Kindergarten Review: February - Space

In February the subject was Brother-Bug's choice. We went to the outer reaches of the stars. Actually we stuck pretty close to our galaxy, learning our planets and nearby constellations.

As always, we started with a list of questions and a pile of books from the library. We stayed more with space and never got to astronauts and space ships.

One major project was trying to impart the idea of scale. We gathered a basket ball, a quarter, a nickel, 2 popcorn kernels, 2 sesame seeds, and 2 poppy seeds. The basketball represented the sun, the quarter was Jupiter, the nickel was Saturn, the popcorns were Neptune and Uranus, the sesame seeds were Venus and Earth, and the poppy seeds were Mars and Mercury (if you want to include Pluto, use a grain of salt). I don't know how well Brother-Bug understood the concept of scale, but I learned a lot! And it helped to put those planet names and sizes in our heads for the next project.

We used out dining room light as the sun, made planets of construction paper, and lined them up across the ceiling. I went for approximate scale - the little planet were little, on up in graduating sizes, using the previous project as a guide. I didn't worry about orbits or distances between the planets. We put in the asteroid belt, and Brother-Bug got some great handwriting work done making the labels for each planet.

Using felt, ribbon, and a stick we made a mobile of the Andromeda constellation, reading the myth (I did a little on-the-fly editing to make it age-appropriate) while we worked. We talked about how constellations help us see the stars in patterns so we don't get lost when we look up. We also talked about how people have told star stories as far back as we know, and constellations are one way we have saved those stories.

We read a bunch if books and watched some space documentaries, as well as The Magic School Bus space themed episodes. But the best project? We made a rocket ship.

A little cardboard, packing tape, and a box cutter, and soon we needn't only read about the planets...we could travel to them!! Both kids spent the better part of many days in the rocket ship, traveling to various points in space. I listened to Brother-Bug attempt to instruct his sister in the science of counting down to Blast Off. Frequently I was informed that I was now really heavy and couldn't jump because we had landed on Jupiter (as an example). The book that really aided is in this all encompassing imagination game was If You Decide to Go to The Moon by Faith McNulty and illustrated by Steven Kellogg. And kid with any interest in space would love this book.

Papa-Bug helped us explore some science fiction and space opera - some less violent episodes of Star Trek, as well as reading some select chapters of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to Brother-Bug. This furthered our discussion of star stories, and inspired one final project.

I recorded Brother-Bug telling me his own space adventure story. I recorded it, pausing the record to ask him questions when he got stuck. The result was a minute and twenty second story of A Trip to Saturn (the link is a cowbird story that includes the audio of the story).


This was a great unit. At the very least, I think I actually learned the order of the planets finally! And the imagination that was inspired was some of our best yet.

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Homeschool update:

Here we are in May and I'm just posting February's review! Yoikes! The pregnancy is slowing everything down and while we keep homeschooling (because how can we not? Learning seems to find us no matter what!) we are letting go of our formal units in favor of less stress. The summer is coming when we would take a break anyway and I want to spend more time out and enjoying. The Baby is coming in November, so we will certainly do some work around the Election, but mostly the fall will be spent in getting ready for our new being. I hope to be back to something a little more organized in January.

In March we explored Mammals (have you ever heard of a Numbat? I hadn't.) and for April & May we are exploring herbalism and gardening, but we haven't done a lot of easily reportable project. I have been delighted to watch Brother-Bug take the lead and explore the topics in his own way. It's given me lots of good ideas for the future as his educational needs grow and change.

And the lack of pictures... There are a bunch that I wanted to post and when I went to finish this post yesterday my computer, where the photos live, gave me the blue screen of death. My fingers are crossed. It's pretty much all backed up, but we need to take an evening and really look at it.

January Kindergarten Review: Oceans and Marine Life

Ready to explore the Aquarium!

One of our Christmas presents was a membership to the Oregon Coast Aquarium, so we grabbed that inspiration and decided that Oceans and Marine Life was a great thing to study in January.

Two fascinated learners.

We start each new topic by generating a list of questions on our school white-board: Why do dolphins jump? Is a whale a fish? And so on. We use these questions through our the month as a treasure hunt - looking for answers as we explore. We don't usually find all the answers, but working together to find our questions creates immediate interest and gives me a touchstone when life gets in the way of lesson plans. 

We always check out a big stack of related books and go hunting through our bookshelves for related books. One of my favorites this month was My Visit to the Aquarium by Aliki - such beautiful art work.

