Literally Walk through Long Division

Although Will seems to understand the concept behind long division just fine (we'll nevertheless still continue to go over it amply, rest assured), she just can't seem to keep the steps in her head, so I thought we'd mix it up a bit and get that whole body learning going by moving the lesson outside.

I wrote a GIANT long division problem on our driveway, and then literally walked Will through it. Will started by standing on the divisor, and then walked across the dividend until she reached a place where the divisor would fit. Then she walked straight up to write down that portion of the quotient, walked back to the divisor to multiply, then walked down to write the product. Then she subtracted to find the remainder:

She walked up again to find the next digit of the dividend to bring down, and so on:

Most kids would probably think that this was a fun activity (Syd watched the whole thing eagerly, practically vibrating as she tried to figure out a way that she could participate), but Will haaaaaaated it! It took too long, required too much effort, she had to bend down to write, etc. etc. Before she'd finished the above problem, in fact, her grousing reached such a level that I gave her the official verdict of Bad Attitude.

You may already know, but in our family, if you complete your entire day's schoolwork with a Good Attitude, you earn yourself a solid hour of screen time afterwards. If, instead, you display a Bad Attitude, you earn no screen time, and I tell your father when he gets home from work and he frowns at you and gives you the same lecture over again. You do not like it.

Anyway, this was Monday, and during yesterday's math, which was supposed to be an easy review of some stuff she learned last week, I saw that Will was having an awful lot of trouble with the "find the missing factor" part of division. She'd be presented with an easy division problem, say 84/9, and would just start wildly guessing what factor multiplied by nine would come the closest to 84 without going over. Three? Seven? 

So today, instead of our regularly scheduled Math Mammoth, we're going to have multiplication boot camp, reviewing the multiplication facts and reviewing them again when presented as missing factor problems. 

If only you could literally beat the multiplication tables into someone's head, sigh. I know you can't, so I won't try, and also that would be wrong, but if only...

Work Plans for the Week of September 15, 2014: Extracurriculars and Extra Badges

MONDAY: I just realized that this day is stacked with our quickest, easiest subjects; if I'd noticed as I was planning yesterday, I would have switched one of these subjects with Wednesday's history assignment, but oh, well--more time for chores today, then!

First Language Lessons continues. The kids are memorizing William Makepeace Thackeray's "A Tragic Story" as part of their current lessons; it's not my favorite poem, but they like it.

The kids are also still working on states and capitals memorization, and reading L is for Lincoln just for fun. I'm eager to have this memorization accomplished, because I've finally figured out what I'd really like the kids to do for geography next, and I'm excited to present it to them! I think that next week I'll revisit daily "memory work"; it got out of hand when we last had it regularly scheduled, so this time I'll likely also institute a time limit.

Matt sat both the kids down last week and actually made them study their spelling words instead of just goofing around on Spelling City (another reason for a daily memory work time), so they both aced their tests and have all new lists this week! I give Will 20 words at a time, and Syd 15; as they memorize words, I'll take them off of their lists, and when they're down to five or fewer words, I restock their list. I've still got the kids using Spelling City, however, goofing around or not; perhaps when we're doing daily memory work, I'll delete spelling as a discrete subject and simply have spelling words as part of the memory work.

Will is still working on division in Math Mammoth, and still fighting all the computation involved in long division, so later I'm going to take her out to the driveway, write long division problems in huge script on our driveway, and then literally walk her through them. Syd is starting multiplication in her Math Mammoth, a unit that should go well since I had her memorize facts along with Will last year; today we'll review them while playing Roll-n-Multiply--she LOVES this game!

I've started recording the kids' hours that we spend volunteering at the food pantry on Mondays; apparently, the mayor's office offers a service award to children, evaluated solely on volunteer hours, that the children will certainly be eligible for at the end of my twelve-month recording period.

TUESDAY: Lately, Math Mammoth has been moving both kids along a little too quickly, which means that not only do they not get to feel a sense of mastery over any particular math concept, but they also feel frustrated at daily having to slog through a new concept, and not remembering how to deal with previously-taught concepts. This day's math, then, is a review of the previous week, using worksheets found online and in our Kumon drill books. Syd has Roman numerals, the order of operations, and graphs, and Will has word problems, multi-digit multiplication, and division. If they need review again next week, I'll switch this to Monday and put the hands-on enrichment for the coming week on Tuesday.

