fire, gratitude

I am on a bad keyboard, but a quick note. Our house caught on fire today in the basement from an electrical issue. We are all safe, humans and pets. We are so grateful to our neighbors, Lauren Sample, Liza Artman, Mark and Rose Bowler, the Lyons police dept., fire dept. ambulance, chaplain, the Red Cross, Steve/Crow, the Dickasons, for hauling stuff, doing laundry, taking pets, etc. We are so, so humbled and grateful for the support on a Facebook group, the offers of help. We can't even believe the love we have received.

Math as a form of torture

Emma, Soren and I hit the math workbooks on Friday for a few hours. It was a challenging experience, and we didn't get nearly as far as I would have liked. The girls complained all morning about having to do it, so I'm thinking about doing it first thing next time to eliminate that. Of course that doesn't eliminate the complaining *while* we're doing it...

I'm also thinking of working with them one at a time. They would hit things they didn't understand, and one would be stalled while I helped the other. I tried to mitigate this by having them go forward to a question they understood while I helped the other one, but this wasn't all that effective, because Soren hit a whole section that she didn't get.

Emma needs to acquire a fluid understanding of fractions, decimals, and percentages, and how to perform mathematical operations on all of these. She also needs to be able to perform long division and multiplication of large numbers without assistance. I'm tackling the fractions, decimals and percentages by showing how they are all different ways of expressing ratios. So we spent some time converting decimals and percentages into fractions (which I think is the most sensible form for performing mathematical operations). We went through addition of fractions, using least common denominators, and multiplication of fractions, using examples that sparked "a-ha" moments. We went through the fact that any number can be expressed as a fraction by putting it over one, and that any number over itself is equal to one, and why those things are so. This took a while. Luckily, Soren was able to listen in and understand some of it. She helped us find least common denominators and do the basic mathematics involved in the problems we were using as examples.

Soren kind of hit a brick wall when the fourth grade problems started talking about fractions and percentages. She's not ready for some of the problems. We worked on prime numbers and how they're defined. She's interested in things like why all prime numbers are odd (except 2). I think next time, I'm going to cover some basics with both of them and pick out workbook problems that relate to what we talk about.

The biggest problem I had was attitude. They definitely seem to dread working on math, and their attention spans were discouragingly short. Hopefully we'll get to the point where they start to see the magic.
I think I'm going to turn multiplication tables into a car thing on the way to gym. They seem to enjoy doing things like that much more in the car. Probably because there's not much else to do.

The first unit

We're doing math for 3 weeks.

Yesterday we practiced 2 and 3 times tables while swinging and played Snap It Up, a multiplication game. We discussed the commutative property of math.

So far in her 4th grade curriculum, Soren has covered:
number patterns
logic/deductive reasoning
word problems - creating problems with addition and subtraction
using a graph - understanding and creating
estimating
substitutions

Emma has done the following so far:
using a thermometer (WTF? this is 5th grade?)
substitutions
adding and subtracting money
adding and subtracting using decimals
permiters
deductive reasoning
word problems - Emma's biggest problem is figuring out exactly WHAT the problem is asking - a common issue in solving word problems!
maps - reading and drawing
Fractions - simplifying and multiplication of
figuring out sales tax
understanding how to multiply in columns using decimals

We also went to the RAHA un-first day of school picnic and E. practiced her beam and floor routine once.

Soren played with Audrey

They started TOPS yesterday.

Today I had them work online on coolmath.com - Emma did the first 6 lessons on
fractions:

Fractions: What are they?
<2> Fractions: Mixed Numbers
<3> Fractions: The Magic 1
<4> Fractions: Equivalent Fractions Part 1
<5> Fractions: Reducing (Simplifying) Fractions
<6> Fractions: Equivalent Fractions Part 2

She did several problmes on Equivalent and reducing fractions until she finally "got" it and was surprised to learn that she was doing subsitution as well as division w/o even knowing it! She used our multiplication chart to help her out with finding the common dividing number.

Soren practiced the 0-3 times tables on coolmath.com and thought it was too easy ;).

We also went to Strong Museum this morning and Emma did a detective card in the storybook section - it was kind of hard, and fun! Soren helped :) Jude ran around like a nut and distracted me.

They both have been practicing their instruments daily.

Busy!

Cars and Rockets!

The kids are really enjoying this video

And this week we did a bunch of their math already!

2006 Curriculum Plan

September 4th – 21st:

Mathematics: Use school curriculum packets for 4th and 5th grades respectively


September 25 – Oct. 13

Language Arts:

Spelling drills – 15 words a week

Library Skills – finding books and learning about resources – Nonfiction, fiction, reference, biography, autobiography, music, etc.

Study one famous woman and write a short bio

5 Greek or Latin roots


October 16 – Nov. 3

Social Studies:

History of Halloween and Thanksgiving

Medieval Times – Read Tales of Shakespeare, make castle from pandia press kit, The Viking World or something like it

Learn how to use PowerPoint and make a presentation on Vikings or Knights or King Arthur or any topic, with an oral component – using library and internet


Nov. 6 – Nov. 24

Science:

Soren: REAL Science, Life science component - must purchase

Emma: still need something


Nov 27 – Jan. 2
Free Topic

Soren: Erie Canal Topic

Emma: Veterinary Medicine study

Here we go!

OK, Summer is almost over and we're planning our strategy for the year.

The school year schedule is going to be brutal this year, but I think we're ready for it. Lots of structure, and free weekends.

Monday:
9 a.m. Emma's oboe lesson
10 am - 2 pm Emma mother helping
4:30-8:30 pm girls at gymnastics

Tuesday:
10-12 drama
1-4 Lilac Children's Garden
6:15-8:30 Emma gymnastics

Wednesday:
9:30-2 YMCA Homeschool Camp Arrowhead
4:30-8:30 girls at gymnastics

Thursday:
10-12 Drama or writing group
1-3 homeschooling
6:15-8:30 gymnastics Emma
6:30 Soren violin lesson

Friday:
1-4 homeschooling
4:30-6:30 gymnastics

Saturday:
9-12:30 Soren gymnastics

Sunday:
11:00 Religious Education/Church

Tom, David and I sat down and figured out that we are going to do blocks of studies.

3 week cycles of:
math
literacy (grammar, spelling, poetry, greek/latin roots, etc.)
Social Studies (geography, history, civics, cultural studies, United States, country studies)
Open session: review something in depth, or do a project

We came up with several projects we want to do - there is an erie canal project for Soren and a cultural/historical project for Emma. They could also choose to do library skills, dinosaurs/museum studies, or possibly nothing.

We're going to trial it till December and see if we're all still alive ;)

Camp and such

Emma went to camp Gorham for 2 weeks, and did a TON of stuff. Water skiing (made it up!), rock climbing (made it to the top of the hardest wall!), canoeing, swimming, kayaking, horseback riding, hiking, lots of camp songs and team building. she had a blast!

Soren adn I have been reading about Helen Keller and we played Great States today. She's gtting better at knowing what states are where!