leftschool

Snow Day!

2008-10-29T12:38:00.000-07:00

Butterflies and mobius strips

2008-10-08T11:48:00.000-07:00

Eldest and a moth (Io moth?)

No that wasn't our 'lecture' subjects today but it was on the menu for the homeschool activity group that we participate in. We started off at a butterfly show which was packed with school tours and suffocating compared to the cool fall air outside. Despite the winged beauties most of us quickly retreated to the second part of our tour which was exploring the work of a family member of the group - a prof of math.

That was way fun! Eldest (and the rest of the group) sat rivetted as he wrote some fancy looking differential equations on the board. She sat forward and said to the mums sitting next to her, "I can't read that." Neither could I. In fact, prof claims few can. Anyhoo, after introducing what he did as a lecturer, he started cutting loops of paper. Now that was fun.

A single loop cut along one side creates: 2 loops
A twisted loop or mobius strip creates: one big loop.
A double twisted loop where two sides are once again obvious creates: 2 joined loops.
and so on...

This is seriously fun so here's a link to explore further. http://www.metacafe.com/watch/331665/no_magic_at_all_mobius_strip/

Afterward, he asked the kids who liked art and math and all the rest which prompted a range of questions being throw at him like "How does the sun make light" and "How was the Earth formed." Poor math prof. We had to hush the children.

Math Story Book Extra-ordinaire!

2008-09-09T19:05:00.000-07:00

This book really blew my socks off as it can be read on different math levels from basic counting to thinking about cubic volume:

365 Penguins

A fun math book which introduces the concepts of 7 days a week, different amounts of days that make up a month, 365 days in a year, the + 1 sequence, some addition, some multiplication and division. Oh, and it's funny too. My kids loved it.

The whole math story book list to date

I'm baaaaaaaaack

2008-09-05T18:02:00.000-07:00

Oh yes, back from a holiday of which I have mixed feelings so what's up in our world?

My eldest has moved on from her fascinations of natural science into history and right now we are knee deep in books about medival knights and pyramids. Monday it will be off to the Museum of Civilization for the Greek Exhibit.

Not to be outdown, my youngest is on a quest to learn about different kinds of critters. Being the more neglected and consequently (I assume) less neurotic younger one she is adamant about how she is discovering all about - phonetically dragged out -'iiiinnnssseeecccttt' with a punctuated 't' at the end.

I have vowed once again to keep our approach relaxed and fun. "Remember, it's supposed to be fun!!" I think I'm going to post that on my forehead. We're concentrating on what I call:

1. Reading Circle - go around and read to each other
2. Word Work - spelling and stuff
3. Writing/Drawing - 'cuz no one can handwrite worth a darn save me in this house
4. Math you Make - I'll post pictures
5. Way too many fieldtrips and library books.

Empty shelves at the library? It's not the bookworms, just some homeschoolers.

2008/2009 has begun!

Cutting off my hair

2008-04-08T07:41:00.000-07:00

I have had really long hair for a while now... okay, 6 years and was going for the 'classic length' which according to internet sources is just below your bottom. However, it was getting on my nerves what with brushing out the tangles every morning, never having time to do anything with it and just generally being a bit grumpy (I had other words in mind but let's keep this rated G), so one morning I said to my eldest:

"Want to see mommy cut off all her hair?"
"Yeah!"
How kids love naughty things.
"Okay, but don't you do this. Ready?"
It took longer than I imagined cutting through the steel wire which is my hair, and two scissors later - gone. I had thought that I would stop there. You know, go to a professional to finish the look but what the heck...
"Hey, how short should mommy cut it?"
"To your ears like papa!"
"Okay."
A little while later.
"Mommy can you put it back on again?"
"No honey, I can't."

The shackles of feminine locks are gone. The last of my original vanities have been donated to the wig makers. Am I sad? Heck (G censored word) no.

Before:

After:

BTW: I had asked several hairstylists what they would suggest but all of them had been lets just say unencouraging mentioning my 'strong jawline' and other nonsense. This and my reluctance to let people 'do' my hair (or any other part of me) made me fearless about cutting my own hair.

It has been fun watching the shock/horror on people's face too. I think it looks good but really I DON'T CARE if it does or not.

Relief. No more hair obscuring my gaze on the world, to restrict my speed of my movement, and to be looked upon as admiringly as proof of my fertility or other such blather.

This is the first ever blogger pic of me so "hi"

Math is fun fun

2008-03-28T06:21:00.000-07:00

Money math - we use dimes and pennies to learn about adding double digit numbers. That way, she adds her ones first and trades if she has ten or more for a dime and then she adds up all her dimes or the tens collumn.