Every week I tell myself that next week I should push cursive more. Every week I have more interesting things that I want to schedule instead.

Although I usually give the kids free reign over their Girl Scout badges, I'm going to encourage Syd to tackle the reading list for her Bugs badge (because those books are going to be due back at the library soon) and Will to make 3D glasses with me (because I want to write the project up as a tute for CAGW). We'll see how this goes over!

Horseback riding lessons start again this week, and the kids are SO excited to get back to their horses! The fall show is coming up next month, so I imagine they'll be doing a lot of work on the drill team performance that they'd like to perform at the show.

Will also has a robotics workshop that she attends on alternate Tuesdays; the kids are learning to program and problem-solve using LEGO Mindstorms. I'm planning an at-home robotics unit to accompany these sessions, but don't have it prepared yet.

Because Syd's not old enough for the robotics workshop, she has reading as her final school slot on this day. I'm asking her to read me the first chapter of Island Horse, then to finish reading it on her own this week.

WEDNESDAY: This is usually our weekly free day, but I'm experimenting with moving the free day around to take advantage of days when we don't have scheduled extracurriculars; this week, that's Friday! I'm playing around with how I want to go about scheduling weekly writing, so since last week I had the kids write essays, and book reports the week before, on this day I'm asking them to write a short story.

The kids are looking forward to starting the Great Wall of China diorama that I've assigned them on this day. I've got enough styrofoam blocks for one diorama, so I'll have them work together; hopefully, there won't be too much conflict between Syd's perfectionism and Will's disdain for creating visual art. We're exploring Ancient China through the lens of its artifacts, so there will be a lot of these projects involved in our study.

I've discovered that there are also Junior Ranger badges that are focused on subject, rather than the parks, and this Junior Paleontologist badge is one of them. I need to order some more supplies before I can get the kids to work preparing and displaying their own fossils from the dino dig, so hopefully this self-directed unit will buy me the time that I need.

Will is getting frustrated because she thinks she's advancing too slowly at aerial silks (mind you, the classes were on hiatus this summer, and the first day back was necessarily a review, but Will doesn't want to perfect skills that she's already learned--she wants to learn NEW skills!), and asked me to sign her up for two classes this week, so I signed both kids up for two out of convenience.

THURSDAY: I added a book to this day's math, just for fun. I like to have a book or video as part of each day's schoolwork, because the kids enjoy them and because they seem to absorb information well from those outlets.

Grammar and spelling are repeats from Monday. I would have liked to have a second slot for cursive this week, and a slot for art, but the kids have an unusual amount of extracurriculars this week. I count extracurriculars as slots in our school day to make sure that I'm leaving enough free time in the children's schedules. I know that most kids who go to school have extracurriculars on top of school and then homework on top of that, but my kids' free time is precious to them--and to me!--and it's really important to me that it be preserved.

That being said, the kids have two scheduled activities on this day, which I also try not to do. At least one of the activities, our homeschool group's Park Day, is just free play.

FRIDAY: Free day! The kids have a buddy coming over to play in the afternoon, and there's a craft project that I'd like to interest them in, but otherwise, their time is their own.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: This weekend is unusually scheduled, as well. Not only does Syd have her regular ballet class on Saturday morning, but in the afternoon she has an audition for the university's yearly production of The Nutcracker. On Sunday, Matt's taking the kids to the Hoosier Outdoor Experience while I stay at home and work my butt off.

Surely by the end of the weekend, my study will be unpacked? That would certainly be a sanity-booster!

My Latest: Making Repairs and Playing with Food

a round-up of easy repair tutes

another round-up of projects that get kids playing with food

and a tutorial for mending a torn knit dress using a T-shirt

Look how cute it turned out!

I'll pretend that I'm showing you the following pictures just to illustrate to you how well the dress drapes, but really you know that I just want to show off my adorable kid:

In some ways, this project might seem a little odd: the dress itself is from Old Navy, which is known for its cheap, easily-replaced garments, and this particular dress, actually, was free, a hand-me-down from a friend who warned me, when she gave it to me, that it had a hole in the tushy. 

Why bother repairing, you might ask, when I could probably walk into Old Navy today and buy an identical one for four bucks?

