BAck to math

We got back to math today - Soren was doing shapes and I asked her to observe what made a triangle a triangle, after we had discussed polygons. When we decided what made a polygon a polygon, she had the realization that triangles are polygons! I guess that's a good exercise in paying attention to detail and to beginning sets. she also did some measuring in cm.

Emma was working on division by breaking numbers down into more manageable pieces. I think she would have been better off just doing the long division, but she finally got it. I got out the multiplication chart so she could focus on the process more, instead of struggling w/ computation every time, since she still doesn't have the tables memorized.

Then they each did some cursive. Soren is loving it and is so proud of herself! Now she's reading aloud to me - Junie B. Jones is a Beauty Shop Guy and Emma is reading R.L. Stine.

They lost the privilege of going to the science museum today because they are just sooo disorganized in the morning, despite my best attempts. So we're doing "school" at home today and I'm micromanaging their time, although even with that, Emma took over an hour to eat lunch. Argh!

Oh, but Emma also did some fractions while helping me cook potato soup for dinner.

LCG 1/25

Hello parents,

Today we had our last class in January!

We started with our opening verse and songs. We were joined by Tom Hall, Emma Kilmer's step-dad. It was great to have him in class.

We did some bean bag passing with our songs, and 3's and 4's times tables, and we started a lovely new poem "The Snowflake Fairies."

Then we got back to painting. We did winter scenes-- working on capturing the essence of snow. With only three colors-- red, yellow and blue-- the children painted beautiful paintings, with some beautiful combinations of colors and color-mixing, and experimenting with use of the sponges. Tom was a big help-- that extra pair of hands really helps at paint time.

We had a few minutes for recorder-- please have your children bring their recorders next week-- Emma K, Erin and Lila were all missing theirs today. Please have the children check their baskets for supplies before they leave home. Also-- slippers or shoes would be helpful, as we walk through the often-wet hallways to the bathroom...

We moved into handwork-- almost all of the class worked on squares for our class blanket.

Snack was a lot of fun with an old-fasioned apple peeler and corer. We ended with some clapping games.

I sang two new songs that we'll be working on-- a sledding song, and our St. Francis song that we'll sing in the play.

I told our new story, "St. Jerome and the Lion," and we did beeswax.

I read through our play and the children did some preliminary play acting. At this point our play will be on Tuesday, April 12 during class time, and FRIDAY APRIL 15 in the evening. Please let me know if the 15th absolutely will not work for you. Our options are quite limited with the church. The Fellowship Hall is not available on Wed. and Thurs. evenings, so we went with Friday.

Re tsunami aid--Please send in your contributions to our box (see list below). Thanks for the contributions that came in today.

We'll have a small bake sale NEXT TUESDAY, Feb. 1-- we'll just put our goodies out on the bench in the hall. Anything you can contribute would be great.

In addition, we'll also sell some baked goods at the LCG TALENT SHOW FEB. 15 (more details to come) Again, anything you can contribute would be most appreciated. But please only do what you want-- this is all optional.

If the children want to work on earning money on their own (e.g., shoveling snow), we'll have a container in class for them to put their contributions in.

Sledding anyone?? Let us know if anyone wants to get together for fun in the snow.

Wilcox's are on for snack/clean-up next week.



Still haven't done the quarterly reports. Must do it this weekend! Girls have taken a few days off of math, mostly due to crazy schedule. Now we're working on puppy training skills!

Dividing and multiplying fractions

Emma and I spent some time on fractions. We talked about fractions as ratios.

She was asking about how far we walked to go sled-riding, and how far a block is. I told her that it was five blocks to get downtown from my apartment, and that that distance was a half mile. Then I showed her how to calculate what distance one block is, based on that. She got it, to an extent. I went over multiplying and dividing fractions with her as well. We went over the fact that any number can be a fraction by putting it over one, and why that's true. Then we went over how you can multiply fractions by multiplying straight across. I explained dividing fractions by telling her to flip the bottom fraction upside down, then multiply straight across. To her, this is a "trick", but later she'll be able to understand very quickly why it works (for example, when dividing hours into mph to get the miles traveled).

I can't believe a whole week has gone by. We've done math just about every day. Soren started fractions, and Emma is deep into multiplying and dividing (using a number line) fractions and figuring out greater and less than. :::sigh::: if she could just retain some of the mutliplication tables in that brain of hers, it would be so much less labor intensive!

Soren is really doing well with all her math stuff. We did MLK Day activities on Monday, with reading comprehension and writing included. Soren really insisted on me sitting there and reading theq questions with her which was a little frustrating. I *know* she understands what she reads, but she gets so frustrated so fast! Her first reaction is always negative, as in she always assumes she doesn't know what to do!

Quarterly reports are due soon (I think!) already, so I am going to get those done for the end of January hopefully.

Update from LCG:

Hello parents,

Sorry-- this is LONG-- please read through to the end for snack list and info on relief project.

CLASS SUMMARY
We started with our usual verse and songs, then moved into beanbags with songs, 3's and 4's, and introduced a poem-- "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

Then we did a mirror form drawing. We continued to review on recorder, trying to bring everyone up to speed on the same songs. The children were antsy to knit, so we started early, singing a bit as we knitted.

After snack we re-told the story of St. Francis, then drew and wrote the story in our main lesson books. Then I read the children the play-- which I am working to re-write a bit.