I went upstairs from the computer to greet my freshly woken eldest and said how did you sleep?

"Can we do more math," she responded.

-- just a reminder why we homeschool --

We were going to do some exploration of multiplication and area of rectangles and squares but when I went to do laundry or something boring, my daughter started her own game called 'archeology' using the squares as a 'dig grid'. Sometimes you gotta know when to leave them alone.

Division and fraction for beginners

2008-03-21T14:06:00.000-07:00

A script of our game: dividing

Stage 1

Me: "Let's start with a number. Hmmm, which one?"
Eldest: "12!"
Me: (Oh good one!) "Okay, can you share 12 crayons with 3 people. Make sure everyone gets the same amount of crayons."
Eldest: Starts to separate them all by ones.
Me: "That's a lot of people. How many people were we sharing with?"
Eldest: "Oh." Starts to make groups with 2 in each.
Me: "How many do I get?"
Eldest: "Two"
Me: "What about your sister?"
Eldest: "Two"
Me: "What about you?"
Eldest: "Two"
Me: "But that leaves a bunch of crayons. Why don't we start by giving one to each person and then do it again until we have no more crayons?"
Eldest: "Okay." Starts handing them out. Fights ensue over which colour each gets. Finally...
Me: "So how many do we each get?"
Eldest: Counts "Four."
Me: "So what is 12 divided by 3?"
Eldest: Thinks a minute to figure out why I changed the words from share to divide. "Um..."
Me: "How many is in each group of crayons."
Eldest: "Four"
Me: "So what is 12 divided by 3?"
Eldest: "Oh. Four."

Stage 2

Me: "Do you remember when we divided 12 crayons?"
Eldest: "Can I draw?"
Me: "Yes, can you draw 4 circles, make them big because we are going to divide some numbers into 4 groups."
Eldest: "Okay."
Me: Takes out 4 counters. Writes 4 divided 4 on a slip of paper. "Can you divide these 4 counters into these 4 circles?"
Eldest: Hesitates. "Like this?" Puts all four in one.
Me: "No. You want to make sure that each circle gets the same amount. Divide the counters into 4 circles. Divide by 4."
Eldest: Puts one counter in each circle.
Me: "Tell me how many is in each circle. What is 4 divided by 4?"
Eldest: "One."
Me: "Good! Let's try it with a bigger number. Let's divide 8 by 4."

This game continues with different circles and different amounts of counters until the words 'share' 'same in each circle' etc.. are entirely dropped and only divided by and equals are used. It can also be done with blocks making evenly sized towers. This is great for making sure that you have divided evenly - all the towers are the same height.

Of course, if your child gets bored, it is good back to concrete examples such as plates and raisons. In fact, in order to use math effectively, concrete examples should never be abandoned entirely. This ensures that instead of word problems being difficult, they are easy, maybe even easier initially.

The Script: Starting with Fractions

Me: "Who wants to make a pie?"
Eldest, youngest: "Me, me, strawberry!"
Me: "Okay, I'm drawing a big pie. Youngest, how many pies is that?"
Youngest: "One."
Me: "Okay, I'm going to divide the pie. Do you all want a piece?"
Eldest, youngest: "Yes."
Me: "How many of us are there?"
Eldest, youngest: Counting overtop each other. Somehow the number "Three" appears.
Me: "Okay, I'm dividing our pie by three." Cuts up pie with scissors. "One, two, three pieces. How many pies do we have?"
Youngest: "Three."
Me: "Really? We started with one. I'm going to put it together again. How many pies is that?"
Youngest: "One."
Oldest: "Just one."
Me: "Yup, but we all get a piece." Drawing on each piece, I put the fraction 1/3 and say "One piece out of three. That's one out of three. One divided by three. We divided our pie three ways. Wait. Oh no!"
Eldest, youngest: giggles.
Me: "I see a mouse. Do you see it? It's over there." Points. They both look (we hope). I take away a piece. "Hey, that mouse wasn't over there. It was over here. A piece of our pie is missing! How many pieces do we have now?"
Eldest: "Aw. We have two."
Me: "Sigh. Two. Two out of what? What did we start with?"
Eldest: "Three."
Me: "Can you say all of that so I can write it down."
Eldest: "Three. Um"
Me: "What do we have left?"
Eldest: "Two."
Me: "Two out of ?" I write two with the fraction line
Eldest: "Three."
Me: "Which is?"
Eldest: "Two out of three."
Me: Write the three on the bottom. "Wait, there's that mouse again." Point. "Hey, it's not two out of three anymore!"

Continue.