Well, because even though it's from Old Navy (I've had bad luck with some of their clothes), it's a good-quality garment, it's roomy enough to fit Syd well through next summer, it's comfortable and she likes it so it will get a lot of wear, and it's so easy to repair that I couldn't have gone to Old Navy and back in the time that it took me to mend this dress. 

Even so, yeah, it did take me about an hour to mend a $4 dress, which wouldn't be worth it to a lot of people. But it's worth it to me, because I prefer to use what we have rather than buy new, even if it's cheap, and I like to see my kids wearing clothes that I've sewed for them, and I to see my kids in interesting, unexpected clothes, when I have the time to make them for them. 

So I had a little extra free time this Wednesday to repair a comfy dress using an interesting detail, and it made me happy, and it made Syd happy, so yay.

And then, of course, we woke up the next morning to see that the weather turned, and it's now freezing here. And now I'm extra glad that I lengthened the dress so that Syd can wear it next summer, too!

Will Demonstrates Centrifugal Force

Here's another activity from the Girl Scout Entertainment Technology Junior badge that Will has technically earned probably thrice over by now, but that has such enjoyable activities that she just keeps coming back to it:

(Note of oddness: Lately, my videos haven't been playing with Youtube's Safety Mode on, although I assure you that they are all quite appropriate for all audiences! If you're logged into Youtube, you may have to scroll down to the bottom of any page, where you'll find the Language and Safety Mode menus, then turn Safety Mode off.)

I think I've mentioned before that I create a list of additional activities (I have a whole Girl Scout pinboard!) and a reading list to go with each badge that the children want to earn, and I leave at least one schoolwork slot each week solely for work on these badges, on top of the work that the kids do on them by choice in their free time. I've often wanted to push the kids to finish the last couple of lingering activities that make up a badge, just because I like to be organized and structured that way, but so far I've resisted the impulse by trying to remember that, even if they pick and choose among sixty random activities for twenty disparate badges, working on something totally different every time, the self-directed activity that they're engaged in is still useful, academic (mostly. Some of the Brownie badge activities are a little soft), and enriching.

And I hadn't otherwise planned on having Will study physics this week, so there's that!

Oregon Trail Books for Elementary Kids

Here's the rough draft of Syd's book report on A My America: A Perfect Place: Joshua's Oregon Trail Diary, Book Two:

After Syd had finished, she read it to me sentence by sentence and watched me rewrite it by hand, standardizing the spelling, grammar, and punctuation and putting it into paragraphs as I wrote. We didn't work through any more edits than that, as I was so pleased with the detail in her plot summary. She and I can talk through writing an introduction and contextualizing her information another time.

This week spells the end of our pioneer unit study. With some unit studies, I've had trouble finding enough resources to suit (History of Video Games and History of Drama unit studies, I'm looking at you!), but there were loads and loads and LOADS of resources to use in studying frontier and pioneer history. Here are some of our favorites:


I should note that while Syd read the first two fictional trail diaries and the picture books, and listened to the Jim Weiss recording and the Little House books, Will read ALL of these independently. Assigned reading is an especially effective way for Will to learn, since she's such an avid reader, and having her read these "extra" books is one of my favorite ways of leveling the same subject for two different grades.

One flaw, however, that I have just noticed as I'm recording what we read, is that our list is very, very historical fiction-heavy. The problem is that there are just so many wonderful titles in historical fiction concerning frontier history and the Oregon trail that whenever I was faced with the choice of giving a child a non-fiction book or one of these living histories, I always chose the living history.

Ah, well. There will be plenty time for fact-based research the next time our interests cycle around to the pioneers.

On a related note, I have pre-ordered this book--


--and I could not be more excited to read it in November! I hear it's going to be quite dishy...

Work Plans for the Week of September 8, 2014: Pioneer Indiana and Ancient China

 

MONDAY: Right now, the kids are coloring pictures of Asian dragons (the younger kid's is Chinese; the older kid's is Japanese) while we listen to our The Story of the World chapter on Emperor Qin Shi Huang and his Great Wall and terra cotta army. I'm very excited because on Thursday, we're going to see some real artifacts from this army!

