Math Fun!

Let me tell you a secret...I HATE MATH...Okay, that's putting it mildly. I think it comes true to what it all boils down to though. We often hate that which we don't understand. I was hospitalized in my 4th grade year for a very long time and a very crucial part of that year. I missed much of the basics that led me to being a poor match student. I struggled every which way til Sunday with Math and because I had ZERO confidence in my skills, I always scraped by in each class. SCRAPED. College years were HELL because I felt too stupid to ask for help and and just sat and struggled. To do it all over again, I would have asked for help back in the 4th grade. I NEVER EVER want my kids to go through that. I am going into Math with a FUN outlook and at the same time......taking on a new adventure. I plan on starting from the bottom up. I am going to learn with them regain the confidence that I plan on putting into them. Together we will all grow strong in math and learn to love it. My children don't know I hate Math, in fact, they think it's my favorite subject and you know what? It slowly is getting there. S...l...o...w...l...y...Take a tour of our classroom, and focus on our Math centers!

Colorful charts decorate our room, the bolder and more colorful the better. I hang them on cup hooks, so that they can easily be interchanged. There are a few posters on this hook and right along with them, I have coordinating flashcards. This becomes a center where children can sit with flashcards and compare or test themselves with a dry erase marker. Anything they can think of, they can use it for. Having them be interchangeable allows me to cover up any particular one if there is a test that day.

Math games, counters and pattern blocks aplenty in this room! We love to play them all and even when it's not class time! Confession: I buy everything at Thrift Shops or Garage Sales! That is how I can afford to keep purchasing them when I find one.

Our Hundreds chart gets used and used often. This is the 2nd one our family has had to buy. My youngest loves to count using a dry erase marker and keep track of how high he can go each day. He marks where he struggles and starts from the beginning again.

Our Math manipulative cabinet is chock full of great things. Money, flashcards, card games along with window games and a multiplication electronic game. This corner of the classroom is a favorite.

I even like to make up Math games to keep the variety flowing. We like to incorporate real life Math into our activities that I call Math We Can Use! Here is where we use real newspaper ads and our fake money. I give the children a grocery list and they have to find those items and tally up the total. Then I give them a set amount of money and they have to subtract the total from their money. We change this one up in different ways to keep it fresh. 

Instead of a Math notebook, we keep math folders. Their folders have different reference points in them to assist each child in whatever they may be working on. I will go into more detail on these in tomorrows post but this one holds:
Gallon Measurements
Place Value and Decimals
Regrouping
Length/Capacity/Weight Measurements
Multiplication Chart
Division Chart

What do you do to make math fun?

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Homemade Literacy Centers!

My youngest Little is learning to read right now and I like to change up his literacy centers, so he doesn't always get bored with it. I try to create as much as I can at home, to keep costs down and we also borrow videos from the library! The photo above is a letter flip book to work on word families. You can do this with any of them, but this one is for the -OY family.

I made this wheel with a simple brad and 2 pieces of paper for the -AT family.

This game is made from a Target Brand Crystal Lite Container & some letter tiles. I cut a hole in the lid and he has to hunt for the vowels and put them in the box. Hunting and saying each letter to see if it is a vowel helps so much with letter recognition. 

Letter tiles again with flashcards and his phonograms cards make a game that has a few more steps. As he studies a sound (SH shown here), he finds the matching flashcard and then spells it out with the letter tiles, sounding out the letters as he goes. 

Sight Words Parking Lot is his favorite. I saw a sight word and then sound it out slowly. He then drives his car to the proper parking spot. If he needs to play this alone, the little pocket on the right holds photos of the words and he just puts the photos in the proper slot. I made this game using worksheet pages from his schoolbooks. I find it such a waste to just throw away those colorful pages after he has written on them. 

Are you reading 20 minutes a day with your littles? It is so important but also so fun! I incorporated the use of a pointer when reading with the youngest. As I say each word, the pointer follows along, so he can visually identify where we are and the sound of that word. 