Later on,

Me: "Let's make a pie with 8 pieces: one for ..., one for ..., one for ... How many pieces do we have all together?"
Eldest: Counts
Me: As she counts, put a cherry sticker or counter on each piece.
Eldest: "Eight."
Me: "So what should we put on the bottom?"
Eldest: "Eight."
Me: "Did the mouse eat any? Did YOU eat any?"
Eldest: giggling "No."
me: "What number should we put on the top then? Are they all there? All ..."
Eldest: "Eight?"
Me: "Okay." Makes fraction. "Does that look right? Eight out of eight pieces of the pie."
Eldest: nods.
Me: "Did you know that this line also means divided by?" Put dots on either side of the fraction line so it looks like a divided by symbol. "What does this say?"
Eldest: "Eight" Looks at me.
Me: "Right. Go on."
Eldest: "Eight divided by eight."
Me: "You got it. What is eight divided by eight?"
Eldest: "Um... one?" (This only works if they have learned about numbers dividing by themselves in the first place obvioulsy)
Me: "Hey one is how many pies we have. How did you know that?"
Eldest: "We only drew one pie."

This game can be extended to look at adding and subtracting pies with the same number of pieces, as well as in the mouse ate two pieces so 4/4-2/4 = 4-2/4 = 2 and adding as you unevenly share pieces so that daddy gets 2/4 and kids only get 1/4 each which still adds up to 2+1+1/4. If you use two pies, you can practice converting fractions like 8/4 into 8 divided by 4 or 2 (pies).

Enjoy and let me know how it went with your kids!

It's as easy as ABaCus - lots more math

2008-03-21T13:53:00.000-07:00

Alright, some of you might be thinking I should change the name of my blog to 'math for tots' or something like that. I have yet to download some of our more lefty stuff and have been so busy with the nuts and bolts of homeschool that I haven't had time to write much more than the ideas I think are good enough to share lately.

Anyhow, my obsession with math literacy (yes I know it's numeracy but I use literacy to draw parallels between what I perceive as an illiteracy in numbers for much of the popoulation) is an old one, harking back to my own struggles to understand mathematics and eventually my success at tutoring it.

From my limited experience with teaching 'very' young children, I am beginnning to believe that it is better to introduce ideas such as fractions earlier and give them time to develop a flexibility with them, than later.

My eldest is happy to not only to attempt basic addition and subtraction but also to delve into negatives, divide, multiply and describe simple fractions. She even is gaining an understanding of the connection between fractions and division. Is she some kind of math genius?

Really, I don't think so.

If you can count, you can add
If you recognize more and less, you can subtract
If you can add more than once in a row, you can count by '2' '5' whatever AND you can multiply
If you can add, recognize that 1 is 1 and 2 is 2 (or share evenly), you can divide
If you can divide, you can do basic fractions
If you can divide and add, you can start to add fractions
Etc...

Maybe it's not that simple, but it really helps my kids to work at these concepts together.

Some activities my kids liked to follow.

Caps for Sale - block math

2008-03-03T10:28:00.001-08:00

Oh yes, more math:

I find blocks useful for working out multiplication and division problems as you can make even height towers or even length rows.

Here we are calculating how many caps were for sale in the classic story book 'Caps for Sale' by remaking his hat and figuring out that there are 4 groups of 4 or 4x4 plus one more. There are lots of other math ideas that could be drawn from this book including the one to one correspondence of monkey to hat, or how much would all the hats cost at 0.50 cents each etc...

My daughter very seriously balances her 'cap tower' on her own head - for some reason this image won't rotate for me.

Oh and since someone in our local homeschooling circle suggested that my blog made my kids look like they spent all day cooperatively doing complex games and problems, here is what they did directly afterward and it is something they excel at - making a mess and having fun in the process.

More math books

2008-03-02T18:58:00.000-08:00

There is a lot going on right now but I just haven't been in the mood to update the blog but here goes with two new math books found in the picture book section:

1. 93 in My Family
-adding in big numbers

2. The Three Silly Billies
-using money

Be back when the winter blahs have lessened their icy grip.

Here's the whole list

The ponderings of an under 5

2008-02-14T15:02:00.000-08:00

I was sitting in the mall food court when my eldest looked over at me and thoughtfully said,

"What era will it be when all the people are gone?"

"What do you mean? Do you mean when all the people are dead. Like the dinosaurs?"

"Yeah, what will it be like then. Will we start all over again?"

"No, that kind of time is not cyclical but like when everyday there is a day and a night but everyday is a different day not the same as the one before."

"Oh, but what will it be like?"

"Mommy cannot predict the future."

"Oh. Are we going to get ice cream now?"

"No. Eat your french fries."

