Friday School Plans...and Crayons' Epiphany Gala

What's up today for the Squirrelings?

Well, that's after we get enough clothes on to go out and shovel the steps and help Mr. Fixit clear the driveway.

We have been reading Little Town on the Prairie together this week before starting other classes--just something that got started on kind of a whim.  And we usually start with a hymn or O Canada--sometimes with the hymn books, sometimes with You-tube.

Then Crayons has table work with me--she has just started Math Mammoth Light Blue Grade 4 (thanks, Mr. Fixit, for printing it out), so she's doing addition and subtraction review in that book.  And I have to put a few dates together for her to paste into her timeline book--we are doing a Book of the Centuries but in a format that doesn't take as much writing.  Oh, and we have a science experiment involving popcorn.  And four pages of Robinson Crusoe.

Ponytails has ongoing work in math and science; she is doing an outline of a magazine article (from one of the units in Write with the Best) and studying nouns in Easy Grammar Plus.  Today is Canadian History day (we usually read that together) and she also has half a chapter of Story of the World Book 4 to read.  And some assigned pages from The Accidental Voyage (the last Mr. Pipes book of hymns and history).

Group times:  we are continuing our French lessons together, reading Louisa May Alcott's Jack and Jill, reading a couple of pages from It Couldn't Just Happen, and doing a picture study.  Except that it's now Friday morning and I'm not sure what picture we're doing.  I guess that will have to wait until after lunch.

Making stuff:  Ponytails has a couple of current projects; she'll probably post them on her blog when she's done.  Crayons has been extremely busy over the last few days since she arranged a Twelfth Night/Epiphany party for her Only Hearts Club doll (who's Hispanic), the little sister of the Only Hearts Club doll, the same-sized friends of the Only Hearts Club doll, and the rest of us human beings, who felt a bit like we'd been invited to the Miss Happiness and Miss Flower housewarming in Rumer Godden's book.  She made decorations, gave a speech, gave EVERYONE tiny Sculpey presents, gave us paper hats, and read us the Three Kings Day chapter of The Happy Orpheline.   I love it when the Squirrelings get old enough to think of things like that all by themselves.  Thanks, Crayons!

Wednesday already? This and that, and dialing for dinner (not pizza)

The week has been busy...everybody's been making things, and Ponytails the Photographer is going to post some photos soon.

The crazy radio stations that play Christmas music too early (and the same songs over and over) are still good for something. Yesterday afternoon Mama Squirrel happened to turn THAT station on, and the nice announcer invited her to phone in and be caller number three...and tell him what comes after "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire." So Mama Squirrel obediently dialed the phone, said "Jack Frost nipping at your nose," and won dinner for two. How about that?

Mama Squirrel and Crayons are one chapter away from finishing Kidnapped. Crayons was not pleased to leave Alan knocking at David's uncle's door at the end of yesterday's reading, but that's what suspense is for. We are also almost finished the biography of Stevenson, and one unit from the end of Grade 3 Light Blue Math Mammoth. Mr. Fixit has ordered the download of Grade 4 so we should be ready to go with that soon.

And we are all putting in extra time on Latin. This is part of this week's lesson:

"Benedic, Domine, nos et haec tua dona, quae de tua largitate sumus sumpturi. Per Christum, Dominum nostrum. Amen."

Virtual saccharum if you know what that means.

School plans for the last week of November

Ponytails (Grade 8)

Monday:
Bible
Reading from Mere Christianity
Math & Science as assigned by Dad
Lesson on Outlining and Notetaking in Write with the Best Volume 2
Story of the World Volume 4, read with Mom today

Tuesday:
Bible
Reading from Mr. Pipes--written narration
Math & Science as assigned by Dad
Lesson on Outlining and Notetaking in Write with the Best Volume 2
Story of the World, read alone
Whatever Happened to Justice?, with Mom
Watership Down

Wednesday:
Bible
Mere Christianity
Math & Science as assigned by Dad
Lesson on Outlining and Notetaking in Write with the Best Volume 2
Story of the World
Extra French lesson with Mom

Thursday:
Bible
Mr. Pipes
Math & Science as assigned by Dad
Lesson on Outlining and Notetaking in Write with the Best Volume 2
Story of the World, half chapter
Canadian History, with Mom
Watership Down

