It seems that every new school year Kaia picks a subject to rebel against.  Last year, she did whatever she could to get out of writing in any form.  So, this year, I’m getting super creative with her assignments.  If there is more to writing than just sitting down at the table and putting words on lined paper, then it holds her interest more.  Of course it would.  Most kids don’t want to finish an assignment if they are bored.

So, lately we’ve been doing Sistine Spelling (tape the paper under your table and write your spelling words a la Michelangelo.

Then there’s Invisible Cursive:

Write your message in white crayon on white paper.  Then watercolor over it to reveal the message.

Yes, Kaia’s secret message to me says “Hag but head.  Bla Bla Bla. Bye.”  She realized that she’d spelled ‘butt’ incorrectly.  It is a very important word to know how to spell when you are 8!

Leif’s hands were definitely not idle while Kaia worked.

Speaking of Leif, he’s been begging me for his own curriculum (yes, he used that word!).  So, we’ve started with All About Reading Pre-1  I wasn’t planning on starting any official schooling with him for a few years.  He’s not even 3 yet.  But he knows his alphabet and wanted more.  So far this is perfect for him.  Kaia likes to join in his lessons and be my assistant teacher, and they both love using their magnetic doodle writer thingies (what are those things called anyway?)

How do you get creative with your lessons?  I’d love to hear your suggestions!

Mathematician Maria Droujkova has been working on an amazing living math resource for babies, toddlers and their parents.  Please take a moment to check out her newest project and think about donating!

We were super excited to start Anatomy this year.  I have so many fun experiments planned.  But, of course, we had to start with the Jello Cell.  Did you create one of these in school?  I remember doing it at least twice!

You can use all kinds of things to create your cell.  This just happened to be what I chose: jello (Cytoplasm – I would advise using a light color if you want to see the details), Whoppers (nucleus), M&M’s (Lysosomes – I think Lemon Heads or jelly beans would have worked better here.  The M&M’s bled their color into the jello and made it a bit murky), Fruit by the foot (we used two different kinds for the Mitochondria and the Golgi Complex), Fruit twists (Endoplasmic Reticulum – I was looking for licorice, but this is what I found).

We read a bit about what it means to be human and then about how cells work in the body.  I found a book with a nice color picture of a cell that we could refer to as we built our jello cell.

I was surprised how much of the fruit and candy actually ended up in Leif’s bowl and not in his mouth…

“Mom, my nuculus won’t stop floating!”

Just as fun to eat as it was to make! (though, not as pretty!)

Wow!  Thank you all so much for your wonderful comments and math game suggestions!  We are excited to try them out.  We are also very excited to tell you that we now have decks of PrimeBomb and Fractazmic that we will be reviewing soon.

So, with out any further ado… The winner of the Pyramath deck is:

Vanessa!!

Congratulations, Vanessa.  I’ll be contacting you soon for shipping details.

In early May, I read this review on a game called PyraMath and immediately thought it would be a great way to practice math facts with Kaia.  I went to the website and clicked on the link to Play.  We happened to be visiting in Boston a the time, but I thought I’d just play through it once to see if I thought it would really be useful.  Unfortunately, I got sucked in!  I kept trying to beat my best time and ended up playing late into the night.  All that play paid off when I won a deck of PyraMath cards!

The day that they arrived I think we ended up playing a gazillion times!!  I showed Kaia how to play a solitaire game beginning with 5 cards.  Each card has a number on it, from 0 to 9, and the number word written in English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Roman, and Chinese (so they learn a little about other languages at the same time!).  The first 5 cards are put out in a line.  Then Kaia drew a card from the main pack and see if she could use it in an equation.  

Here you can see that her top cards were 1, 4, 5, 2, and 0.  Between adjacent cards you use either addition, subtraction multiplication, or division to create your answer.  So, between 1 and 4, she used the number 3 when it was drawn from the deck, because 4-1=3.  Over on the other side, between 2 and 0, she used the number 0, because 2×0=0.   The cards that couldn’t be played were placed in a discard pile and play continues until the last card on the pyramid is placed.  She loved it!  And I love that this deck can be used for kids that may only know addition facts up to adults who just want to review.  So, I can play with Leif when he gets a little older, too.  And really, for Kaia, the game isn’t at all about math practice, it’s just about having fun.

Later in the evening, she challenged me to a game, which she won.  We started this game with 7 cards.  Her pyramid is on the right.  We haven’t covered division yet in school, but she started working out a few equations on her own here.

