Happy Birthday Ca!

3 March 2012

Happy Birthday Ca!

Today is Ca's Birthday! I drove down to my parents today to let the kids play so I could get some birthday shopping done. Tomorrow we are celebrating not only Ca's birthday but also five other cousins who have their birthdays in March! Busy busy month. Glad I did my budget!

After shopping I hurried the kids back home and we got ready for Ca's birthday party with our friends. We had lots of cake, pizza, presents and games. The kids had a blast and after the party was over we watched Puss in Boots (a present Ca received from our friends <3). We went to bed late of course and so again, no books but it was a very fun day.

My friend wants me to draw a chapter header for her book that is coming out on St. Patty's Day. Ahh! Talk about a fast approaching deadline. It wont take long though so I am going to get that done tonight before I go to bed. Check out her book at her blog here and have some fun and enter her writing contest and/or art contest!

So much fun! I hope your day was as good as mine.

Reinventing Math

1 March 2012

Today we reviewed skip counting by 3's. As I said before, Ra has 3-30 down pretty well and when I asked her today if we could try to go to 60 she went all the way to 99! I am so impressed. I really could hardly believe she needed very little help to do it either! But because the pattern repeats itself and we talked about it as much as we did she picked up on the rest of it like it was a cake walk!

When we finished our counting review I let Ra play some more on the computers with her brothers and I watched a YouTube video on Jean Peaget's theory on kids reinventing math. I had never heard of this idea before but it make complete sense after seeing it in action as it is on the video I watched. Here it is so you can see for yourself what you think. I was amazed. (This is the first part of a three part video)

Source: youtube.com via Candiss on Pinterest

When I was first teaching Ra math in K and 1st grade using the Utah Virtual Academy K12 program I wanted to explain to her all of the different ways I see the problem to make it easier to add or subtract. But this isn't how the text books taught and so I believe I was sending my poor little girl too many mixed signals about how to solve a math equation.

After watching this video I pulled out a chalkboard and chalk and sat down with Ra and went through some similar exercises. I wrote an equation and had Ra answer it, then I would have her explain how she came up with that answer. I would then explain to her what I do to get the answer. This is a much more fluid way of teaching math and it also helps improve cognitive thinking, deductive reasoning etc. Very fun exercise, it would be fun to do with a few more kids involved though.

Ra decided she wanted to make some money so she started drawing pictures to sell. She is becoming quite the little artist. Her pricing method was creative, if not a little exaggerated. She counted how many colors she used in the picture and then charged a dollar for each color. So if the picture had six colors it would cost $6.00.

The rest of the day I spent cooking, cleaning and balancing our budget for March.Not my favorite day, but it kinda is too. I like budgeting, it gives me a sense of control and stability, though I also get to see all of the frivolous mistakes we made with our money over the past week(s).

We didn't read anything tonight. I am getting behind on everything with the hubby being home. Hopefully I can get caught up on Monday. This weekend is super full and I know I will not be able to get caught up then, I will just be lucky if we don't get more behind.

Staying Within a Grocery Budget

15 February 2012

My little Ca had an ear ache last night and so I didn't get much sleep which in turn led to a late morning. After breakfast I had Ra help me put together our grocery list. I told her what we needed and she wrote it down. At the grocery store I had Ra write down the cost of each item we were purchasing.

With the produce I explained to her that the price (on most items) is based on pounds. The tomatoes were $0.99 per pound and when we weighed the two tomatoes in our sack it was 1 1/8 lb. I drew a pie for Ra to show her briefly what 1/8 means. We added the $0.99 to the $0.12 (for the 1/8 lb) and come up with $1.11 for the tomatoes. She repeated this exercise with the bananas.

At the eggs I showed Ra that they sold them in increments of 6. They had a half dozen, a dozen and one and a half dozen. I had her divide 12 and 18 by 6 and we found it to be 2 and 3. We then divided the price of the 12 eggs by 2 and the price of the 18 eggs by 3. We came up with prices of $0.99 for the half dozen, $0.74 for the dozen and $0.73 for the one and a half dozen. This wasn't really an exercise we needed to do because I always buy the one and a half dozen because that is how many eggs we use in a week, but it was instructional for Ra and I think she enjoyed it.

Since we bought two loaves of bread and two gallons of milk and two bags of cereal I had her add the price of two together. At the end of our trip the list looked like this:

eggs...........$2.19
bread.........$1.98
milk............$4.58
bananas......$1.65
tomatoes....$1.11
cereal.........$6.74
tortillas.......$0.99
tea...........+ $2.66
                 $21.88


When settled at home again I had Ra write her spelling words two times each. I used the synonyms for "symmetry" for her spelling words this week. Her words are:

equal
symmetry
balance
proportion
unity
consonance
symphony
coherence


I worked on her printing with her a little bit, asking her to focus on making her writing neat and exact. I also needed to remind her several times that it is okay to erase, that is why we write in pencil, so we may be able to fix our mistakes. I also had El practice writing with "A" and "1". After that we watched a few videos from Have Fun Teaching and then watched Donald in Mathmagic Land. I used to watch it a bunch as a kid though I never realized how full of information it is!

I did research on line trying to find some Homeschool Co-ops in my area and found that there was a group meeting in an hour for a once a month get together. I hurried my kids out to the car and called my dad inquiring if he would look after the kids for me. He agreed and I met with the wonderful ladies. They were informative and friendly. I only wished that they were a little closer. They gave me information on how to go about locating the homeschool co-ops that would be in my area. I plan on doing some of that tomorrow as I am falling asleep while typing at the moment I need to go to sleep. Sweet dreams!