This Online Fraction Generator Saved My Life

https://apps.mathlearningcenter.org/fractions/

The 10 year-old is struggling with fractions, improper fractions, mixed numbers, etc. He needs fraction manipulatives to solve the fraction problems in his math workbook.  I have fraction rods, but I needed a fraction manipulative that could do larger numbers.

So, I found this online fraction generator (free).  There's a small learning curve when first starting out.  But you can choose a rectangular shape or a circular shape, choose how many parts the shape is divided into and then shade in how many parts are in the numerator.  There's a pencil to scribe the fraction, do some quick addition/subtraction, etc on the whiteboard.

There's a fraction feature which tells you what fraction of the shape is shaded.  

You can even add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions with the calculator.

This online generator is going to be so helpful while I try to drag the 10 year-old through the daunting world of fractions.

Homeschool Day 1/15

 4th Grader

Sonlight D (history, Bible and literature)

• 100 Bible Stories
• Explore Native American Cultures!
• Sign of the Beaver
• US States Puzzle - we located Jamestown and Plymouth on the map

Sonlight Readers 3 + Language Arts

• Tippy Lemmey (his new reader, which he loved)
• All About Spelling 2
• Handwriting without Tears Cursive
• Draw It Yourself Adventures: Alien Attack

Math

• After not using a math curriculum all winter, I decided to give Life of Fred a try.  I started him with Cats, because even though he could do the arithmetic easily, there seemed to be things in that book that he needed work on, like money and sets.  He said he loved Life of Fred after just one chapter.  I already own almost all of the Life of Fred books (from the older kids), so switching was simple.  I just had to get the book off the shelf.  

Abeka 4th Grade Science

• Life in the Forest

Art & Music

• Piano practice

French with Mr. Innes (free on YouTube)

• Days of the Week

12th Grader/Early College Student

• Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Mathusee Stewardship
• ASL Basics

Hooray!! College Placement Test News

 16 year-old took the math section of the college placement test TSIA2 today and tested at a solid college level in math.  She's allowed to take college-level classes in the algebra track.

Hooray!!!!  No more SAT math prep!  We can put those SAT prep books away.  

Beast Academy Games

 We're switching to Beast Academy this summer for math.  I was looking around on their website and saw this: https://beastacademy.com/playground  The "Playground" has a bunch of videos explaining how to play different math games at the elementary level.

Review of Wild Math 3rd Grade

https://discoverwildlearning.com/wild-math/

We've used Wild Math 1, 2 and now 3.  

Grade 3 covers place value, addition/subtraction, multiplication/division, geometry, money and time, fractions, measurements, graphing and charts.  The curriculum guide has a weekly schedule, a booklist, a list of board games and a checklist of hands-on activities that you can do outdoors or indoors with your student.  You can use natural materials from outside (like acorns, flowers, etc) or you can use things inside like popsicle sticks, cuisinaire rods or counters.  The teacher's guide tells you how to make an outdoor math kit that you can use outside to take measurements, compare items, work math problems, etc.  

This is such an enjoyable curriculum.  This is our favorite math curriculum for younger grades.  He especially enjoyed the board game suggestions.  He really liked the measurement unit and the multiplication unit.  For any older homeschoolers familiar with Konos, this curriculum reminds me of that, but for math.

Every one of the board games we bought this year were a hit.  He loved Sleeping Queens and Prime Climb.  Even my high schooler liked Prime Climb.  Clumsy Thief was difficult for him, but it was also good.  This curriculum definitely encouraged me to use more math board games in our school year.

The worst thing about this curriculum is that it ends at fifth grade.  I really wish the curriculum would extend to the pre-algebra/algebra years.

I feel like my son has a really strong conceptual grasp of math after following this curriculum for three years.  

Also, the price is another strong point.  $27 for a year of math plans is a good deal.  If you buy the board games, you end up spending quite a bit more on math, but we enjoyed them so much that it was worth it to buy the games.  We checked out most of the readers from our city library for free. 

"New to Me" Charlotte Mason Curriculum

 I've been listening to A Delectable Education podcasts and have stumbled across some new curricula that looked interesting.  https://www.adelectableeducation.com/

The Peaceful Press

https://www.thepeacefulpreschool.com/

This appears to be a Charlotte Mason-inspired unit study curriculum for 6th grade and under.  It covers a variety of subjects that you would typically see in a Charlotte Mason course of study.

Scientific Connections through Inquiry

https://scicurriculum.com/sci/

We are actually going to start this in 2024.  I'm buying Level 3.  It's a very new science curriculum and all of the levels are not finished yet.  It's supposed to be similar to Building Foundations in Scientific Understanding. https://www.bfsucommunity.com/

Beauty and Truth Math

https://beautyandtruthmath.com/

This is a Charlotte Mason math curriculum.  Looks interesting.  Youtube also has some videos about this curriculum.  

Homeschool Day 1/31

We did not do schoolwork yesterday, because of the terrible ice storm and the stress of trying to get everyone home safely.

 2nd Grader

Math

• We played Mathemagical World
• He worked on multi-digit subtraction problems

Reading/Language Arts

• Explode the Code 2
• Sonlight Reading/LA

Science

• We read The Magic School Bus: Lost in the Solar System (this is just a great book)

Sonlight B World History 1 (history, literature and Bible)

• The Ology
• National Geographic poetry book
• Little Pear (read-aloud)

Extras

• James and the Giant Peach (bedtime read-aloud)
• Doing some programming with Dash Robot Kit (borrowed from the library)

10th Grader

Bible

• The Book of Psalms

Math

• Mathusee Geometry

Grammar & Writing

• She finished her essay from They Say, I Say (persuasive essay)
• Easy Grammar 10th Grade Ultimate workbook

Science

• Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities
• Smithsonian's The Planets
• Smithsonian's The Stars

History and Literature

• Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie

Extras

• DuoLingo Korean
• She practiced classical guitar yesterday and today

School stuff I am ordering this week:

Clumsy Thief Money Game:  https://melonrind.com/products/clumsy-thief

Sleeping Queens:  https://gamewright.com/product/Sleeping-Queens

Mathstart Series

https://www.mathstart.net

Our library has the MathStart series and I'm starting to read through the Level 2 and Level 3 books with the 2nd grader.  Almost all of these are in our library system (through inter-library loan).

