Math for the Young

My new post is up over at Heart of the Matter. I just want to say that writing for them is one of my favorite things to do these days! I'm thankful for the opportunity. I hope you enjoy what's over there and take advantage of all that experience and information. If you'd like to read more of what I've written, then click here for all my articles. For now, read below to find out more about doing math with young children.



I was inspired recently to write this post while playing for several hours with my five year old and some Unifix Cubes. He and I had a grand time making patterns, counting, and measuring. It made me realize again how much math we can do while we play and how important playful math is to young, aspiring mathematicians. Read more...

Fizzy Foamy Science

J5 got several science kits for his birthday last month. He loves to figure things out so I knew he'd love these kits. Between us and his grandparents, he's all set. With R10 as his assistant, he set out to see some fizz.

R10 helped by reading directions

adding some citric acid

making sure the citric acid is dissolved

adding the baking soda

fizz!

observing bubbles

I've neglected my blogging this week in favor of being the craft lady at our church's VBS and for some busyness with my MOPS volunteering. Thank you for baring with me and I hope to catch up on some happenings here over the next several days.

C is for Caterpillar

You might remember J4 and I doing some caterpillar fun with The Very Hungry Caterpillar. He's been keeping such a fine notebook for it and a bit ago he dot painted the letter C.

He's also been keeping a notebook for his studies with The Salamander Room. And of course lots of little bitty creatures are mentioned in The Salamander Room. So, we finally got our caterpillars from Insect Lore and we've been watching them grow from tiny to HUGE.

One day, when the caterpillars were nice and plump, they all started up for the ceiling and made themselves hang upside down. It was really cool to see them hanging there as caterpillars and over a few days transform into a pupal stage.

Today it was time to get our chrysalises into the mesh habitat. I really thought Dan should have the pleasure, but he voted me because I am the biology teacher. So true. Yet, a have a dislike of insects across the board.

Stumped...so they say to open gently, but the lid is really hard to get off the container. R9 caught me with a look on my face that says, "NOW What?"

Taking the paper thing the chrysalises are hanging from and getting them into the mesh bag...without something bad happening was tricky business.

Pinning the paper circle to mesh habitat. We are close now!

This is what our caterpillars came in- very cool!

Home Sweet Home- all set for coming out of there in the adult stage. I hope we get to see some of the next stage as it happens.

This has been a lot of fun for everyone. We have some tadpoles right now as well. More on those later.

For now, we'll be adding to the caterpillar book with some cool photos of our caterpillars and chrysalises.

Today J4 even happened upon a caterpillar on this leg that he tried making a habitat for in the wooded play set area and he grew somewhat frustrated that his caterpillar kept walking out of it!

More Caterpillar Fun

J4 and I have been having more Caterpillar fun. Last week we played with the sequence cards and I thought it would be fun to share another video with you. These are just 30 second little videos that I take with my cell phone. I am excited to have another gadget in my arsenal very soon though...a Sony Cybershot will be joining our camera family for snapshot fun. I'm mostly excited about the video and blogging shots I can do with it. Nothing can ever replace our beloved our Canon Digital Rebel. Nothing. (with the exception of another digital Rebel!) The pictures are unmistakably better.

Anyway, enjoy the little video and other than hearing J4's little boy voice you will be graced with my heavy Maryland/Baltimore accent. Listen to the word cocoon especially. Trust me when I say I do not sound like I'm from around here!



Next up we have the life cycle of a butterfly courtesy of the Evan Moor Giant Science Resource Book. J4 was not too interested until I offered up the glitter. Now I'm not a fan of loose glitter (that stuff will come back on you forever). I'm not even really all that into glitter glue (too gloppy). But I love, love, LOVE Elmer's Shimmer n' Shapes. That stuff is an ingenious art glaze with glitter and other shiny things in it. The only thing to worry about is that it will dry out if you don't use it up. You can bling up any art project with this product. Totally worth it. And the glitter is safely caught up in a viscous solution. Perfect.

You can see J4 is all set with his glaze and his art box.


He was so careful with the bottle and the brush. He absolutely loved glazing over his colored life cycle. He wasn't really up for it until the promise of the fun stuff happened. I've probably set a precedent. It'll all be about the shine from here on out. I will say that R9 decorated some poetry with the glaze.
We pulled out The Very Hungry Caterpillar Game and had a fun time collecting food for the caterpillar. R9 and I7 also joined in after the first game.

We have a butterfly garden from Christmas and I'd love to send in the certificate if I could only find it...we may have to purchase a new kit. At least I only paid $5 on some awesome sale for the one we have.

J4 has some lapbook elements to finish up and then we can show off his Caterpillar lapbook complete with a cut and glued blinged up butterfly life cycle.

Fun with a Certain Hungry Caterpillar

We've been having fun with The Very Hungry Caterpillar. The hospital where three of our kids were born gives this book out in the baby pack you take home. We had a copy from E11 and we once got to meet Eric Carle himself (at the anniversary celebration of the First Book program that funded the books at the hospital) and we took a regular hardback book for him to sign. So, we have no less than 5 copies of this book in our home!