Brother-Bug wrote a book report on a book we read about sharks - learning not only about sharks, but also how to write a book report (he dictated and I wrote).

He made a basic food chain picture and drew a lot of pictures if sea creatures. We talked about our favorite sea creatures and got a deck of cards with sea creatures on them, using them to play (what else?) Go Fish. These cards were great, with facts about each creature on the cards.

We got out the jellyfish we made about a year ago and hung it up. It's a simple project that we made up, using blue cellophane and bubble wrap.

Watching the jellies...

By far the best project was making our windows into ocean zones, as I wrote about earlier this month.

We watched several nature documentaries on oceans, and also this amazing animation of what happens to a whale carcass. That was my favorite thing. So beautiful and creepy and amazing.

Finally, we read Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid and then watched the Disney version. We had a lively discussion that spanned several days about what was the same about the story, what was different, and why that might have been.

All in all, it was a great month. Onward now (and very much upward!) to the heavens and a study of Space.

How To Make A Jellyfish

Last year Brother-Bug was interested in jellyfish. We got books out of the library and delved. The eventual result was a large jelly that hung from our ceiling for months.We found it recently and hung it up for our month of studying Oceans and Marine life. It looked really good with our oceanic windows.

It is a very simple project. You will need:
A large piece of bubble wrap
A piece of colorful cellophane (usually sold or found as a gift wrap supply)
Lots of clear or white twist ties
A good plastic bonding glue
Scissors

Optional - a pack of silver rik-rak and small colorful cards.

Cut a large rectangle of bubble wrap - approximately 12"x36". Glue the 12" side together making a cylinder and let the glue dry thoroughly.

Using the scissors, snip holes around the top and bottom of the cylinder, abut an inch down and 3/4 of an inch apart. Thread one twist-tie through the homes, gathering up the cylinder. That's the top of your jellyfish.

Crumple the cellophane and put it in the gathered cylinder. Use a twist-tie to gather the bottom closed. Squish the cylinder flat-ish to make the jellyfish "head".

Cut tentacles out of bubble wrap - about 24" long and 1-2" wide. Use the scissors to poke a hole in one end of each tentacle and around the bottom of the "head". Use a twist-tie to secure each tentacle in place.

Optional Rik-Rak: tie long strings of silver rik-rak to the bottom center, using the gathering twist-tie as an anchor. Some jellies have two kinds of tentacles much like this.

Optional Cards: we wrote some of the facts we learned about jellyfish on small cards and stapled one card to each tentacle.

Hang in a window to catch the light! I imagine how cool it would be to make a lot of these and float them on a large room... Maybe lighting the cellophane with LEDs...

One bubble-wrap jelly fish.

Living Under The Sea

I'll be writing my kindergarten wrap up for February pretty soon, but thought I would share a couple of the awesome projects we did during our study of Oceans and Marine Animals.

Our major project was making the three windows in our main living area into three different zones of the ocean.

The project itself was super simple. I taped blue cellophane (from the gift wrap section of the craft store) over the windows.

The Open Ocean: Moon jellies, a tiger shark, cod, tuna, and a skate.

For each zone we researched what animals would live in that zone and selected a handful to display in our "aquarium". I cut the appropriate general shape of each creature out of construction paper and taped it to the window. Brother-Bug helped decorate the cut-outs with crayons and markets. We labeled each creature with its common name.

The Continental Shelf (Coral Reef): Octopus, Moorish Idol Fish, Coral, Manta Ray, Anemones,Clown Fish.

I kept the creatures, colors, and shapes basic and simple because we are doing kindergarten. If we were a little older I might have found actual pictures of the creatures to cut out, or done more complete labels and descriptions... We could have made it a lot fancier and/or complicated; if we repeat this project in the future we probably will add some facets.

The Dark Zone: Female Angler Fish, Vampire Squid, Red Comb Jelly, Brittle Star, Deep-Sea Crab, Sun Star, Gulper Eel, Deep-Sea Urchins (Brother-Bug's favorite zone).

The best part was watching Brother-Bug explain the projects and zones to friends, identifying creatures as he went along each window. He also incorporated his new ballet moves into underwater dances of each creature. It was so fun and hands-on that he seemed to retain a lot of the information.

I wonder what else our windows could become?

The Behavior Tree

Brother-Bug has many of the behavior issues of his age-set - the boundary pushing, power playing, individuality experimenting that delights all parents. He's bright and sensitive and deeply feeling. What Papa-Bug and I want most for him is that he learns how to have these big feelings within the context of kind behavior. We don't want to have to get him in trouble as much as we want him to think about his actions and make good decisions for himself. 

