Math Minute {Practicing Place Value}

Two things coincided to make me buy Monopoly Millionaire recently...first, lots of moms were talking about playing it with their homeschooled kids because it must have been a hot game this Christmas. Secondly, I10 was having trouble with place value in large numbers.

So, I thought...why not try to play and we can talk about numbers in the hundreds of thousands with zeros all over the middle! That will help.

I have several Monopoly purists in the house, but this is a quick game to play and fits the bill for practicing with large numbers.

We've been working with place value in long division problems and that throws my fifth grader for a loop sometimes...the quotient with the zeroes in the middle. You know the ones.

Here are a few other resources for place value fun:

Interactive Math Journal- this is a nice little notebooking packet for math journaling. She has some place value activities in here.

Family Math- has several games involving place value and estimating, money, and digit value

Math on the Level- Money & Decimals Manual has a lot of ideas for teaching students large number place value.

Do you have any ideas for teaching large number place value? Feel free to share them in the comments below!

Catapults {A Five Day Unit Study}

After an inspiring two days of TV fun with the World Champion Punkin Chunkin on the Science Channel, my kids and I decided it might be fun to learn more about the machines these teams used to hurl their orange fruits- with the idea that we’d hurl something of our own, of course.  

So, a rather impromptu unit on the physics and history of siege warfare machines was born!

Much of the design of this unit goes along with my “Science as Investigation” approach. The ideas that follow came out of a desire to dive right in and explore. Sometimes you don’t need the perfect curriculum or the perfect materials. You just need a question to be answered or something you want to figure out.

This unit will attempt to answer the question: What were these machines and how were they used? Who used them? How do they work? Can we build one? And how will it perform?

Day 1's Topic?

Types of Siege Machines: 

Catapults- research the different kinds of catapults and how they operated. When and how were they used? (I was able to find torsion and Roman models in my brief search)

Trebuchets- research the various models of trebuchets including the modern, “fixed axel” trebuchet which drops the counterweight straight down using the potential more efficiently. Trebuchets differ from catapults because they use a counterweight to throw the arm and hurl the object.

Without much preparation on your part, just send the kids off to see what they can find out. No special notebook pages necessary! Have them jot down their list on a sheet of notebook paper and make some sketches. 

Join me tomorrow and we'll find out more about these machines and how we'll put that information to work later in the week.

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Join the iHN in their five day Hopscotch Series to see what other members are sharing this week!

Candy Graphing

At long last I have a few thoughts to share on our Halloween candy graphs! This is a classic assignment and one that isn't too difficult to pull off. Here are a few details:

• Have kids sort and tally their candy stash- no Halloween for your family? How about taking a poll on people's favorite candy? Tally up the results. 
• Data chart- kids can design their own which is a great learning experience. What kind of chart will best hold the data? How can I organize the information so it's easy to use later? J7 wrote his out by himself and then used Excel to make a chart on the computer.
• Trade the candy- because...well...you know. You have to leave time now that's all out there in the open.
• Eat a little.
• Graph the results- now we thought it would be great to use the candy wrappers in the graph. Splendid idea, but then we needed to wait long enough so that the kids had eaten enough that we had enough different wrappers. Downside: this delayed the follow up of the assignment and the graphs were huge. Upside: how cool are the graphs?
• As part of graphing, the kids will determine which graph is best. More on this in the next post- How to Make a Great Graph!

We had to make sure we had all the elements of a great graph which I'll share with you in the next post. If the student didn't have the wrapper they needed, they drew them on their own.

The kids chose a bar graph to represent their data which was a good choice. In this case we aren't looking to see a relationship between the two variables in our data set. We just wanted to visualize which candy we had the most of. Graphs are used to present data in different ways so which graph you use depends on what you are trying to convey.

They enjoyed this math classic and it launched us into a week of graphing exercises. Meanwhile, E14 has started graphing conic sections in Advanced Algebra. Isn't it fun when a family math plan comes together?

Using Ordinary Notebook Paper Day 3: Math Journals

Welcome to iHN's Hopscotch at Blog, She Wrote! My topic for the 10 day series is Ten Ways to Use Ordinary Notebook Paper. Thank you for joining me. Please take a moment to subscribe, so you don't miss out- you can follow, subscribe by email or RSS feed (just look to the right!) and follow Blog, She Wrote on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. I'd love it if you'd stay connected and visit again!

Today's notebook paper topic is: Math Journaling! Math Journaling is a great way to see how your student is processing math concepts. On a math journal page, you are trying to get your student to write about the math concept. You can use math prompts, have them explain a new concept you are ready to have them nail down, encourage drawing, etc. It's a creative way to practice math and it offers another way to learning for kids who think outside the traditional math box.

There are many resources available which will encourage a great math journal experience in your homeschool. 