Friday:
Bible
Mere Christianity
Math & Science as assigned by Dad
Lesson on Outlining and Notetaking in Write with the Best Volume 2
Augustus Caesar's World, with Mom
Story of the World, half chapter


Crayons (Grade 4)

Monday:
Bible reading
Hero Tales--Mary Slessor
English--work on sentence structure
Math drills
Math Mammoth--finish division chapter this week, keep working on multiplication
Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, ten pages
Work on history timeline scrapbook


Tuesday:
Bible reading
Bible Geography (review lesson)
Free Reading List
Math Mammoth
Science on a Shoestring

Wednesday:
Bible reading
Math drills
Math Mammoth
English work
Chapter from Kidnapped
History: George Washington's World--"The Seven Years' War Ends"

Thursday:
Bible reading
Hero Tales
Free Reading List
Math drills
Chapter from Kidnapped
Chapter from Story Book of Science--"The Old Pear Tree"

Friday:
Bible reading
Bible Geography--start a new lesson
English work
Math drill (short)
Math unit test
History, George Washington's World--"Goethe"


Group Work

Monday:
The Fearless Treasure--start "The Knight's House"
Latin--finish off lesson 3 this week (we are a bit behind)
It Couldn't Just Happen--pages 56 to 58
Picture Study--Jason and Medea, by Waterhouse
Poems

Tuesday:
Ourselves
French--start a new lesson this week (we are a bit ahead)
Shakespeare: Twelfth Night
Home Studies
Singing

Wednesday:
The Fearless Treasure--written narration
Latin
It Couldn't Just Happen, pages 58-60
Composer Study--songs by Faure
Poems

Thursday:
Ourselves
French
Age of Fable--Cadmus
Home Studies
Singing

Friday:
Age of Fable--The Myrmidons
It Couldn't Just Happen--finish the chapter
Latin
Jack and Jill--written narration (or do one from Age of Fable)

Wednesday School Plans

Crayons:

Bible reading--Hebrews 7
Hero Tales--reading about Menno Simons
English--some "messed up writing" to fix from Czechoslovak Fairy Tales
Math drills--times tables
Math Mammoth lesson--division with remainders
History:  work on timeline scrapbook
Poems
If we get time:  a science experiment showing the difference between safety matches and regular ones

Ponytails:

Reading from The Accidental Voyage (current Mr. Pipes book)
Poems
Reading from Bauer's Story of the World 4
Extra French lesson with Mom (most French is done with Crayons)
Grammar page
Math and science as assigned by Dad

Together:

Opening--hymn, folk song, reading from It Couldn't Just Happen about the age of the earth
Latin lesson:  copy the quote for the day "Alma mater" and look for derivatives from "mater"; review some of the roots we have already learned; practice counting to ten; review the genitive (possessive) case
Chapter 8 from Alcott's Jack and Jill, with written narration...this is the chapter where Merry redecorates her room and sets the curtains on fire
Composer study:  Fauré's Dolly Suite
Time for...making things...or maybe playing Zooloretto (Crayons' request)

How homeschoolers do things: a lesson on milliliters

The book: Math Mammoth's Light Blue Grade 3B, unit on measurement, lesson on "Milliliters and Liters."

The props: 250 ml measuring cup, 1 liter measuring cup, 1.2 ml measure (also known as a quarter teaspoon), several bottles and packages from the cupboard, several cups and mugs, water, towel.

Purpose of the lesson: to introduce the idea of volume, using the metric system. We have done linear measurement, first in imperial and then in metric units; we've weighed things, first in imperial and then in metric units; and now we're onto volume. I'm deliberately switching the order this time, since although we use lots of teaspoons and cups in cooking here (I cannot wrap my brain around cooking without my teaspoons and tablespoons), we don't hear as much about pints, quarts and gallons. So today's lesson focused on metric volume.

What we did: I put several bottles, jars and packages from the cupboard and fridge on the table, and asked Crayons to sort them into the ones that were marked g or kg (labelled by weight) and the ones that were marked ml or L (labelled by volume). The cereal and baking soda went to one side; the vanilla extract and juice went to the other. What was the difference? Crayons figured out quickly that the dry foods were mostly sold by weight, and the liquids were sold by volume. (Honey is an exception--I still don't know why it's sold by weight instead of volume.)