She stared off again into the crowds.

I wonder if she was hoping that perhaps the dinosaurs would reappear?

Signed

Mother of a dinosaur lover.

P.S. We got cookies instead.

Kids goofing off in the snow!

2008-02-14T14:56:00.000-08:00

When will winter end!

I think we're going to break out the sand toys and put bathsuits overtop of our snowsuits!

Bowl Math

2008-02-14T14:37:00.001-08:00

Bowl Math - Addition & Subtraction

Take a fixed number such as 8. Ask your child to count as they place pennies (or other counters) in the bowl until they reach 8. Have a numberline in front of you and ask them to think of a number smaller than 8. Refer to the numberline if necessary. Once they think of a number, get them to place that many in a second bowl. How many are left? Use cards marked with numbers and math symbols to construct (or write it in pencil) this as an addition equation:

ex: 5+3 = 8

Now switch the bowls around. How many is in the first bowl now? How many are in the second bowl? Does it still equal 8? Ask them to count all of them if they are not sure.

ex: 3+5 = 8

Do this again until they come up with all the possible combinations.

---

Count out 8 pennies (counters) and put them into one bowl. Ask them to take away some and put it the other bowl. Construct / write this as an equation.

ex. 8-3 = 5

Remove the math symbols

ex. 8 3 5

Ask your child to replace the subtraction and equal sign with an addition and equal sign. Where would they go?

ex. 8=3+5

In this way you have discovered that:

3+5=8
5+3=8
8=3+5
8=5+3
8-5=3
8-3=5

With three or more bowls, you can also learn that

1+2+3+2 = 6+2

etc...

Have fun!

Nature Club - Animal Tracks

2008-02-10T17:39:00.000-08:00

This is a post for the monthly meeting of the local Nature Club.

Note the parents: I am not an expert at tracking just thought it might be fun to think about other ways of observing animals.

We will be doing a small craft where we build a 'bird' foot for making footprints out of pipe cleaners and take them for walks in the snow.

---

Nature Club - Animal Tracks
Where are all the animals?

Have you ever gone for a walk in a wooded area and thought, where are all the animals? Many animals stay away from people because they are afraid of us. How do we know then what kinds of animals might be there?

Trackers use clues left behind by the animals to tell them what kind of animals might be there, when they were there and what they might have been doing. Foot prints, hair or feathers, and drooping are all useful signs.

If you saw this feather, what would you say left it there?

Blue Jay Feather, credit to Janerc from Creative Commons

How about these footprints?

Dog tracks in the mud, credit to Zen from Creative Commons

Imagine someone was tracking not a bird or a dog, but some kids. They went to the playground after all the kids had left. What kind of things might they find?

Sandtoys?

Cracker crumbs?

A forgotten hat?

Footprints?

Sand castles?

Hair?

Footprints

A tracker follows the tracks of an animal. Tracks often refers to an animal's footprints. These can be left in the dirt, mud, sand, even by bent or broken plants. Another good material to see tracks in is snow.

Can you tell where the duck is going?

Duck prints shared by Martin Deutsch from Creative Commons

What about this dog? Where do you think he wants to go?

Dog prints shared by Rachel is cocunt&lime from Creative Commons

Cats normally keep their claws in as they walk and you can see this in the footprint.

Cat prints shared by rosefirerising from Creative Commons

The photographer pointed out a wing print in this picture of chickadee footprints. Can you find them?

Chickadee prints shared by Alex Dobb from Creative Commons

Wow look at all those prints. What do you think made them?

People prints shared by Kimba from Creative Commons

Squirrels often jump in the snow. Next time you see a squirrel hopping or walking along, go and look at their footprints afterward and see how they change as the squirrel moves differently.

Squirrel prints shared by Ryner12 from Creative Commons

Links

If you want to know more about animal tracking then bear tracker's free web site/course has a lot of information. You will have to verify any info of course but to my untrained eye, it seems great, especially the mammal section.

More about tracking for kids

As many a dino fanatic knows, trace fossils are those fossils of signs and tracks left behind by dinosaurs, including their feces.

Animal Track colouring sheet

Find the track game

Dog versus Cat prints at bear tracker

Make a plaster cast of a track

More on preserving tracks

Books (available at the local Library)

Big tracks, little tracks : following animal prints / by Millicent E. Selsam ; illustrated by Marlene Hill Donnelly. (younger kids)

Tracks, scats, and signs / by Leslie Dendy ; illustrated by Linda Garrow (younger kids, but I haven't seen this book yet)

Tracking and the art of seeing : how to read animal tracks and signs / Paul Rezendes (older kids)

Field guide to tracking animals in snow / Louise Richardson Forrest ; illustrations by Denise Casey. (older kids)

Bilingualism - pros and cons

2008-02-01T10:24:00.000-08:00

My 2 year old has transformed from an energetic toddler into a Why Machine*.

