Posted by Cindy on July 30, 2007
If you’ve been around me long enough, you know I’m not much on doing one curriculum exclusively. You can read all my “excuses” in previous posts. Truth be told, though, there are so many good and fun things out there, that I can’t bear to pass up many of them! Hence, the reason I do a workbook math curriculum two to three days a week and jump around the other days.
I just posted about my “plan” for Mahayla from Kindergarten up to now, the 5th grade. In that post, I mentioned that I would try to give you some ideas for the “other math” that I use. So, here goes.
Most workbook curriculums I’ve come across simply don’t cover enough, if any, logic, real-life problem solving, hands-on problem solving, graph making, multi-step thinking and other what I call “meaty” work. Over the years, I’ve collected many resources here and there that have these types of thinking skills activities in them. I’ve also tried to bookmark good math sites, too. As I run across something I want to do during the school year, I copy it and put it in a folder so I’m not searching at the last minute for a math activity to do on our days off from workbooks.
Some days, the activities will be short, so we’ll do several of them (logic matrix activities like those found in Mind Benders are an example.) Some times, we may work on one activity for a few days because it’s so involved (like our candy math days that I’ll talk about below.)
Four things to know:
1. These are supplemental activities, so I DO NOT try to work through every activity in every resource!!
2. I try to find activities that are going to add to their math experience, not repeat what they already know. In other words, if their math workbook program has drilled them to death on subtraction with borrowing, I’m not going to find some cutsie seasonal worksheet that drills them on subtraction with borrowing. Now, I might find a thought-provoking activity where subtraction with borrowing is necessary to solving the problem.
3. I usually work through these sorts of activities with them. They are challenging and often require more than one step. I’m sure to be there guiding so frustration doesn’t set in.
4. Please don’t try to go out and aquire everything I’ll mention. I’ve picked these things up over many years and rarely ever spent more than a $1.00 or $2.00 on anything. I’ve also run across the websites over years. Trying to buy, search through or use everything I’ll mention WILL throw you into overload!! More than anything, I’m hoping to give you examples of what I add to our math curriculum and where I find it.
Logic
*I love the Mind Benders books from The Critical Thinking Company.
*AIMS has a fun early logic book called Primarily Bears.
*Logic Posters, Problems and Puzzles
*Puzzlers Paradise
Problem Solving – (includes pretty much everything else like real-life math, creating graphs, etc.)
*Problem Play and Problem Parade
*Venn Perplexors
*Meeting Math Standards With Favorite Picture Books
*Menu Math
*Munchie Math
*Thinking Skills
Fun Individual Activities To Print From The Internet
*A Taste of Fractions
*Symmetrical Design
*M & M Math
*More M & M Math (all M & M activities could be done with a variety of foods – Skittles, candy hearts, trail mix, gummy bears, life savers…….)
*Christmas Math
*Valentine Math
*Birthday Math
Internet Resources
*NC Math
*Math Lab
*Math Magic
*Literature For Learning Math Concepts
*Literature & Money Lessons
*NCTM Activities
*Auntie Math
*Menu Math
Online Activities
*Math Playground
*Math Cats
*The Golf of Mexico
*Online Manipulatives
*Rainforest Maths
My children are always so excited on our “problem solving” days. I hope your children will enjoy a little spicing up of their math time, too!
Posted by Cindy on July 26, 2007
Here’s a look at our first-ever mini offices. Mahayla made her own. I made Caleb’s. He is very excited about these, which was quite a shocker to me. I expected Mahayla to be the excited one as she loves this sort of thing.
I wrote a post earlier with links to pictures and print-offs for mini offices. I found just about everything I copied from those sites.
Mahayla’s Language Arts Office includes lots of writing helps and editing reminders, and a parts of speech chart.
Her Math Office includes – oops, a cursive chart! – a multiplication table, measurement equivalencies and conversions, a Roman Numerals chart, a place value chart, a reminder of radius vs. diameter, word problem key words, and a US map (because we didn’t know where else to put it.)
Caleb’s Reading Office includes sound reminders for all letters and many blends, a phonics rules charts, manuscript and cursive charts, an editing checklist, a punctuation chart and some tips for writing good paragraphs.
His Math Office includes a 100 chart, a coin chart, an ordinal numbers chart, perimeter vs. area reminders, a skip counting chart, spellings of the days of the week and months of the year, and that pesky US map.