I showed Crayons how much a liter is (as big as our big measuring cup), and how much a milliliter is (about as small as the quarter-teaspoon measure which also shows 1.2 ml).

Then I had her do an activity from the worksheet: measuring the volume of cups, glasses, jars, or other small containers. We poured water into the cups and then poured it back into measuring containers. The Apprentice's giant tea cup holds 500 ml (2 cups for you Americans); an average coffee mug holds 300 ml; a small drinking glass holds 200 ml; and a tiny doll cup holds 5 ml. (We had to measure that one with a spoon.)

We skipped several of the calculating activities on the sheet--I'll probably have her go back over some of them tomorrow. Instead, we skipped to the end of the lesson, where there were three word problems. "One shampoo bottle contains 1 liter of shampoo. Another one contains 478 ml. How much more does the bigger one contain?" The other two problems were about drink bottles and juice in a pitcher.

And after all that we were very thirsty.

I told Crayons that if she wants a homework assignment, she should go ask The Apprentice if she can examine her stash of cosmetics, lotions, potions etc. and see which ones are packaged by weight and which are packaged by volume. I just thought of another fun homework assignment: figuring out how much toothpaste and shampoo you can fit in a zipper bag to get through airport security without going over the milliliter limit. See, grownups have to know about this stuff too.

Schoolwork, the day after Thanksgiving

Holidays are wonderful but they do mess up your school week as well as your mental clock.

So today isn't a very heavy day.

Crayons:

Bible
Hero Tales, read about David Livingstone
Math Mammoth Light Blue Grade 3B, two pages--learning about meters and kilometers
Spelling work
Canadian Children's Treasury--start reading a story about the Arctic by James Houston
Science--start a sprouting-birdseed experiment

Ponytails:

Bible
Mere Christianity
Math and science assignments
Einstein biography
Composition assignments
Page from Easy Grammar Plus
Watership Down
Augustus Caesar's World:  Mark Antony

Group things:

Hidden Art of Homemaking--read about music (put off from last week)
Latin lesson
Singing
Sewing
Teatime, using a recipe for Cranberry Apple Tea (if I can get the Squirrelings to try it)...we might combine that with the Homemaking reading

Frugal Homeschooling: Is there a homeschool store in your cupboard?

Last spring I made a list, not of every book in the house, but of what we had in the way of homeschool resources. I set it up in the same way as my favourite homeschool catalogue, so that I could "shop" from it. I didn't include library books, but I did include downloaded e-texts and software.

A homeschool catalogue usually starts by listing how-to-homeschool books and parent resources. My list started like this:

General Books

Debra Bell—Ultimate Guide to Homeschooling
Ruth Beechick books—primary, grades 4-8
Books Children Love, other books of books
Homeschool Your Child For Free
Classical Curriculum (Berquist)
Charlotte Mason Companion
CM Home Education series
The Blackboard Book, by Eleanor Watts (e-text)
Free printables and websites, 2010 edition (e-text)

Next section in a typical Christian homeschool catalogue: Bible study resources. Again I just made a list that started like this:

Bible Study

Bibles—several translations
What the Bible is All About for Young Explorers
Old Testament 2-year Survey Class, by Meredith Curtis (e-text)
The Holy Land in the Time of Jesus
Everyday Life in Bible Times (NG book)
Bible for Today, 3 vols.
Barclay’s Gospel commentaries
Desiring God / Future Grace

And so on through Spelling Skills, Handwriting, Grammar, Math, History, Science, Music.

All of this counting and listing had a couple of purposes. One was just a general figuring out of what we had--a chance to count our blessings, if you like, and to realize how much we really didn't need to buy, how much was already right there for us to use. The other reason was to take that information and "shop" with it. From this "homeschool store," what would I buy to use for math this fall with Crayons? What resources could I combine to put together a French program? And was there something really lacking, that I couldn't figure out a way around?

Most of what we plan to use this year came from our own "store." We got planners for about a dollar apiece. We did end up buying new Key to Algebra workbooks for eighth-grader Ponytails, because that made the most sense. Later in the year I'll download the next Math Mammoth level for fourth-grader Crayons. I also bought John Hudson Tiner's Exploring the World of Mathematics from a friend who was done with it, and a set of Calculadder 2, although I'm having second thoughts about using it this year...that's something I need to talk over with the Squirrelings.

