Massive Homeschool Giveaway

I just happened to come across this massive homeschool giveaway. In case any of you out there are also new to homeschooling or just need some new curriculum, be sure to check out these baskets of fun!

One of my favorite giveaways is offering whole kits! You can get right to this one here.

My New "Buffet"

So..... the lockers have been painted, and painted, and painted. I think that they currently have about 9 or 10 colors on them. And I don't like any of them... So we are trying something else, but had some rain the past couple of days.

So in between drying and trying to pick a new color, I picked up this lovely dresser for $35. I thought  that it was a pretty good deal. I was hoping to find a free one, and it just didn't happen.  It is for the dining/sewing/home schooling room. So it will look like a buffet or credenza or sideboard or whatever you want to call it... I hope.

I was going to leave it as is, but upon further inspection, we noticed it needed some loving. It wasn't the kind of wood you could refinish. It was some fake layer on top over particle board or something. So I had to paint it.

I went with spray paint (Ivory Satin) to save time and to have the "no brush strokes" look. Spray painting furniture is harder and easier than I thought. It is really easy to get a rhythm down and get the paint to come out pretty nicely, but at the same time, with the quality of the wood, it was hard to cover without showing  some of the swipes and getting the coverage even. I read a ton of tutorials on feathering and all sorts of tips, but it was still hard.

So, don't mind my bad cell phone picture and my bad paint job.

This baby houses a bunch of our homeschooling and craft stuff. So it is easy to get to and out of sight. It makes a pretty nice addition to the dining room. And the ivory color looks lovely with our pale yellow walls... although you can't see that with this bad picture. Now, I need to find some handles for the doors (one is missing) and sew a lovely table runner to hide the top.

When the dining room is  a little more done, I will get some pictures for you with a real camera. You'll be able to see my antique chalk board (my math geek dream!!!) and my sewing set up. It is tiny, but I am just glad to have a space right now.

It is all still getting worked on, so be on the look out for more posts as I hunt down some great chairs for that room.

What have you been working on?

Some Mathy Goodness for Your Home Classroom

 

photo source

I know a lot of people out there are hating on math. I have heard from parents, students, even some teachers, that they just don't want to do math, teach math, think about math.....

This makes me really sad. Math is actually really beautiful. Math is often there in the background and you just don't see it. I have been spending time studying quilting because I so desperately want to be making quilts all the time. And you know what? There is a ton of math involved. And if you stop and think about anything that we do, there really is math some where in there.

So math is everywhere, but no one wants to talk about it or teach it or think about the mathy goodness that is part of everything. Maybe that is because we have been looking at math all wrong.

So what's my point in all of this? Well, I want to start to share some different ways of incorporating math into your life. Maybe you homeschool, maybe you have a child that hates math, maybe you hate math. Let's try and work on this and help you find the beauty that is in math. And in finding the beauty and purpose in math, maybe we can build math skills and math sense.

To get you started, I want to share a website with you. (This doesn't cost anything. I won't bring you through a thousand screens and say that it is about to give you the answer to all your life long questions.... It is not some scary scheme to make money or anything like that.) This website was started by Dan Meyer and it includes lots of "Three Act" math lessons that really get you excited and interested in learning the math topic that it is about. And for those of you doing homeschooling or teaching in a classroom, the Common Core standards that are associated with each lesson are listed right on the website with links to each lesson as well.

I have to warn you though. These are not your standard math lessons. Be ready to think, discuss, question and sometimes even laugh. These will really get you asking deep questions, creating plans of action for solving, and (wait for it....) DOing Math!!!

If you happen to like these, I also encourage you to check out Dan Meyer's 101 questions.

Please note: I am in no way affliated with Dan Meyer. I chose to share this with you because I find it interesting. I try to post on things that I love and feel passionate about. This is one of them. :)

President Trading Cards

My Love and I have started a new project over the last few weeks. We have been studying the presidents. To do so, we printed out these really cute president pictures on cardstock. Then we discussed what would be important to include on each card.

Here is what my beautiful 9 year old decided on:

                    * Full Name
                    * Birth date and date of death
                    * Location of birth and death
                    * Details of their family
                    * Something important the president did while in office
                    * Something interesting about the president

It is really fun to watch her getting excited about learning something new about each president. She gets to decide what is important enough to make it on to the trading card. And we both get to learn lots of new stuff as we discuss what she has found while researching and narrowing it down to the most important. It is also awesome to let my daughter have the lead on this project. She does the research, she decides what should be on each card and which facts are the ones that make it. Watching her work through this process has just been incredible.

