Last night

Hubby went to a local college football game last night, so it was a girl's night for Apple and I.

After school, we were late for dance class. This time, I had left work early and was all excited about actually not having to rush to get to dance class. But, as I was walking through the school, one of Apple's teachers stopped us in the hallway and asked me if I'd like to see what Apple and her friend 'K' worked on that morning in her classroom. Of course, I couldn't pass up this opportunity, so we went into the classroom and the teacher and Apple proceeded to show me what they had done...

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K and Apple worked together yesterday on some science and math. For science, they did fish nomenclature. The teacher, Ms A, showed me the cards they used to learn the different parts of the fish. First, they read cards that were bound with rings that had pictures and descriptions of each part of the fish. Then, they looked through cards with only the picture of the fish on them. Each card was missing a particular part of the fish. They had to identify which part it was and double check themselves by referring back to the original cards and descriptions.

Then, Ms. A had the original descriptions separated by lines of text... each were cut into an individual strip. So, for instance they had 5 strips of text from the original description:

Ex.: The dorsal fin is the top fin of
the fish. It helps the fish change
the direction it swims. And there
was more, but I can not remember
what it all said. :)

These strips were jumbled and they had to put them in the correct order. (teaching them paragraph structure and continuity) After they put them in the order they believed to be correct, they went back and checked themselves with the original cards and descriptions. Today they will be continuing this lesson with some other variation. I can't recall what it is.

Ms. A also said that they did some math work today. She explained that they are learning their addition facts and working on four digit addition that included 'carrying the one'. (at least that is how I learned it... the girls aren't learning it with that phrase) Ms. A showed me the tiles that they work with so that they know if they have 11 tiles with 1 on them, they need to replace 10, 1 tiles with 1, 10 tile. Same with tens... when they have 11 ten tiles, they need to replace 10, 10 tiles with 1, 100 tile!!! Same with hundreds too.
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To say I'm please with what they are doing is an understatement. I am THRILLED!!

So, after all that, we went to dance class. It was observation week at dance so the parents got to sit in the classroom and watch the class. Apple really really enjoys dancing and her teacher is wonderful!!

After dance, we stopped by the community center in our town to pick up tickets to the dance school's Holiday Cabaret. Every year, the dance school does a mini-recital where they sell tickets to raise money for the American Cancer Society. It's been really successful. This will be Apple's second time dancing in the Cabaret and she's very excited about it.

Finally, we settled down last night at the house with a pizza from Domino's and Apple and I played checkers til it was time to go to bed!! :)

This weekend we are going to try to work in the state fair sometime... I'm not sure how we are going to do that considering Saturday is Apple's last soccer game and award ceremony. Sunday I'm going with some neighbors to take a dear friend out for her birthday!! We've got to get to the fair sometime though....