I bought a printed-out copy of Write with the Best Volume 2, although I do have my own copy of the file, to save myself the trouble and paper of having to reprint it. (You have to print out the whole book with that one--all or nothing.) And there have been a few other things that popped up along the way, mostly secondhand--like The Canadian Children's Treasury and Science on a Shoestring. Very recently someone on the Canadian used-curriculum exchange list posted a few items for sale, including some historical colouring books that fit with Crayons' history, and a couple of other things, so I have my order in for those. (I try to sell a few books here and there myself to even things out.)

Some printer paper, and I guess we're set.

To sum up: homeschooling is not totally free, even when you shop mostly from the cupboard...but it does help. You could say that I should figure in some amortized cost for books that I had bought previously and used for one or two other people. You could also say that I should include things like printer ink (some people do), staples, any books I haven't bought but might, any lessons or outings that we haven't registered for or attended but might, or even Teacher Appreciation Presents.

Hey, everybody's got a wish list.

This post is linked from the Festival of Frugality.

More on this fall's homeschooling (Part 3)

MATHEMATICS

I already mentioned briefly what we're doing: Ponytails is finishing off Key to Geometry and Key to Decimals, and then will be starting Key to Algebra, and probably doing practice Gauss competition tests at the grade 8 level. She's planning on doing most of her math with Mr. Fixit again this year.

Crayons will be finishing Math Mammoth Light Blue Grade 3, because we got into it late in the year, and then we'll download Grade 4. I've been very interested to see where/how the Miquon Math she'd always used fit in to this newer curriculum; where we can go fast because we've already covered a topic, and where we have to slow down for math potholes. Not surprisingly (if you know Miquon), she has a very good sense of place value; she has a good understanding of how numbers work, and she's probably a bit ahead in multiplication, since Miquon starts that early. She's great at money math, not so good at telling time, but we'll keep working on that.

We'll be doing a weekly joint math time--I'm still working out the details on that. Some of what we'll be doing will be coming out of Critical Thinking's Math Detective book (the gr 5-6 level), since we have it on hand; but I don't want to do exactly the same format every time...the goal is to get a bigger sense of mathematics, to learn about the really interesting parts of it, not just "what you get in school." (If you've never checked out the Living Math website, there's lots of inspiration there.)

GRACIOUS ARTS

Otherwise known as Home Economics or Family Studies...but it's more than that. We are going to read through The Hidden Art of Homemaking (maybe just parts of some chapters), and supplement that with Marmee's Sugar N Spice Studies (nice around the holidays), a book on teatimes, a book on making basket gifts for people, and other books on crafts and creativity. We'll also read Louisa May Alcott's novel Jack and Jill, since a lot of that book is about "brightening the corner where you are" and finding the beauty around you.

CITIZENSHIP

A catch-all category. Whatever Happened to Justice? could fit in here, but I'm counting that under history this year. We'll be reading Plutarch's Lives (probably just Ponytails the first term), some of Charlotte Mason's book Ourselves, and Noel Streatfeild's book The Fearless Treasure. (We've never used that last one yet, so it will be an experiment.)

FINE ARTS

We'll probably follow the Ambleside rotation for picture studies and composer studies, except that I want to include Tom Thomson in this year's studies...it's a good year to do this since at least one museum within reach will be hosting a Thomson exhibit.

Art instruction: this is pretty much open. Crayons, although she loves to craft, is going through a spell of thinking that she can't draw, so it's not something I'm going to push right now. Ponytails has her own artistic interests she's working on. We will incorporate narration drawings and other activities into the year's work and leave it at that. (I was pretty happy, though, to find tins of watercolour pencils and charcoal pencils at Dollarama this weekend for $1.25 each.)

LATIN

We'll be following the lessons in Our Roman Roots, probably three times a week.

FRENCH

I had planned to have Ponytails start one of the Mission Monde levels, and work something out myself for Crayons. When I got started working on Crayons' curriculum, I realized that we could probably do at least the first half of the year together, and then maybe get MM for Ponytails after Christmas. I looked at the Ontario ministry guidelines for grade 4 and grade 8 French, and they're really not that complicated...no offense to anyone who might be offended by that, I just mean that, for a ministry of education outline, it's pretty simple and clear what's supposed to be taught, and we can cover that with our own books. Our theme is going to be Les Insectes, based on a Canadian activity book (from a used book sale) called Les Insectes (surprise). We'll learn bugs along with verbs.

