Fun New Math Game

As I may or may not have mentioned, teaching AC math is a bit of a challenge. It's not that she's not good at math, quite the opposite is true. She is a math whiz if she's doing it in her head. She just has a mental block where math work is concerned. I think it's partly a confidence issue.

After beating my head against a wall and causing my ever-patient homeschooling friends to want to beat their heads against a wall due to my incessant whining about our math struggles, I finally took the advice of all three of those friends and ditched our math curriculum (for the time being). Instead, we do kitchen math, mental math, math games, games that are not math games but that require math skills (like Yahtzee), and work from the incredible "Math Pamphlet" that my good friend made for AC. (That's a whole other post. It's really wonderful.)

In my search for ways to work on math without it seeming like we are working on math, I came across the Exact Change Card Game. Not only is it a great way to teach money skills, but it is perfect to teach children how to add a series of numbers with regrouping. I have AC do all the adding for all of us. It's great practice and is a good confidence builder for her. I think it's really going to help. Hopefully, we can start our Singapore Math curriculum again soon.

2nd Grade Math Is Going To Kill Me

I tend to post about all the fun things we do here in our little school at home. Readers of this blog (all three of you) might get the idea that it's just all rosy and cheery all the time...that all we do is read, do crafts, cook, take field trips, socialize (imagine that!) and have fun. We do a lot of that.

We also do math. Or at least we try.

I used to be able to get my hair colored every six weeks. That is, I used to do it every six weeks until I started teaching Thing 4 math. Now I have to go every five weeks and I should go every four. I have a lot of gray hair. I blame it all on math.

Thing 4 does not like math. In fact, she hates math. She will do just about anything to avoid doing math.

She's not bad at math. Actually, she's quite good at it as long as it's not pencil and paper math. Ask her how many eggs are in four dozen and she can tell you without even stopping to think about it. Ask her how many weeks are in three months. She can tell you that, too. You can even ask her how much change she'll get back if the item she's purchasing is $14.50 and she gives the clerk a twenty.

But she hates doing math in school.

Math is going to be the death of one of us.

Here's a photo I took the other day when we were doing math. When I left, there were only two problems on the board...nothing else. The problem on the left, I worked with her. The problem on the right (the one where she is incorrectly subtracting from left to right) is the one I gave her to do while I ran and switched the laundry out and started another load. One problem. That's simple enough, right?

When I came back, the board looked like this:

Excuse me while I call the salon.

Curriculum Choices - Part 1

I've made a lot of changes for the upcoming school year. I'm excited about our new curriculum choices.

Here is what I'm using for Thing 3:

Singapore Math - This curriculum is different than the "drill and kill" math we are used to from our public school days. The goal of Singapore Math is to "teach our young to think creatively and apply knowledge innovatively" and to develop "creative independent learners". It moves quickly and may not have enough practice problems for children who need more time on a particular concept. We used it last year, and it was perfect for my kiddo who enjoys math.

Life of Fred Math Series - I love this humorous, creative math series. It's self-teaching and requires kids to use their critical thinking skills. We will alternate Life of Fred with Singapore.

Michael Clay Thompson Language Arts, Level 2 - I'm crazy about this Language Arts curriculum! I can't wait to start using it. It was written by an expert on gifted education with gifted children in mind. It covers grammar, vocabulary, poetry and writing. The text is both beautiful to look at and read. It's very engaging. I think we're really going to like it! (Hat tip to my neighbor, good friend and fellow OE mom, Mel, for turning me on to both MCT and Life of Fred.)

Lively Latin - We started Latin last year but used a different program. It was DVD based and just didn't work that well for us. I've had a chance to read through Lively Latin and I think it's going to be great! I like that it incorporates history, art study, and culture. It also has games and hands-on activities to make learning Latin more fun!

English From The Roots Up - This is just a fun, easy way to improve vocabulary. We work on four or five of these roots every day while the kids are eating breakfast.

Oak Meadow History and Science, Grade 5 - I have searched high and low for secular History and Science curricula. (While I am a Christian, I would rather teach History and Science from a secular view-point.) I finally found Oak Meadow and I really like it. It's a Waldorf-inspired curriculum, and it incorporates a lot of art, nature study, and projects.

