From our Fourth Grade Studies:We began our story with Joseph and Katie pulling up camp and meeting Roak, the bear. Katie learns she can talk to the bear and anyone can if the bears want to be heard. Roak travels with them as they head toward the sea. On the way, they meet a Bison. A Bison is similar to the Cow in its behavior and body, so we take a closer look into “The Cow”. We learned how it eats with molar teeth and it’s four stomachs, to create milk. We learn a little about it’s personality and how it walks on it’s tippy toe nails. We drew a cow in the field and wrote a small paragraph about the cow. T.’s first paragraph! We then read and tried to memorize some of a lovely Poem titled The Cow. While this study has been commencing, we I have brought T. back to the very beginning of learning to count and use all the four processes. We have taken each number, so far only 4,5,6,7, and 8 and found all the fact families for addition and division, but using subtraction and division principles to discover them. Using gems we see if they can be split evenly, whether they are an odd number or even. Then we discover the many ways these gems can be split up to create the total. T. has enjoyed this process and I think it has helped him immensely to see, feel, know each number in this way. He seems to be holding onto the math facts much longer than he has in the past.