It’s another cozy day at home for us today, which I really enjoy. Here’s some thoughts I had for ways to fill it. Feel free to join in!
1. Silly similes. Teach the kids what similes are (sim-i-lees– comparison words that use “as” or “like,” as opposed to metaphors which say something is something like “all the world is a stage” or “a sea of faces”). Brainstorm together and list a bunch of predictible ones that everybody knows (black as night, quiet as a mouse…). When you have a nice list, have each child make up a new simile for each phrase. Try to be silly and creative, but still accurate. Then share your lists.
2. Make winter collages and cards from old magazines. We’ve been doing this to make our holiday cards this week and it’s lots of fun. I ripped […]
Original post by Alicia
We had fun doing some of the 10 fun things to do that I posted the other day so I thought I’d brainstorm 10 more.
1. Make up polls and graph the results. We’ve done favorite ice cream flavors and colors in the past. We even graphed the favorite colors one in M&Ms (I bought Easter and regular colors to cover all the bases!). Let the kids pick their own categories to poll about and call friends and relatives to get their votes.
2. Report on a historical event as a news report. Let the kids pick an event and play news reporters to fill in viewers about what happened. If you have more than one child, let one be an anchorwoman, one a reporter, one a witness and so on. Videotape it if you can!
3. Chart the temperature. Find out the highs or lows for the past month (or week) […]
Original post by Alicia
(You have to say the title of this post with a vaguely French faux accent in the dulcet tones of a six-year-old, as in: Mish-i-ohn complet-eh, since that is JediBoy’s current favorite phrase.)
JediBoy wrapped up his studies in Math-U-See Beta today. Gamma is out on the table, patiently waiting for Monday.
Overall, we continue to enjoy this math curriculum. It provides me with a step-by-step structure, so that I don’t worry I’ve forgotten or glossed-over anything vital. Like me, JediBoy seems to have a fairly good intuitive number sense, and he enjoys playing with numbers and puzzling things out.
Of course we have Those Days. You know Those Days. As cool as math can be, there are days when I’m tired, or he’s tired, or BabyGirl is coveting my attention, and I just want him to do the problem already.
That’s not easy. When I push him, […]
Original post by piseco
We’ve run into math problems this year, or rather problems with math concepts this year in Pre-Algebra. First we needed to spend weeks on the concept of adding and subtracting with negative numbers. Finally though we passed that hurdle and adding and subtracting with negative numbers became “easy.” What a happy day it is when I hear Mark utter those words while we do math.
Original post by mtpleasant
ht to MaryM at WTM Forums
I spent last evening exploring Khan Academy vido library, watching videos and doing math problems. Can’t wait to have the boys explore this site too.
It is our mission to accelerate learning for students of all ages. With this in mind, we want to share our content with whoever may find it useful. Below are our videos that are integrated with our exercise modules. We don’t cover all math topics yet, but we hope to. Let us know if you find this useful and have any requests or suggestions (email sal@khanacademy.org).
They have 20 videos for Singapore Math Grade 3 book too! Click on the ‘All Playlists’ to find those, and ones on physics, statistics, SAT math prep.
Login, (free, and easy) and go through their exercises. Their ‘knowledge map’ lays out what skills you know, need to learn, which ones are foundational […]
Original post by mtpleasant
The other day I joked with Victoria “What, I have to give you life AND feed you?”. That’s not all I have to do, it turns out! I have to school these people too.
Real school. No more of that relaxed, fun, child-led business. Oh no. They want school, and lots of it.
Starting at 8 a.m.
With homework.
And pop quizzes.
Oy.
Today we did our first full day of an honest-to-goodness math curriculum. I had a complete, like-new set of A Beka 5th grade, which just happens to be Victoria’s grade. I asked her last night if she’d like to use it and she surprised me by saying heck yes.
We are really not A Beka kinda people. I am the kind of homeschool mom who does math by tossing chocolate chips into my children’s mouths when they get the right answer, the kind to write out story problems involving six-legged cats who […]
Original post by Alicia
I love aha moments. They light up my world and are one of my favorite things about homeschooling, being there for the good ones. We had another one yesterday.