I think that's it for now...

What's ahead in the Treehouse homeschool?

Up in the Treehouse, Mama Squirrel has been hunched over a desk with a pen in her furry paw, post-it notes stuck to her tail, and a look in her eyes similar to that of a determined but frustrated suitcase-packer.

However, that's not a very leisurely place to be, for either Mama Squirrel or the Squirrelings. And the answer, of course, is not to cram everything in tighter, but to let go of what most likely won't matter on the trip. Or afterwards.

Leisure is having the freedom (time, space, opportunity) to discover what makes you fully human.

Okay.

But we are still going to fit in a travel-sized package of Latin this year. And work on French, in which we have gotten unavoidably but sadly behind.

Crayons, going into Grade 4, will be doing Ambleside Online's Year 4, more or less, which covers mostly American history of the 1700's. (We won't be reading This Country of Ours or Abigail Adams.) Geography, nature, and some of the science will be different. However, we're at a very interesting point with the two Squirrelings that are left homeschooling, since some of the Year 4 books also appear on Carol's Pre-7 book list, which we like very much and which gave us a base for planning Ponytails' Grade 8. So this year we'll be doing Age of Fable and It Couldn't Just Happen together, along with Shakespeare and some of the usual other together-things.

Ponytails will have two strands of history: Augustus Caesar's World by Genevieve Foster, and world/Canadian history from 1865 to 1965, using The Story of the World Volume 4 and The Story of Canada which covers, in this squirrel's opinion, too much too fast to be a favourite CM resource, but which is good for a middle-school look at Confederation, the World Wars and so on.

Math will be mostly Math Mammoth for Crayons and Key To books for Ponytails, although we'll also be doing some math journalling. Crayons will be reading Jean-Henri Fabre's The Story Book of Science and doing some Benjamin Franklin science experiments (maybe these, maybe these). Ponytails will be continuing to study science with Mr. Fixit (a.k.a. Dad) but will also have a (short) science reading list.

I'll post more details as I pull them from my tail notebook.

One more reason I am still liking Math Mammoth

Is it only coincidence that the two math programs we have liked best both have the initals MM?

Actually, so did one we didn't like as much, but never mind.

This is what I'm happy about: included in the support materials with the downloadable Grade 3 Light Blue curriculum is a worksheet generator for all the Grade 3 topics! Times tables, measurement, money, clocks, addition, subtraction, everything.

I also like that you get a Canadian version of the money chapter (there's a European one as well)--very helpful.

Switching to this program is probably one of the best things to come out of the Review Crew this year for Crayons. I'm only sorry that I didn't use it earlier with Ponytails, because I think she would have liked it too. (Ponytails has been using some of the Key To books this year.) I know there are lots of other good math programs out there, but I'm happy we got a little shove into using this one.

Review Crew Cruise Question: On Choices, burnout, and violets

This week's question: "Burnout--how do you handle it? Avoid it?" (Click on the ship to see more responses--they will be posted on Tuesday.)

And in the morning it's manna hotcakes.
We snack on manna all day.
And they sure had a winner last night for dinner,
flaming manna soufflé--Keith Green

On the weekend we went out for dinner with Grandpa Squirrel, to a diner-style restaurant we like. The food and the service are good. The wall decor is amusing (lots of diner-era movie pictures).The only problem with this place is its mind-bogglingly long menu. What are you going to have? Fish and chips, pasta, pizza, pasta-plus-pizza, burgers, sandwiches, all-day breakfast? Soup or salad with that? Fries or baked potato? Mama Squirrel went into can't-decide mode, so when The Apprentice asked for a chicken wrap, she just said, "I'll have the same." Fortunately, it turned out to be a good choice. But wrapping your brain around all those choices seems to be a too-common experience in our culture, and it can actually keep you from choosing at all. We have posted about this very thing before.