The MathStart website has a list of books by level and then what math concept is taught in the book.

Level 2 Books - these are meant for grades 1-2

• Animals on Board (addition)
• The Best Vacation Ever (collecting data)
• Bigger, Better, Best (area)
• Captain Invincible and the Space Shapes (shapes)
• Coyotes All Around (rounding)
• Elevator Magic (subtraction)
• A Fair Bear Share (addition)
• Give Me Half (half, obviously)
• Mall Mania (addition)
• Comparing Numbers
• 100 Days of Cool (100)
• Pepper's Journal (calendars)
• Probably Pistachio (probability)
• Racing Around (perimeter)
• Spunky Monkeys on Parade (skip-counting)
• Super Sand Castle Saturday (measuring)
• Tally O'Malley (tallying)

Level 3 Books - these are meant for grades 2-4

• Betcha! (estimating)
• Dave's Down to Earth Rock Shop (classifying)
• Dinosaur Deals (equality)
• Divide and Ride
• Game Time
• The Grizzly Gazette (percent)
• Hamster Champs (less than, greater than)
• Jump, Kangaroo, Jump (fractions)
• Lemonade for Sale (bar graphs)
• Less Than Zero (negative numbers)
• The Penny Pot (money)
• Polly's Pen Pal (metrics)
• Ready, Set, Hop (equations)
• Rodeo Time (schedule)
• Room for Ripley (volume)
• Safari Park (solving unknowns)
• Shark Swimathlon (subtraction)
• Slugger's Car Wash (money)
• Too Many Kangaroo Things to Do (multiplication)
• Treasure Map (mapping)

The MathStart website also has videos on how to read the books, printable PDF activity pages, a full list of the books, etc.

2nd Grade Math Woes

 The 2nd grader is just spinning his wheels with Mathusee.  I love Mathusee, especially the high school courses, but he is not making much progress with it.  He does not like worksheets and the curriculum is not moving fast enough through topics for him.

I don't want to waste money on another math curriculum.  So, I am going to teach math without a curriculum for now.  

I made a list of topics I want to cover this school year (for 2nd grade):

• Addition and subtraction math facts 
• Add 2 and 3 digit numbers
• Subtract 2 and 3 digit numbers
• Round to 10
• Place value to 1,000
• Tell time to 5 minutes
• Money
• Length and weight
• Basic geometry
• Review
• Even and odd
• Tally marks
• Simple graphs

Most math curricula has them learning multiplication in 2nd grade, but I think he has enough on his plate with just mastering addition and subtraction.  I'll save multiplication for 3rd grade.

I bought a couple of games to help with addition and subtraction.  I bought Mathemagical World.  I also bought Math War, Addition and Subtraction.

We are continuing Life of Fred math for fun.  I am also planning to get math-themed books from the library to supplement.

So, my plan:

• Life of Fred math
• Living math books
• Math games
• Flashcards for addition/subtraction practice
• Whiteboard - work through problems together on the whiteboard
• I would like to do some math projects

Ideas for living math books:  https://www.livingmath.net/reader-index

https://denisegaskins.com/living-math-books/

New Curriculum Review: Mathusee Stewardship

 This just arrived from Rainbow Resource:  https://stewardshipmath.com

This is going to be my 16 year-old's last high school year (most likely) and I couldn't decide if I wanted her to continue with Precalculus or do this Stewardship course.  She plans to major in Fine Arts, so I decided to buy the Stewardship.  She will never use Precalculus in her daily life.  But, this Stewardship course looked incredible.

I'm going to put one credit of Personal Finance on her transcript when she completes this.

It covers personal finance/consumer math, including these topics:

• income
• income taxes
• banking/credit unions
• budgeting
• credit cards
• comparison shopping
• vehicle ownership/purchasing
• mortgages
• house ownership costs
• compound interest
• investing
• charity
• insurance

It comes with 4 parts:

•  digital code to see the lectures online
• instruction manual (textbook, basically)
• student workbook
• biblical studies book (which covers what the Bible says about different financial topics)

I'm planning to have her start this by August at the latest.  1 credit under the category of math: Personal Finance.

Kindergarten STEAM week: 1/25-1/29

 This week, we will take a break from our curriculum and have a STEAM week.  Here are the activities I've planned:

Lego Math Games - I plan to do the addition and subtraction board games

https://thekindergartenconnection.com/totally-awesome-lego-math-activities/

Lego Measurements

https://www.playdoughtoplato.com/lego-measurement/

Model Clay Turtles

https://www.weareteachers.com/best-kindergarten-art-projects/

Lego Challenge Cards

https://thestemlaboratory.com/lego-challenge-cards/

Make Painted Windsocks

https://www.weareteachers.com/best-kindergarten-art-projects/

Oobleck Science Project

https://www.instructables.com/Oobleck/

Tornado in a Bottle

https://mommypoppins.com/kids/50-easy-science-experiments-for-kids-fun-educational-activities-using-household-stuff

Flower Color Wheels

https://www.weareteachers.com/best-kindergarten-art-projects/

Adding Pages

 I'm slowly adding pages to this blog.  I added a Math Resources page this morning.  I listed links to different math curricula, a few reviews, living math books, blogs and a few sites with math project ideas.