• Math Journals at Blog, She Wrote- a link that takes you to posts about our math journals.
• Math Journal Pinterest Board- follow the link and check out math journaling ideas from around the internet.
• Books- There are a great many books devoted to creative math problem solving and puzzles. I've made a Pinterest board called resources for math to share my favorite math journaling resource books. I'll try to add some links on my living math page as well.
• Magazines- I often find relevant ideas in magazines that can be used in math journaling. I like to use a local regional magazine, for example, to create journaling activities. There are many ways to incorporate some math skills with some application to magazine topics.

I tasked my kids to make a geometry journal page last year.

This journal entry was an activity to accompany my fifth grader's Beyond FIAR study of Homer Price- on highways and interstates. The book is Real World Math for Hands On Fun.

This was a favorite- making a journal page devoted to all the math skills you use when you play the game Monopoly. This was especially fun after reading some strategy and history books about Monopoly. Like The Monopoly Book

If you haven't done any math journaling at your house, I encourage you to give it a try. I enjoy seeing how my kids will make a page so they can remember a concept. It's a pretty open and creative process and although my focus is on using notebook paper, don't be afraid to make the journal page interactive and use some lapbook elements as part of the page. The ideas I've shown here are just a few and are meant to illustrate that it doesn't have to be fancy and well planned to make a great page.

If you already do math journaling, tell us about something you enjoy using as a resource.

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Please visit the other bloggers participating in iHN's Hopscotch over the next two weeks. While you are taking a look at the other Hopscotchers, check out the Pin It to Win It giveaways sponsored by Prufrock Press.
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Math Play

Have you played with math lately? I like to play math with my kids at least once a week! Sometimes it's a commercial game and other times it's one that I've made up- I just knew I could find all kinds of math play using number chips.

I've posted on math games before...makes me think it would make a great math page to link to. But, I thought about now some of you might be looking to for a little math boost. Listed below are some of our favorites: (This is not an exhaustive list, if I find more I will add to the pile!)

• Set- what a great way to practice visual discrimination. In searching for a link, I came across this daily online Set Puzzle. How cool is that?
• Equate- pictured above it's a math Scrabble game, but way harder than Smath. This is a great game when you combine getting the highest score
• Sumuko- super game to practice multiples
• Labyrinth- this one requires thinking ahead and planning and seeing moves a few out which I'm terrible at!
• Yahtzee- this one requires math to score and see who wins! It's also a fun way to practice patterns and identifying sets
• Math Dice- mental math fun and there are two versions. Check out the Math Dice Junior as well.
• Zingo- for the younger set
• Corners- fun little card game from the RightStart card games

Last spring I taught a math co-op class and it was fun to play math games each week. One thing I found is that although the "math wise" kids knew a lot of math facts fast, they had trouble with strategy. We worked on that throughout the semester. 

I know many of us are tempted to think of games as the icing on the cake with not a lot of substance compared to solving problems and finishing those math book pages, but I encourage you to think of math games as more nutritious and to make sure your children get more servings! Math games help kids to solve problems in a unique way and help to develop a more creative approach to problem solving.

Decimals & Dolls

R11 is working with decimals. She's learning division and conversion from fraction to decimals and all the other fun things come with working with parts of a whole. I think she prefers whole numbers. Don't we all? In an effort to engage her, we've stalled in our Life of Fred Decimals and Percents to give her some increased understanding and practice.

While word problem concerning her interests are fun and easy to write, I'm going the extra mile to write problems where she has to measure and cut and make patterns and anything else I can think of to make the math problems real. Really real...not just sort of real.

I had R11 measure some items in her sewing world. I was really hoping for more decimals!

Measuring fabric to see if we can work in some division with decimals

Sometimes I'm just looking to have her convert fractions to decimals and work with the decimals.

Here's something else I must admit now. I don't make printables. There. I said it. I know there are so many homeschool bloggers out there making beautiful printables with convenient downloading at the ready. It's not really my gift. Oh sure...I can make a worksheet...used to do it all the time. But, a printable is a step up with fun graphics and for me it is not a simple way to homeschool. I waste too much time looking through membership files and websites for the perfect sheet to match our lesson and often I come up empty handed. Sometimes I do find just the sheet, but then all this time has gone by.

So, I grab a sheet of lined paper and I create. 

Fast, easy and not really professional at all, but we get to the doing. And that is what matters.

Calculating Molecular Weight

For those of you who enjoyed our Flower Chromatography, we decided on a follow up activity to help us learn more about the dye molecules. We did a Google search to find the molecular formulas of each of the dyes using their trade names like Blue #1, Yellow #5, etc. The result typically showed us a chemical formula and the chemical structure of the molecule. I stopped short of pulling out the organic chemistry model kit (that'll be next!) which is right on a nearby shelf, but I did have the kids try and figure out the molecular weight of each compound.

