CHRISTEPHI

What is Ooka Island? Ooka Island is an adventurous computer game that teaches early literacy to kids from Pre-K to 2nd grade.  It's fun and engaging without making any sacrifices on the academic side of things. "Upon arrival on Ooka Island, children customize their own online avatar and embark on a compelling 3D hero-mission to save the Ooka Elves! As young learners follow the Ooka Island Adventure, they travel on their own unique path created by Ooka Island's READirect learning algorithm.  This ensures that they are on the fastest track to reading success!" A Bit of Backstory Ooka Island is based on the work of Dr. Kay MacPhee who developed a successful program for struggling and reluctant readers in the 1990s.  Her program, then known as SpellRead, was the subject of many intensive studies because of its effectiveness, but it was quite expensive.  It became an exclusive product for either the poorest of the poor (by way of government sub...

Little Guy practicing his letters in a pan of salt. This week we learned more about the early American settlements, how they built their homes and what sorts of foods they ate.  We investigated yeast and made butter! My kids are not unfamiliar with yeast since I bake bread every week, but I don't think I had ever let them really examine it or explained what exactly it does.  This week in science, we did an experiment to show that gas (carbon dioxide) is produced by growing yeast. The kids worked together to mix yeast and sugar in warm water.  Then I carefully poured it into a glass pop bottle and stretched a balloon over the neck. We set it aside in a warm place while we worked on some of our other lessons.  We checked in on it just in time to see the balloon "sproing!" straight up! Both kids were so excited and really enjoyed the whole experiment.  Miss M recorded our procedure and observations on a lab sheet and added it to her Adve...