Our Beautiful America Copywork Book - I use this for handwriting practice for Thing 3. We started it last year and he really enjoyed it. The family who wrote this book took a trip to visit all 50 states. Along the way, they recorded interesting facts about each state. This book has two to three information entries for each state.

Spelling Wisdom - We use this for spelling and dictation practice. The book is filled with inspirational writings from great authors, politicians, speakers, and some from the Bible.

Rosetta Stone Spanish - We started this last year, too. Thing 3 really enjoys it. I like that it's self-paced and he can do it independently. I'm not sure it's the best way to learn Spanish...in fact, I'm sure it's not. However, it works well for us right now. I anticipate having to find a real, live Spanish teacher one of these days. Until then, we'll continue with Rosetta Stone.

That's the formal "stuff" we will use. In addition to those things, both kiddos will journal, work on nature journals, work through a reading list of classics, and take music lessons. We will go on lots of fun field trips, and will continue to see lots of live theater through the Young At Art program. Both children want to start blogs, too. We'll see how that goes.

It's going to be a good year!

Some days are good math days...

...and some days aren't. I've finally learned that it's better to let go of math on the bad math days and move on to something else.

It was a bad math day but an excellent day for flower arranging. Thing 4 spent a great deal of time carefully choosing flowers and greenery from our backyard and making flower arrangements. This was one of her favorites.

It made the bad math day a lot less frustrating.

An overdue post

I have been meaning to post a detailed "Year In Review" post but I just can't seem to get around to it. Here's the Reader's Digest version of what I learned this year.

1.  Oak Meadow is perfect for us. The upper elementary (we were in year 5) is much more involved than I had anticipated, and some weeks we had difficulty covering everything completely, mostly because I didn't use only Oak Meadow. I had too many other things in our schedule.
2. Sometimes less is more. (See #1)
3. Swinging helps Thing 4 concentrate. I started noticing that if she was having difficulty focusing on, say...Math, she would ask if she could go swing. When she came back in, her concentration was better. (Everything is relative.) I've talked to other moms who have kids with attention issues who are especially creative, and they have noticed this, too. Interesting. 
4. MCT Language Arts is fabulous, especially the Caesar's English portion.  (Thanks, Melanie).
5. Life of Fred...also a fabulous curriculum. We use this to supplement Singapore Math. It is great for developing higher level thinking skills. 
6. Singapore Math is perfect for Thing 3, not so much for Thing 4. We are switching to Oak Meadow Math for her next year. 
7. It's great to be able to tailor instruction and expectations to each child's learning style, personality and activity level. (See #3 and #6.)
8. As Latin goes, Lively Latin is a really good curriculum.  It's a nice mix of the basics of Latin combined with history, games, art history and puzzles. The online resource is very good, also. That said, we are dropping Latin next year. (See #2.)
9. Rosetta Stone is a great way to learn a foreign language.
10. It's worth paying for a good art class. 
11. We should have planned more field trips and done less "school". Thing 3 was verging on burn-out by the end of the year. (See #2.)
12. CiCi's pizza is over-priced and under-good. We go there anyway.  
13.  Otherwise Educating is great. Summer is greater. 

Curriculum Choices - Part 2

Big changes are also in store for Thing 4 this year, and I am very excited! One thing I discovered last year is that an unconventional child doesn't really do that well with conventional teaching methods. Workbooks and other "school-y" activities just sucked the life out of her and frustrated me.

Oak Meadow, Grade 3 - This is going to be where we focus the bulk of our time this year. This Waldorf-inspired curriculum will be perfect for my little girl who loves art, crafts, cooking, nature and spending lots of time with Mom. The third grade curriculum covers Language Arts, Social Studies, Math, Science, Art, Music, Health and Crafts. There are many activities and crafts included in the curriculum. It's very teacher-intensive, which might not work for some families. It's also a very "gentle" curriculum where children explore topics through reading, re-telling stories, drawing, experimenting, observing and investigation. We cannot wait to get started with Oak Meadow!