Posted by Cindy on July 25, 2007
Some background first…..When Mahayla was in Kindergarten, we started with Horizons Math. We continued with Horizons through 3rd grade, but used it loosely. What I mean by that is I usually only bought one of the two workbooks and never bought the Teacher’s Guide. Two or three days a week, we would do one workbook page from Horizons and one workbook page from Miquon. The other two days I would pull from logic books, problem solving books, NC Math or we’d do real-life sorts of things. (I’ll post very soon on my math resources.)
Last year (her 4th grade year), we switched to Saxon 5/4. I loved that it was “self-teaching” and I could go over the lesson with her and then leave her to work on the problems without much help. She, on the other hand, hated it. She didn’t like copying work from the book to her paper. She didn’t like all the problems – mental math, new lessons problems, practice problems, fact sheets. So, I backed off. She only had to do mental math, the new lesson problems and 1/2 of the practice problems. And this only two or three days a week because we were still doing “other math” the rest of the week.
Even though she liked this plan better, math was still such a struggle. I can’t count the number of tears. I can’t tell you how many times Principal Daddy had to be called upon. I can’t tell you how frustrated I became day after day of fussing with her about doing the Saxon work.
Fast forward to yesterday. Since we only finished about half of Saxon 5/4 (because of adding other math each week), I wanted to see if she needed to finish the 5/4 book or if she was ready to move on to 6/5. I printed out the Placement Test and let her go for it. No help. Would you know that little stinker easily surpassed the 5/4 book, the 6/5 book and almost made it past the 7/6 book???
So here’s what I told her (as she’s laughing at her accomplishment.) THIS year, I’m keeping a brick by me during math time. If she dares to complain once about how hard math is, I’m throwing the brick at her! (Just kidding!) Seriously, though, NO COMPLAINING ALLOWED! I’ve decided to keep with my plans of Saxon 6/5 instead of moving her up. One reason, I already have it! ($$$) Another reason, I see lots in the book that we’ve never covered that I’d hate to skip. And finally, I plan to stick to my schedule of Saxon two or three times a week, so 6/5 makes more sense.
My point in all this? Aren’t you glad I’m getting to the point? Two of the biggest questions I’m asked are, “Aren’t you afraid of not finishing a workbook?” and “How do you know you’re covering everything your child needs if you use so many different materials?” I’ve always said, the proof’s in the pudding. Here’s a prime example. Workbook companies don’t know YOUR kids. Workbook companies also don’t KNOW everything. Workbook companies can’t possibly cover EVERYTHING either. You know what your kids need. You know how they learn best. You know what their interests are. You know how much of one type of learning they can handle before they explode. You have mommy’s intuition. You have the Holy Spirit leading you in decisions. (Hopefully, if not, I hope you’ll email me and ask how!)
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Filed Under: Math
Posted by Cindy on July 19, 2007
This is the title of a workshop taught by Tina Burnell that I attended at the CHEK Convention.
Let me first start by saying, Duh!! I have a master’s degree in education. I’ve studied in depth about teaching reading. I’ve studied in depth about reaching various learning styles. I’ve known for many years that my son learns in an active, kinesthetic, hands-on sort of way. Why did it take me attending an hour-long workshop session to rekindle the idea of teaching my son reading in a different way?? I actually do know the answer to my question. Because this sort of teaching is going to require much more preparation on my part. It’s going to require more of my focused time each day. But, my goodness, it will all be worth it to give him a solid foundation in reading and spelling! So, on to the review of what I learned…, relearned…, refreshed in my mind. Yes, I like that one!
First, let me mention Tina’s Yahoo group. It’s full of ideas, printables, helps, diagnostics……In fact, you may just want to forget reading anything else I’ve written and just go join the group! In case you’re still with me, following are notes from her handouts and notes I took.
“The wise man builds his house upon the rock.”
Learning to read is similar to this. The “foundation” of the “house” being “phonological awareness” – being able to notice, think about and manipulate individual sounds in words. Some examples: rhyming, syllables, understanding that changing letters means changing sounds.
The “walls” built upon the foundation are “phonics”, “vocabulary” and “fluency”. Phonics is understanding the predictable sound/letter connection. Vocabulary is understanding word meanings. Fluency is the ability to read accurately, quickly and with expression.
And the “roof” of the building is “comprehension” – the ability to understand and make sense of what you read.
So, you must start with the foundation – phonological awareness. (This is from me – Teaching with a multi-sensory approach means you are using more than the visual mode of learning. You pull in auditory things (having to do with sound), tactile things (having to do with touch), active things (get the body moving) and maybe even taste or smell. Some children will understand better using one or more of these approaches. Most workbook style curriculums only use the visual method.) Multi sensory activities for phonological awareness would include:
*reading lots of rhyming books (Dr. Suess)
*saying a word and having your child come up with a rhyming word
*finger tapping or clapping out syllables
*using a manipulative such as magnets on a white board to represent letters. For example, write cat. Say cat slowly, emphasizing each sound. You child pulls downs a magnet for each sound heard. This helps them begin to understand that each sound has a special place (or reason) for being in the word.