So, because I love finding ways to make math fun, and the fabulous people at PyraMath sent along a deck to give to you lovely readers, I’m having a giveaway!  YAY!!

Here are the rules:

• For one chance to win, simply leave a comment.  You don’t have to, but I’d love to hear your favorite ways to ‘play’ with math.
• For another chance to win, share this giveaway on your blog or facebook, and leave me a comment about it.

Don’t forget to leave a way to contact you if you win!  If you don’t win, don’t be discouraged!  A deck costs only $6.95 plus shipping, which I think is completely worth it!! (and no, I’m not being paid to say that!)

I’ll draw the winner on Monday, June 20th, at 7pm EST.

Now I’m off to the PyraMath Wiki page to learn more ways to play!!

One of the games I thought we might play this summer to sharpen Kaia’s math skills is Multiplication Bingo.  I found this great site for creating your own Bingo cards, Print Bingo, and simply plugged in the answers to the multiplication facts for 2×2 through 9×9.  If two or more equations have the same answer, like 3 x 4 = 12 and 2 x 6 = 12, I only entered the number 12 once on the bingo sheet.  I printed the cards out on yellow paper and ran them through my handy-dandy laminator.

Then I wrote down the equations on red paper and laminated them, too.  I wasn’t planning to pulling this game out until the next time she said “MOM!  I’m bored!”, but Kaia saw me doing this and wanted to play immediately.  So, we put the red equations into a paper bag.  She would pull them out, one at a time, and say the answer.  If either of us found the answer on our card, we’d cover it with a blue cube.  I was the first to yell “BINGO!”, so we kept playing until she made 5 in a row and could scream it herself, too.  Next time I think I’ll use chocolate covered raisins instead of blue cubes.  Then we can eat our playing chips when we are done!  Yay for fun learning!

Kaia and I are wrapping up her school year this week and next, and we thought we’d learn a little about negative numbers to end the year.  We talked about things less than zero, looked at thermometers and time lines.  Then she drew a number line from -5 to 5.  I gave her a few dollars of monopoly money and set up a little store.  If she wanted to buy something but didn’t have enough money, she’d borrow from the mom bank.  She started off with $5 and stood on the number 5.  She wanted to buy a head band worth $8.  So she borrowed $3 and moved back to the -3, because she now owed me $3.  Then she would ‘earn’ money somehow (birthday, chores) and move up again.   We’ve been over this concept of owing before, but it was nice to put it into action and then write the equation on the board so that she could see how 5-8 could equal -3.  She enjoyed it so much that she ended up playing store for over an hour and a half!

This is the only way I can ever get Kaia to put paper to pencil!

I told her I would make Ice Cream Pie if she could write me the recipe.   Yum!

Ice Cream Pie by Kaia

1. Fill crust with ice cream.

2. Top with whipped cream.

3. Drizzle on chocolate syrup.

4. Sprinkle on marshmallows and sprinkles.

5. Add 8 cherries.

6. Eat it!

I have to admit, I love planning for school.  Searching through all the options that are available to the kids is very exciting.

This past year has worked pretty well for us.  Really, the hardest part of it was getting lessons done with a 2 year old crazy man bouncing around us.  And sometimes, I can distract him with some fun game but them Kaia wants to play too and ignores the lesson.  So, we’ve all learned a good bit about flexibility this year!

This summer, we do plan to do a little schooling.  We will play lots of math games and read living math books so that Kaia can keep up her skills.  Kaia is still very resistant to writing, so I’m going to encourage writing of any sort over the summer.  And, since we’ve not really done much geography, we will learn a bit about the oceans, continents, cultures and such.  I’m going to try to keep it laid back, though.  I could use a break, too, ya know!

In the fall, Kaia will technically be in the 3rd grade and we are planning the following:

Language Arts – Michael Clay Thompson level 1 (I’ve read such good things about this!  I’m excited to give it a try) This will be our basic curriculum and I don’t think we will need to add much more.  We will continue with Sequential Spelling (Kaia has been enjoying this a lot and I think it’s important for her to get some spelling practice since she doesn’t like to write often).  I think she will probably finish up HWT Cursive early in the year.  Other than that, there will be lots of reading.  Kaia reads up a storm, so I may put some books around the house for her to find, but I don’t think I’ll have much in the way of required reading.