Singapore Math - I talked a little about Singapore here. While it's perfect for Thing 3, it's really not perfect for Thing 4, but I haven't found anything I just love yet so we're going to plug along with Singapore. We won't do it every day. I'll likely use Oak Meadow math and math games most of the time, but we'll work on Singapore a couple of times a week.

Handwriting Without Tears - We started this last year and will continue using it until we finish the program. I love this program because it is not teacher intensive, and every homeschool mom needs something like that.

Primary Language Lessons - This is also something that we used last year. Although it was written in the early 20th century, this book is still relevant today. It has wonderful, gentle Language Arts lessons that we work on together. I will use it to supplement Oak Meadow Language Arts.

Thing 3 will also work on her journal and nature journal. She will work through a reading list of children's classics, take dance, piano and maybe start a blog to practice writing and keyboard skills. She's looking forward to field trips and live theater, too!

We are ready to go!

Now That Was A Cool Field Trip!

One thing about Otherwise Educating is that there is never a shortage of things to do. For any non-homeschoolers out there, if you've ever worried about the "socialization" issue (and it's the rare "outsider looking in" who hasn't expressed that criticism, er, concern), please don't worry. I find that we have so many options for enrichment and socialization, that I have to choose carefully or we'd never be at home to work on math and grammar.

We've had the opportunity to do many things away from home this year. We've done some really great things, and there have been a couple of activities that have left me thinking, "Yeah, we probably should have stayed home and worked on math facts."

Our latest field trip was the best yet. Our co-op went to the Tulsa Performing Arts Center for a behind the scenes tour. It was so cool and we all loved it! We have been to many performances at the PAC, including several plays this year through the Young At Art Series (which happens to be the best value in homeschooling), so it was really fun and interesting for the children to see the PAC from a different perspective.

We saw all four theaters at the PAC and were able to go on stage, backstage and to the orchestra pit in the theater where we see the Young At Art plays.

On Stage, Williams Theater:

Orchestra Pit in the Williams Theater:

Backstage:

We saw dressing rooms:

We rode in the freight elevator...

...which was the highlight of the trip for Thing 3:

We even got to go all the way to the top of the PAC to the spotlight room...

...where we had a great view of the Chapman Music Hall:

Orchestra Pit In The Chapman Music Hall:

This is the glass art piece that hangs in the lobby. They say that sucker weighs 4 tons. Think about that next time you're in the lobby waiting for you show.

It was great day!

Our Official First Day of School!

Much to the dismay of my older boys, we have a tradition of taking pictures outside our front door on the first day of school. It's a fun way to see how much the kids have grown from year to year by checking how tall they are compared to the door.



After taking pictures, we did a little math.



For some, math can be a bit of a challenge.



But she got it!



We met some other OE friends for donuts and then headed out to the Oxley Nature Center for a first day of school field trip. We thought it would be fun to take a little hike on the nature trails.



(My daughter is quite the fashionista with those arm warmers, doncha think?)

But approximately 30 seconds after I took that picture, it started to rain. Then it started to pour. It poured for an hour. We poked around the nature center waiting for the rain to stop...but it didn't stop.

There is a lot of cool stuff to touch in that nature center! The working beehive is particularly interesting.



The staff there was great! They answered all the questions our kiddos had, and our kiddos had a lot of questions!

We had such fun! I think I'm going to like this!

Bread Making - Four Subjects, One Lesson!

In history, we are studying Babylonia..."a rich land where there was no money". Thanks to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers creating rich soil, Babylonia was rich because many good food crops grew there. Historians believed that wheat was first grown there.

That was history.

Before we made the bread, we learned about yeast...what it is, what it's job is in bread dough, and how it works. We learned that yeast is a single-cell fungus that "comes to life" when it is put in warm water. We used a thermometer (that was math!) to be sure we had the perfect water temperature because if the water is too hot, the yeast will die. Like all living organisms, yeast needs food to survive. Yeast's food of choice is sugar. When the sugar is consumed, the yeast releases carbon dioxide bubbles, causing the bread to rise.

I wanted to give the children a visual of what, exactly, happens during the fermentation process. So before we started making the bread, we put some yeast, sugar and warm water in a bottle and placed a balloon over the top. As the yeast fermented and released carbon dioxide (which we learned is a gas), the balloon inflated. (My children made the observation that yeast, like people, burp and pass gas when they eat. What are you going to do?)

