Happy Thanksgiving!

Out To Lunch

Tot School Report

We are now completing our HOD lessons here and there or every other week but that's ok when you're two. You can get away with not doing "school" and just have some educational fun play.


Pouring beans into different containers. She went back to this activity repeatedly for several days. I think it's a fav now.
Painting with watercolors.
Making a masterpiece with homemade play dough.


More cute little Tot Reports can be found here.

Quick Math Planner

click to enlargeThis is a little form that I made in order to incorporate Living Math into our current program. We use Rod and Staff Math as our spine. In the concepts area, I list the topics to cover and the page numbers. Vocabulary that we need to focus upon is listed for that week . We then do some mental math drills (ex. 5 x 7 + 3 or 9 ÷ 3 - 1) and facts drills such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division cards. We follow drills with math readers which are library books covering the topics that we have already learned or currently learning. Some are games, some fictional stories and some incorporate both. Activities are anything that we do to learn the concepts. Then I have slots for our Family Math (arriving any day) time then Kitchen Math which is basically cooking with Mom. Each child has assigned days to cook with me. This not only allows each child an opportunity to get hands-on experience with measurements but also some one-on-one time with Mom. I have also placed Grocery Math into on my planner for our grocery shopping weeks so we won't miss any chances to do this fun activity while shopping. After our lessons have been completed for the day, my gang is allowed to play computer games but ONLY if they are educational and ONLY after they have spent some time reading and some time playing outdoors. I placed review on the planner as a reminder for me to review topics covered to ensure that they are not forgetting all which has been taught. Lastly, we have progress notes (Mommy's notes about each child) and a little section for Tests. I don't actually record grades in elementary any longer. I mainly check for comprehension and retention.

Well, there's our little helper. I'm not the best or creative at charts but it's been working for us. We completed our first week of adding living math and my gang has loved it. I told them that I wasn't sure how long it may last because honestly, I'm no planner. I love "open and go" but they practically begged me not to return to the full textbook. "Please don't, Mom. We love math this way." OK. I guess they have really touched my soft spot (Ha!) so I'm going for this challenge. My new motto "To infinity and beyooooond! :D

Oh, I almost forgot to announce our math's name. It's called.......(drum roll please)...
Our Math©. Sounds complicated, doesn't it? :)) My gang came up with that name so it's official So cute!

What Time Is It? Elfin' Time!

It's that time of year again and since my highschooler refused to be photographed for our weekly report, I thought that I would help him get over his shyness by Elfinizing him. :)) He did actually laugh at it.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Weekly Report

High School
Math: Polygons
History: Review Creation to Rome. We will do this for a few weeks as a quick overview since we changed some of the elements of this course in order to get a better understanding.
Writing: More Narrative writing
Spanish: Time
Science: We hit a wall in Chemistry so we have been reviewing radicals and the different bonding of elements
Computer: Part 3 Lesson-Microsoft Word
Literature: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
Bible: Luke Detailed Study continued

Chemistry and History had us a little stumped for a while but we are moving along now. :)
I couldn't get my high school student to take any pics. He is a tad bit camera shy unless I bribe him. :D

My younger dc are quite the opposite.

Elementary (taught as group)
Bible: We have been exploring the religions of the world and praying for other countries.
English: More on Action Verbs; Complete subject and complete predicate
Spelling Wisdom: Exercise 3
Math: We have been working on multiple column addition and we have added more readers and games to our Math after I changed our scope and sequence. The dc are begging to do math now. Just check back with me next week to see if this remains the same. ;)
Geography: We learned about various maps and how to read maps. We created maps of our world, our bedrooms and later maps of our local area.

This is our Globe cake from MFW's week of maps. The gang did a little kitchen math as they baked. Do you know how difficult it was to frost this thing? :))Science: We learned about the food chain, the water cycle and the structure of plants and how they absorb water. We investigated this with a celery experiment and by stripping the xylem from one stalk which began to wilt. The healthy and intact celery stalk flourished in the orange dye colored water which we had placed it so that the xylem tubules were very visible. The kids thought this was pretty neat!
Before
After

Nature Study: We did some a tree rubbin' and a huggin'. We collected some beautiful fall leaves which were later laminated. My gang really enjoyed this.
Aside from the Art and Music Activities in MFW, we did not have a composer, scientist nor poem to study this month. Hopefully, we will pick it up after holidays along with Latin. We are still waiting (snail mail) for the DVD that I had forgotten to order earlier in the year.