The older kid's math also went excellently well; she was able to use arrays to help her work multi-digit multiplication problems and long division problems. Her Math Mammoth this week is a review of simple division and long division. I think the younger kid will enjoy her math, as well; she'll be graphing her toy animals in preparation for her Math Mammoth units on graphing this week.

First Language Lessons is still tooling along, with sentence diagramming and memorization of the current poem.

My decision to stop making states and capitals memorization fun is working fine so far. The kids each have a US map, and they color in each state as they learn it. This makes it easy to know what they're supposed to have already learned; review is simple, and assigning additional states is also simple. Not fun, necessarily, but simple!

TUESDAY: After much hemming and hawing on my part, Matt convinced me to do the day trip to Conner Prairie on this day. The kids are studying pioneer history, after all, it's not a super long drive, and the admission price certainly can't be beat! As a bonus, there are apparently several enrichment activities that kids can do in the pioneer town, using activity guides similar to the Junior Ranger books that they love so much. This enrichment, which will involve interacting with the characters in various scenarios and doing plenty of critical thinking about pioneer life, will absolutely make the whole day worthwhile, and that's only one section of the place!

WEDNESDAY: I expect Tuesday's trip to be tiring, but I do still want a full school day on this day, so I tried to combine quicker and easier subjects, such as spelling and (hopefully) this day's Math Mammoth, with the fun subject of Girl Scouts. Based on what we did at Conner Prairie, I'll write a list of essay prompts, then ask each kid to choose one to write, edit with my help, and revise.

Aerial silks classes begin again this week; the kids will be happy to get back on the silks!

THURSDAY: We'll be spending this entire day at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis. The kids can play in the museum all morning (perhaps visiting the fossil prep lab...), and we plan to visit a couple of the employees from our dig trip, and in the afternoon we have an all-ages homeschool class on the terra cotta army, and then we'll visit the actual terra cotta warriors exhibit. I'm SUPER excited!

FRIDAY: I've written lesson plans for this day, but my guess is that after two full-day field trips and the completion of our four-day school week, I may declare this day a holiday. Even if I decide to muscle through, I did pack this day's schedule with only the quick and easy subjects. The exception is art; Matt plans to give the kids a lesson on logo and commercial design, then have them complete a second draft of their "I Voted" sticker design for a local competition.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: The younger kid has ballet but this is our only organized activity this weekend --yay! We try to do something fun as a family each day, but I'd like to host a housewarming party soon, and so Matt and I are buckling down to get our home in order.

Because even though I adore this house so much and feel as if I've lived here forever, I do admit that it would be even nicer without all my art supplies and the kids' toys on the floor.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

My Latest: Toys and Black-Market Drugs

a tutorial for making bendy yarn (they work just like Wikki Stix!)

an essay on post-Apocalyptic drug hoarding and the concept of community

a tutorial for making toothbrush bots

and an essay on iFixit and the Right to Repair

Coming up next week, I'm thinking about homemade buttons, food art, and household repairs!

Biome Pin Flag Map

I chose to add a global geography element to Will's Girl Scout Animal Habitats badge; the badge teaches children quite a lot about environments specific to specific animals, and it's well-suited to such an expansion.

To complete my requirements, Will had to memorize the biomes and a brief definition of each; locate them on a world map; and conduct in-depth research into each biome (the books that I asked her to read for that were all pretty long, so I had her discuss each informally with me rather than write about them).

I set up the mapwork as a pin flag map project, using these biome pin flags from The Homeschool Den:

I also added pin flags for the states that the kids had covered back when we were studying each US state in depth. Will's job was to research the locations of each biome and then correctly place each pin flag. I had also wanted her to color each biome the correct color, based on the map's legend, but she didn't want to and I didn't push her. I wish I had done now, though, because I didn't provide enough pin flags of each biome to completely cover all its locations on the earth, so I think she came away from the project with an incomplete knowledge of these locations. Make YOUR kids color the map!

Here's how I store our pin flags, in case you're curious.

Here are some of the resources that Will used as part of the Animal Habitats badge:


Looking again at this project (which Will actually completed at the beginning of the summer--how time flies!), I think that after the kids finish memorizing the states and capitals, I'll do this unit again, but with both kids; Will can review, and Syd can learn it for the first-ish time. The kids love mapping enough that perhaps our geography curriculum this year will primarily consist of identifying and labeling--it's a good spine for further study, if nothing else.