Hardcore. I know.

But, Dan suggested that we find out how big the molecules are and molecular weight is a great way to quantify that information. We want to see if our observations match what we find out about the size of the molecule.

Here we go.

The first thing I had the kids do was write down the chemical formula for each dye. R11 wrote them down herself and I jotted them down for I9. We pulled up the Web Elements site and we talked about which elements were in our compounds. Also, we looked at all four and observed what elements they have in common and which are not the same. Red #3 is the only dye that had iodine in it. Fancy that.

We also noticed that the dyes are all large carbon molecules.

In order to find molecular weight, you multiply the atomic mass by the number of atoms of that element in the formula for the compound. Once you have the mass of each element represented, you add them all together. So, that covers multiplying and adding decimals.

I do not have huge skills in the area of making printables. I'm more old school than that. We use a lot of loose leaf paper around here. I ought to do a post on that!

We also used a book version of the table- sure would love a big poster!

The kids did the work themselves, but I wanted to give them some structure on how to solve the problem. They are only in 4th and 6th grade after all! I decided making a copy of my first sheet was prudent so both kids could have a worksheet.

As we looked at the Periodic Table of the Elements we talked about the groups of elements and where they are in the table. We talked about how the atoms of particular groups behave and what that means for how they interact with other atoms.

We aren't finished with our calculations yet and we need to check them against the known listed molecular weight. Once we've done that, we can talk about how the dyes behaved compared to each other and if that correlates at all with their size based on molecular weight.

This activity was an experiment based on a fun idea and it turned out to slide right in line with our study of Thomas Edison and our study of decimals. Because, of course, most elements do not have atomic masses that are whole numbers. Sneaky, huh? I love it when a plan comes together!

Stay tuned for more results!

Co-op Math Class

I'm teaching a math class at co-op this semester. We have a wide age spread (grades K-5) with three stations. Thankfully, I have two great helpers who work with two of the groups and I work with the third group of older kids. The younger kids switch stations part way through class so it works out well.

The aim of the class is just to enjoy math through puzzles, activities, and games. I'm pretty sure we're being successful so far.

This week I took the math chips which were a huge hit. Who can resist the fun of circles with numbers on them? What can you do with them? Read on!

This story is terrific to begin sorting buttons and talking about their properties.

Love buttons and I love trays for containing buttons!

Fantastic math book if you have kids who love numbers!

The "math wise" older kids range from 1st to 4th grade and I finally stumped this week with a tangram challenge! Score one for the co-op math mom! Each week I read to them from the Cool Math book and teach them a new number trick. Then we play a game or do another activity. Favorites games so far are Corners and Equate.

The Real Life of Decimals...

One of the best homeschool strategies I've developed over the years is to select reading material from various sources whether they be books, periodicals, or other items and just leave them out around. I have some key spots for maximum exposure. The coffee table, the library shelf, and the kitchen table work very well to attract attention. The kids know the library shelf has some good finds on it and I will leave a book open on the top and inevitably the kids will stop and have a look.

Such was the case with a magazine article my daughter read the other night. It could not have been a better time to have found it- completely God ordained I'm sure. She has been struggling with decimals in math lately and had done some practice work for me earlier in the day. She sat down in the evening and began reading the magazine I'd brought home from the store that very day.

One of my favorites- a local magazine...look and see what is available where you live! Great field trip ideas, local wildlife and other items of interest.

After reading several articles, she stumbled upon this one about a winery not too far away. When she finished it, she told me all about it and how the vintner was all worried about losing 168 bottles of wine- wine bottles that needed to be accounted for. It turns out she misplaced a decimal point and was only missing 16. The author even said, "What a difference a decimal place can make!"

R11 is working on Life of Fred Decimals and Percents as part of her living math approach.

What a great living math story at just the perfect time!

I encourage you to seek out resources for your kids and leave them out to be shared. My kids always know something good is around.

And my effort to rotate and find more print material is always worth the effort- a total homeschool win!

First Grade Math

Just another update on some first grade math with Fred Butterflies. J6 has graduated from Butterflies and he is working on Cats. I'd say he's doing pretty well. I finally gave in and let him use wide ruled loose leaf paper rather than his primary paper. Good decision I think.

Not a bad use of regular paper by our resident first grader.

As J6 worked on the addition practice at the back of the book, he informed me that he could not be tricked! His way of saying...these aren't hard.

Overall, J6 loves Fred as much as anyone at our house. He gets the chance to read to me and we play at other sorts of math. Right now we are preparing our house for selling which is exciting and very busy. Dan is furiously doing his best job at painting (of course his best work...in case the house doesn't sell in which case we want to live with the best he has to offer!) and the rest of us are thinning out and organizing. We are hoping to have our house officially on the market by March 1st so our school routine looks more unusual than...well...usual! But right now I'm working on organizing a set of cubbies in our learning area. Easy access to all things math fun. Stay tuned for a look at that.