*using magnet letters (or some other type of letter – even notecards) to make a simple word like “at”, then having your child pull down new letters to add to the beginning to make new words – c-at, h-at, b-at
Now, on to phonics to build one of the “walls” of the building. This is where we teach the letters and correspoding sounds. Multi-sensory approaches would include things like:
*pulling down magnet letters on a white board as words are sounded out
*putting red chips under consonants and green chips under vowels as they read a word you’ve written on a white board
*laying letter cards on the floor and having the child jump on the letters when they hear the sound
*making little vowel puppets on popsicle sticks and asking your child to hold up the correct stick when you say a word
*laying plastic screen (from craft departments) over large letters you’ve written on paper and asking your children to trace the letter with their finger. The plastic gives a nice tactile attachment to the letter. This is good for children who have a hard time writing letters correctly, too. It’s the same idea as writing letters in sand or rice or shaving cream, but gives more of a bumpy tactile feel on the top of the finger.
Another “wall” to build is vocabulary. She didn’t go into vocabulary during the workshop. But I think it would include such things as :
*having vocabulary cards and definition cards that the child matches
*vocabulary charades
*drawing a picture of the words
*using a particular word in a sentence and asking your child to guess whether it was used correctly or not
*building play dough creations of vocabulary words
The final “wall” is fluency. She didn’t give multi-sensory ideas for fluency, but said that the #1 way to improve fluency is repeated readings of short passages that are at or below the child’s reading level.
And you top the building off with the “roof” of comprehension. She said children can’t comprehend what they’re reading until the foundation and walls are built. Again, she didn’t give multi-sensory ideas to improve comprehension, but my experience has been that children will easily comprehend when the other “parts” are in place. The biggest stumper to comprehension for a younger child seems to be fluency. As children get older and read more fluently, the biggest stumper in comprehension seems to be unfamiliar vocabulary words or the inability to phonetically break apart long, unfamiliar words.
Tina felt like children needed to be monitored or assessed often in the early days of reading. Here are some websites she recommended for free assessments:
*Don Potter – phonics books, remedial drills, assessments, articles
*Balanced Reading – early reading assessment
*National Right to Read Foundation – reading competency test
And finally, she recommended a book called All About Spelling to give your child a solid start to spelling and extra phonics help.
Learning is experience. Everything else is just information. -Albert Einstein
Posted by Cindy on July 16, 2007
What a great weekend! Hubby and I were able to go to the CHEK Convention Friday and Saturday, and boy was it good this year! The speakers were great and the vendor halls were packed.
Ken Ham (from Answers In Genesis and the Creation Museum) and his brother Steve were the keynote speakers. You gotta love Ken Ham! He speaks with confidence and conviction, he gets right to the point, and he speaks about very relevant topics. I don’t ever feel like I’ve wasted my time listening to him, you know what I mean?
Most of the other speakers I had the opportunity to hear were great as well. Nancy Carter from The Old Schoolhouse Magazine spoke on grace in our homeschools. I needed to hear this one!! We can be really tough on ourselves thinking we need to be doing better, doing more, doing school just like the Jones’, or just plain getting weary in the homeschooling process. Her talk was so uplifting and encouraging. She’s a super sweet and very down to earth person. It was a priveledge to meet her!
Tina Burnell spoke on multi-sensory reading and spelling techniques. Just the thing a momma with a struggling reader needs to hear. She packed this hour full of helpful ideas and resources! I may even do a blog soon outlining some of her techniques, web resources and books she recommends.
The last speaker I had the chance to hear was very intriguing! Joanne Calderwood of URtheMom.com taught about the self-teaching method of homeschooling. I brought home a booklet she passed out that I’m working quickly to finish because I’d love to start some of these methods with my 10 year old. She talks about all sorts of advantages to allowing your children to be responsible for their own work. You choose the curriculum, your children take responsibility to get it done with as little intervention by you as possible. I know, it sounds too good to be true, but she explains it in very easy to understand terms. I don’t think I’d want to turn all areas of our homeschool into this sort of learning because we really enjoy family unit studies and they require mom’s attention. But, we will be looking into self-teaching for some subjects, like math and spelling this year.
So many speakers, so little time! Now I’m ready to get the new school year underway!
