What Clever Children You Have!

The students continued their individual work in the TOPS Math and Math Rules programs. We also completed a creative thinking exercise to work on our flexible thinking, originality and elaboration skills. The students were each given a paper with four circles. They had to use each circle to create a very different picture. I challenged them to see if they could come up with something no one else in their class created and to be as elaborative as possible.  These drawing exercises strengthen the skills (fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration) the children will need to do real problem solving..

We went to the library to begin work on our research skills. We discussed how the Briarcliff library is arranged, the difference between fiction and non-fiction books, how to read the call number on the spine of a fictional book, what the letters mean in the call number, how the books are arranged on the shelves and the importance of being sure we put books back in their correct location and order. It is empowering to students to learn to locate books on their own. Mastery of these skills frees them to select books on topics of interest and locate specific books without having to wait for adult assistance. This is monumental for early readers and for students interested in unusual or "hard to locate" topics and information. Next week we will focus on how non-fiction books are organized. We will continue to focus on research skills over the next several weeks.

This afternoon, we met our second "Quirkle" of the year - Andy Acid!


The Quirkle's series, written by Missouri authors, is a science exploration and phonetic program. When we have Quirkle time, we will first read a story featuring one of the 26 (each letter of the alphabet) Quirkle characters and follow up with a hands-on experiment or demonstration. Each book is full of words that begin with the letter sound of the character, has rich vocabulary words, and focuses on a science topic that we may or may not be familiar with. Some of the concepts are pretty complex, but exposure to the topic is our goal! Today, Andy Acid helped us learn about acids and bases and we found out what happens when we eat too much acidic food. We made a magic formula to test for acids and bases. Ask your child to tell you about our demonstration and show you their Andy Acid science log.

Have a great week!