Flat Zeke goes Around the World!

Over the weekend, we attended a Girl Scout International Festival with our Girl Scout troop. We took this opportunity to take Flat Zeke to something fun! So far his time with us has been pretty boring, as we are having a very sick winter for some reason, and haven't done much at all.

With A, ready to tour the globe!

At our troops booth, learning about Puerto Rico!

Close up with a coqui

Learning about Russia

With a Brasilian fox


Learning about Mexico (IN the sombrero)

Learning about China
Learning about Canada

Cuisenaire Rod Sites

Here are a few sites I've found with some good ideas using Cuisenaire Rods. We just started using Miquon Math (since my oldest is really struggling, and I'm hopeful this approach will help). Enjoy playing!

Cuisenaire Rods: Space, Color, and Mathe

Cooking with Cuisenaire Rods

Introduction to Fractions (5th grade lesson plan)

Play with the Rods online

Cuisenaire Fractions Lesson

Math Perimeter Problem Solving

Math Game

As I type my kids are playing this game, and I wish you could hear them squealing and shouting.

I found this idea in an old Mailbox magazine I picked up at a thrift store, its from Feb/March of 1990! :-) I am a Mailbox subscriber, and so when I saw this one, for .25 I couldn't pass it up. And it has proven worth it's quarter, already!

It's similar to War, but it is titled "Porky" (Pigging Out on Place Value is the section it's in.)

It makes a great center if you have more than one child (they can play together like mine are) or as a family game if you have an only, or kids in to wide of an age range to play this together. I also can think of some different variations.

You take a deck of cards, and remove all the tens (and jokers or wild cards). Aces=1, and face cards=0. Deal out all of the cards, then you flip over the top two. The first card is your ones place, and the second card is your tens place. The child then 'reads' the number ("I have a 7 in my tens place, and a 4 in my ones place, I have 74." kind of thing). Then they compare with the other player(s) to see who has the highest number. Whomever has the highest number gets all 4 cards. If there is a tie, the first person to yell "PORKY!" wins the cards. First person to get ALL the cards, wins.

Simple. Fun!

A couple Variations:

• You could easily make it three cards or more to include higher place values as they move up (we are playing a higher place value version).
• You could also do a variation where you added or multiplied the numbers, instead of doing place value.
• You could have the child BUILD the number they draw with cuisenaire rods (or other math manipulatives).

Enjoy!

The girls have been sick. My middle has had a fever since Wednesday! Seriously, 5 days so far. She's still feverish, but the two days in the middle (Thurs and Fri) she was HOT HOT HOT. Today it's pretty mild. Friday the oldest got the fever as well. Yesterday was her HOT HOT HOT day, today is better. We went to the ped on Wed morning because I was afraid it was strep (again), and it wasn't strep or the flu (the other thing I was concerned about). So, it's just a really nasty cold. Hopefully, the rest of the house will be spared.

Having them lay around on the couch for hours and hours staring at various screens that required no mental or physical effort on their part did allow for me to clean the house up some....it needed it. Have you ever noticed that once it gets a teensy weensy bit out of hand, it's a fast, out of control, down hill spiral? Or is that just the vortex that is my house? Hmm. Either way, we had a stomach bug (I mentioned that) on Valentines Day (fortuneatly, only affecting the three oldest members of our house). And, I swear, it's been 3 weeks and my house STILL hasn't recovered from the 3 days I didn't clean. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? Currently, the kitchen looks really great, as does the living room. The babe's room is also fantastic (He recently got some new storage solutions in there), and our bedroom isn't the pit it was a month ago, so I'll take it.

Another day of laying around will give me time to plan out a bit further ahead in our curriculum as well. So, we'll be having another 'sick' day tomorrow. Hopefully, that will be the last of it though as running a fever for this long simply can't be good.

It's Girl Scout cookie time, that'll throw a kink in your plans to lose 20 lbs by May! LOL Especially, when you have 2 scouts IN your house. It's ok though, the weather is starting to warm and I'll be able to run again soon. Afterall, I have to train for that 5k in June! Yikes. What have I gotten myself in to?

Recently, I've been thinking about priorities. I wish this blog was higher on my list. I do wish I documented more of what we do on here, for the world to see. I enjoy our homeschooling so much, and I spend so much time reading more and learning more and growing more, I wish I made it more of a priority to share with the homeschooling (and non homeschoolers who may find their way here somehow) community. I'll try. That's the best I can do.

Currently, I am reading Essential Montessori, and Montessori in the Home: The School Years. I'm working on making the materials. Recently I completed the grammar symbols. I've fallen behind on my flags of the US though, as a result of working on other projects (including preschool/toddler things). I also made a big batch of colored pasta for sorting, patterning, counting, etc. The girls helped with that, and thought it was fun. I'm attempting to make a moveable alphabet this week....I already attempted it once but made my letters too thick and when I baked them to harden them, they plumped WAY up. I could just let them harden on the counter I suppose, I'm just in a rush to get them done (for no particular reason except that I think the kids will have a great time playing with them). I'd also like to make a set of sandpaper letters. That may be the next project, oh and finishing my flags!

I recently ordered Miquon math. My oldest really struggles with math, and after many approaches, and knowing that she is a visual learner, I hope Miquon will be a good fit and will help it "click". It's the only area she's 'behind' in. We'll start with it this week, provided she recovers soon. I really like how visual and hands on it is. I'd also like to create some of the Montessori bead material for her to use.