Ages ago, somewhere, I read about "Table Manner Tree", designed to help children learn their table manners. While I don't remember the specifics, I re-created the general idea for our household and expanded it to include the general beahvior stuff that we want Brother-Bug to be working on.

Our tree - day one. Fifty-seven leaves and flowers in place.

The tree is simple. Brown construction paper for the trunk and branches and colored post-its for the leaves and flowers. On the left there is a calendar for the month. On the right is a list of the specific tasks that Brother-Bug is working on with the tree.

The List:
There are about a dozen behavior tasks on the list. They range in scope from not picking his nose, to being patient with his sister, to using his utensils and napkin. Easier behaviors are green. More difficult behaviors are yellow. There is one pink task - accepting a consequence without fussing. The colors correspond to leaves and flowers. If you are making your own tree, obviously you would craft the list to your child's specific needs and challenges. I tried to keep the list in the positive, using "Yes" language. "Keeping fingers out of the nose" instead of "Not picking the nose".

How The List and Leaves Work:
When Brother-Bug ignores or forgets a rule of good behavior from the list, a leaf (or flower, depending on the color) falls to the ground. When he remembers to use his good behavior he can get the leaves and flowers back on the tree. Very simple. I made lots of leaves, so that even on a very bad day the tree is still beautiful and rewarding to look at. The pink flowers, as I mentioned, are about calmly accepting consequences - whether the consequence is the falling leaf or something more drastic like losing dessert...

The Calendar:
The calendar has each day divided into two sections. At the end of each day we count how many leaves are down and how many are on the tree. We write the "up" number and "down" number in the two spaces. We wanted someway to help Brother-Bug think about the fits he throws, but couldn't think of a good and specific way to write it on The List, since fits can be all-encompassing and apply to many behaviors. We added the concept of the gold star to the calendar component. If Brother-Bug has no temper fits, he gets a gold star on that day.


How I Think This Works:

Our tree (and garden) today!

The stars and leaves and flowers give Brother-Bug (and his parents) a neutral place to look objectively at his behavior. There is no loss or shame in a leaf falling, it simply does so. Several times I have shown Brother-Bug that a lot of leaves have fallen of a day, and been delighted to see him (usually) turn his behavior around and try to get the leaves back up. He can look at the calendar and see his good days and bad days. He can control how many leaves are on the tree. He can make choices.

Sister-Bug is really into it. So much so that Papa-Bug made her a small "Garden" with five flowers in it. Each flower is a post-it. When she is good and sweet and doesn't shriek, her flowers bloom in her garden. When she is shrieking and whining, her flowers fall "just like brother". Her's is more arbitrary, or course, but I am happy to see that she is interested, and often responsive, to the idea of behavior moderation and self-control in these ways.

All-in-all, I am very pleased at how well this is working so far. And if you want to give it a try, let me know how it works for you! I imagine you could make any thing that you could "take" from - an aquarium with fish, a larger garden, a cake with candles, a pizza with toppings...

Black & White Popcorn Balls

Over at Lonesome Whistle Farm, Jeff & Kasey grow Dakota Black Popcorn. It's beautiful. If you find your way down to the Holiday Market, Kasey might just have her black popcorn maker out, popping black popcorn, and you can try a bag of fresh popcorn with her fantastic seasoning.  I recommend it.

On Halloween, Brother-Bug had a friend over for the day and I wanted something fun to do, special for Halloween to divert some of their not-so-pent-up excitement about tricks and treats and costumes. It occurred to me that black popcorn is really just the right thing for a Halloween project, and we were lucky enough to still have some from last year!

Popcorn balls are easy to make. We looked online and found this recipe that didn't call for any corn syrup. The rest we can show in pictures...

Look at that gorgeous corn! Doesn't it look so Halloween-ish!?

As they watched the popping, they were egging the corns on; "JUMP! Jump you corns!"

All popped up and ready to ball - I love the color contrast of this corn. So fun.

I don't have pictures of us making the popcorn balls - it was a little sticky to be using phone or camera. But we all know that sticky projects are the funnest projects. Plenty of popcorn was eaten in the process, molasses dripped and hardened on the floor. The black and white popcorn was announced very tasty.

Okay - the dark molasses I used killed the black-and-white scheme. But they were really tasty AND fun to make!

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As partial payment toward the Bean and Grain CSA, I write about Lonesome Whistle Farm, their products, and what I do with them in my kitchen. Hope you enjoy! I know I do!

