it turns into a "ten" and 9 "tens" before it turns into a hundred. WOO HOO. She did great on her test at the end of the week and was able to explain everything to me.

We also started back up our spelling words this week. As we work on them we review the rules that any of the words may be following. She got all of her spelling words correct and was even able to tell me that the words "but" & "and" are conjunctions. She also was able to explain to me that a conjunction connects two ideas.

We watched Linnea in Monet's Garden, Animal Planet video's "Growing up American Black Bear, Growing up Zebra, & Growing up Lion". We watched one Planet Earth video :Ice Worlds" as well.

We have started reading "The Borrowers" nightly.