How do you know you found a great math book? Well you get woken up by screaming fighting kids who want to each have the 1 math book :).
I ordered a book called beast academy from art of problem solving. Genevieve read a few chapters last night. I don't think Gigi has got all out if it, but she is enjoying reading it. Nathan got to start it at bedtime. You read a few pages and then do the work pages. Nathan asked for the work pages and did some last night. At this moment he is reading some more, he has been at math for almost 2 hours this morning. Some of the questions are taxing on my brain, but Nathan is loving it.
Update 11:30. Nathan is still working on math, has been since 7 am :)
Well we have been schooling despite not posting in a bit.
We have made progress in math. We are enjoying games in rightstart, and I've even invented a few on my own. Nathan and Gigi needed practice with adding 8 and 9. So I separated all our 8's and. 9's out of the deck of basic rightstart cards. We each had a pile and had a pile of regular cards. We played war by flipping 1 card from each pile. Worked great! Next we made it more challenging and replaced the basic cards with cards from the multiplication deck! This was much harder for them. Nathan did well the first day. Today Nathan was struggling grrr. He was having a hard time adding 8 or 9 to a teen number. I think it is the way it sounds. He needs to understand 14 is 1 ten 4 ones. It is just confusing for him. Genevieve was having a pretty easy time of it, but reputation is getting her faster at it.
Still working on tornado and weather unit! We finished the book tornado today. We have done some work on conflict. Talked about different kinds of conflict, character/character, character/natural forces environment, character/internal. We gave examples of different types of conflicts from different books we have read in the past. They also wrote about two conflicts in both of the story lines in tornado.
They have written chapter summaries for each chapter of tornado. Nathan is starting to really enjoy working on these. Genevieve has started putting up a little fuss, she wants to type on a computer too!
Here is a sample of Nathan's writing from this week.
Nathan had a massive nosebleed this week and has been a little tired since. His bedroom was covered in blood, even managed to hit the ceiling. I have scrubbed it off the walls and ceilings but it's still on my white carpet! Ugg white carpets are terrible to have with a bleeder! Of course there is a trail of blood from his bedroom to the front of the house, even the porch has blood everywhere! I was taking him to the hospital, when his bleeding slowed down.
I thought I took more pictures of our work this week, but I guess I didn't , so I will work on better reporting next week.
We took Jeff to the airport today. We came home in time to have 1 last piano practice before our piano lessons.
We watched this video after dinner. I think Nathan is going to become a particle physicist, he is so excited by all of this stuff, and space. We had watched a few videos yesterday which are called science symphony's and Nathan loved them. I swear he has a better understanding of what gluons, higgs particles, and the four forces of Nature than I do. He loves learning about black holes as well. We watched one of brian cox's on black holes yesterday. Nathan I think learns top down, in that he needs to see the whole big picture before he can learn all the little details. I think this is why math has been difficult for him, well easy math anyway, he understands difficult math concepts.
Math - lessons 8 and 9 in transitions rightstart math. We discussed quadrilaterals, and what hundreds look like on the abacus. We also looked at a bunch of different manipulatives.
we played a new game in math based on Old Maid, making 10 s as pairs. I cant believe how much Nathan has improved on his making 10 facts!!!
Next up we worked on Moving beyond the page literature unit tornado. Each time we do a unit, I am surprised at all the different activities each day, they are so varied and different, but definitely engaging. Sometimes I think oh that activity looks stupid we shouldn't do that, but we do it and the kids love that activity. I think the kids like it because it is teaching them in so many different ways.
I wrote out sentences on sentence strips and the kids had to match the correct vocab word to the sentence. Genevieve needed a little direction in this activity, not sure if it was just because she was tired or not...
I then got them to arrange the vocab words in alphabetical order.
Nathan's chapter summary
Gigi's chapter summary
Our chapter discussion questions
Making a best pet award. They had to write down four things that made tornado a good pet and put it on ribbons which were then cut out and glued to the medallion they cut out. I was going to skip it glad I didn't excellent fine motor skills for Nathan. And good practice for good sentence writting for Gigi.
I'm sure you can see moving beyond the page is a little time consuming, but so far we are really enjoying it. Right now I can get about 2-3 hrs of work out of Nate and Gigi. We are spending about 1 hr on math, at least an hour on the literature unit and 1 hour on the coordinating science unit we are doing in mbtp. I fit in story of the world and Canadian studies a few times a week, usually at the dinner table or while driving :). I also manage to tie in Canadian studies, and story of the world with other things that come up, it's amazing how much we are able to draw on prior knowledge and experiences in our studies.
Started with math. Genevieve was a little difficult for me this morning, it was too easy she said. First too hard now to easy! Next they played go to the dump by themselves with a few squabbles I had to resolve. They are both a little more difficult on Jeff's fly home days...
Next up was moving beyond the page literature unit.
1st up we read how the turtle got it's shell. Nathan was turned off right away as it's a golden book, he said that's little Kidish. Nathan did almost immediately say I know don't judge a book by its cover. We all liked the book it was a book about different myths of how the turtle got it's shell.
1st assignment was picking their favourite myth and using a graphic organizer to write down important details, I used the whiteboard to explain the who what where when and how, as the organizer asked different questions. I wanted them to understand how it tied together.
This is Genevieve's.
Nathan had a harder time, he wanted to use his computer, I got him to use the organizer as I think some handwriting each day is good for him, but his is hard to read as it was hard for him to fit his printing in the organizer, he prints large.
Next up they had to write their own myth on how the turtle got it's shell. Nathan used his computer and cowriter and classroom suite. It was not a long story, but he was liking writting the story and he was happy with it! So I think we will go with that! We really need to do some typing practice with Nathan!