TSUNAMI RELIEF PROJECT
At handwork time, we talked with Melissa about our tsunami relief project. We decided on a "kids kit"-- Melissa found this for us (put together by a child psychologist-- to help children feel more "normal" after a catastrophic event)-- and the children signed up for what they want to bring. We will also be doing some fund raising-- to buy whatever's left on the list, to pay for postage ($3), and possibly to make a cash donation to a place like the Red Cross or UNICEF.

They'd like to work on their own raising money by shoveling snow, etc. and do a class bake sale project. We thought we'd shoot for Feb. 1 bake sale. Can anyone help with organizing on this?? Please let me know. Thanks.

Here's the list, with sign-ups for the kit-- let me know if this is NOT going to work for you.

CHILDREN'S AID KIT SIGN-UP

stuffed bear-- Erin
small ball-- Erin
harmonica-- Allysa
slinky-- Lila
yo-yo-- Molly
jump rope== Nat
paper-- ???
crayons-- Emma M.
eraser-- Emma K.
6 pencils-- Michaela
pencil sharpener--???
scissors-- Erin
ruler-- Lila
6.5 qt. clear plastic box with lid-- Lynn

Raise money-- Lila, Allysa, Michaela, Emma K, Emma M, Molly, Nat.


And finally-- here's the snack list-- I tried to make it equitable, and arrange snack near their birthdays.

LCG 1/11/05

Hi all,

It was nice to be back in class today. We missed Allysa though.

We started with our opening verse and songs. Then we sat down to do beanbag passing-- we did our 3's times table, which is going well. I introduced a new song which we'll use for our 4's.

The children seem to love their beanbags--we might try to make beanbags one of these weeks so they can take some home.

We sang a bit, and played recorder. Let me know if you ever want me to show you a song on recorder so that you can work with your child at home.

For form drawing we continued with our mirror images. Then we used our bodies and tried a challenging yoga balance pose-- tree pose.

Melissa was helping sub for Julia, so we were on our own for handwork. Everyone seems to be knitting well. I'd like to move forward with our knitted squares for our class blanket.

This then led into a discussion of the tsunami-- all of the children seem to be aware of what happened. They shared what they know, and also expressed a desire to help. I'd love to work on a class project-- we talked about each trying to raise money, perhaps by shoveling snow, or helping a neighbor with errands.

Molly mentioned that her church is organizing a drive to collect basics like soap, toothpaste, washcloth, etc. Let me know if you have thoughts on how to organize this. I know the need is great, and ongoing, and I'd love to see the evergreens contribute.

After snack we had a nice long time to jump rope, and work up some heat. Then we sat down for main lesson. Now we begin our second main lesson-- Lives of Saints (or amazing people). We started with one of my favorites, St. Francis. The children modelled beeswax from the story. It looks like St. Francis and the Wolf will be our play. We'll start reading it through next week.

We ended with some clapping games, rotating partners so they can all work with each other.

For the winter, if there is snow, and it's not too cold, I wouldn't mind ending class a few minutes early so the children can play in the snow. Let me know if this works for you, or if it doesn't, if you'd be able to come a few minutes early for dismissal.



Soren did great when I dropped her off, despite my fears that 3 weeks off would have left her w/ separation anxiety again. I went and bought her a cursive book, but don't like it and want to order one like Emma's for her.

Soren is reading her way through the Junie B. Jones series right now and Emma is listening to the LOTR trilogy on CD (thanks David!) and finishing reading the HP books.

Emma did some serious fraction work on Monday, with common denominators and mulitiplying and dividing - I don't think I'm doing a very good job of teaching it logically. I need to look at a book about it, so she doesn't get confused.

Math

Our quest to do math every day is going well. Soren is currently working on low level multiplication and has many of the tables already memorized.

Emma is working on the distributive property with multiplication, division and addition. She is also about to start learning graphs and more complex work with fractions. She is learning long division, multiplying 1x2 numbers in columns and adding and subtracting columns of numbers. She's getting faster. Unfortunately, she has a hard time memorizing things (like me) and she has to do the work every time. She admits that doing it every day is making it easier to remember stuff though!

We're also back to doing spelling and writing. Soren finished her printing workbook and I need to get her a cursive one. She is very excited to get started with that!

I need to do my quarterly report this week (already!). I am anxious to get it done.

Things are going very well!

catching up

Emma did some math yesterday with substitutions on a grid. It made her do addition and subtraction and logic. Soren did a couple of pages of addition and subtraction as well.

Today Soren and Emma did a lot of writing because they did their thank you notes for the holidays and Soren's bday.

We went to see Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events. It was pretty good. Soren followed it much better than she tends to follow live action flicks, so that was pretty cool. We had the theater all to ourselves except for one guy ahead of us. Jude slept through the whole thing. What a guy!

They have been watching a lot of animal planet lately. Have I mentioned that they've been vaguely following the tsunmai news and have decided to donate some of their allowance? Pretty cool.

Writing and math

The girls have been practicing their writing by writing each other notes about how annoying the other one is ;).

Emma is playing her new electronic hangman game.

Soren has been practicing math by subtracting 5s from numbers in the car, b/c my clock is set 5 minutes fast. She's getting fast!

They are also reading everything in sight. I can't stop them. They are voracious. I can't even keep track of what they've read because they're doing it so fast!