Actual conversation:

Me: What colour shirt would you like to wear?

DD: Why?

Me: I'm offering you the choice of pink or purple.

DD: Why?

Me: Pink or purple?

DD: Purple.

Me: Here you go, the purple shirt.

DD: Why?

Me: Why what?

DD: Why the purple shirt?

Me: You asked for purple.

DD: Why?

Me: Um, I don't know. Why?

DD: Um, I don't know. 'Cause I like purple.

Me: Okay, here you go.

DD: Why?

Me: So you can put it on.

DD: Why?

Me: Why do you think?

DD: Cause I'm nakey! (Runs around for a minute)

Me: Okay, put on your shirt, please.

DD: Why?

Me: Could we take a why break?

DD: Why?

Me: Please stop saying why for just one second (Yes, terrible of me I know)

DD: Por que?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

--

* By Why Machine, I do not mean that my daugher asks why a lot, I mean it is a verbal tick, a word that exits her mouth at the same rate as breathing.

For the Shape of Mother(s) and our daughters

2008-01-31T07:49:00.000-08:00

The Shape of Mother blog (connected to the amazing website looking, I mean really looking at the way society engages with the bodies of those who gave birth to us) has asked bloggers to submit an article on children and body issues.

Television, myself and my daughter

The best thing that I have ever done for my bodily self-esteem was giving up reading magazines and watching television. Even though I am constantly bombarded with the bigger than life billboards of air brushed beauty and gym advertisements in the mail, I barely notice them anymore. I truely don't care that one of my boobs is bigger than the other or that I have more stretchmarks than Mid-Atlantic Ridge. I just don't care! Really.

This is pretty remarkable considering that my mother was a model and I struggled with an eating disorder and compulsive exercising for most of my teenage and young adult years.

I didn't stop watching television in order to become comfortable in my own skin. No, I wanted to reclaim time. At first, it was difficult because there were times when I was lonely for an adult voice or for an escape from the doldrums of washing dishes but my husband was adamant that something transformational was happening to him. He felt freer but he didn't clarify exactly how.
Years later when I hardly missed television at all, I realized that I was no longer hung up on the cellulite at the backs of my legs. How did that happen? At the beach I noticed that practically everyone had cellulite or freckles or rolls or stretch marks or liver spots or wrinkles or whatever. All these bodies were as beautiful and imperfect as mature trees. They showed the signs of living. Some showed the signs of an act of creation so commonplace and yet so important: motherhood.

And then I made the connection, I wasn't getting my daily dose of carefully dressed and photographed bodies. I had become freer.

Which brings me to my eldest daughter. She loves both dresses and vicious dinosaurs, the colour purple and telescopes. She wants to be beautiful but knows that we don't use the 'p' (princess) word in our house. It is not because I am no fun but because I recognize the market connection between princesses and the beauty industry. Girls want to be powerful and of course 'beautiful'. We all want to be powerful through our beauty. It is impossible to be beautiful enough so we are powerless.

I explain that I don't want her female role models to be women who are simply admired because of their family connections and their beauty. Now I know the marketers have tried to make princesses more sassy but notice how they are still gorgeous while doing their clever acts.

But there is more. My daughter is beautiful...

... at least according to this time and place.

I would never have imagined having a little girl with waist long stawberry blond hair and clear blue eyes. It's bizarre. Small groups of people wander around after her trying to determine the exact colour of her hair. Older girls tell their mothers that they want hair like hers. Grandmothers proclaim her a good child because she is so lovely.

So despite the fact that she has never watched 'television,' does not know that fashion magazines exist and has a mother who doesn't put on her face in the morning, she knows that one of the things that is valuable about her is that other people think she is beautiful.

What will happen when someone threatens it with a careless comment. What happens when they tell her to suck in her stomach? How do I fortify her against the casual cruelty of a world that has told her that she is beautiful and that this is more powerful than her ability to read or her interest in T-rex.

I have no answers only hope?

Eldest reading the book 'red is best'.

Truly amazing free math resource

2008-01-20T06:02:00.000-08:00

This is a pilot project for teaching math in the UK and it offers it's resources free online. You seem to be able to be able to access all of the first year but only half the textbook in the second year, and so on. You have to be a teacher of an institution to get the second half but the first is really a fantastic start.

