Homeschooling Math: Glad we found Fred!

I haven't had much time for blogging lately, but wanted to post about a math series we love.  A friend who is a homeschooling pro recommended it and let us borrow her book for a little while until we get our own.  Have you heard of Life of Fred?  It's a fun little set of books that go from kindergarten to calculus and teach children math through stories.  Fred is a 5-year-old math teacher at KITTENS University.  In Fred's daily life, situations come up which show why certain math skills are important and relevant before asking children to learn them.  For instance, it is 5:00 AM and Fred wants to go jogging, but he thinks he will wait two hours until it is 7:00 AM and no longer dark outside.  5+2=7.  We just finished chapter four in the first book, Apples, and Suzi and I both love Fred.  She really relates to this strange math teacher child who sleeps under his desk and has a doll named Kingie!

Suzi isn't quite ready to answer the end-of-chapter questions on her own yet, and I don't want to push her too hard, so I help her answer the hard ones.  If it gets too frustrating for her, we'll take a few weeks out and come back to it later.  As a child who felt crushed under rows and rows of repetitive math problems, I'm so happy to have found something totally different for Suzi.  I'm even thinking of trying out the higher-level Fred books for myself.  They aren't even expensive!

As for our general homeschooling progress, I do have some pictures, but I don't have much time to upload them right now.  We are swiftly approaching day 90, which is the halfway point of our 180-day school year and time to fill out forms and send in a mid-year checklist to our accountability association.  I'm oddly excited about it, maybe because it's the first official thing we'll have to do besides joining.  Our schedule has been fluctuating due to holiday events and activities, but we'll almost certainly be halfway done by Christmas.  Instead of taking a long Christmas break, I think we'll take advantage of Daddy being home to help with the little ones and keep on schooling.

Well, naptime is probably almost over around here.  I hope to have some pictures up soon!

66 down

I don't seem to have many pictures this time!  Here are the few I do have.

We are continuing with our Cuisenaire rods and both getting a little better at it!  I can let Suzi work some problems while I play with Robert or do something else, which is great.  We are still just working on addition right now.

On my mom's advice, I made Suzi this matching game.  Even though she can't sound out all those words, she can look at certain letter sounds for hints and is pretty good at matching them all up.  The words are taken from several Christmas easy readers we are using right now, so it helps her when they come up in the stories.

 What my kids do in their ample free time.  I'm pretty sure he dressed himself like that.

Lately, I have not had to ask Suzi to practice her writing.  She wrote these words one day when she was playing reading games on starfall.com.  They appeared in the interactive story at the end of each little unit.

The other day we read a book called "Latkes and Applesauce" and decided we'd have that for dinner.  They are a bit of work, but I love latkes.  The kids tried them but didn't like them.  Oh well, more for me.

Another bit of Suzi's writing practice, a list for Santa.  She is not yet writing words all on her own.  These are mostly copied from an alphabet poster.

We went to another homeschool skate, and after the last one I decided to order the girls their own skates.  It looks like the homeschool skate is going to be a regular monthly event.

Blurry picture, but it shows how Suzi's skates light up.

Ivey and her friend Delaney play together at the rink.

This is a little game I'm working on for Ivey.  She wanted to play Suzi's Christmas matching game, but it's too advanced for her.

More dress-up and pretend play.  Our house is their castle.

Tandem nursing!  I'm so proud.

I haven't managed to take many pictures of our time at ATBAB, our Monday homeschool co-op, but here is Robert enjoying his Thanksgiving lunch soup yesterday.  Our minister made soup for us, and it was yummy!  Then we played on the playground a little.

One thing we are working on that I have no pictures of is Spanish.  Suzi decided she wanted to learn it, so I ordered a book (didn't really need it) and got started.  So far Suzi can count to five, tell you her name and how she is doing, and remembers a few colors (rojo, verde, azul are her favorites).  We are working on getting all the colors and counting to ten.  It's been easy to incorporate into our day.  Spanish was the language I took in high school and college, and though I was never fluent, I do remember the beginning stuff!  I am also pretty decent with pronunciation, since my teachers were very particular about this (my favorite one forbid us to ever speak "hick Spanish").  Suzi isn't reading yet, so all the worksheets in our book with the words printed on them are not yet useful to us.  We just find a dull moment during the day and ask each other questions, count, and then I point to different things and ask her what color they are.  We're building on it gradually  :-)

A fall update--57 days down!

 We took a little family field trip to the state fair with Nana and Papa (Jordan's parents).  Most of it was riding and eating fair food, but we also checked out the art exhibits and some other interesting stuff.  This, for instance, is a sand sculpture of the four seasons.  The whole thing was made with sand and water!

The day after the fair, I took the kids to our homeschool co-op's zoo day and Suzi went to the homeschool class there, where they discussed how animals use the sense of smell.  Here is Autumn the giraffe, a few days before the birth of her baby, Kiko.  Kiko was born late at night, but later on I showed the girls the video.  It was amazing!

 Another zoo pic.  The girls love the statues!

 We did several fun crafts, such as pumpkin carving and these cheesecloth ghosts.  Ivey enjoyed this more than Suzi did.

 Here are the kids on their way into our homeschool co-op one crisp fall morning.  Ahh.  I absolutely love that they are becoming a bit more independent!

We went to our rink's first homeschool skate.  Loved it!  The girls spent time with their friends, and I spent some time with mine too.  Robert was at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

 How Little Brother entertains himself during math.  Maybe you can tell that he cried for the abacus.  He wants to learn to count!