The Toronto Star posted a review yesterday (by Jennifer Hunter) of a new book by Sheena Iyengar, The Art of Choosing. Iyengar talks about the same issues and describes experiments such as "the jam test"--a grocery store experiment where people overwhelmed by too many flavours turned out to be less likely to buy any of them at all. I've seen the same thing happen at the homeschool conference vendor hall, where the sheer number of books, DVDs, posters and toys makes people either freeze up, or go crazy buying things they don't need. Or the number of people telling you to try this math curriculum, that method, this subject, that program, becomes just another invitation for brain meltdown.

I'm experiencing a slight dose of this myself today, on a gorgeous warm Easter Monday that, besides an attack on Mount Laundry, requires some time spent organizing our spring term. If you can get burned out by boredom (manna waffles) or by overwhelming demands, you can also be attacked with similar symptoms when the choices seem too many. Especially when the weather's nice and the last thing you want to do is go through all those free downloads.

But maybe there's something there I missed...and the DHM is using that Numbers Long Ago book, so maybe I should look at that again...and I just got that 40-page Worksheets Directory, maybe there's something in there we could use. Oh nuts--I'd rather sit on the back deck and finish Terrible Lizard.

Okay...regroup. First of all, our general schedule has been working pretty well. Although I might like a slightly neater weekly table of subjects; and although Charlotte Mason might like it better if Crayons didn't do all her math, spelling and handwriting all in a bunch (or if she didn't do "spelling" at all, but that's another story); I have to admit that if it's working and the work is getting done, we're probably halfway there.

What do I want to see change this term? More outdoor nature; more picture study and music (we've been very lax on that this year), more geography, and more independent literature for Ponytails. More independent Bible reading, since we've finished the year's stories-to-read-together. More Roots and Fruits word roots, since we let that drop in the fall and the Squirrelings keep asking me when we're going to add more prefixes to our lonely little list on the kitchen wall. More habit training, which sounds like rather nasty medicine but which is nonethless beneficial.

Goals: to get Crayons to a particular point in third grade Math Mammoth, and to get Ponytails past decimals and through a bit of algebra. To read Kim and Great Expectations out loud, and more poetry. To get done Easy Grammar Plus through the Verbs chapter. To get done everybody's assigned history for the term. To finish a few other things that we started--no big choices involved there. To keep everything within the idea of leisurely. (You never thought it was so much work to be leisurely?)

Nice things I'd like to fit in:

*A short unit on inventions with Crayons, using some of the chapters from Story of Inventions which is part of her Year 3 work, and since we were asked to try out an inventors game for the Review Crew.
*Marmee Dear's Sugar 'n' Spice Unit Study, just because it looks useful and interesting
*Gardening books
*Spring Nature Study, from Type Lessons for Primary Teachers
*Nature study on the violets that are everywhere on our lawn
*Tables in Word 2003 by Leanne Beitel (how to create tables--very useful)
*Charlotte Mason's Ourselves

Some of those are obviously more important than others--but violets don't last long. We have to keep the priorities straight.

So am I done? Can I go read my book now?

Oh--I still have to get all that stuff in order for tomorrow, don't I? And put the things in the right workboxes. Okay, so I'm not quite there yet...

but I'm not burned out.

Photos: Mr. Fixit

Why I like Math Mammoth even more now

We are up to page 80 and 81 of the Math Mammoth Light Blue Grade 3-A Worktext, in the chapter on times tables.

This is what Crayons did today for math, following the directions on those pages:

Reviewed skip counting of 2's and 4's.
Skip-counted by 10's.
Filled in a chart: 1 x 10 = , 2 x 10 = , etc.
Filled in the other half of the chart: __ x 10 = 10, etc.
Drilled fifteen multiplication facts, mostly from the 10-times table.
Drilled fifteen more multiplication facts, of the ___ x 10 type.

Answered this word problem:
a) You see chickens and cats walking in the yard and they have a total of 22 legs. How many cats and how many chickens are there?
b) Find two other solutions to the previous problem.

Did six more multiplication facts, set up vertically.

And filled in a multiplication table, with the tables that haven't been covered yet blacked out. (In other words, filling in the 0's, 1's, 2's, 4's, and 10's.)

That's it--a total of two pages (and twenty-two legs).