Some caveats: In the project outline, it says that it wants to put the teacher as the focus of the class and the class to work more as a group but the material is easily adaptable to homeschooling and the curriculum offers a measured, comprehensive approach to teaching maths unlike any I've ever seen before.

I would use if you had no willingness or ability to purchase other math curriculum, wanted to supplement your child's math work or felt lost in math.

Enjoy: http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mepres/primary/default.htm

Nature Club - Snow

2008-01-17T05:35:00.000-08:00

A post for the local meeting of the Nature Club:

Snow

When many of think of winter, we think of snow – lots and lots of lovely white snow! Hopefully, that snow will be soft enough to land in when making snow angels and have just the right amount of wetness to pack into snowmen.

Snowflakes

But what is snow?

Snow starts its journey just as raindrops do as tiny droplets of water which form a cloud. If it is cold in the cloud then those little bits of water start to freeze onto specks of dust or salt that is also in the cloud. More and more bits of water freeze onto the started crystal until they become too heavy to float in the cloud. These heavy crystals fall as snowflakes!
(explanation abbreviated from the great book: Snow Watch by Cheryl Archer)

Snowflakes almost always have six sides because of the way the icy water molecules fit together. Every one of those six sided flakes has a slightly different shape. That is why people say that no two snowflakes are a like.

Advanced answer to the 6 sided question: http://www.learner.org/channel/courses/essential/physicalsci/session6/closer1.html
Logic question, just because we’ve never found two snowflakes that are identical does this mean that it can never / has never happened?

How to make a paper snowflake
Make an online snowflake

Activity - Maybe you want to look at real snowflakes. Next day it is snowing, get a dark cloth and hold it up quickly into the snow and then look at it. Are there any snow crystals that you can see? Do they really have six sides?

Lots of different people have been fascinated by the beauty of a single snowflake including a man named Snowflake Bentley who took the first photographs of snow. He had to work quickly and he had to work outside to make sure that the snowflake did not melt before he could take his picture.

Snow is warm

Sometimes people will say that the ground was covered in a blanket of snow. What a cold blanket that must be! Snow really is like a blanket though. Piles of snow are filled with lots of tiny air bubbles and these air bubbles trap heat so that whatever is under the snow is warmer.

Activity - A great activity is to fill a clear glass with snow and measure how much there is. Next, let it melt. Measure again. There’s a lot less water in the glass than snow, I bet. That is because water takes up a lot less space than all those jumbled together snow crystals with air trapped between them.

So next time you are outside remember that there are lots of plants (and other things) sleeping under that thick blanket of snow!

Great books (all found at the library):

There are so many fantastic books about snow that I’ll only list a couple that my kids really enjoyed:

1. Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin
(mentions home school and a natural love of learning and nature).
2. Snowman at night by Caralyn Buehner with pictures by Mark Buehner.
(imaginative story with great illustrations told in rhyme.)
3. Winter is the warmest season by Lauren Stringer
4. Snow Watch by Cheryl Archer
(filled with lots of great ways to investigate snow)
5. The mitten by various authors (old folk tale)
6. Imagine a night by paintings by Rob Gonsalves with text by Sarah L. Thomson
(not strictly about snow but amazing illustrations)

Websites:

1. Colour, cut and paste a snowman
2. Great snow pages
3. Snowflake Bentley Museum
4. Snowflake Bentley's Crystal Collection
5. Modern snow crystal pictures
6. How to make maple syrup candy

Math Story Books - How Do You Count a Dozen Ducklings

2008-01-17T05:32:00.001-08:00

An addition to the growing list of math story books:

How Do You Count a Dozen Ducklings by In Seon Chae, with illustrations by Seung Ha Rew

Found in the fiction section of the children's library was this little math gem about a momma duck trying to keep track of her 12 ducklings. It explores the precursors of division and multiplication through grouping, along with counting by multiples. A good transition storybook from counting by mutliples to multiplication.

1. Multiplication / Division Foundations
2. Counting by Multiples

See More

Element of the week - followup to Lithium

2008-01-17T05:18:00.001-08:00

My kids liked the experiments with bowls and we discovered that metal really does cool down and warm up very quickly. My eldest correctly used the word insulator and conductor but than later asked me, "Mommy what is an insulator?"

They also had a novel way of using the 'battery model.' I like to call it the automated kid. My eldest enjoyed demonstrating this by having someone else move the electron 'paperclip' around and jumping up and down as if someone had turned on her switch!

And here is the automated stuffed T-rex:

Element of the week - Lithium

2008-01-12T08:48:00.000-08:00

Let's meet Lithium. It has 3 protons in its nucleus and 3 electrons circling around it. Here is a fun animation so you can imagine it better. Switch between the nucleus and shell view for fun. How many nuetrons did it have in its nucleus?