Geometry

We've been enjoying some new geometry concepts over the last couple of weeks. Last week we were focused on JrFLL and preparing for the big Expo which occurred on Saturday. Before that, we were knee deep in line segments, rays and angles. Oh my!

The list of terms which were turned into a notebook page. Illustrations by R11.

Some of the concepts on the list for R11 for geometry this year (some of them I9 will do as well. His 4th grade list is shorter):

• metric units
• coordinate planes
• volume of a cube or rectangular prism
• metric and customary unit conversion
• protractor and compass- lines and line segments, etc
• drawing angles
• drawing shapes
• congruent angles and porportion
• area of triangle, parallelogram
• Pi and the Circumference of a circle

J6 is working on measuring length, volume, weight and temperature. He will identify some more shapes as well. These concepts were taken from the Math on the Level Concept Chart. Remember I am preparing my children for Algebra and while some items on the Concept Chart are built upon other skills, some are not. The object is for my students to be ready for Algebra in 8th or 9th grade. E13 started Algebra I in the last quarter of 7th grade because he had mastered the skills necessary for Algebra success. R11 is probably more of a 9th grade Algebra student.

To add to our math journals, I had the kids make a notebook page about the new geometry terms. They did a nice job and they are doing well at remembering all the new words.

They could easily see the size of an angle by using two pencils.

We've also been using some pages from Math Mammoth Geometry I. It was a freebie recently and I grabbed it up. Math Mammoth is great for explaining new concepts and she has plenty of practice for the kids. I like to dabble in math practice sheets by the topic for my kids when I need them.

Measuring angles yesterday....this one is 180 degrees.

The kids are enjoying the unit. We do these new geometry concepts roughly three times a week and we do Life of Fred at least one other day and on the off days we do a math adventure of some sort.

Geometry and Measurement

Still following the path of individualized math learning using Math on the Level (and other resources like Life of Fred), we have begun a unit on Geometry and Measurement. The first day we had some fun with shapes using pattern blocks and tangrams.

The kids could choose a blank pattern or one with the shapes outlined.

R11 tried out some Tangram cards- these are difficult!

Not surprisingly, things turn to free play and elaborate pretend games begin. Do you see the elegant table with chairs all around? R11 and J6 were entertaining kings and queens!

Another good use of trays- there in the background more free shape play for J6- after he completed the pattern page underneath.

This time around we are hitting lines, rays, angles, etc and tomorrow we'll be using a protractor to measure and draw angles. Today I had the kids make a notebook page on some of the math terms we've been reading about and using this week. Stay tuned for the results on that. This set of goals is on R11's list of geometry objectives in my planner.

Homeschool Bowling

At our last session of Thursday bowling yesterday the kids learned about the phenomenon known as Rock-n-Bowl...

We do bowling on a university campus during a PE class for the students. Turns out the instructor promised them a rock-n-bowl for their last day of classes! Here J6 watches his ball slowly move down the lane.

A good time was had by all and I'd say E13 has improved his game this fall. R11 is looking for better bowling times in the future without a broken arm. Scoring is old school at this alley so this counts as math too!

More Catalog Math...

I'm going to try and catch you all up on the different things we've been doing in school. It's a busy season with our FIRST LEGO League team having its final preparations for competition and just when we are typically finished with it, our teams won a chance to attend the next level of competition in Rochester! More on that in another post. To get us started on some more catch up, I'll start with some math ideas.

Behold the power of the whiteboard!

I love to use the white board to change things up during math time. Some kids like it a lot and some don't. Makes it easy for me to say- try again!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...pretty sure.

Oh yes...did I mention that R11 broke her arm on Halloween? Co-op recess...she took a fall on the blacktop tripping over a ball. Her cast busy with signatures these days. Another week of the cast and then she'll be wearing a splint for a few weeks.

I9 is working on learning how to do the big multiplication problems. Not bad for a start...

J6 is practicing his two digit addition without carrying. He loves the whiteboard!

R11 checks her own math...sometimes she gets it and sometimes she needs a redo. A little reminder on where the dollar sign goes wouldn't hurt either!

I gave this problem to R11 last week. She had to work on calculating tax for her American Girl doll purchase. Not a fancy notebook page, but I find my it's easy to just put an idea on paper and hand it to my kids. I'm all about getting the job done.

In case you like the white boards, these are from Discount School Supply. They are the Reversible Picture Story Whiteboard which is currently out of stock, but hopefully will reappear. If not there are some other lap sized white boards available. I like these because they do not have a lip/frame around the edge so they are easy to write on. My kids use them a lot for stop motion video too!