Cardstock Covered Wagons on the Oregon Trail

Personal experiences from the Oregon Trail are great to explore, and we've immersed ourselves in loads of them, from documentaries to fictionalized diaries to real diaries, but the engineering problems of emigrating cross-country in a covered wagon are also quite fascinating, so over the course of a couple of weeks, I set up an engineering challenge for the kids:

Can you build a covered wagon out of cardstock, load it with gear, and take it down the Oregon Trail?

I gave the kids these cardstock covered wagons to color and assemble; they were both able to do so without any assistance other than me holding the odd glued piece so that it could dry (and Will colored and cut and glued contentedly--GASP!!!):

The kids were quite... generous with the glue, so rather than completing the rest of this activity later that afternoon, I put it off for an entire week until the next Friday. 

The next Friday, while the kids did their chores, I set up a general store at our jumping off point, the play room:

First, the kids would have to roll the dice to determine the number of family members who would travel with their wagon.

You can have as many housewares and pets as you want, but all they are is dead weight.

Work animals can walk, at least. One food package per person must be "eaten" at every stop on the trail.

I was pleased that each kid ended up rolling a ridiculously large number of family members:

Will crammed her wagon with all the housewares and bedding, but had to drop most of them before she could even leave this jumping off point:

Both kids quickly learned that the wheels are by far the weakest part of the wagon, and had to very carefully choose what to bring and how to pack it:

All those wheels have to stand up straight, Young Pioneer!

Syd eventually determined that it works MUCH better when you make all your family members walk!

 The kids' Oregon Trail journey consisted of taking their wagons and all family members and possessions to each room of the house, where they'd have to stop, eat their "food," make sure their wagon could still stand, etc. If they ran out of food, I was going to make them kill off family members, but back at the jumping off point, when I told them how often their family would use the food, Will sent Syd to run around the house and count all the rooms, so they both had enough.

If I'd wanted to make the activity really elaborate, I could have assigned a real stop on the Oregon Trail to each room--Chimney Rock, Fort Laramie, river fords, etc.--and then had the kids do something special or choose a slip of paper with an accident or adventure written on it. That would have been a fun way to spend the afternoon, or to do as a culmination activity with a co-op full of kids studying pioneer history.

In the coming weeks, we'll be doing the occasional activity to highlight post-emigration pioneer life, but that's well-trod ground for us by now, and I'll be shifting most of our history study to Ancient China.

We're going to see some real Terra Cotta Warriors!

Work Plans for the Week of September 1, 2014: Louisville and Ancient China

TUESDAY: The kids have another poem to memorize in First Language Lessons--it's not what I would have chosen for them, but they like it. Today I set them the job of preparing a play of the poem, which they also enjoyed, and which served the purpose of having them repeat the poem to each other many, many, many times. Mwa-ha-ha!

Will mostly breezed through her task of finding the area of irregular polygons using graph paper and multiplication--I thought it would stump her, at least for a bit, and that she'd need to use the Base 10 blocks to help her, but she looked at the first problem and knew immediately what to do. She's sitting next to me now, getting a little frustrated with the multiplication computation (of course...), but otherwise zipping right along.

Syd, however, is in the other room probably getting more frustrated with her assignment, which is to use yarn, washi tape, and Sharpies to make a very long mileage ruler that we can use with our large US wall map. I'm curious if her engineering brain will allow her to ultimately solve the problem without fuss, or if her perfectionism will ultimately cause her to kick up a GIANT fuss. Stay tuned!

I'm hoping that we'll be able to do some work in the fossil prep lab in the Children's Museum next week (I should probably actually, you know, contact the paleontologists, but I'm sitting on my butt right now and can't be bothered to go find the right business card), so our lesson today was designed to get the kids thinking more about what paleontologists do for a living; the interview questions that they came up with are really cute, and perhaps they can actually conduct their interview when we're finally in the lab.

I'm still not sure how much time I want to devote to spelling as a discrete subject. We're regularly using Spelling City until our subscription expires, and then I'll rethink. Reading is going well, though--more Oregon Trail fictional diaries this week, but I must make a mental note to find some new ground for next week, at least for Will, who's grown weary of all these trekking children and their woes.

WEDNESDAY: This is normally our free day, but with Monday's holiday and Thursday's field trip, I needed this extra school day!