That was science.

And then it was time to make the bread. The children took turns sifting, measuring (math again!), mixing, kneading, punching and forming.

That was cooking class.

Thing 4 couldn't resist drawing in the flour.

I counted that as a bonus art class for her.

Finally, we had two beautiful, if imperfect, loaves of bread. One for us and one to share with friends.

Who needs a bread machine?

Ahhh...Spring!

Math is so much more pleasant when it's done on the front porch glider.

It took her longer than normal (and that's a l-o-n-g time) to finish her assignment because she spotted the coolest looking bird in the front yard. She spent a good deal of time just observing him. Any day we can combine nature and math is a perfect day in my book.

Freedom To Be Creative

Thing 4 loves to create. It doesn't matter if she's creating with paint, clay, sticks or trash she found in the street. The simple act of creating feeds her sweet little soul. So last week when she took one of her frequent outdoor breaks, it was no surprise to me that she came back in with an armload of flowers, (or weeds, depending on your perspective) and asked if she could make some flower arrangements.

We still had math and cursive to complete, but who am I to stifle the creative spirit of an 8 year old? Math and cursive can wait. Creativity can't. She spent the better part of the next 90 minutes creating and then placing her beautiful arrangements around our home.

I know people wonder how she will ever learn to cope in the "real world" if I don't make her sit for most of the day doing pencil and paper work. I have heard that criticism concern first-hand.

How will she ever learn to sit at a desk for hours at a time if I give in to her need to move?

The answer is "She won't", and that's precisely the point.

I could fight who she is and we would both be miserable. Instead, I choose to allow her to be the person God created her to be, (as much as it frustrates me sometimes).

The black hole of homeschooling "stuff"

How is it that we do school at home, rarely take our books, etc. out of the house, yet we are always losing things?


"Go get your math books, please." "I can't find them." "What do you mean you can't find them?" "I mean they aren't on the shelf or table or in my room. I looked on the couch, in the playroom and even in the car. I can't find them anywhere." If I had back all the time I've spent looking for school books, my house would be clean and I'd never have dirty laundry in the hamper.


And pencils. What's with us not being able to keep up with pencils? In the course of our two years of homeschooling, I have purchased approximately 4,598 pencils, yet we can never find one when we get ready to do school. Are the children eating them? Today, Thing 3 resorted to doing math with a red ink pen because it was either that or a white board marker. The few pencils we manage to scrounge up always have broken lead and/or bad erasers.


I wonder if other homeschoolers have this experience or if we are just terribly, horribly disorganized? Feel free to comment. 

It's A Journey...

You would think after five days of Otherwise Educating that I would have this all figured out, wouldn't you? I would think so!

I'm not the most patient person I know. I'm not even close. So not having this all figured out is killing me.

I feel like I should be doing more. I feel like my children should be learning more. I feel like I'm not as creative as I want to be. I feel like they're bored.

What's wrong with me? It's been five days! They should know all the states and capitals by now. We should be halfway through their math curriculum. And shouldn't my 4th grader be writing a novel? Clearly, I'm a home schooling failure!

There is an adjustment period, for them and for me, but more for me. We're all trying to shake the traditional school mentality of completing an assignment and moving on to the next worksheet. I'm having trouble because I set my expectations too high. I plan to accomplish way more than we can in a day.

As much as I believe in a child's natural desire and ability to learn, I'm having trouble living in the moment and letting them soak up whatever they can. When my daughter jumped up from her spelling work to watch the hummingbird drink from the flowers outside our window, my instinct was to say, "Come back and sit down and focus on your spelling." I had to remind myself that she was learning from watching that hummingbird and that if spelling had to wait, well, then spelling had to wait.

I know we will figure it out and that everything will be fine. I just have to remember that it's a journey, not a race.


"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education." Albert Einstein

Hobby Lobby Homeschool

When I'm out and about with the munchkins, I often try to sneak in a lesson or two. For example, if I buy something that costs $6.84 and give the clerk a $10 (on the rare occasion that I actually have cash in my purse), I'll ask one of the kiddos to tell me how much change I'm getting back. If I'm really quick (and have a calculator handy), I can get the answer before Thing 3 does. He is a math whiz!