I found some fun resources for the book and we've taken full advantage of them. This will be the first of a couple of posts on the topic.

At Confessions of a Homeschooler, she has some activities for the Caterpillar which is where I found the graph. Here J4 is sequencing the story by putting the story cards on the string in the order that I read them.



Today he did some story sequencing with the small cards. That was just before he colored the life cycle of a butterfly. He set it up and then told me the events. J4 likes to sequence. The sequence cards are from DLTK which I found through Homeschool Share.
Finally, I used the alphabet cards found at 1+1+1=1 to have J4 match his letters up. This was the day I had my phone out for taking video. Wanna see? You have to click in just to see him do lightening letters!



We did some fun science and art with the Caterpillar today...I'll share those tomorrow.

Reading Made Easy- Our Final Round!

I can hardly believe it. We have embarked on our last journey with Reading Made Easy! I know what you're thinking...how could we? How could we start teaching reading to a 4yo? It flies in the face of every relaxed homeschooling proponent.

Don't worry...we aren't going for college next year. It just really can't be helped.

Really.

You know it's time to start when you hear your 4.5 yo look at a sign and say, "on". Or, "off".

You know it's time to start when you watch him look at a cereal box and say, "Mommy! That says YES!"

You know it's time to start when you watch him read the word, "no".

You know it's time to start when he spells the word "Candy" at the dinner table when he's finished his peas.

You especially know it's time to start when he is at the table with his siblings and his 7yo brother spells the word "half". I7 says, "Half is spelled H-E-L-F.

R9 responds, "That's almost right I. Very good. It's actually spelled H-A-L-F." (to which I smile because all is not lost for my creative girl)

But then J4 adds, "Yeah I, how else will you get the AAAA (think short a) sound in half?"

So yes, it is time. He's amassing sight words without my intervention. Who am I to hold him back?

We'll take it slow and enjoy the journey. We did the first lesson last week and J4 was supposed to give me a sentence about himself. In a family where dictation and writing abound, is it any surprise he wanted to go beyond I am 4 years old to a dissertation on our trip to Boston?

Our last preschooler *sniff*.

He's ready to read!

Preschool Block Play

J4 was asking to play blocks over the weekend. So, Dan sat down with him on Sunday and I7 joined the fun. J4 chose the wood blocks from our block stash.

The Block Pile

So, they all built buildings and knocked them down. However, Dan declared that his was a historic landmark and could not be torn down. So, that prompted the kids to ask what he meant and he explained it very well. He also added- we don't want to forget the architecture ( he paused to look at his watch) from 6:50pm. He cracks me up.

He cracks the kids up too because of course you have to add sneezing out blocks to block play...I spared you the picture of the block "hanging" from his nose. He's SUCH a boy.

Never underestimate the teaching power of block play. A fun time was had by all and yes...this is on our preschool morning rotation for activities ready for J4 when we begin school.

Preschool Math

J4 and I (and his brothers and sister) have been doing a lot of preschool math stuff over the last several weeks. In no particular order I'd like to share some of what he's been up to.

He loves to play with our learning cash register by Learning Resources. This is the deluxe model. the other day I caught him playing a game with it where the register asks for coins to be put in. I watched him place all the right coins in the slot. When the voice asked for a penny, he inserted a penny. So, then we played with money some more. He had a great time.

While sharing these skills with Dan, Dan decided to pull out real coins and let him have fun with those. My cell phone provided this picture of J4 sorting coins with Dan.

J4 has been working on counting from 11 to 20 and this week he hit the milestone! This is an excited J4 demonstrating a great session with his number train. Cool.

The other day he wanted to sew some buttons. We love buttons.

This is from the Preschool Activities in a Bag Book 2

On to the second button...just like R9 he says!

Check out a few more activities from Preschool Activities in a Bag Volume 2. I have quite a selection of bags from both volumes 1 & 2 because I participated in two swaps. That's the way to go. You are just responsible for making a certain number of one activity, you mail them off, and then you wait for your mailbox to fill up with fun!

He's also been working on the Mathletics Kindergarten level when it's his turn to do school computer time. There is no preschool level so I have him working in kindergarten. Math-wise he's been doing well, but it requires reading so we all help him out with what the problem is here and there.

As we begin each school day, I like to have an activity out for J4 waiting for him. I also work on his Before Five in a Row stuff at the start of the day. We read the Before book and then talk about it some, then I send him off to do his activity. I try to have one building item (one morning this week it was Wedgits) and a bag activity ready to go for him.

If I don't fill his bucket of love first, there is sure to be mischief while I'm trying to work with the older kids. So, this works well for us. I'm working on establishing a rotation for these things so that it doesn't take long to figure out. I'd say my biggest challenge this school year has been being prepared for each day early in the morning. So, a set rotation would help me out a lot.