We're beginning a unit on Ancient China, to accompany our visit next week to the Children's Museum to see their exhibit of some of the real Terra Cotta Warriors, and to attend a homeschool class on the Terra Cotta Warriors. Chapter 10 of Story of the World covers early Ancient Chinese history, and next week, before our trip, we'll cover Chapter 11, on Emporer Qin and the Terra Cotta Warriors.

Will's Math Mammoth this week is a review of division; Syd's is a random unit on reading mileage (hence the previous day's mileage activity) and then the order of operations.

Depending on my energy level and the kids' level of rottenness, I may introduce a game to help them memorize their states and capitals, or I may just give them a list and make them sit there and look at it while I sit next to them and glare.

The kids aren't making a ton of independent progress on earning Girl Scout badges (some other moms and I have a Girl Scout co-op in the works), but it certainly does keep them busy and happy doing such interesting things!

THURSDAY: My bestest friend in the world will be in Louisville, Kentucky, for a few hours on this day, so the kids and I are trekking down to eat at a hipster Appalachian tea cafe with him! I think we'll use our ASTC Passport to spend the rest of the day at the Kentucky Science Center.

FRIDAY: Over the past few weeks, the kids and I have been listening to Masterpiece in the car, so I wanted them to have a good idea of what Albrecht Durer's works look like. I'm not 100% sure where this "gallery" that I so blithely speak of will be, but we do have wall space that hasn't been crapped up yet--SHAMEFUL!!!

Ever more never-ending cursive torture for all. Sigh.

Now that the kids are accustomed to having a weekly reading assignment, I'm going to see if I can also get them accustomed to writing a weekly book report! At this point, I'll just be requiring a rough draft, some Momma-led editing, and a final draft, and we'll see where we go from there.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Ballet begins! Matt and the kids will be attending a kayaking class at the Girl Scout camp. A dude will be coming to repair my treadmill. I'd like to get out and do some geocaching. I'd like this rain and humidity to cease so that I can varnish some more shelves.

And what will this weekend's drive-in movie be?!? Last weekend was Maleficent, which I was reluctant to see, but I ended up LOVING it. Maybe that's how the kids will feel about book reports!

Multi-Digit Multiplication Using Area Models

Lest I accidentally promote the false conclusion that I have an eager, happy math learner here, I should tell you right now that Will does not currently enjoy math. So many things come so easily to my bright kid that she is very much disliking the many-stepped process of learning multi-digit multiplication. As she can do with so much else, she wants simply to look at the problem and immediately know its answer. She does not want to compute with pencil and paper, and she certainly does not want to compute for a problem that has more than one digit! She does not want to go through the bother of writing down numbers that carry, and she does not want to also go through the additional bother of crossing out those numbers once she's used them. This, of course, leads to many clerical errors, and she very, very, very much does not want to have to erase and re-compute when she's worked a problem incorrectly because of a clerical error.

Our school days can be greatly extended these days, as what could have been thirty minutes of math is drawn out with many philosophical discussions that consist mainly of "But WHY do I have to do [insert current step here]?!?" And then when I bring out the Base 10 blocks to once again demonstrate why a certain step works the way that it does (it occurs to me that I should have showed you how to use Base 10 blocks to do multi-digit multiplication prior to this. If the kid ever lets me get them out with her again, I will photograph the process and show you), I hear, "NOOO!!! NOT the Base 10 blocks!" because, of course, the Base 10 blocks make working the problem take even longer--not as long as a problem takes when you spend all your time whinging about it instead of working it, mind you, but unlike the whinging, you get to blame the blocks on ME. And anyway, the question isn't directed at confusion by how the calculations work, but at despair that this multi-stepped method is the only one that whatever idiot who must be in charge of Math could come up with.

Nevertheless, I do like to spend some time with Will each week exploring different concrete manifestations of how multi-digit multiplication works, knowing that although some of her fuss about the computations is just laziness, some of it must also be a lack of confidence, and a fear that she's not "getting" it, quick as she usually is.

Area models are a great concrete manifestation of how the math works, and an understandable extension for the kid, since by now she should have played plenty both with arrays and with area models for single-digit multiplication, back when she was learning her facts.