But this is why I really like Math Mammoth...because page 82 is completely different. At the top there's a diagram of a ruler showing 5 centimeters at the top and 50 millimeters at the bottom. First you change centimeter measurements into millimeters, and vice versa. Then you do a series of questions like this:

2 cm 2 mm = 22 mm (example)
5 cm 4 mm = __ mm
__ cm __ mm = 37 mm

Now is that a clever way to practice 10-times tables, or what? It reminds me of an exercise Charlotte Mason had her students do converting shillings and pence, to teach them something about place value.

The last activity on the page is to go around actually measuring things in centimeters and millimeters.

And then the next lesson works on the 5-times table.

I like this stuff for teaching and reviewing times tables--it's not fancy, but it's not all the same old drills either.

The last nine days of the term

We are in the last two weeks of our homeschool term (we finish at Good Friday). These weeks are a bit geared-down, finishing things up and not really starting much new. I have some new things in mind for the spring term, though.

Both girls:

Memory songs and hymns (see post from earlier this week)
The last few Old Testament-and-beyond stories from Through the Bible. (How come the Old Testament just stops suddenly? What happened in between then and the New Testament?)
The Pond on My Windowsill--reading about dragonflies and other such things
Swiss Family Robinson
Dinosaur DVDs from the library (I'll post about those later)--we call it "Dinosaur Cinema"

Ponytails:

Continuing Key to Geometry, Christian Kids Explore Chemistry, Easy Grammar Plus, Analogies, Keyboarding for the Christian School, and Abraham Lincoln's World.
Starting Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?
Still working on Plutarch's Life of Poplicola and books from her extra reading list.

Crayons:

Reviewing time telling.
Doing a chapter on times tables in Math Mammoth.
More work in Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting (this week) and All About Spelling Level 3 (next week).
Still working on The Jungle Book and At the Back of the North Wind.
Dinosaur books and other extra reading.

Math Mammoth (TOS Review)

Treehouse Review Week

Math Mammoth Home Page
Free Samples Download
Placement Tests
FAQ (including ordering information)

"Fully reproducible math workbooks
and worktexts for grades 1-12.
Incredibly affordable!"
I mentioned a few weeks ago that we would be trying out Maria Miller's Math Mammoth series with Crayons this term. We received both grade 3 books in the Light Blue Series (more specifics on the grade 3 books here), and I printed out the first chapter.

"The first chapter in this book deals with addition and subtraction strategies. The student does a lot of mental math, learns addition and subtraction terminology, touches on algebraic problems in the lesson about addition/subtraction connection, practices borrowing, and more."

What else do you do in Grade 3? "Then we tackle the multiplication concept in chapter 2. After that come multiplication tables in chapter 3, so multiplication does take a big part of book A. Then comes a chapter about clock and time (chapter 4) and a chapter about money (chapter 5).

"In part B, we study place value with thousands (chapter 6), then measuring and geometry (chapters 7 and 8), followed by division in chapter 9. In chapter 10, we study a little about multiplying bigger numbers, and finally in chapter 11, it is time for some introductory fraction and decimal topics."

Why do I like this so far? As I've said before, I like the three-year curriculum we've been using with Crayons, but in its final year it does get a bit esoteric with Fibonacci numbers, measurement, and graphing concepts--and I've felt that she really did need more work this year on basics. I wanted to be sure that those arithmetic "acorns" she'd stored up didn't get buried under a lot of other leaves and nuts--nice leaves and nuts, but not what she most needs right now.

It might be that Timmy-Tiptoes part of being a Squirrel: dropping those nuts down deep through the hole in the tree, but not being sure exactly what went down there, or how you're going to get them out again later.--previous Treehouse post

I also like the balance we're getting between a bit of "mom teaching time" and then a reasonable amount of problems for Crayons to do alone--this works very well with the way we like to learn here, and seems to go at about the right pace. I like the uncluttered feeling I get when we work through these pages--they're not fancy, but they offer enough variety to keep things interesting, and include self-checking activities like finding all the answers in a long line of numerals. (If the answer isn't in there, you did it wrong.)

"When you use these books as your only or main mathematics curriculum, they can be like a "framework", but you do have some liberty in organizing the study schedule....This curriculum aims to concentrate on a few major topics at a time and study them in depth....This is opposite to the continually spiraling step-by-step curricula in which each lesson typically is about a different topic from the previous or next lesson, and includes a lot of review problems from past topics. This does not mean that your child wouldn't need occasional review. However, when each major topic is presented in its own chapter, this gives you more freedom to plan the course of study and choose the review times yourself."

