Art is complete for the Year 3 program of study. You’ll find it in the list of individual courses. Here’s the course description.
Students will study art as they make observations about work by artists from across the globe. Students will not only look at paintings but architecture, sculptures, costumes, floats and other non-traditional art. Students will draw, paint and create several projects inspired by their studies.
This week our family is going to take a break and just do a little catching up with school. Here are some fun Christmas activities for your family. There are stories, songs, recipes, crafts and activity books.
Christmas Traditions with Mr. G
Decorate an online Christmas tree
Christmas recipes from around the world
Twelve Days of Christmas Lapbook
The Legend of the Candy Cane Lapbook
Christmas activity book grid pictures, counting, tracing, other worksheet activities
Christmas alphabet letters, words, tracing
Christmas counting numbers, tracing numbers, counting
One thing I couldn’t do with the curriculum is build in holiday activities. I had to make it so that it could be used at any time, so here are some Thanksgiving activities for those who want them.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Interactive lesson
http://www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving/
Reader’s Theater
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/collection/first-thanksgiving-readers-theater-ideas
Mayflower Math
http://www.education.com/files/73401_73500/73446/mayflower-math.pdf
Cranberry science
http://kitchenpantryscientist.com/thanksgiving-science/
Thanksgiving crafts
http://www.learningliftoff.com/16-easy-thanksgiving-and-fall-crafts-and-activities-for-kids/#.WDROlly52SU
Turkey crafts
http://www.dltk-holidays.com/thanksgiving/turkey_crafts.html
Draw a turkey
http://www.leslietryon.com/seasonal1103/turkeydraw.html
Draw a pilgrim or Native American
http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/learn-to-draw-a-pilgrim-girl
Draw the Mayflower
http://artprojectsforkids.org/portfolio/mayflower/
Build a Mayflower crafts
http://www.artistshelpingchildren.org/thanksgiving-mayflowershipartscraftsideaskids.html
I’m sorry I haven’t been posting on the blog. Here’s something I posted on facebook and wanted to share here as well.
The McGuffey Readers are for learning by sight. Your child is to look at the word and remember what it is. We all read by sight. You are doing it right now. Learning to read this way will produce a faster, more fluent reader.
When you are using the McGuffey Readers, there are a few things you can do when a child is stuck. I don’t expect you to teach them to sound out those words. There are too many rules of phonics to do that. Sounding out words and phonics rules will be taught systematically in Getting Ready 2. If you let phonics take its natural place of being for new words, not every word, it will be much simpler for your child.
However, there’s a reason they learn their alphabet sounds before learning to read. I also give them a few Starfall exercises where they put in the first sound of a word. If they are stuck on a word, the first thing to ask is, what letter does the word start with? What sound does that make? Maybe saying the sound will jog their memory about what word it is.
Another strategy if your child is stuck is to have your child look at the picture. Does the picture offer a clue as to what the word is?
A third strategy is to ask your child if what he read makes sense. If a word is out of place, have your child think about what word would make sense.
A fourth strategy is it to look for words you know inside the new word. Words that end in the same letters will rhyme. Some examples: the word “at” inside “sat,” the word “or” inside “for”
Your Getting Ready 1 alphabet stories and sight words should all be working today. Thanks for your patience through our growing pains. There is still some tweaking to do, but things should be working.