I also recently ordered some Weekly Reader books on the election process. They wont' be here until August, but I'm already excited. I have one book on the process of elections and voting called Woodrow for President (also from Weekly Reader) that the kids liked and learned quite a bit from. With it being EVERYWHERE these days, it's such a great chance to really show the kids the democratic process in action, and share with them the things I'd like to see changed!

My kids are in bed (well 2/3 of them are...the bigger two even!), my wee one is playing outside with my husband--man do I love him....that could fill another whole blog, how much I love the man I get to share my life with. And, now, I am off to read, plan, and make materials.

Much love, and happy homeschooling to you all!

New blog: Preschool

I started a second blog, specifically for preschool and toddler activities.


Waterfront Preschool

I'm still going to blog here about the older kids, and their many activities, and our family life in general, but the second blog allows me to keep track of all my preschool lesson plans (something I was unable to do the last time through) so that I can use them in the future, and also might give some others ideas.

We had a nasty stomach bug last week, right after I had spent a week getting my house in SUCH good shape it was amazing. Of course, it all fell apart when we were throwing up! LOL

I agreed to teach my neighbor preschool stuff, and I was feeling overwhelmed! LOL I guess I'm over that notion now. It must have been a bad week.

We exchanged flat travelers with our friend Heather's family, and my daughter loved seeing the pictures on their blog! We just got our traveler, and we're very excited to start taking him to do fun things.

School is going fine, after we recovered anyway.

More later!

Ramblings

So I must confess, I'm feeling really overwhelmed lately.

And yet, I keep thinking about getting pregnant again in the summer. How does this make sense? I'm overwhelmed, so add more!

It's my strange sense of logic.

I guess mostly I feel over-extended. Which also doesn't make sense considering that we don't do NEARLY as much now, as we once did. There was a time when we were out of the house, at different events, 4 times a week. And that actually didn't include sports! So now that ALL we do is sports and Girl Scouts, and an occasional playdate, how can I feel like it's TOO much! It's not to much for the children, in fact, I think my oldest would be happy if we went back to 4 days a week of outings, in fact I know she'd like that and not only because she's a complete extrovert, but also because she'd think that would take the pressure off actually getting her work done (more on that later). I've made the decision that I need to step out of my Girl Scout responsibilities next year, and just be involved as a mom, not a leader. This was a hard decision for me, as I truly do love "my girls", they are so much fun, but I don't feel it's fair to not feel like I'm giving them 100%. This year hasn't been nearly as successful in my personal review of my progress. I think the girls are still having a good time, and learning new things, I just feel like it could be so much better. In fact, I know it can be, because it was! It's very frustrating for me. I need to get it together.

And, third and fourth grade is time consuming! LOL Who knew! My younger dd is doing mostly 3rd grade work, with the exceptions of reading and writing, which have been slower to develop. My older is doing 4th grade with the exception of math-oh and the exception that she has made the decision to fail 4th grade. I've made the decision to let her. I decided I'm no longer in the reminder business. I spend ample time planning, and they are old enough to work independently a lot. So, I give them their assignment sheets each day. Things they need help with need to be completed by dinner, but they are free to work on things they can do unassissted until bedtime. Things that aren't completed by bedtime get zero's. My 8 yr old has yet to get a zero, in fact she's well on her way to straight A's! However, her sister...not so much. She had 20 zero's the first week we went to this system (we're about to enter week 3). I'm pretty sure she's going to have to fail before she learns this lesson. She needs to gain personal responsibility for her education, I don't think it's to early or that it will do her any great service to allow this lesson to wait. If she fails (which seriously, I think she will), she will be able to catch up...on her own desire to do so. If she is willing to work extra hard to get back "on grade level", then I will help her with that. If she isn't, then I will accept that decision as well. I'm hoping *crossing fingers EXTRA TIGHT* she will find her own inner motivation. She's not the most responsible being, and sadly I've realized I created this irresponsible, immature being before me! I robbed her of many opportunities to experience the natural consequence of her irresponsibility by constantly being that little voice in her head that said "did you get that done?" "what needs to be done now?" "do you have things you need to finish before class?" By being that voice, I've caused her true voice to grow silent. I'm hoping it will return.

I have a lot of planning to do. I have tons of stuff I want to share, but I haven't made blogging a priority yet. I'd really truly like to. I enjoy it immensely. I need to carve out a time once a week at least to get this done! It's not that I don't have the time...especially with the new laptop, it's that it hasn't been high on my priority list. Which would be fine, if I were spending that available computer time doing something important or worthwhile...but it's nothing that noble.

I want to share one quick thing about our school work, then I'm going to go and get on that planning, and cleaning my home, and going to ULTRA FUN things with my kids this weekend (We're seeing High School Musical 2-stage tour this afternoon, and the Hannah Montana 3-d digital movie tomorrow!!!). I will really try to blog more next week!

We did our first "research project" this month. We completed it with oral presentations this Wed. And, while it became apparent to me that I need to teach my kids how to take notes....after years of saying "complete sentences" they don't get it! It did go very well. They researched Coretta Scott King, and Harriet Tubman. They did internet research, and book research at the library. They collected the info then presented it orally (which wasn't the original plan...but was what our assignment morphed into). They both did a VERY good job, and I was very proud of them!

Now, I'm out.

Baby's First Birthday

Here are some pictures of the little one, enjoying his cake, and his present at his birthday party!