Math, for JediBoy, has been an on-again-off-again enjoyment. He was very interested in learning about math, trying things out, and we played with lots of manipulatives and did lots of talking and exploring when he was 3 and 4. Last year, I decided to try a more formal program with him, because to me the nature of elementary math lends itself well to a linear curriculum. We bought Math-U-See Alpha, and although JediBoy enjoyed the blocks and some of the supplemental topics, he found drilling his addition and subtraction facts pretty boring. We stuck with it (in a flexible, no-pressure kind of way) because I agree with the reasoning that later skills are easier to perform […]
Original post by piseco
You know one of the things I love about homeschooling?
It’s the opportunity to stop in the middle of what you are doing to follow another path.
As I’ve mentioned zillions many, many times, I really want GB to become more fluent with his math facts. I’m really trying to be patient here.
Really.
I keep having to remind myself that when I was in the 5th grade my parents made me go to Summer school for math because *I* wasn’t getting the multiplication facts down.
Sound familiar?
So, I’m trying to stay patient and offer any way that I can that will help GB in the quest for instant fact recall.
Today I remembered an old program that I bought WAY back in the 3rd grade when GB was first starting to dabble in multiplication. It’s called TimesTales. And I took it out and looked at it and my first thought was that it was too […]
Original post by Robin
I was feeling bad for not doing enough homeschool today so this evening I went down and gathered up the kids. I grabbed a bag of dark chocolate chips and their eyes lit up. They know the drill. Chocolate chip math is a favorite around here.
We’ve been doing some version of CCM for years. It’s a fun way to combine dessert with arithmetic!
For tonight’s version, I gave each kid a number. Jack was 2, Anna was 3 and Victoria was 4. I told them that I’d say a number, and if their number was a factor of my number then they should raise their hands. I explained to Jack that any even number would be a multiple of 2, so as long as it ended in 0, 2, 4, 6 or 8 then 2 would be a factor of my number.
Then I started tossing out numbers. I did […]
Original post by Alicia
Today we spent some time on math facts.
Yes, it is repetition.
Yes, we’ve done it ALL before.
Ugh! I’m so tired of going all over this again.
But I must get GB fluent in his math facts. I must!
The first thing we did was work on a great multiplication facts tool. It’s a kid’s freeware download. First you study the facts, then you practice either with a timer, or without. And the timer can count down from a certain amount of time, for timed trials, or you can count up if you want a little less pressure.
Later, we tried this concept, which I saw on the TV show, Kids by the Dozen, on The Learning Channel - great show by the way. On it, the mom, who homeschools all 16 of her kids (seven of whom have grown up and moved out) was working on multiplication facts with one of her little ones. […]
Original post by Robin
I think most people know about FreeRice by now, the cool web site that tests your vocabulary and earns rice that’s donated to the hungry. They’ve expanded and now have categories like chemistry symbols, multiplication, world capitals, foreign languages and more! What a great way to help others and help your kids (or yourself) learn.
Original post by Alicia
ugh! I feel like I am pushing a rope trying to teach Mark math. At moments I feel like he gets it and then he doesn’t. Three steps forward and 5 steps backwards is often how I feel it is around here with Mark and Math. Right now he doesn’t get negative numbers, or combining like-terms, or adding, or subtracting….. he’s frustrated by it all too. I think he’s not ready for it either.
Since he missed most of the adding or subtracting negative numbers on the Key to Algebra Book 1 test, I had made up drill sheets of equations like this:
-4 - 8 =
for Mark to do, let him practice working with negative numbers. No way could he get it.
Last week he had taken expressions such as this:
-4+ -8 and changed it to -4 - 8 but now! No, he doesn’t […]
Original post by mtpleasant
ALERT: If you have come directly to the page for this post (say, from a feed reader) you are going to get the whole thing. It includes solutions to the problem. I tried to put this after a break that you would have to click through to get but that only seems to work if you read it on the main page. Click here to go there now if you aren’t sure you want the solution.