October Kindergarten Review: Weather & Seasons

With the weather changes and fall leaves that blow about, October seemed like the perfect month to think about weather and the change of the seasons.

We got a bunch of library book, pulled out some of the science books, and jumped right in.

Brother-Bug was already good on the seasonal differences, knows what season we all have our birthdays in, and some of the things that are traditionally done in each season, so much of the focus was on weather.

The first thing we did was make a calendar of October and start charting the weather each day. We marked if it was sunny, rainy, or cloudy, and if we thought is wag hot or cold. This was excellent practice for handwriting skills and observation (especially the observation skills for my book-bound little boy who would rather read than do anything else). On November first we counted up how many of each kind of day we had had - how many hot, how many sunny, etc. and made a list. We had a little discussion of what there was the most of, the least of, and how (looking at our list) we would describe the October weather. Was it consistent with our memories?

The detailing of the day's weather.

We did two awesome hands on science projects to learn about pressure in the atmosphere. The first was making clouds in a bottle! Papa-Bug found the instructions on this site and what fun we had. It was great for us to see exactly how pressure changes the cloud state. I think I learned as much in the project as Brother-Bug did.

Changing the pressure, creating a  cloud.

Once we knew about pressure, we made our own barometer, using these instructions. We watched the pressure everyday - here again I think it was just as fun and edifying for the grown-ups. We've decided not to disassemble the barometer because it's so fun to check everyday, as well as being useful for biking and hiking and planing other outdoor activities. Brother-Bug wrote a short report about what a barometer is and how it works. The way we write reports right now is that I ask leading questions and write down his answers, helping him find the answer if he gets confused.

We did seasonal activities, like a visit to the pumpkin patch, and hunting mushrooms - with discussion about what things are specific to each season, what comes ripe and what is happening in the garden, and similar.


Papa-Bug put a Weather App on his iPhone that Brother-Bug could easily navigate. Then they put location pins in familiar places - where friends live, where favorite books are located (James and the Giant Peach, for example, is in New York City). Bother-Bug would take the phone and Papa-Bug would quiz him to find out what the weather was in... North Carolina? Is it hotter or colder there than in NYC? What will the weather be like in three days where your Aunt lives? And so on. We learned all kinds of geography (a great carry over from last month's study of maps), comparisons, research, and sorting skills - and it was on the iPhone... which always makes it a special project.

We started a simple art project, making a tree showing all four seasons to tie into our conversations. I set Brother-Bug the task of using the hole pinch to meek snowflakes. He was having such fun with that job that I changed my plan mid-stream to let him do a lot more punching. He punched small green leaves and pink flowers for spring, and cherries for summer while I glued things. Then we listed out some on the things we notice or do in each season, leaving plenty of room. Finally (to keep enjoying the hole punch and do some math) we sent out a text to many friends and relations, asking their favorite season. When they responded, he found the season and joke punched it to tally. Of course we followed up with a review of the results - which season has the most/least kind of questions. .

Those were the high points of our October. On to November and learning about emergencies - first responders, what to do, who to call, buying a fire extinguisher, and so on.

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Usually I get these reviews out in the first week of a month. With the Occupation work our family is doing, regular life, my writing projects, and preparing for the holidays, blogging has taken a bit of a back burner. Thanks for your patience. After Christmas we will return to our regularly scheduled blog adventures.

September Kindergarten Review: Maps and Compasses

September was a certain 5-year old's birthday and we took a trip to Seattle to celebrate. His Godmommies live up there and we hadn't seen them in about six months. It happened to fit into his birthday weekend, so we planned it as a surprise. I also planned to do maps this month, to fit in with our trip.

Several days before his birthday he woke up to find a map from "The Birthday Faeries", directing him down to the train station parking lot. The map was in a series of 7 or 8 maps, each one building on the one before. He told Papa-Bug what the directions were and we drove him to the train station. At the station, he found a package with train tickets to Seattle and a Seattle Map in it. Away we went. We brought our compass. In Seattle we got several other maps - tourist maps and whatnot. We used these maps to find out where the Godmommies live, and how close they are to things we could see (like The Space Needle). When we got home I found a topographical map of the Seattle area and we compared the maps to one another - one showed a small area of Seattle, one a larger area, the road map showed a LOT more, the topo map didn't show us roads, etc.

On the train, listening to tunes, impatient to get there...

