Math Literature

One of the workshops we went to at the CHEA Convention was entitled 'Math Games'. It was about not using a curriculum for early elementary math. One of the handouts had a list of books that integrate math and literature. Right now we are using Math Fables by Greg Tang. Using stories it goes through numbers 1 through 10 showing all the addition combinations that make each number (1+6, 2+5, 3+4 all equal 7).

I have red and blue buttons that I hot glued together so turned one way they are blue and turned over they are red. I made a set of ten. As we read the book I have K. put out the right number of buttons, then turn over the number mentioned to show the addition equations. Here's an example:

Salt Crystals

This week in science we were doing a lesson called 'Does It Change In Water?' We added flour, oil, sugar, salt, pasta, butter, ice . . . all sorts of things to water -- some cold, some warm -- to see if and how they changed.

The last part of the lesson was to add enough salt to warm water so that the water was cloudy, then to pour some on a saucer and let it sit in a warm place until the water evaporated. Of course, salt crystals formed, but I've never had such nice crystals form. Some were almost 1/4" square and about 1/16" thick. They were really neat to look at with the magnifying glass.

Treasury for Children

In reading Educating the WholeHearted Child, the Clarksons recommend James Herriot's Treasury for Children so highly that I thought I'd see if it was in our library system. I was a bit trepidatious (I don't think that's a real word) about the book because I've read his other books so I know how much swearing and drinking are in them. I started to read them to our older girls when they were jr. high and high school age, but quit after the first couple chapters because I just wasn't comfortable saying, "don't do this and don't say this" then reading a book where both are done liberally. The only objectionable thing in Treasury for Children is one "What the devil?"

I not only found the book, but also the audio book. I requested both. We got the audio book before we had our vacation and enjoyed listening to the stories. K.'s favorite is 'Moses the Kitten'.

Last week the book came in and now we are working our way through it and all the wonderful illustrations. It is neat to hear K. recognize the stories from the audio book when I'm reading it.

Farm Tales

We found this book at the library. It is a compilation of unabridged Little Golden Books. It has a couple we already had -- The Shy Little Kitten and The Little Red Hen, but it has introduced us to Mrs. Mooley (who jumped over the moon) and Two Little Gardeners and many others. All the illustrations are wonderful (I enjoy just looking at the pictures) and some have so many details to discover that we spend more time talking about the picture than reading the text. If I was just starting my family, I would definitely invest in purchasing a used copy of this book instead of all the little ones.

Penmanship

Now that K. is 4-1/2 we are starting to officially learn how to write the alphabet. She has taught herself how to draw all the uppercase letters, but now she needs to learn how to correctly write them. I found an activity book at Staples that has a little saying that goes with each letter. For instance, for the letter H it goes: Draw two Stick Kids side by side. They're shaking hands! Draw a line between them. I'm hoping that these sayings will help override any bad habits she has taught herself.

She doesn't have all the small muscle control I would like before writing on paper, so I put a couple pounds of uncooked rice in a tub and she is practicing writing the letters with her finger in the rice.

Phonics, Step 4

Now that we have completed learning the blends, I wrote a story and used clip art to illustrate it. After K. has read it a few times we will be on to learn the clusters.

I've grouped the clusters this way:

• ar, er, ir, or, ur
• ch, sh, th
• aw, ew, ow, oo (as in spoon)
• oy, oi, ou, oo (as in book)
• ing, ang, ong, tion

Children know how to say these clusters -- they use words with them all the time -- however, they don't know what letters make the sounds. Using this reasoning, this is how I'm introducing the clusters (I'll use 'ar' in this example):

1. Show a picture of a car and ask K. what it is.
2. K. tells me "car"
3. I write "car" next to the picture
4. We sound out the word: k - ar
5. I bring attention to the sound of 'ar'
6. We use the letter cards to build more words which contain 'ar'. Here are some examples: hard, card, far, jar, mark, lark

If I want K. to have more practice:

• 
  
  I can write the words we build on a sheet of paper for us to review.
• 
  
  To spread phonics over the whole week, and since she enjoys cutting and gluing, I can also write the words on a paper (or each on a card) and K. can find pictures of the items and glue them next to the word.
• 
  
  Another idea is to write some sentences K. can read after each group of clusters is learned. They might be silly like "Her car is full of fur." K. could illustrate the sentences.

After learning the clusters there will be another book to read.

Our Neighborhood

Last week we finished all the structures that we were making for "Our Neighborhood". We took them in on the living room floor and arranged them in their basic direction from our house. In this first picture you can locate our house (bottom) and get the idea of the main street going past the stables, doctor's office, gas station, and bank.

This picture gives a better view of the gas station and shows the library. We made the grocery store, but it is in the other direction and isn't in these pictures.

K. enjoyed getting out her cars and people and playing. The buildings are made from half gallon juice or milk cartons. I covered them with butcher paper and K. used markers to draw on the windows and doors. Most of the buildings are open on the top so she can put people "in" the building. For the stables we made fences from tongue depressors, stuck them (and glued) into a round styrofoam, and found pictures of horses and glued them on the fences.

Bubbles

Last week I was going through our bookshelves pulling out books I wanted to use for kindergarten science and came upon the book Make It Change by David Evans and Claudette Williams. It doesn't go with our kindergarten theme of Creation, so I decided to go through it before going back to our regular book, Science Experiences. Yesterday we did the page "Can you make bubbles?" I had a large container of bubbles that was about 4 years old, so we used that up instead of making our own bubbles, but we did make our own bubble blowers from pipe cleaners. We made this large one first, then we made a couple smaller ones. There was a slight breeze and we discovered that the breeze was better at "blowing" the really big bubbles than us blowing them. We played with the bubbles for about 30 minutes. It was a lot of fun!

Eddie's Friend Boodles

This wasn't one of my favorite books by Carolyn Haywood. It was a good story, but not very captivating. The book did introduce us to funzies, though, and we are having fun with them. A funzie is a tall tale -- like Paul Bunyan -- something you and everyone listening knows isn't true, but it is fun to say.

Eddie's Menagerie

I was a bit disappointed in this book by Carolyn Haywood. It was written in 1978, and I guess she changed with the times and decided they didn't need to go to church on Sundays.

Other than that it was a very good story. If your children like animals, they will love Eddie and his adventures that center around the pet shop, a colorful cap, his family, and friends. Eddie is older in this book so I thought K. might not relate to it and like it as well, but she enjoyed it just fine -- "read the next chapter!"