Keep a reading log, so that your children can see just how much they are reading and you can keep track of how long!

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(Almost) Wordless Wednesday

Friday, we had school at the library! The booth behind us had homeschoolers, as well as the booth on the other side of us, it was pretty cool to see. 

I love shopping at learning stores!

Use a bucket to make snow blocks!

Hang a real mailbox in your playroom for even more pretend play fun!

Oh yes!

Color and Cut or Trace and Cut! It's time to get ready for St. Patrick's Day! Plan ahead and you will be ready. Color Milk Green? Make a Leprechaun trap? Lucky Charms Treasure Trail? What are you up to??

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Is it Bad...

Is it Bad.......

That all the schools are closed due to the big storm and my kids are still having class today?

That my husband has the day off, due to the storm & I still woke him up to help around the house?

That we bought and moved into this house in August and I just yesterday, unpacked the very last box?

Is it Bad.....

That I have been busy organizing our class space, that my clean laundry is piled on the floor for the 2nd day?

That I have been so busy organizing our class space, that I lost track of time & had to order pizza for dinner?

That I have been so busy organizing our class space that I didn't sleep at all on Friday night? 

Is it Bad.....

That while cleaning my bedroom I got so distracted by found wedding photos, that I stopped cleaning?

That because I have an aversion to fish, I have never  ever served it to my family?

That even though I make my children try new things, there are some things I will never try?

Is it Bad...

That I love doing Science Experiments more than my children?

That we do so much hands on learning that my cleaning schedule is discombobulated? 

That while cleaning out the playroom, even I started to play with the neat stuff I found? 

Is it Bad...

That even though the house needs a good cleaning, I have playing outside in this storm on priority?

That even though there are dishes in the sink, I served breakfast on paper plates?

That I wouldn't change it all for anything?

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Reading Nook

This weekend has been quite a whirlwind with all the activity going on around our home. We purchased and moved into this home at the end of August and have just YESTERDAY, unpacked the very last box! I was so excited and when I saw what a difference it made, I was a bit upset I didn't do it sooner. We have a finished basement, so all of these boxes were taking up serious square footage in an actual room down there.   As I began this project, I knew what this room was headed to be. As many of you know, we absolutely love to read around here, it's actually something that I would describe as a passion. It was time to carve out a reading nook in this room that will undergo a fun transformation.

A quick trip to IKEA, gave us all that we were going to need along with 'shopping out home'. The center bench part of the nook is actually a coffee table, but I wanted something wider as opposed to longer. I don't like to lie with a good book, I like to curl up & this was absolutely perfect. I had to take this photo from close up, because the room was FULL OF BOXES!!!!  

Next, I began adding books and as that was being done, I was emptying boxes and was actually able to move further back with the camera. I used old board game boards as baking on some of the shelves and just may add more as I come across them. a realization hit me as this project was underway, and I came to notice that if I was physically seeing a change in the room, I was tempted to keep working and keep getting it done. In the beginning when the room was loaded down with boxes, I hardly wanted to be there and kept sneaking upstairs to just get away from the chaos. How much I loved just closing that door. The problem with that whole situation though, is that in closing that door and keeping it all hidden away, we were also closing the door on an attached full bathroom downstairs! How insane is that?!

Did I mention that we began this project on Friday evening and it went into the wee hours. So late/early was I working that I was actually able to entertain a call from a friend who asked to stop by at 3am, as she was in town! LOL!! She came over and that is when I stopped working. As she left right before 7, instead of going to bed, I headed right back down! Progress was being made in the shelves but the boxes needed to be weeded through again. As the clock rolled on towards 9 a.m., I had visitors that already found this room to be the coolest one in the house! AMAZING how a few simple things being done, can bring kids to books like magnets. Nope, I never got any sleep on Friday night and headed over to see my parents on Saturday where we stayed until about 10. I thought for sure I would pass out when we got home, but instead I kept working and finally fell asleep at 2 a.m.