I got him a puzzle of the United States - you know the one, were each state (or almost each state) is its own piece. He has had a great time putting that together, and he is a master of basic US geography now. One evening, with friends over, we did the puzzle and marked where each person had lived - more than 14 states were covered! Our favorite related book is "The Scrambled States of America" by KK. It is a fun and silly way to learn about US geography.

I had planned some math exercises involving distance, but he did those on his own. I found him with his puzzle, tracing his finger across different routes: "North Carolina is over here and it is so far away. Minnesota is here and it is closer..." and so on. He was doing such a good job counting states, comparing size and shape, exploring distance, and so on, that I didn't feel a need to interfere with the natural math lesson happening in front of me.

One of the best projects we did was so simple. In the morning, we traced Brother-Bug's shadow with chalk on the driveway. The shadow was pointing West. Again in the afternoon we traced the shorter and North facing shadow. In the evening, the East facing shadow. It was very easy and a simple way to teach direction and the sun's movement. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture before it rained and washed our project away.

Easy map making for a 5-year old.

We made a map of our neighborhood as well. Brother-Bug went out with a camera and we took pictures of landmarks and street signs on the walk from our house to a nearby playground. I printed the pictures out and made construction paper streets. Then I let Brother-Bug figure out how the streets fit together, and where the pictures should go. With some assistance he came away with a lovely map of our neighborhood. I only wish I would have printed the pictures a little bit bigger.

Look at those piano-playing hands!

I did less this month, because we started learning piano as well, and I wanted to make sure we had enough slack around school things to accommodate piano practice and lessons. How grateful I am to my music teachers of days gone by - I am more than competent enough on the piano (as is Papa-Bug) to easily teach primer level piano at home. This is not only a financial savings, but an emotional one as well - we don't have to get to lessons, stress about practicing enough, or anything else. We just sit down and explore the piano together with gentle guidance and some pushing from a parent. As of this writing, Brother--Bug has 4 or 5 simple songs that he plays all the time. He is loving piano.

So those are the high points of our September. Of course, we read related books, found relevant websites, and all the rest. Learning to use a compass proved to be too tricky for us right now, so we will save that for another adventure. Now, on to Weather and Seasons in October! We'll be making our own barometer, among other things.

What Might Be Around The Bend

Over at The Homeschool Club they asked what homeschooling might look like in our family in the next few years. It's a thing to think about, for sure.

Right now, Brother-Bug is five and we are doing some kindergarten work. I say some because the kid already reads like a... like a seven or eight year old. So we can skip that alphabet prep.

The fabulous artwork of Carl Larsson.

In a few years, Sister-Bug will be doing her "Pre-School" work, Brother-Bug will probably be applying to Harvard. I say that tongue in cheek. I have no interest in pushing him (or his Sister) on any kind of a smart-kid-fast-track. That is one of the reason we are homeschooling - because we want their brains to be allowed to grow without lots of labels, restrictions, controls, and other aspects that are inherent in a system as massive as a public school system.

(I want to step back and be very clear. I have nothing against teachers. I love teachers and think that the work they do is amazing. Hats off to teachers. I also have nothing against people who believe that school is the best option for their family. We all have our own family structures that make sense to us. What I do take issue with is the mega-industrial-complex nature of the American public school system, which, I believe, ultimately dehumanizes both the heroic teachers and the amazing children.)

But back to the point. In a few years we will have another toddler probably, so I will be balancing teaching some middle-elementary grade work with preschool with babyhood. But the beauty of that is how it can all fit together. How Brother-Bug can be studying the complexities of the digestive system while Sister-Bug colors a picture of the stomach and intestines, and the imaginary baby nurses (using its digestive system!). Most of the time it will not look that idyllic and seamless. But there will be moments.

There will be math, geography, history, science, reading, respect, cooking, and play. Sometimes they will happen as well-thought-out lessons. Sometimes we will fight over the multiplication tables. Sometimes they will all happen at once, by accident. There will be music, family dinners, travels and adventures, cozy days with tea and reading and nothing else.

Every day, lesson planned or not, there will be opportunity to learn and adventure. Every day we will have rhythm and love and time to explore who we are. That is the essence of what we plan on doing here. 

August Kindergarten Review: Food

In lieu of formal curriculum, each month we choose a subject (or I choose a subject) and make that the focus of our learning projects for the month. Brother-Bug is kindergarten-aged (more or less), so our topics are broad and simple. I try to keep them easy to work into our day and fun to play around with.