 There were so many fun fall events this year.  Here we are at the Montessori school's fall festival, enjoying the hayride.  The girls spent most of their time in the inflatable bouncers, but there were also pony rides and a pumpkin patch.

Ivey the Bat enjoyed spending some time in the play-doh center at our homeschool co-op's Halloween Party.  Mother Goose stopped by to read to the children and play some games, too!

The girls were in a little barnyard play for their drama class.  Ivey is the chicken there in the middle, and Suzi is on the far right, playing a horse.  They did a great job.

 Suzi's handwriting.  She grudgingly follows my example, but prefers to sign her name in a much fancier way.

 In mid-October, we tried to take the girls apple picking, but they were out of apples when we arrived.  So we just bought some apples and picked muscadines.

These are a few of Suzi's Halloween decorations.  She loves to decorate for Halloween as much as I do!  I can't wait to see what she does for Christmas.

Here's the picture Suzi drew of Autumn having her baby, after watching the video.  That's not exactly how the baby came out, but I think it's cute anyway!  Then she did a little copy work.  Her writing is improving--she's not reversing letters as much anymore, and can do more writing faster without getting tired.  Still need to work on spacing, though.

We took a few days off in October to prepare for Halloween festivities and deal with a few other things that came up.  We are going again now, though, so hopefully it won't be as long before I get the next update posted!

What we've been up to

Here's what we've been doing lately, in pictures.

After our homeschool co-op one Monday, Suzi found a fungus growing on a tree stump.

We made pumpkin puree to use for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.  The girls' job was to remove the seeds.  Suzi loved it.  It also turned into impromptu counting practice.  Still trying to get her to say "30" instead of "20-10!"

Suzi asked why the mirror gets foggy when we take showers.  We set her up for an experiment with a glass of cold water, a glass of hot water, and a handheld mirror.  Pretty interesting that only the hot water created condensation on the glass.

This was our PE.  The funny thing is that as we were riding by, I think the kids at the school across the street were having PE too.  I like our version.

 She's got a library card and is proud to use it!  She could only check out one book as a new borrower, but next time we go she can get up to 20!

 Suzi loves making clothespin people.  When I saw this wooden castle at the thrift shop for $1, I knew she'd love it.  She colored it and put her clothespin people in their new home.

This is me when I was a little girl.  I had to help her with the hair.  I love Suzi's arts and crafts.

This is at Science Day in a homeschool friend's backyard.  All the kids brought a little project or something to show and tell everyone about.  We brought magnets.  These are our favorites, floating in air as they repel each other!

Also at Science Day, the kids had a pretend archaeological dig.

It can sometimes be like pulling teeth for me to get Suzi to practice her writing when I want, but if I leave her alone she'll go to her desk and start copying from her word list of her own free will.  She's also expressed that she wants to be told when something is backwards or otherwise incorrect so she can fix it.  I previously had not been pointing out every little mistake because I know how frustrating that can be when you were trying to write for pleasure.

This is what Suzi wants our pumpkin to look like.  We are going to have to get at least one more pumpkin, because Ivey has named our pumpkin Patterson, after a pumpkin in a book we read, and I don't think she's going to want it carved someone else's way.

I've added a section to Suzi's notebook of sample work.  We've been talking about classification of living things.  So far we've been over what it means to be a vertebrate versus an invertebrate, and mostly we've worked on identifying the different classes of vertebrates--birds, reptiles, fish, mammals, and amphibians.  The Sunday before last was a family school day for us.  We went to the zoo (I forgot the camera, naturally) and I took the opportunity to help Suzi classify different animals.  She's pretty good at recognizing the different types of vertebrates, and I'd like to explore invertebrates soon!  The fancy dog pictured above was her response when I asked her to draw her favorite animal.  Behind that sheet there is a sheet for vertebrates, and behind that for each class of vertebrates.  I do have a sheet for invertebrates, but not all the different classes yet.  I'll get that done soon.  The idea is that whenever we study an animal, we can file whatever we draw or write in the appropriate section of the notebook.

Countdown to Halloween!  We made this calender together, first of all because we are really excited about Halloween, but also to help Suzi understand calenders and how they work.  Now she gets to cross the days off and count down through all our big days in October.  It's going to be a fun month!  Hopefully I'll remember the camera for most of these things we have planned...

Nature Day with Mrs. Megan

My friend Megan keeps a garden and has a big, shady yard with bright flowers and a hammock.  She recently discovered these black swallowtail caterpillars in her herb garden, and invited us over to play and look at the caterpillars.

She talked to Suzi about the life cycle of a butterfly...

While the little ones played and bounced.

And we found this little guy!  You can't tell from the picture, but he is a huge slug.  When he realized we were all standing around him, he tucked his antennae away and made himself look just like a rock.

Here is the conversation that ensued.

Megan, to the children:  Would you like to pet the slug?

Me:  Eww.  Is that okay to do?

And later...

Megan:  Sigh.  It's so relaxing out here.

Me:  Eek!  A bee!

So I think you can see why it's Nature Day with Mrs. Megan and not Nature Day with Mama.  I try and am getting better, but I'm so glad for all the unique role models in my kids' lives.

Did you know that Mrs. Megan is also the leader of our homeschool co-op, All Things Bright and Beautiful?  We have a great time there. If you are in the area, you should think about joining!  There are limited openings in both age groups.