Here it is, finally finished at 2 this morning and I am thrilled with the results. A dry erase board is in the center, underneath the bench is where all the activity and coloring books can be found. They actually are in some kind of order but I am going to want to organize them better in the near future. We want to be able to spread these books out and add in more educational toys in the mix, so we will be doing the exact same thing to the opposite wall. We also have loads more books in each bedroom upstairs and in the 2 bookshelves in the playroom, so we would like to move those down here as well!

Here it is, the opposite wall! YES, you CAN see it!! This room is empty of all books and looks amazing. I am in love and am thinking of sleeping down here for the next week. Right now, it just holds our daily schedule and some jumbo ABC career flashcards I came across one lucky thrifting day! 

AMEN!

I've been making up book marks for our Book Exchange Party!

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Saturday School Round-Up

Happy Saturday friends, for some reason I keep feeling as though it were Sunday already! This week has absolutely sailed by, so much so that I feel as though I have accomplished so much. It was a fabulous week in the homeschooling world and I know it will only continue to improve. My children are finally somewhere that the Lord has led us. They are HAPPY, HEALTHY and SAFE! Let me share a few things that my youngest and I worked on this week. 

Dominoes are so awesome for math in learning. They can be used in so many ways. First, I took a sheet of printed dominoes and handed them to my Little. I told him to match them up on the paper when he found the matches. Once that was done, I had him use the white line as an addition sign and give an answer.
0+0=0
4+6=10
6+6=12

We use a learning clock for more than just the normal activities that it was intended for. I took a set of time flashcards and have him make the time and then tell the time. It's fun for him to use the colorful and fun cards and play with a clock that he made! Making it fun, makes them think that they are playing and not really learning! LOL!

Sight Word Learning! One of our literacy centers has sight word flashcards alongside a wipe board with dry erase markers and an eraser. He has to sound out the word, write it and try and say it alone. He struggles with this one,but he loves the dry erase so he enjoys doing it.

Sight Word Spell! Roman absolutely loves this one! He uses a Boggle Game to spell the words on his sight word cards and then attempt to sound out the word as he adds letter by letter, blending as he goes.

Pipe Cleaner counters make counting by 10's so much fun! Especially when he is the one that made them. He also uses them with his math work.

Homeschooling space is at a premium here and I use every.single.inch.of.space! Here I attached a pocket chart to the side of our mobile classroom cart. I set up a beginning sounds game for him to sit on the floor with and match on the chart. It challenges him just enough to keep him occupied while I help the older children.

100 is such a big number to a little guy and our 100 chart game is a favorite. He learns to count that high and at the same time has fun doing it!!! We take our 1-100 flashcards and if we are playing together, I call out a number and he puts a little 'chip' on that number. If he does it himself, he picks a card and searches for it. Both ways are necessary to learn because he needs to learn to HEAR the number and find it but he must also learn what the number looks like and searching to match it up. He must also learn to work independently .

With Roman moving right into the heart of addition and subtraction, he is loving using counters to get himself familiar with the process. He is learning that he can use anything as a counter! Every morning he enjoys finding what he will use as a counter and then getting to work with it. It gives him something to look forward too but also allows him to have a say in what type of learning he will be doing.

More telling time! This is a simple game and as you can see in the photo, there are actually many more pieces but the key to successful learning, is not to overwhelm the child, where they think the task is impossible before they even begin!

Playing, Spelling, Reading and Writing!!! Puzzle cards are so much fun to my Little. He loves searching for the matches and then putting it together properly! I added more to this simple activity by having him sound out each word and then write it down, saying each letter as he writes it!

Sight Words and Magnets! Same as the writing, but varying it up! He spells the sight words using the magnets and it's so simple but he loves digging through the bin for the right letters. He calls it fishing :)

This is the same game that I mentioned above on the pocket chart but instead it's played with 2 players. You use a sand timer and each person gets the allotted time to get as many matches as possible.

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