Yesterday AnimalGirl came around to tackle this problem with Tigger, which I blogged about a couple of weeks ago. I thought I’d provide some detail of how they worked on it because I know some folks are interested. First go look at the problem. The girls read through the problem and then focused on the map. They weren’t sure where to start but one of them suggested working out what all the possibilities were and […]
Original post by jove
This morning I took my two dogs for a walk around the neighborhood while Michael rode fast by us. He has quite an exercise program and is very dedicated to it. Routine, he likes that. It was hot on our walk, and humid, and I don’t do well with either. Brutus really doesn’t do well in the heat so when we returned home I filled our kiddy pool with water and while watching them splash and frolic in the water together I walked around my yard.
I love walking around my 2-acre yard, looking at the 120 trees that I planted as little sticks six years ago, marveling at their growth, standing now two or three times my height, and many with trunks that are too wide for my hands to grasp around. I admired the Blue Spruces that were the […]
Original post by mtpleasant
One thing I love about blogging is how much I learn. I hope none of you were under the impression that I have everything figured out. I am a extrovert decision maker, which means that I need to talk about things with others in order to figure them out. And sometimes, just the word someone uses makes a whole bunch of stuff click.
“Probabilistic thinking” is a phrase Sarah used in her comment on my last post. (She also provided a link to a cool simulation so you might want to check that out.) I had been talking about how my general goal for math is to develop the skills needed to spend time working on tough problems and at least move towards a solution. But because the stuff we’ve been working on recently has been probability her response made me recognize a reasonable objective for the probability stuff: shifting to […]
Original post by jove
What fun! Mathbits.com has developed an online treasure hunt of math problems, geocaching style.
In the spirit of geocaching, we have created activities called “MathCaching” which use the internet to find hidden boxes to reveal clues to the continuation of the games. Your success at “MathCaching” is dependent upon your skills at solving mathematical problems.
The MathCaching games are subject area dependent. There are versions of MathCaching for Basic Math Skills (”BasicCaching”), Algebra (”AlgeCaching”), Geometry (”GeoCaching”), Algebra2 (Alge2Caching), Trig (”TrigCaching”), PreCalculus (”PreCalcuCaching”) and Calculus (”CalcuCaching”).
Even the basic one is a bit tricky so I’m suspecting I’ll need to help steer my kids in the right direction. I think they’ll love the idea though, and the challenge. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Original post by Alicia
We’ve been working on more probability problems and this has forced me to recognize what the real goal of this approach to math is: learning to work for sustained periods on tough problems. The difficulties Tigger has faced in the past few days have not been about the math, per se. They seem to have arisen from the fact that the problem I have given her to work on is not one that she should be able to find “the answer” to in 5 minutes. And that even when she has been working for 20 minutes or more and doing good valuable work that contributes to finding the answer, I come an suggest other tacks she might take with the problem.
There has been some shouting, crying, and other frustrated behaviour. But we are making progress. We’ve talked about the importance of the process. About how math isn’t necessarily about solving […]
Original post by jove
That ice-cream problem worked so well that I thought I should keep going with that kind of approach. We haven’t covered much probability so I thought that I would continue in that vein.
This morning we worked a bit with dice talking about the chances of rolling a particular number, rolling it 3 times in a row, rolling it once in 3 rolls, etc. We went on to talk about rolling 2 dice and the probability of different sums, something that is important strategically in some games (including Settlers of Catan, which marks the probability on the number tiles).
But this was not grabbing Tigger’s interest as much as the ice-cream problem did. So I’ve been looking for some other problems. And then I remembered to check my own links page. Duh. The NRICH site is a treasure trove of interesting problems. I did a search on probablity and then looked […]
Original post by jove
The disconnect between the ubiquity of probability in our culture, especially in relation to health and illness, and the poverty of understanding of this area of mathematics strikes me as highly problematic. If one goal of eduction is to prepare our children (and ourselves) to participate in the world, then a solid understanding of probability should definitely be included.