Math – I’m thinking that we will continue using Right Start Math (levels D and E), just more loosely.  I think it moves to slowly for Kaia.  So, we’ll use what we need and make it a richer experience with living math books, experiments, Mythmatical Battles, Math Rider, and such.  I may add in a little Mind Benders and Math Analogies occasionally.  I’m even thinking of getting this Algebra primer.  I think she would really dig something like it.

Science – Kaia said she was interested in studying Anatomy and Electronics next year.  So, we plan to do lots of kits and experiments.  Toby will take on the electronics since he knows lots about it.  But we will probably start with something like this kit and expand from there.  For Anatomy, we will use kits from Horrible Science like this one, The Magic School Bus kit, as well as lots of books, dissections and stuff.  I may get the REAL Science Biology book to pull ideas from too.  (We used their Chemistry book this past year and felt it left a lot out.  The labs were generally too simple, but I still liked having the book as a starting point.) We’ll see.  (I just found this from Winter’s Promise.… Hmmm… might be something worth looking into.)

History – We’ve been using the History Odyssey curriculum for our Ancient History, but we basically only using it to follow the schedule of who to read about next.  This next year, I think we will use the Usborne Internet-linked Encyclopedia of World History as our spine.  We ended up referencing it more than our curriculum.  We are both very excited to study the Middle Ages next year.  We are already planning our trip to the Renaissance Faire in the fall!!  We’ll also supplement with lots of living history books and crafts.

Art – We started off this past year using Artistic Pursuits.  I really liked it how it connected the history we were studying with a the art, but Kaia didn’t like being told how to create her art.  So, we ended up using it less and less often.  I’d like to find something to introduce her to famous artists and art techniques, but I’m not sure what we’ll use yet.

Music – Continue Piano lessons

Foreign Language – Kaia wants to study Spanish.  I am looking for a local class.  I feel like that would be more effective for her than a computer course or something.  I don’t remember enough of it to feel like I could be a good teacher.

xtra stuff – Homeschool co-op, nature walks, Aerial gymnastics

For Leif, I’ll have to see where he is at in the fall.  We will definitely continue with letters and numbers. lots of hands on play.  There are lots of curricula out there for pre-schoolers that look great (like this one from Winter’s Promise and this one from Little Acorn Learning) and I love to have things organized and planned out, but I’m thinking my 2-3 year old just really needs to play and experience the world without too much structure.  We’ll see.

Let’s hear what your plans are!

Ever since I first saw sandpaper alphabet cards on another mama’s blog, I’ve been wanting a set of these for Leif.

I found small wooden cards at the local crafts store, along with felt capital letters and super sparkly, textured lower case letters.  The red felt letters are actually stickers.  So, Kaia took charge of sticking them to the wood.  The purple letters needed the hot glue gun.

Then this wonderful set of alphabet cards needed it’s own sweet carrying bag.

I hope they will get lots of use!

Want a fun way to encourage story telling and writing in your home?  Create a story board!

If you are sew crafty, you can sew some pockets onto a larger piece of fabric.  If you don’t sew, what about using poster board and gluing or stapling on paper pockets?

I sewed 12 pockets (about 4 inches wide, although next time I may make them larger) onto a large piece of felt.  Those are 3×5 cards, just for size reference.

Label these pockets.  We used the 5 W’s and ‘How’

Fill your pockets up with your ideas.  For example, ‘who’ could be grandma, Snoopy and Woodstock, the cat, Frosty the Snowman… ‘where’ might be the cellar, on Mars, under the table… Get the picture?

Then, have your kids take one piece of paper from each pocket without peeking at them.  With these they can create their story.  They can tell the story, act it out, write it down, draw it… however they want to create their story.  It can lead to some great fun!

And you don’t have to stop at the 5 W’s.  You can put whatever label on these pockets that you like.  For younger ones you can put a color, shape, letter, or number label on each pocket.  We put colors on each pocket and had Leif sort colored tiles and blocks.  You could do the same with shapes, letters and numbers using toys, refrigerator letter and number magnets, etc.

Kaia just went to the story board and pulled out these:

• Who: Mom and Dad
• What: Got an ugly haircut
• When: in the distant future
• Where: in a dungeon
• Why: Because he burned his tongue

So… what kind of story would you make with this?