I would love to laminate them when we are done!

I know I saved the link to where we printed our pictures from, but cannot find it for the life of me. So here are some more options to help you.

If you are not up to making your own, here is a premade template from PBS.

This set here is more like what we printed out. We just printed, cut and used the back to add our own info.

Activites for those that LOVE or HATE math.

 

Hate is such a strong word. And sometimes I think that maybe so many people would not hate math if they were just taught math in a different way, shown the beauty and usefulness in math or if they could build more of their natural number sense. Anyways, I got an email the other day with a new post from KidsActivitiesBlog. It has such fun ideas for math activities at a ton of different levels. You can check it out here. It may be called 25 Activities for Kids that HATE Math, but I think that those that LOVE math will like these too!

Troubles with Regrouping (Carrying in Addition)

Sometimes math can seem like a foreign language, to students and even some teachers. I have always loved math, and thought about things mathematically, but after becoming a teacher and a mom, you can see first hand, that not all brains think alike. And not all methods will work for everyone.

Here is an example from a typical day working with a student (sometimes even my older students make this error.)

      
                           67
          +      48
                105

Now, you might argue that the person could have just used a calculator, but that isn't the point here. It is good to be able to do some calculations quickly in your mind. And it is good to have number sense about how things work. We can get into why I think these things are important in another post, because instead, I would like to show you another way of thinking through this problem that might just help.

When I was in school, I was taught to "carry". These days I think they are calling it "regrouping" because you are taking a group of ones and writing as a ten. You might remember writing a little one on top of the 6 because 7 + 8 = 15 and we have 1 ten and 5 ones. This method is great and works for many people. And I am not saying you should stop using it. I still do.

                              1
                  67
          +      48
                115
What I am saying is that this method doesn't click for all minds. If you have a child or student struggling, it may help to work it out all underneath the line. So when you add 7 + 8 and get 15, you actually write 15. And then when you add the 6 and 4 you think of them as 6 tens and 4 tens or 60 and 40 to make 100. Finally, you would add these together to get 115.
                   67
          +      48
                  15
           +   100 
                115

This builds on the knowledge and understanding of place value. We want students to see what each digit stands for in the problem and make sense of the answer.

If you have a little one having some trouble adding two or three digit numbers, you might just want to give this technique a try. Let me know if it helps.

Lining Up the Decimals... It Just Doesn't Add Up

My daughter and I have been talking a lot about math. Maybe that is because I love math, maybe it is because we home school, maybe it is because math is applicable to so many topics.... Whatever the reason may be, we have found our way to decimals.

We have begun talking about the tenths and hundredths place, we have  looked at how these decimals would appear as fractions, compared and ordered. So when I found my daughter counting up the change in her piggy bank, I figured this was the perfect time to introduce some adding.

We have a huge chalk board. I wrote the problem 0.34 + 0.15 and asked her to add. She quickly got 0.49, but it wasn't so easy for her to explain to me how she got it. She gave me the typical student response, "I just added." So then I wrote the problem 0.7 + 0.24 on the board and asked her to use any method she wanted to add them together. Again, she quickly added them together and got..... 0.31!

Seeing her answer and knowing what she had done, I found this to be a great time to go back to that piggy bank. We broke down the problem like this:

                0.7           +           0.24
             7 tenths      +      2 tenths + 4 hundredths
             7 dimes      +      2 dimes + 4 pennies

Why did we do this? Well, just simply telling students to "line up the decimal points" doesn't work because they don't understand why they are lining them up and sometimes, they don't even understand what that really means. Trust me, I saw it year after year in middle school and I even see it now with my adult students.

So first we broke it up by place value. And this might have been enough to get the point across. Now my daughter could see we have 9 tenths and 4 hundredths or 94 hundredths or 0.94 or 94/100 or 47/50.... (We like practicing writing numbers in different forms!!)
I took it another step to bring it back to the money so that she had something she could picture in her mind to help it make even more sense. Once we were done discussing, she was able to write the problem correctly, lining up the place values. But she didn't do this because I simply told her to; she did it because it now made sense. She even intuitively filled in a zero after the seven to make it 0.70 + 0.24. Time will tell if she will continue to remember how to add decimals together, but I think we are off to a good start.

Next up, throwing in some whole numbers (dollars) to see if she can figure out where they will go in the whole adding process and of course, some subtraction!

