Monday, November 5, 2012

Addition Story Problems

As I was going through Karen Tyler's Math Albums to see what I have missed, I came across the Story problem presentations.  So I quickly printed out the three Story Problem Sheets that she had provided with the course.  D worked with the first one and loved it.  I showed her how to record it in her Math journal.  After finishing the Addition Strip Board, it was good practice for D to work on addition facts as well as to see how it might fit into the real world.



Sunday, November 4, 2012

We are onto the Subtraction Strip Board

We started to work on the Subtraction Memorization sequence after finishing up the last of the Addition Charts.  D preferred to write and fill up the last Addition Chart.  I did cross question a few sums to make sure D was just not following the pattern to fill up the chart and she did perfectly fine!  


So I presented the Subtraction Strip board to her.


She caught on and started to fill in the booklet on Subtraction tables.  She figured out that since she knows the sums, she did not have to use the board!


There were a few that she was not sure, so she only used the blue strips to cover the squares that she did not need to figure out the answers!  So much for buying this set hoping it would get a lot of use!  So now I am off to printing the Subtraction Equation slips for her to use.  I don't think we are going to stay on this for long, so I might have to get her  to work on skip counting, so we can start working on the Multiplication Board simultaneously.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

How we researched on Volcanoes...

I wanted to post about how we are proceeding with research after our Great Lesson Last week.  I did not have a definite plan on how to go about this, but we eventually found our groove.  At first D wanted to research about a ton of things.  I don't think she understood exactly what research meant, but she was just excited after the great lesson.  So I asked her to write down all that she wanted to know more about and she made a list.


Obviously (!) "Volcanoes" made it to the top of the list!  When we did our Great Lesson, I made our Volcano using newspaper, but I had ordered this one for the kids to use.



D used this a lot for eruptions.  We own two Volcano books, one is below and the other I can't find a link for.  I had purchased these at various library book sales long long ago.  The prizes on amazon are ridiculous though!



We read through these, but I still wasn't sure how to go about the research.  Then I read through the notes on MissBarbara.net and figured out I could give simple questions to D that she could find answers for in the books, then I could help her summarize and record it.


I gave her the question and wrote down what D summarized in her own words (with prompting) on our white board for her to copy down.  At this point, she can copy as much as she wants and can work through copying over a few days.  I am happy to say that (may be a little brag!) D loves writing and she often wants to copy the whole thing in one sitting!


As you can see I've written the summary in cursive and D writes it down in cursive too! Thanks to Handwriting without Tears!

After a few days we wanted to find out the parts of a volcano and this time D choose to draw and color.  She gave up drawing after a few tries and wanted me to draw an outline for her which she choose to color and label.



On another day, D cut and drew a volcano and used glitter glue to decorate her picture.  Yea! Art for the week was covered too!



D wants to research on rocks next as most of the texts on volcanoes talk about Igneous Rocks.  I have a few books Rocks and Minerals that D is reading through.  I want to order a few of the rock and minerals kit so she actually see the rocks and properly understand what minerals are.  So I am planning to work on the Earth's layers till my purchase arrives.

Hope this post helps some of you see how work after the Great Lessons proceed based on your child's interests.  Each child is different and it is wonderful to see how learning happens at this level at different home schools!