Lithium is a metal. Can you think of something around your house that's a metal? How is it different than wood or plastic. Here is a fun activity to try:

# Activity 1

1. Metal Bowl (make sure it isn't aluminium, a pot might work better - I made this mistake at first and was wondering why the magnet didn't stick!)
2. Glass Bowl
3. Plastic Bowl
4. Wooden Bowl
4. Metal Spoon

Drop the metal spoon into the bowls. Does it sound different depending on which bowl you dropped it into?

How else does the metal bowl appear different from the plastic bowl? Is it shiny or dull. Does a magnet stick to it? Get someone to help you pour hot water into the three bowls and touch the outside, does it get hot quickly or slowly?

Making Stuff with Metal

You discovered in the above experiment that metal makes a clinking 'metallic' sound when struck, that it is shiny, that magnets can stick to it and that it conducts heat.

It is also malleable. That means that you can bend and squeeze it into different shapes.

#Activity 2: Try this, get a twist tie and take off the covering (or leave it on but remember that it's metal inside), now twist it.

It isn't called a twist tie for nothing!

Metal's malleability has been used for centuries to make things like swords, cooking pots, and other useful objects.

We'll learn more about metals as we learn about the various metallic elements in the periodic table.

Light Lithium

Because lithium weighs so little, it is often mixed with other metals to make light weight alloys. An alloy just means a mixture of different types of elements (normally metals), like a recipe is a mixture of different ingrediants. Lithium is sometimes mixed with aluminium, copper, manganese, and cadmium to make alloys that are used to make some airplane parts. Why do you think it would be a good idea to use light metal when building an aircraft?

Actually...

Lithium is an alkali metal. This means that it has one electron in its outer shell and it want to get rid of it! When electrons move around from one atom to another, chemical reactions happen. The more atoms want to get rid of electrons, or collect more electrons, the more reactive they are! Lithium is really reactive.

The fact that lithium wants to get rid of the electron in its outer oribital makes it useful in batteries.

#Activity 3: Have a PARENT get a battery for you and look at each end. One end will have a big plus sign on it, and the other a minus sign. (BTW: They may be labelled alkali batteries, remember alkali metals?)

Quick question: Are electrons negative or positive?

That's right, they're negative.

Quick question 2: Do negatives attract negatives or positives?

That's right, OPPOSITES ATTRACT. In the case of subatomic particles, negatives are attracted to positives.

So how does a battery work?

To understand this, let me tell you a teeny tiny tidbit about electricity. You have probably heard the word before. Maybe if the lights went out suddenly, someone might have mentioned that a power line is down and there is no electricity going to the house. Or perhaps something in your house won't start because someone forgot to plug in the 'electrical' cord. Or maybe your toy won't work because it needs new batteries which supply electricity.

What is electricity?

Electricity => electr... => electron.

In the most simpliest sense, electricity is moving electrons.

#Activity 4: Model a battery.

Materials:

Piece of stiff paper / cardboard
Length of string
Pen
Paper clips
Tape
Stuffed animal

Part 1:

1. Draw a rectangle
2. Label one end with a plus sign - this will be the positive cathode*
3. Label the other end with a negative sign - this will be the negative anode*
4. Get one piece of string.
5. Tape one end of the string to each 'node'
6. Now hang the string and 'battery' around a stuffed animal

Part 2:

1. Put a whole bunch of paper clips in your anode end. These are your electrons.
2. Run your electrons through the string 'wire' to your animal.
3. Your animal has electricity now, make it dance!
4. Now keep moving your electrons to the cathode end.

You have just demonstrated how a simple battery works. The anode is negative because it has too many negative electrons and they are being attracted to the positive side of the battery. This end is positive because it needs more electrons. As the electrons moves through the wire, the electricity makes your machine, or animated bunny, or light bulb or whatever work!

Show someone else your pretend battery!

---

* Apparently, the positive and negative characteristics of the anode and cathode vary depending on the device.

Learn More

Lithium Batteries for big kids - wiki entry
Alloys for big kids - wiki entry

A fantastic website!and Little Bitty Baby Math

2008-01-11T08:50:00.001-08:00

Great math website

http://www.rainforestmaths.com/

This free website by Jenny Eather covers preschool/kindergarten to grade 6 roughly and has tonnes of interactive, fun games to help learn math ideas ranging from equations to algebra to geometry and more. Wow!

Even my little on enjoys it which brings us to:

Little Bitty Baby Math

"So what does your two year old do while you are doing these activities?"

She participates.

Not that she has the same attention span or understanding but she usually wants to do what her older sister does for a micro-second of time.