This is Genevieve's story.
Next up was moving beyond the page science. We read about wind. The kids then went outside and studied the wind to see what level the wind was at according to the Beaufort scale.
Well today's schooling was much better than yesterday!
We read another page in our kids can arctic book, it talked all about ice flows. We read from our book about Canada's arctic animals. We read about seals and arctic fox.
Next was right start math transitions. We discussed what parallel and perpendicular are. Did a little more work with fact families. And next we played the game go to the dump again. This time the game was pretty successful. Nathan really likes using the abacus when he needs to. We have played lots of math games before but never one that focuses on making 10.
Again I was going to do more with the kids they really wanted to do tornado but I am pretty tired... Maybe after dinner we will do tornado...
Well I had great intentions of getting a lot accomplished school wise.
We started with math, I had dreams, I knew what I was going to teach, how I was going to teach etc. but Gigi has a cold and Gigi was a little temperamental! She's the easy one!
Genevieve got flustered when I put the = sign on the wrong side of the equation. 49= 50-1
She said no that's wrong that doesn't make sense and his under the table ! If she was feeling better I'm sure this would not have happened. And I certainly did not win parent of the year for how I handled it! Anyway finally got her back down and explained it to her.
This is partly how I explained it
We did lesson 3 in right start transitions.
Nathan was bored with this lesson said it was too easy.
We next played a game from right start math. It is like go fish except you are getting pairs to make 10, so if you have a 2 you ask for an 8. Making 10 is difficult for Nathan. Nathan had done tears when Gigi cheated and looked at his cards. Oh my! I brought over their abacus to check, and Nathan really liked this. He said he can see in his head the number seven on the abacus but 8 is harder. We finally made it through the game. I think I will like it better on another day.
I was planning on doing more schoolwork but this wore me out ;)
So until tomorow! Hopefully it will be an easier day!
Tuesday I got a phone call in the morning to watch my friends child who was too sick for school, but her husband was in the hospital. So no school for us but we did manage to make it to piano lessons.
Wednesday- was not expecting much again from Wednesday but we started right start math! We have to complete 20 transition lessons before we move on to level C. This lesson we learned about dr Wynn's research on identifying quantity. We looked at objects up to 7 and looked at how we were able to quantify without adding. We talked about and used tally marks. We also learned the "math" way of counting. 23 is two ten three. 147 is one hundred four ten seven. Does this ever make more sense when you think of place value. We learned in Asia this is how they count.
Next after math we went to physio/ music and then hockey.
Thursday - was a great learning day, kids are enjoying the structure of our day!
We start the day with math- lesson 2 transitions right start-
After right start we did a worksheet from math u see
This is a spelling test, Genevieve typed out the form herself on the computer and brought it to me and said she wanted a spelling test :)
Next up language arts
Moving beyond the page chapter 4 tornado.
1st was a chapter summary both Nate and Gigi worked completely independently. Nathan struggled unable to put anything down on paper until I suggested using his computer, amazing how he was able to write and put it down, when he did not have the pressure or hurt of handwriting.
Nathan's summary- I did point out the first sentence but Nathan insisted it was a funny sentence and needed to stay that way with all the water words. So he knows this is an absurd sentence but it's funny :)
Genevieve's summary
Next they had to research turtles. I found 3 books on turtles in our bookshelves, they also used computers and the iPad to research online. Nathan found this part the most interesting! I think this is thanks to Rebecca's class at tla!
Nates
Genevieve's
Oh and our chapter questions
And then we had to leave for cheerleading and Nathan and I went to the library to do some research on a current event. He did not enjoy it, I'm surprised as he read an article on Roberto luongo!
Friday - class
Ocupational therapy / Gigi did some work in her writting book
When we got home I honestly think the kids would have been up for more work, but I was too tired, I think I'm getting a cold...
and here is a video of Nathan today at tla
and here is gigi practicing a front walkover tonight.
Well I woke up exhausted! That was a lot of snow to shovel! I procrastinated most of the day to start school. I had a hard time getting to sleep last night which means a hard time waking up.
Nathan and Genevieve both spent about a half an hour playing piano. While Genevieve practiced piano Nathan and I played connect 4 and then we started playing scrabble. Nathan informed me we were doing a lot of school work as scrabble has math and language arts. Nathan again astonished me at being able to use math in practice. Things he finds hard on paper he can do.
While Nathan was practicing Genevieve worked on her writing book.
This page was completing sentences, by either adding a subject or a predicate.
Next page was identifying complete or incomplete sentences. We also went over the sentences and reviewed what parts were what.
Next up was math, we spent a lot of time on math today, we reviewed rounding and we started adding with carrying over. Nathan got this concept immediately! Yeah for Nathan. I sent Nathan to the other room with worksheets and a small dry erase board to work on problems. I spent about 10 minutes going over problems with Genevieve, she mastered very quickly.
Next we had to take our house cleaner home! So we went out for diner, did I mention how sore and exhausted I am from shovelling? At dinner we played snap it up. Nathan was grumpy, didn't eat much, his shoulder would not stay in place. He says it was hurting but only after I asked if that was what was wrong.
Nathan played minecraft for 1/2 hr when we got home, and then it was bedtime.
At bedtime Nathan asked for math worksheets to work on and Gigi asked as well. They both completed 4 worksheets. Nathan made a few mistakes but they were basic math fact mistakes. He completely understand how to do it.
These worksheets were carrying under 1000. I think they could easily do over 1000 as well.
Now to only improve Nathan's math fact memorization. He knows his doubles and can figure them out from there but the 9 trick stumps him!