For the month of August we learned about Food. This was a particularly easy one for a family deeply immersed in whole food eating, local food, canning, and who all love cooking. As the month progressed it was fun to see Brother-Bug take on more and more of the food challenges, and his awareness of what I was serving him at meals (and why) deepened as well.

We started off with a Preschool Lesson Bin from our local library all about food - a collection of a CD, some puppets, a DVD, and about 10 books all centered around Food. It was a good start.

We read some great books and did some excellent projects.

Muzzy kicked us off with her great Ice Cream Project! Brother-Bug said this was his favorite because he got to eat ice cream at the end.

Brother-Bug samples the produce

We also enjoyed blueberry picking at Adkins Farm, and the resulting work making jam, freezing berries, drying more berries, and making pie. Mmmm...pie....

We made our own mozzarella one day, using Ricki Carroll's book and instructions. It's fun and easy to make, and very satisfactory. Brother-Bug said he really liked the kneading and pulling necessary to make mozzarella. And when we hung the whey up to make ricotta (which didn't really turn out) he liked how the dripping was "cheese pee".

With the leftover whey, we made bread! We measured, mixed, kneaded, let sit, punched, and waited, and finally baked. It was perfect with honey. We talked about how the yeasts work (they make the bread fluffy by eating sugar and then 'farting'...lots of giggles there!), how to be safe with the oven, and other general learning tasks presented themselves - measuring math and so on.


So far, all these projects are just things that happened in the course of our days. Part of our rhytem of August. The cheese was made because we had extra milk. The bread was made because we had the whey from the cheese.

Kneading, kneading, kneading...

We talked about the 3 Gs - something I have written about on this blog. We cut out food pictures from magazines and made a 3 Gs collage. Along with the collage we discussed healthy eating choices, the importance of balancing healthy food with treat food, eating a rainbow of colors...and had fun with scissors and glue!

We had a field trip to a local fresh pasta maker - Pasta Plus - and learned about how food is produced in a factory. Brother-Bug got to cut his own sheets of pasta which we later had for dinner. Super tasty.

In our library bin there was a Sesame Street DVD about funny food songs, which was a favorite. Brother-Bug got to write a first 'Media Report' about it - dictating to me while I asked him questions. It was a real challenge for him to put his thoughts together about the movie, and I was thrilled that he was very excited about that particular challenge. When we thought back about the month's activities, he specifically mentioned enjoying the challenge of the report.

Our major math activity was making a Bar Graph of likes, dislikes, and favorites. Brother-Bug worked with his friend T, asking people in their world yes/no questions and filling in the graph I made with stickers. After the information gathering was done, we looked closely at the graph, asking several questions - is there anything that everyone likes, but is not anyone's favorite? How many people like ice cream and how many like celery? Which has the most likes? And so on.

Our graph - green indicates 'like', yellow indicates 'dislike', and red indicates 'favorite'.

To finish up the month we read Everybody Cooks Rice and located the countries represented on our globe with post-its. We also read The Life of Rice, about how rice is grown in Thailand and the culture that surrounds that staple crop.

To augment, I found some websites with food-related games for when he really wanted to play computer games. There was no game or site that stood out as excellent, so I'm not going to bother sharing them here. I threw them in mostly to keep consistent with our Food theme. 

We had a great time with all of this, and since we are only in kindergarten, I don't worry too much about retention and the ability to regurgitate information. It's enough for me that we are learning and doing and enjoying - forging pathways of life long learning and experiencing all that we can. That's what it is all about for me.

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Nest month we leap into maps and how they work - playing with geography! I can't wait to see where the month's adventures lead us!

Wordless Wednesday: Results of a Lesson in Yeast

Math Beans

Here in homeschooling land we look for different ways to play and learn, so as to engage as many part of our brains as possible. For math, we really like the skill building over at IXL, as well as cooking, helping with shopping, general counting, and other similar tasks. This week I also made a Math Bean Game, with the help of a few beans and 2 egg cartons. It is basic, almost free, and nicely hands-on for a little person.

(You can click on the picture to get a clearer shot of our game.)

With a marker, write the numbers 1-12 in the first egg carton. Then 1-6 on each side of the second egg carton. In the second carton put the correct number of beans in each side, using two different kinds of beans (we used pintos and garbanzos, but you could also use 2 colors of beads, or marbles, or what ever). That's it. Now play! 

One way to play: take the beans from a #2 slot and put it in the #4 slot. How many of the other kind of bean do you need to make 4? 

Obviously you can do whatever numbers you want to do. You can add, subtract, work forward, work backward... all kinds of math play is possible with this practically free game!