To do this, you need the same manipulatives that I am forever going on about--a huge set of Base 10 blocks, and plenty of centimeter-sized graph paper. If you're printing your graph paper, as I do, make sure that the "fit to page" box is unchecked; just the other day, I ruined a giant, 1,000-centimeter ruler that I was making Will to use as a multi-digit multiplication and division manipulative by not doing this, and then only discovering after I was done that the damned Cuisenaire rods didn't line up correctly with it--GRRR!!!

The only other tricks to this are 1) make sure that your multiplication problem doesn't exceed the size of your graph paper, and 2) if your graph paper isn't square, make sure that your kid knows to draw the problem going the correct way (our graph paper is something like 20x30, so if I wrote a problem that was 17x27, for instance, I had to make sure that Will drew it just like that. It'll make more sense in a minute).

1. Write your problem for the kid. I wrote mine at the top of each piece of graph paper (you'd save paper if you had a dry erase board set up with a centimeter graph--this is on my "to buy" list!), and gave Will five total problems to solve for this lesson.

2. Have the kid draw a box that represents the problem. She should be able to figure out that 17x27, for instance, means 17 rows with 27 units in each row:

3. Here's where the Base 10 blocks come in, and it's really cool. First, have the kid fill up the box as much as she can with the hundred flats:

4. Then, have her fill up as much as she can with the ten bars:

5. Finally, have her fill in all the rest of the space with units.

6. All she has to do is count the Base 10 blocks to find her answer! This is a great time to encourage her to skip count by hundreds, then continue to skip count by tens, then add on by units. Stretch that smart little brain!

The next time we play around with this concept, in the next week or so, I plan to focus more on the area aspect of it, by drawing an irregular polygon directly on the graph paper, having Will use the Base 10 blocks to find its area, then having her invent a way to compute that area with only pencil and paper (by writing multi-digit multiplication problems that require the correct order of operations to solve, thus making her complicit in the usage of both the mathematical procedures that currently offend her, mwa-ha-ha!).

Edmontosaurus Teeth vs. Tyrannosaurus Rex Teeth

Our paleontology unit's focus this time (we have had many paleontology units prior to this, and expect many more paleontology units in the future) is on gathering evidence, making observations, and creating hypotheses based on these observations. Both kids already have a huge amount of factual information memorized from our previous studies and from their own interest in paleontology, and this particular hands-on study is best suited to contextualize and bring out the most meaning in our summer dinosaur dig.

The children had a non-fiction reading assignment and worksheet about making diet inferences from teeth. This year Syd has really been able to embrace the "reading to learn" concept, now that she's no longer learning to read, and we've been practicing thoughtful reading, highlighting, note taking, etc. To accompany the worksheet, I printed a gorgeous, life-sized photo of a T-rex tooth (just Google it; there are tons of great ones!), and had the kids sort through their personal collection bags from our dino dig to find some good examples of edmontosaurus teeth:

We found these tooth fragments during surface collection on the first day of the dig.

Will was even able to show us a fragment of edmontosaurus jawbone that she'd been permitted to keep:

Gorgeous, yes?

Using these pieces of evidence, the kids were able to confirm for themselves the overriding scientific theories that the T-rex was a carnivore and the edmontosaurus was an herbivore: 

We studied pterosaurs this week, but my next goals are to get us prepping, identifying, and displaying our personal fossil collections. For this, I think we'll need to study vertebrate paleontology and edmontosaurus anatomy at a more technical level--good thing I have a couple of Children's Museum paleontologists in my Contacts list!

Work Plans for the Week of August 25, 2014: US History, US Geography

MONDAY: We had a lovely volunteer shift yesterday--I fetched and carried lots of things, and the kids repackaged lamb's quarter and Panera bread to offer to the shoppers. Syd also ate an entire half of a watermelon with a spoon; that kid lives on watermelon these days.

Math didn't go as well, since Syd's perfectionism made our three-person game of Multiplication Touch a little... tense. I didn't want to give Syd any hints, because she should have her multiplication facts memorized by now, but I do admit that Multiplication Touch can be tricky--at one point, Syd had FOUR "24" tiles, and freaked out about where they could all go--so I eventually, after tears and a tantrum, I told her that Will would help her, and then the game went well. It's a dice roll, because often Will's help is the last thing that she wants, but the odds were in our favor this time, sigh. It did give Will a good review of multiplication, at least, which was the point of the assignment.