Kaia and I took a break from our regularly scheduled math this morning after seeing some of these videos by Vihart.  She calls herself a ‘recreational mathemusician’, but that doesn’t come near describing how cool her brain is!  By watching just a couple of her videos Kaia and I found ourselves discussing fractals (again) which she loves, the concept of infinity, mobius strips, and a bunch more mathematical concepts.  For a 7 year old, that’s pretty advanced math.  But, when you bring it down to art, it seems so much easier to grasp.

Kaia immediately grabbed some paper and a pencil and set to doodling.

Here’s her ‘infinite series of circles, inside of an infinite number of circles”!

And more math doodles.

What a great way to spend a morning!

Here’s Vi’s blog if you want more of her creative mind!

We started school today… Kaia is now an official second grader and Leif began his pre-pre-pre K studies.  (He he, ok, so he ran around grabbing pencils, walking over workbooks, and sitting on Kaia.  I did read him The ‘A’ Book, though!)  I like the schedule I have mapped out for this first semester.  On paper, it seems pretty manageable.  Even with breakfast, chores and many interruptions, we were still done by 1 pm.  Then, the mail lady arrived bringing two boxes of yummy goodness that I’d ordered to add more fun to our homeschool days.  Kaia immediately dove into it all!  In our boxes we got:

Unjournaling - I didn’t think we’d actually start this until late in the year, but Kaia wanted to dictate some journal entries to me.

Funny Fairy Tale Proofreading- again, Kaia wanted to keep doing this late into the afternoon.  I finally had to tell her I was done teaching for the day

The Periodic Table - We are starting chemistry this year, and though a lot of this is beyond her at this point, I still thought this would be a fun way to learn about the elements.  She ended up flipping through it for over an hour to find the ‘cute’ elements.

Amelia Rules - I got the first three books in this series and they look adorable.  Kaia is really starting to get into reading.  Over the summer she’s really bloomed.  So, since she loves comic books, I thought this would help fan her interest.

Vocabulary Power – Idioms – This is an idiom a day flip-type book.  Each day gives you a new idiom (like It’s raining cats and dogs) and what it really means.  Kaia said “do I have to do only one a day”

Vocabulary Power – Words – Another flip book… I thought this would be a great way to add new vocabulary words to our days.  Each page has a word, pronunciation, definition, and use in a sentence.  Any words that Kaia doesn’t know we add to our vocabulary list.  Occasionally I will draw from these words and their definitions for copy work.

Haiku Stickies - We haven’t really done much in the way of poetry yet, but I couldn’t pass these up!    They are yellow sticky pages with partially written haiku on them.  You fill them in and stick them some where to be found!  How cool is that.  I thought this would be a fun way to introduce some poetry.  (And what’s really cool is that the author, Allan Wolf, is a friend of mine…. we met in Tae Kwon Do)  (Sarah, don’t get these for Meg… she’ll be getting some for her birthday!)

First Art – I had to get something for Leif, too.  This looks like it’s going to be a great project book for keeping little hands occupied.  Thanks for the recommendation Nikki.

Kaia is doing well recovering.  She can almost straighten her leg and the swelling is almost gone.  She’s still using a walker, but she’s gotten super fast!  You have to watch out for her if she’s moving around or she’ll run over your toes!

Here’s the little foot hammock she created on her walker.

And here’s speedy gonzales!  See, she’s just a blur when she gets going!

We took everyone peach picking this weekend.  Kaia got pulled around in a wagon… pampered princess.  She was actually easier to pull than the load of peaches we got.  In the end we had 2 bushels of peaches, a peck of apples, a gallon of apple cider, and a dozen fresh apple cider doughnuts!!  (Umm, yeah, there’s only one doughnut left!)

Kaia and I have been taking time this week to get her prepared for starting the second grade.  We’ve labeled and decorated folders, picked up some books from the library, filled her art box and refreshed her nature kit.  I think I’m more excited about school starting than she is   I’m also trying to prepare for the fact that we will have a crazy little toddler trying to get into everything that Kaia is doing.  So, I’ve gotten some ABC craft and cookbooks (including this ebook which is full of fun ABC crafts) to work on with Leif, made smelly playdough, and dyed some rice.  I’ve also moved a little table and chairs (just Leif’s size) into the living room where we usually do our work.  I want to have some easy play things to pull out for Leif when Kaia needs to focus on school stuff.  Next week she will be spending some time with her Nana, so we plan to officially start on Aug. 30th.  I’m looking forward to getting into a routine.  Summer does a good job of sending us in all directions with no routine at all.  But that’s what Summer is for, isn’t it?

Drying Rice