Play Foam for Preschool

Word on the street was that J4 loved this foam stuff he plays with at MOPS. So, I found it at Rainbow Resource and we acquired it for Christmas.

Introducing PlayFoam- glow in the dark style

J4 begins to mold

He's making a snake.

Then he announced he was making it wiggle. Such a professional!

Dan had to touch it and so did I. I mean you can't resist. It isn't sticky except to touch it, but it only sticks to itself. Very cool stuff. It won't dry out either so we bagged it up and saved it for next time.

In our preschool, we mold something every day. J4 is a BIG molder.

Name Games

Still trying to get back in the groove after being in Nashville and quite honestly after getting ready for Nashville prior to actually leaving! Preparing a team of 7 to go to convention and making sure they felt welcomed and loved on and to encourage them to do the same for their local teams that were going. And getting three new team members trained and equipped before leaving...whew...I'm ready for a short MOPS break! Perhaps I will share some of what I saw at Convention soon. I learned a lot of relevant stuff and enjoyed it immensely. However, I have much blogging, reviewing and homeschooling to catch up on so it will be a bit.

On to the topic at hand! One of the goals I have for my preschoolers is to have them learn their name. Pretty early on all of my kids could recognize their names and J4 is no exception. So, once that skill is accomplished I like to work on them writing it and identifying individual letters. I mean it's one thing for a 3-4-5 yr old to recognize the pattern they see when they look at their name and another for them to actually sort of spell it out.

Every day I put a name "game" into J4's workboxes. I made this one from paint chips. I cut a file folder in half and wrote his letters on individual chips. The chips in the picture are turned to protect the innocent. I glued one set down on the folder and the other set are for matching up.

I used a library pocket on the back of the folder to store the loose letters.

Other fun ways to practice names for preschoolers:

• Spell their name on a sentence strip and have them trace it with marker
• Spell their name in yellow marker and have them trace in pencil on a sheet of blank paper (I use drawing paper cut into wide strips)
• Spell their name so they can trace it and decorate it with stickers
• Spell their name out in pencil and let them trace the letters using dot painters.
• Give them the letter molds for playdough and let them make their letters in playdough and then match the order.
  
• When they are a bit older just have them spell out their name with playdough letters
• Use letter chips to match the letters in their name
• Spell out name in letter magnets at the frig or magnetic wall
• Trace letters on the white board/chalk board
• Cut out letters that are in squares and match/arrange depending on age
• Begin teaching last names when they get good at their first name

Share your ideas on how preschoolers can practice their name by leaving a comment!

Days of the Week- Preschool style

Can I just tell you how much I love these little pocket charts from the Target dollar aisle?? This just helps to keep us all on the same page so to speak.

I-7 practices reading the days of the week and the other words. J4 gets a reminder of the order of the days of the week. J4 likes to say, "the day after this day" for tomorrow for example, but he's coming around.

I used Post It note word strips for the color word strips and index cards for the days of the week.

This pocket chart hangs next to our weather chart for us to visit each day.

Chicka Chicka Tree Update

Every so often we've been adding to the coconut tree which in case you were wondering has become Nim's lookout tree. I let J4 use dot painters to "trace" his letters this time.

Nice job J4!

And of course he adds it to the tree...he's also added an eclipsed moon and an upside down monkey. And I think a football.

Button Ocean

This one is all about keeping the preschool in the unit study! J4 is all about his home preschool. Just yesterday while out on errands, he announced to woman in line behind me that he was doing home preschool. This is notable because the three older kids all went to the same wonderful little preschool- a vestige of our pre-homeschooling days.

I got the idea of a button ocean from Pink and Green Mama's Ocean in a Box. I'm not into sand in the house and I wasn't even into the aquarium rocks she had chosen, but I love buttons! And so do my kids. So first we sorted the colors into a muffin tin!

Where are all the blue buttons and ocean green buttons? R9 finds a few more...

J4 held this one up and said, "This button is HUMONGOUS!" J4 loves to use the word humongous. Cracks me up.

Ok so we are somewhat short on blue buttons...I think we just need less critters in our button ocean. Don't you think?

Selkie! Yes...there are Nim characters in our box.

While at the school table J4 announced that he had put Selkie on her rock. E10 went to find said rock to add it to the ocean. He also pointed out a sea anemone. Loved hearing my 4yo say that word!

I found this coloring sheet at the Aquarium of the Pacific website. This one is from the Aquarium on Wheels pdf downloads. He was playing with the button ocean's sea turtle and was able to tell me why Chica the turtle came to the island every year- to play and to leave eggs was his reply. See? He really is listening during read alouds!

He requested a Nim journal...that would be a good idea he said. So, I found him a sea turtle picture. These will go into his ocean notebook along with anything else he does during our unit study of the ocean. If I can keep him in fun, preschool-y activities and he enjoys sitting up at the table with us to have fun...what a year this will be! I think we may have turned a corner kids. Wow.

There you have it...an ocean study update...preschool style. And not to worry. The button ocean is in a workbox that will wait for him each day during our unit.