What math are you doing these days? Does math naturally appear in your every day?

Kicking It - Ninja Multiplication Fact Fun

 

Do you have a little one that loves ninjas or karate, or just getting up and moving while doing math?
I found this idea over at Elementary School Garden and I just love it! (I think it was actually created by Apple for the Teacher.) It shares such a cool way to get students/children moving and excited about learning their math facts. And I love that it isn't your average flash card type of practice. You could easily change this up to make it work for other skills if you are not working on multiplication facts and you could even change it up to work for homeschooling. I am going to recreate an activity similar for my middle child and his addition and subtraction facts. He can use family members as partners to get the whole family in on the excitement.

You can read all about it here. Let me know what you think!

Building Number Sense: Moving in Math (Part 1)

            Photo Credit

My son hates to do worksheets. He. Hates. Worksheets. He is six and he was in a public school last year, but we moved and now we are trying out homeschooling. Last year was a lot of socializing,  projects and fun in PreK. Now we are in Kindergarten and he just wants to play, he doesn't want to do work.

So it has been a tough road of mixing in play to learn and then also your standard "put this on paper so I can prove you can do it" kind of stuff. I personally think that there are lots of ways to assess one's knowledge, but we are building a portfolio of what he has learned and including some typical worksheet type things to show he can solve math problems that align with the Kindergarten and First grade curriculum.

My son learns best when he doesn't realize we are doing school work and he is MOVING. So here are some ways to get in math while moving that have worked in our house.

Number Squats: We use this movement to build number sense by skip counting. When you first start, count by 1s. Down is 1, up is 2, down is 3 , up is 4, etc. Then as the child becomes better with counting to 20 or 30, you start whispering the 1, 3, 5, 7,... and saying the 2, 4, 6, 8... louder. Then you even move to "saying the odds in your head" and only saying the evens out loud. Before you know it, the child will be skip counting by 2s.

Leaping Lily Pads: To skip count by other numbers, print out a fun shape, like lily pads, and have the child leap like a frog from number to number. If just starting out from skip counting by 2s, you can try counting by 5s or 10s. If you want to work on adding or subtracting, you could also change this up to include the skills in a number of different ways. One way would be to ask something like 1 + 3 and the child hops over to the 4 and then ask another question and the child hops to the next one and so forth.

Twister: Working on name shapes or properties of shapes? You could draw shapes like circles, rectangles, triangles, squares, etc. or even 3D shapes like spheres, cylinders, pyramids, prisms, etc. on paper. Then tape these to the circles of the twister game. You can play by using the spinner to tell you what hand or foot to use, but also either call out the name of the shape or characteristics of the shape.

Water Balloon Math: This idea from No Time for Flashcards is genius as the warmer weather arrives. I don't think you would have to have hula hoops for each one, and you could even get out of printing the numbers by just writing them with sidewalk chalk on a driveway, side walk or patio. You could also make this suitable for older kids by using fractions, decimals or even integers!

Hopscotch: This is an old favorite and it shows how math really is every where! Take this up a notch with fractions as shown on this lovely blog.

Fire Hose: This idea is perfect for all the little firemen and firewomen out there. I know my boys would love it. Basically, you can work on anything for this activity. You could just write numbers in chalk on a fence, sidewalk, driveway or patio and then give them adding or subtracting problems. They find the answer and "put out the fire." You could also write the question and give them and answer. Ask them to find the question that would have that answer. You could use this for site words too. Check out more here.

Be sure to check back next week for part 2 of the series: Building Number Sense.

What are your favorite ways of getting kids up and moving while learning math?

More Sight Word Love

 

             







Do you practice Sight Words with your loves during your day? There are lots of really fun ways to practice. Here are some of the things that my 6 year old and I do:

* Write as many sight words on the chalk board as possible. I call them out and he finds and erases. If you don't have a large chalkboard, a white board would do the same. Or you can even write them on a piece of paper and take a yellow marker and tell your love to "butter up" each word.

*  I gave my love a red piece of construction paper and some off-white yarn. He pretends he is writing sight words with spaghetti.

* We have alphabet stamps. He writes the words and stamps the words. (The set pictured is what we have and they are on sale at Joann's for $9.99 right now! This is NOT an affiliate link.)