Wordless Wednesday:Burst of Baking Energy

Math: Another Look

Ok, we are really going through the reviewing and rethinking process here. As you know, dh is not a fan of curriculum hopping and neither am I but he did give me the ok to change our sons from Rod and Staff Math to Math U See Math a few weeks ago but I have been back and forth over the entire decision since then. I am a very indecisive person. I've been that way every since I can remember trying to choose between a Happy Meal and a Big Mac. Anyway, it's been a hindrance at times but most of the time, it has been a blessing because it allows me to rethink situations and look at them from a different perspective which is what I have done with our math dilemma. I love the look of MUS..hands-on manipulatives, DVD that eases the teaching of concepts, teaches the WHY, not too pricey, etc. but why didn't I order? My concern is that it is skill based and not the standard math scope and sequence. I know, I know... that's bad public school way of thinking. Hey, I'm weaning here so just be patient with me. :)) Well, my THING is that I always consider the "WHAT IFS". My "what if" in this case was "What if for some reason, I had to place my dc in ps? Will they be ahead or behind the norm?" "Will the transition be difficult?" Well, you know the answer. They will be behind although they would have GRASPED some of the covered concepts better than their ps counterparts. We have no plans of placing our children in ps EVER but I have always tried to stay rooted or grounded in reality and sometimes life happens or things which are beyond our control so I have been pondering over this issue.

Last night, dh and I had a very interesting conversation on this topic and he had really shed some light from another perspective on the matter. I realized that I loved the skill based mastery of MUS and the manipulative use but leary of the scope and sequence. As for R & S, I really loved the different concepts covered in R & S but didn't care for the sequence. It is supposedly mastery based but there is a constant review of previous topics included also. I have added only a few manipulatives to R & S. The teacher's manual is very open and go just the way that I like it. Dh posed several questions, "Who says that you have to follow the curriculum's scope and sequence?" "Why don't you do it like you want or what's best for the kids? After all, you homeschool!" Why haven't I tried to do this? It has been basically the result of FEAR. You know, False Evidence Appearing Real. I have been afraid of trying and failing so I wanted someone to do all of the work for me. Well, this had really left an imprint on my heart and I researched some things. I really love Living Math but didn't know how to start this in our homeschool. I have always believed that any math could be turned into living math so it was now time to practice what I believed and had preached to others. Right? I had read some wonderful ideas and Math Teaching Tips.

I don't want to implement ps math at home. I don't like the idea of throwing different concepts at a child each year then repeating those same concepts in following years without focusing on mastery. I want to concentrate on a concept til it has been mastered and move onto the next according to the pace of my child. Now that I know the Scope and Sequence that our math should include and the Mathematical Benchmarks for each level, I want to create a math that is more suitable for my dc. We have tweaked different things over the years but I have never imagined tweaking or creating my own math. So, we have come up with a plan.

• Stick with Rod and Staff Math and use it as our spine. Our literature based history programs have a spine, why can't our math? Dh made a great point on this.
  

• Change the scope and sequence of the topics in the way that is best suitable for our dc.

• Allow mastery of each concept and allow our dc to set the pace. For example, while learning about division, we will start with short division of numbers then move onto long division, division of decimals, division with fractions, etc. until we have mastered everything there is to learn about division across the board. We will sort of place a "MUS" way of thinking into our own program but master different topics throughout the year instead of focusing upon one topic the entire year. Our focus or scope will be:

addition and subtraction
place value
roman numerals
time
multiplication
division
factoring and prime numbers
fractions
decimals
money
measurements
percent, ratio and proportion
geometry
probability

• Add more hands-on manipulatives to our math. We will add more manipulatives to our program as well as Family Math for weekly math lab.

• Add living math such as real life situations and library books to reinforce what we are learning. I had been doing this here and there already. I love taking our children to the grocery store. Our last grocery store trip was a great learning experience. I found some deals on sale such as 3 items for $4.00. I asked my sons, if I can buy 3 of these items for $4.00, how much would 1 item cost? An instant word problem! There is also a Living Math yahoo group that is really helpful although I have been a lurker for a while more than a poster.

• I will teach my 5th grade twins and my 4th grader as a group so I will be incorporating two grade levels thus pulling concepts from my 4th grade and 5th grade Rod and Staff books. I want to cover two grade levels at a time each year so my scope will cover multiplication from 4th grade and later move into 5th grade multiplication. Then we will begin 4th grade division which would eventually cover 5th grade division by the end of the year. I'm not focusing on completing all of this in a year. If it takes a year and a half to complete, that's fine. I'm allowing my dc to set the pace.

I think an added bonus is cost. Rod and Staff is really affordable but this could be created with any math program or library books. Am I afraid? YES! But excited at the same. Dh is so proud of me and really believes that I can do this. I really need that support! I think anyone could do this with a math program if they are having difficulty finding something that "fits" or not afraid to tackle ....(gulp) MATH but hopefully, I can add more info after we get things implemented around here. Well, things won't get done if I'm hanging around here so I'm off to complete some planning.

Update: Things are going ok. No complaints as yet but it's the beginning phase so time will tell. I have been looking around a bit for next year. Yes, I loooove looking. :D. I really hate to switch curriculum but if I had a choice, it looks as if it will be Math On The Level or MUS in the upcoming year if our current plan doesn't work. Perhaps there will be more on that later. We'll see. I'm not giving up just yet. To Infinity and beyoooooooooond!

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Please keep Carisa's dh in your prayers.