We work on a couple things at her age:

1. Recognizing numeric symbols from 0-9
2. One to one correspondence
3. Quick counting (guessing a number quickly between 0-4)
4. Sorting
5. Building (using positional words)
etc...

Sorting shapes in an egg cartoon.

Adding up, doubles

2008-01-11T08:39:00.000-08:00

Memorization

Sometimes, I want to write that these math songs and ideas are 'in defence of memorization'. I am all for novel ideas that get the mind turning and teach solution finding strategies. But I also think that memorization of facts has a necessary place in learning basic and advanced skills. Knowledge at the forefront of your mind helps you to process more complex problems more quickly. Okay, I'm done my rant. Songs are a fantastic way to lodge information into your brain. The famous example is the alphabet song, in its variations, and despite the critisism that it teaches some children that LMNOP is one letter.

Adding up (and down)

Children use various strategies to add up numbers, usually relying on anchor sums and numbers that the know well. For example, some figure out how close the equation is to 10, such as 6+3 is one less than 6+4 so it is 9 which is one less than 10. Or how close it is to a double, such as 3+4 is one more than 3+3 so it is 7.

Memorization and doubles

To this end, here is a rhyme about adding up doubles:

One plus one equals two

Do up your left and right shoe

Two plus two equals four

Open and shut every car door.

Three plus three equals six

Half dozen eggs in the mix.

Four plus four equals eight

Spider legs hurry up the gate.

Five plus five equals ten

Let us start all over again.

Have fun!

Counting by multiples - songs and activities

2008-01-11T08:05:00.000-08:00

We are learning about multiples in our house, focusing on the 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s sequence but also trying to be flexible with the idea. Sometimes, we start counting by 2s at 1 so that the result is always odd as opposed to always even like when you start with 0 or we count by 3s. Here are some songs and ideas that we like in our household.

Count by 1s

Of course the 1s sequence is the usual counting sequence and there are lots and lots of songs that help children become familiar with it including the well known, and adaptable:

One little

One little
Two little
Three little birdies
Four little
Five little
Six little birdies
Seven little
Eight little
Nine little birdies
Ten little birds flying in the sky.

The interesting thing about the above is that it is also a count by 3 activity. You can do it backwards too. Another one that is also a basic count by 5s activity is:

Once I caught a fish

One, two, three, four, five
Once I caught a fish alive
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten
Then I let him go again...

Why did you let him go?
Because he bit my finger so.
What finger did he bite?
This little pinky on my right.

Count by 2s

Stringing beads in an ABAB pattern.

My kids love playing with beads. We are making a count by two necklace using the ABAB pattern. After the necklace is made, we count alternatively quiet and loud and then silent and outloud to learn the 2s sequence. This will then work even when you are not using the most common 0,2,4,6,8 sequence.

Here is the finished result with a 100s chart exercise.

Marking every other one in the 100s chart.

Here is a simple song we use while stomping around the house:

'When I count by two
I have a noisy shoe'

First step quiet, whispering one, second step loud, shouting two, etc...

Counting by 3s

This is a bit tricky to learn but it's fun.

'One, two, three
Step, step, skip a knee'

You can use your fingers to 'step' and 'skip' or use this game for the stir crazy.

Counting by 5s

Counting by 5s and 10s with popsicle sticks.

My daughter loves to make hashmarks?? 'whatever these are called (I forget).' Every day, after writing our number of the day (we are counting to 100), she draws the number of 'sticks' beside the number and then we count them up by 5s.

We also say this rhyme to the start of the hocky pocky:

'Put your one five in
Put your other five in
Add them both together
and you get ten.'

The picture above shows how we start to group the 5s into 10s by placing the 5s into rows of 2 according to the above song.

Counting by 10s

Counting by 10s also gives the opportunity to learn about place values. My neighbour, who is an elementary school teacher, gave me this idea. Starting with one, we place a straw in a cup labelled '1' every day. When we get to ten, we bundle the straws and place the bundle in a second cup labelled '10'. Every day, we count our 10s bundles using the 10s sequence (10, 20, 30, etc...) and our 1s. Afterwards we guess what the number of the day is and how we would write this. I find the repetitiveness of this activity is great in reinforcing this idea and not at all boring to my children who remind me when I have forgotten to do the number of the day. My eldest does the drawing of the number and my youngest adds the straw to the cup.

More

I have found with our eldest, that counting by multiples, helped her with learning to quickly add and also how numbers related to one another. It is also supposed to be a good pre-algebra exercise.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-25T07:47:00.000-08:00

Another low res image brought to you by paint: The giving tree.