* I placed a bit of paint in a ziploc baggy and he uses his finger to write the words on the outside. It looks and feels cool to him. I was nervous that the paint would come out and also taped the top of the bag. (Similar idea here)

*Parking lot! On card stock, I drew a parking lot. In each space I wrote a sight word. Then he drives matchbox cars to the words as I call them out. He LOVES this one. And we have several different parking lots with different words. Sometimes we connect to make a bigger parking lot and sometimes we just use one at a time.

* Magic Sight Word. My little guy also loves this one. We write sight words with white crayon on a piece of paper and paint over it. It makes the sight word show up really cool.

* Roll a sight word. Here we pick 6 sight words to practice. Each number on a regular die corresponds to one of the words. He tosses the die and writes the word for the number he lands on. So if 3 was "with" every time he rolled a 3 he would write "with" in a printout. I have him color them too and make it a bar graph and we talk about which bar is shortest, tallest and which word won.
 (If anyone would like my roll a sight word print out - let me know and I will email it to you.)

* My son suddenly started asking for word searches. It helps him practice spelling the words right and knowing which are capital and which are lower case. And it is fun to find things. You can get some pre-made sight words here.

*We haven't done this one yet, but it would be great for any little love that likes to move and feel like he/she is playing a game. Looks like you write the words on paper plates, hang them up and toss a tennis ball or something else at the words as you call them out.

How do you make it fun to practice sight words? I would love to hear about it!

Homeschool Pi Day Activities

 

Yes, you guessed it. I am a math geek! I love math. And any reason to celebrate math is good to me. So this Saturday happens to be 3.14.15 or Pi Day!

Do you remember this from school? Pi is the ratio of the circumference of the circle to the diameter of the circle. And the cool thing is that this ratio  is the same for all circles.

Pi is an irrational number which means it cannot be written as a fraction and that when written as a decimal it will just go on and on and on and on... without repeating. The actual digits are 3.14159265359...

So what can you do to celebrate this beautiful holiday of mathematical deliciousness?

1. You could have your kids find circular objects, measure the circumference and measure the diameter. Then divide. After a few objects they should notice that all of their answers are near 3.14. And you can discuss how human error might get in the way of getting exactly the same answer.

2. Make a Pi chain with colored pieces of construction paper. Assign a color to each digit (i.e. 0 - red, 1 - green, 2 - blue, etc.) Then use the chain to practice memorizing the digits of pi. On Sunday you could have a competition to see who has memorized the most digits.
(You could also do this as a bracelet with pipe cleaners and beads. Math bling!)

3. Like music? There are several pi songs out there. Check out some here, here, here, and here. Or make up your own music!

4. Check out the history of pi or some funky stuff about pi at Joy of Pi.

5. Make a pi day piece of art or t-shirt that shows off what you know.

6. Find out how pi is used in other types of math (calculus, trigonometry, or even other geometry applications.

7. Make a pie or cake  and decorate it with pi info that you learned. Then, of course, eat it!

Do you celebrate pi day? What activities make your celebration fun?

Photo Credit

Tape Diagrams for Solving Word Problems

Unless your child is in a public school using Eureka Math or some other Common Core curriculum, you may not have heard of a tape diagram before. I know they were new to me. Although they are new, this doesn't mean that they are bad. In fact, they are quite a handy little tool for modeling math problems and solving.

I am starting a new series, where I will be sharing some tape diagram love. I hope you will join in. And feel free to ask questions if you have any.

A few weeks ago, I gave my daughter this word problem to solve:

Kyla spent three-eighths of the day sleeping. How many hours did she sleep?

This problem could be kind of tricky. But we can start by creating a model. We want to know how many hours are in three eighths of a day, so lets start by breaking up the day into eighths.

Here is one day:





Now, since there are 24 hours in each day, we can divide the 24 by 8 to see that there are 3 hours in each section. If your child doesn't have their division (or multiplication) facts down, they could do an equal share here, where they share the 24 hours equally to each section and end up seeing that there are 3 in each.

This tells us that each eighth of a day is 3 hours long. But we actually want three eighths of a day.

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

From the tape diagram, we can see that three eighths of the day is 9 hours. So Kyla must have slept for 9 hours.

So looking at the model, my daughter was able to determine that three eighths of the day can be calculated by dividing 24 and 8 and then multiplying by 3 or repeatedly add the three hours. 

This process is nice because it really helps the child  visually see how the amount of time sleeping compares to the amount of time spent on other things throughout the day. And it gives them a visual look at which operations to use instead of just memorizing procedures.

Have you used a tape diagram? Have tape diagrams showed up at home on homework?