This works for us.

An important question for our family: do you need a colour printer? In the third-grade workbooks I downloaded, the colours do make the pages prettier; but they also seem to work fine in black and white. If you're looking for material for younger children, you might want to check out the samples for those years to see if you want them done in colour. [Update, October 2010: We printed out the 3B book in colour because it has several chapters about geometry, measurement etc. which use pictures of rulers, measuring cups and other things that show up better with different colours.]

What is Math Mammoth like in general?

Math Mammoth offers a whole array of downloadable workbooks, from full curriculum, to collections of worksheets on single topics. At first the different series may seem confusing, but the website pretty much explains the differences, for example, between the Blue and the Light Blue books. The Blue series is more remedial or supplemental; Light Blue is designed as a full, largely self-teaching curriculum for grades 1-5.

What is there for older students? Very glad you asked: check out the middle-school and high-school stuff here, including the Make-It-Real series of workbooks. "Make It Real Learning products are workbooks that contain activities or problem situations taken from real-life, with real data. Some examples of the situations are: cell phone plans, autism, population growth, cooking, borrowing money, credit cards, life spans, music downloads, etc. etc. Each activity-lesson starts with basics and goes into more in-depth and challenging evaluations and questions."

What does this cost? It all depends on how much you want to get at one time. You can get the whole Light Blue series, for example--that is, all five grades plus answer keys, a worksheet maker etc.--for US$99 as a download or $104 on CD. Prices of one year's Light Blue curriculum (including the support materials) vary slightly between the Math Mammoth page (it says there they are $29.50) and the Kagi store download page (it's listed there as $33.36). You can also order printed workbooks through Lulu.com. General ordering information is here.

Final Take: Over the past few years, I've often noticed Math Mammoth's generosity in offering samples and prizes (I've won a couple of their other products myself), and their interest in working with homeschoolers. I think it's their flexibility that seems to make them a good choice for homeschooling--you can get what you need to start with, get more pages or more help if you need it, and even make up some of your own stuff with the support materials. There is no fancy encryption or stuff that makes printing limited or difficult. And the book we're using has been pretty much print-out-and-use--there's no big learning curve for the parent. I don't know how the materials for the upper years compare to other curricula, but I'd certainly include them in the possibilities for math in the years to come.

Dewey's Disclaimer: This product was received free for purposes of review. No other payment was made. The opinions expressed in this review are our own.

My mind, my acorn pile: Trying out Math Mammoth

The third (final) year of Miquon Math is always the hardest here--and it doesn't seem to matter exactly how old the Squirreling is. Possibly it's the year with the oddest assortment of topics, coming at an age when more typical third-grade math programs concentrate most on operations (along with some time-telling, money and measurement). As I described earlier in the year, I broke down the year's work by weeks and topics, wrote each week's work on a file card, and added notes of possible supplements. It hasn't been bad--we're on track with the cards, and the Mathemagic book is a real success--but I've still been feeling that, even with computer drill games and Calculadder work, there are still some holes in Crayons' math understanding. Not that anybody needs to panic at this age, but I get the impression from her too that math lessons are somewhat less than delightful. I wonder too if, in one sense, she really does know what she thinks she doesn't know, simply because it's not all straight in her head. I think that's what made All About Spelling a success over the past couple of months: she needed to gain some confidence but also to organize some of the knowledge she had stored up so that she could pull it out and use it. It might be that Timmy-Tiptoes part of being a Squirrel: dropping those nuts down deep through the hole in the tree, but not being sure exactly what went down there, or how you're going to get them out again later.

And besides, I know that, one way or another, we're going to be looking for another curriculum for fourth grade and up, because Miquon will be done. There are so many things out there to try now: Math-U-See, Right Start, Life of Fred, Saxon, JUMP, Mathematics Enhancement Programme--everybody has their favourites.

So when the Review Crew offered us the chance to try out one of Math Mammoth's full-curriculum workbooks, that didn't sound like a bad thing at all. We decided to go with MM's Light Blue series for third grade--starting today with an addition review.

This isn't a review yet, but there will be one when we have shaken up the acorns enough.