But, as my opening statement suggests, while the world offers many opportunities to delve into the topic in relevant ways, it offers few guides to understanding. There is a lot of misinterpretation of statistics out there that a good education should equip us to recognize and counter.
Take, for example, the relationship between a particular illness and various factors that seem to be correlated with the incidence of this illness. If we exercise regularly, eat well, scorn smoking, and drink moderately should we feel cheated if we develop heart disease? Does the fact […]
Original post by jove
These look like a fun way for the kids to use science, math and more!
Free Weekly Puzzlers
Students use critical and creative thinking as they learn science, language and math! Recommended for grades 3-8 (ages 8-13)…
More details and a sign-up form at Cogno.
Original post by Alicia
From Googol Learning…
Crazy 4 Math Contest Deadline July 30th
The Crazy 4 Math Contest is once again receiving entries from all over the world, showing that mathematics, the universal language, is enjoyed by children everywhere.
This annual contest was founded in 2005 to help students keep up their math skills over the summer. Research indicates that children lose math skills over the summer. But this does not need to be the case. Math skills can actually advance! Summer is the perfect time for children to experience the wonder of learning by exploring and developing new interests. It’s also a chance for them to discover that learning happens all the time, not just in school.
To enter the Crazy 4 Math Contest, children simply have to describe how they use math in an activity they enjoy. Entries must be submitted online by July 30th at www.Crazy4Math.com. The goal is to generate a free […]
Original post by Alicia
Willa has sent me off to read more interesting things. In addition to the points she drew out of this post at Rational Mathematics Education, I wanted to highlight what seems to me a very sound argument for the negative political consequences of the dominant mode of mathematics education.
The piece starts with a long, and very interesting, quote from Fred Goodman, in which he elaborates on the importance of games (as distinct from puzzles) in mathematics education. It is from this that Willa quoted and pondered. I note particularly his statement:
As the world moves closer and closer to a world where Gods collide and their followers depend with greater and greater certainty on the correctness of their God’s solution, we need to look more closely at the relations that might exist between games, Gods and grades. If learning is conceived primarily as a matter of finding the one correct answer […]
Original post by jove
Three random ways the kids learned in each subject the past few days….
Math
Jack was answering addition and subtraction questions for goldfish crackers in Guy and Val’s hotel room this morning.
Victoria did some math pages to earn extra computer time.
The kids’ computer is hooked up to the net now in the living room and Anna instant messaged me this morning to chat. In between chatting I kept throwing out math problems like what’s 23 + 85? I figured if we were going to be silly enough to chat from one floor away I ought to make it count for something.
Reading
Victoria has been reading a newspaper-style book about Ancient Egypt, a Dilbert cartoon book and our new book about the American Revolution.
Anna has been reading a fantasy chapter book.
Jack and I have been reading beginning reader books together. I’ve also been reading to him lots. Current favorites — The Napping […]
Original post by Alicia
We’re not officially doing school at the moment (do we ever? LOL) but it sneaks in anyway. Here’s a few ways the kids have managed to learn despite the (mostly) wonderful weather.
Jack announced yesterday that he could count to 400 by fifties. He did it for me and later counted all the way to 950 by fifties.
Anna and Daddy found a killdeer sitting on her nest in the middle of a dirt parking lot in a nearby wetland. They talked to the DNR worker about her and he said nobody parks there when it’s not hunting season so she should be safe. They researched how long it takes killdeer eggs to incubate (about 28 days) and they visit her every day. That funny little bird sits on her eggs in the middle of the parking lot and if anybody comes near her she either feigns an injury and tries to […]
Original post by Alicia
On that recurring theme, someone on the LivingMath Forum posted a link to a talk by Ron Eglash on fractals in the design of African villages and other aspects of African cultures. Very interesting. I might have to go find some of his books. There is an article available online about the origins of binary code in African patterns, something he talks a bit about in the video.
He also has a website with tools to create designs using African fractals. And one specifically designed for kids as well as a set of tools specifically designed to relate to specific cultures. Hmmm. Lots of possibilities.
Original post by jove
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