Sometimes, a lesson just jumps off a shelf and slaps me in the face. Today was one of those times. We were strolling around Hobby Lobby when I glanced over at a shelf filled with frames and saw this spelling/grammar lesson staring me in the face.

In case you have old eyes like I do, that picture frame says "Grandma's are Great!"

When I saw the frame, I literally gasped and said, "Oh. My. Goodness." My children looked around, expecting to see someone impaled by a knitting needle.

I admit that I am a grammar and spelling snob. It's rare that I read an article on the website of our local paper with stopping 10 times and exclaiming, "For crying out loud! Don't these people proofread?" Even so, I was pretty sure that my 8 and 10 year olds could spot the problem with this frame.

First of all, to be completely nit picky, given that "Great" is capitalized, "are" should have been capitalized, as well. I could let that go, however, if not for the other glaring mistake on this commercially made frame that some sweet child is going to give Grandma for Mother's Day. Let me show you again.

After regaining my composure, I turned to my darling children and said, "Do you see anything wrong with this frame?" Without hesitating, they both said, "It's the apostrophe." Thing 3 then added, "You don't use an apostrophe to make a word plural."

Ahhhhhh. Exactly. You don't use an apostrophe to make a word plural. Ever. You don't do it when addressing Christmas cards. (It's "The Smiths", please, not "The Smith's".) You don't do it on a picture frame.

My children are paying attention.

I did consider the possibility that some sweet child is going to put a photo of Grandma's cookies in this frame, making the caption, "Grandma's Are Great!", entirely grammatically correct. In that case, just ignore this post.

Election Night

We are doing a little school on this election night. Thing 4 is learning about politics and geography. She is coloring in an electoral map as results come in. She's doing a little math, too, as she keeps a tally of electoral votes for each candidate.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Math Can Be Dangerous

Homeschooled Kids Are Weird!

Today marks the fifth time in the short life of this blog that someone has arrived here by doing a Google search with some variation of the words in this blog title. (A while back I had a post titled My Weird, Unsocialized Homeschool Kids, and it is showing up in Google searches that include those words.) I can't help but wonder what the motive was that drove those folks to perform that search. Was it someone who really thinks homeschooled kids are weird and is looking for articles to back him up? Or is it some parent who wants to homeschool her kids but is afraid that homeschooling her kids will make them weird and is looking for evidence to the contrary? Whatever, I find it mildly amusing.

For the record, my homeschooled kids are weird, but it has nothing to do with the fact that they are homeschooled. My kids who attend public school are weird, too. As evidence, I'd like to share a photo of a gingerbread house my public school kids decorated together.

For those math challenged people out there (me!), that is Absolute 7 in gum drops. Don't ask me why. All I know is that the boys thought it was pretty funny (because they're weird!)

Nope, my kids' weirdness has nothing to do with schooling. It's all in the genes, Baby! I come from a long line of freaks. Just ask my husband. We take pride in our "weirdness".

For future Googlers who end up here by accident, please read this helpful article to determine whether or not your child is showing signs of weirdness. Early intervention is key.

Kidipede

Our OM 3 curriculum directed me to this fantastic reference site today. Kidipede is an online encyclopedia covering topics in history, science and math. It's a great resource. Check it out!

Free Rice!

My good friend directed me to the coolest website: Free Rice. You answer questions, and for every correct answer you get, they donate 10 grains of rice to the World Food Programme to help end world hunger. There is a running total so you can see how much rice you've donated in one session (or you have the option of keeping a running total).

This is a great site for homeschoolers. Kids (and adults!) can answer questions on art, chemistry, English grammar, vocabulary, geography, math and foreign languages. It's not only fun and educational, it's also a worthy cause! Check it out!

In-School Suspension

You've always heard that girls are easier, right? WRONG! Thing 4 is going to give me a run for my money. She can't sit still and focus to save her soul has a little trouble concentrating.

I had to move her to the dining room (by herself) so she could get her Math finished and so her brother could concentrate on his work (in the other room).

And again, she makes quite the fashion statement.