Syd also threw a fit during her spelling test, although really she did quite well, and it was Will who should have thrown a performance-based fit, since she did a terrible job! They both completely immersed themselves in Spelling City afterwards, however, with their edited spelling lists, so I have higher hopes for next week's test.

The kids each had a horse breed to research this week (Palomino and Appaloosa) and to compare to the Knabstrupper, so I didn't ask them to also research the breed's geography, as I usually do (Will did so anyway, because she loves Culture Grams). The kids can always find the information that their riding instructor asks for in this horse encyclopedia, and we usually also look for Youtube videos, as well--I've been surprised about what interesting things we've learned about horse breeds on Youtube!

We're still reading through all the wonderful Oregon Trail living history books that I found at our local public library; both kids have books in journal format for this week's assigned reading. Makes me wonder about assigning them fictional journals as writing assignments, as well... I'll think more about that. Syd also read me A Book for Black-Eyed Susan, just because she thought that I'd like it, and it made me cry so much! Syd thought that was pretty excellent, and Will thought that it was hilarious, the rotter.

TUESDAY: Our local newspaper is hosting a children's art contest to design an "I Voted" sticker (does your community give you a sticker prize when you vote? I ADORE sticker prizes!). It was a great chance to talk about the responsibilities of US citizenship, especially for Will, who's still got a couple of activities left for her Girl Scout Inside Government badge, and then the kids designed their stickers as this week's art. Will sort of blew through hers just this side of acceptably, but Syd's currently deep into her fifth or sixth version. I may never get Will to like doing art, but I WILL make that child practice enough that she's competent at it! If she wants to draw something when she's grown, by gawd, she'll be able to.

Math Mammoth today will be a catch-up lesson; every now and then, if a kid is struggling and taking a really long time at her math, I'll take away any pages that she hasn't finished and set them aside for later. Later has arrived today! The reading journal from Barnes and Noble is also a catch-up; I collected these for the kids at the beginning of the summer, but if they don't fill them out and turn them in this week, they'll miss their prize!

Will has been interested in pterosaurs lately, so that's where today's paleontology lesson will take us. The kids have a reading assignment that I plan to use to teach them how to highlight important facts, and then we'll finally whip out the Pterosaurs Phylo deck! I have been promising Will that I'd teach her how to play Phylo for months, the poor kid.

Another mom at our homeschool group's Park Day reminded me that First Language Lessons have something like 100 lessons per grade, so I've given up my plan to blow through both books 3 and 4 this year. I'll just reassess after we finish book 3 to see what I want to do next.

WEDNESDAY: Horseback riding lesson!

THURSDAY: This is the last week that I'll have the kids working on the summer postcard swap that they're a part of. They ended up disappointed with this swap, since we've only received four postcards through it, although we're still sending out postcards, so maybe we'll get a few more? The kids map each postcard we receive on our big wall map, and so far they've gotten two from Florida, one from Missouri, and one from Canada. Send us postcards, you darn swappers!

For cursive, I'm still asking them to write the cursive alphabet, and having them complete a Startwrite copywork page on the first forgotten or incorrectly formed letter that they come to. I may have to get meaner about this, though, and assign copywork on several letters each time, because this could not be going more slowly!

FRIDAY: We didn't get to the fun activity with the cardstock covered wagons last week, so we'll do it this week, as well as watch a documentary on the Oregon Trail. We've almost accomplished everything that I wanted from this short unit study, and then we're moving on to Ancient China. We're going to see some real terra cotta warriors!

The Girl Scout badges are currently in chaos, with each kid working on random badges randomly, and Will even repeating a bunch of activities last week, because she'd forgotten that she'd already done them--whatever, still educational. I do need to enforce better organization, however, especially now that all the Girl Scout programming is starting up again in this fresh school year, and I know the kids want to have plenty of patches on their uniforms.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY/MONDAY: This is our last totally free weekend before Syd's ballet class starts for the semester, and it's a long holiday weekend, to boot, but considering that we'd like to have a housewarming party at some point, and we need to be unpacked for that to happen, I imagine that we'll spend our relaxing-ish weekend here at home, putting up shelves, varnishing bookcases, painting deck furniture, and creating the all-important s'mores-making fire pit.