1st Grade Activities: Week 30

Monday
1. Religion: pray; read short bio. of St. John of Egypt; read Gospel for today.
2. Reading: Measure It, Gloria Bancroft;
Champions, Rebel Williams;
What Can Fly?, Brenda Parkes;
Legs, Miriam Frost;
Penguins ABC, Kevin Schafer.
3. Science/Nature: read and discuss North Pole, South Pole, Nancy Smiler Levinson; watch What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up? The Zoo Crew (video); chart temperature and time on a chart after running a fever.
4. Read Aloud: Oranges on Golden Mountain, Elizabeth Partridge;
Fishing, Diana Engel;
Not Yet, Elijah!, Harriet K. Feder.
5. Art: make a bouquet of paper flowers.

Tuesday
1. Religion: pray; read short bio. of saint of the day.
2. Science/Nature: videos: Pets: See How They Grow,
Nature Series: Kitten Companions,
Bill Nye the Science Guy: Forensics; care for garden snail.
3. Science/Technology: The Greatest Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century: The Golden Gate Bridge (video).
4. Phonics: Up With Phonics: Short and Long Vowel Sounds (video).
5. Math: making a small book: 1 sheet of paper = 4 pages; 3 sheets = 12 pages; 3 sheets x 4 pages each =12 pages for a book.
6. Music: singing.
7. Reading: read 6 pages of The Golden Picture Dictionary.
(More video learning on sick days.)

Wednesday
1. Handwriting: make tags (name and number) for stuffed penguin.
2. Art/Drama/Music: draw fish for the penguin, create a fishing game, fish and sing about fishing; then feed the fish to Lucy the penguin.
3. Science/Technology: watch mom unplug and very carefully disassemble the TV/VCR, unjam tape, and reassemble it [Hey, my dad and 3 brothers are engineers -- how hard could it be? I've watched them take things apart hundreds of times]. Tape unjamming was successful, hooray! Door operation was not. So it had to be done over again or we would be watching the same show for the rest of ... or until we upgrade to DVD ;) [now door is fixed too -- everything works again] (mini field trip -- inside the TV).
4. Economics: If we can't unjam the VCR, we will have to take it completely apart (break it), remove the tape to return to the library, and throw the player away. It would cost more to have it repaired (probably at least $100) than it would to buy a new VCR.
5. Civics: read a newspaper article about the sale of soda and junk food being prohibited in California schools. High school students are collecting signatures to get a proposition on the ballot to overturn the law. She said the students should make the choice whether to buy soda or juice. We read further, and there was more information about the law and its implementation, including other views. After reading the article, she decided that little kids should not have the soda and junk food available (let the parents decide what they eat and drink). For the medium-sized kids, let the teachers decide (somehow). For the teenagers, they should be given both options (healthy drinks and soda) and be allowed to choose.
6. Spanish: story time at the library.
7. Religion: read short bio. of today's saints.

Thursday
1. Religion: pray; read short bio. of the saint of the day; read Bible readings for today.
2. Reading: I Am a Little Monkey, Francois Crozat.
3. Art/Drama: make a monkey tail, and a banana out of colored pipe cleaners; monkey picks up items all around the room with her tail, peels the banana.
4. History: read Louis Braille: The Blind Boy Who Wanted to Read, Dennis Fradin.
5. P.E.: run and play at the park.
6. Geography: look at maps of California, U.S., and individual states; read some city and state names; play with puzzle pieces (states).
7. Music: sing songs.

Friday
1. Art: read A Child's Book of Art: Discover Great Paintings, Lucy Micklethwait; draw a monkeys in the jungle scene similar to "Tropical Forest with Monkeys", by French artist Henri Rousseau (1844-1910); wear the pipe-cleaner monkey tail again; create a character called Cyber Monkey; make sword, shield, and ring of keys for Cyber Monkey out of colored pipe cleaners.
2. Reading: read some of the captions in the book: Discover Great Paintings; read some text on a children's website.
3. Drama: play acting: Cyber Monkey kills the serpent (representing evil).
4. Music: singing.
5. Science/Technology: read from the book Footprints on the Moon, Alexandra Siy.
6. Read Aloud: from English Fairy Tales, F. A. Steel.
7. Math: demonstration: count to 12 by 1s, 2s, 3s; count to 15 by 5s; count to 16 by 4s; divide 10 items in half (into 2 groups): 5+5=10; another way to divide 10 into parts: 2+8=10; count to 20 by 2s.
8. Cooking: help make an apple pie.