Question: How can you make math fun? Answer: Introduce a deck of cards! I first started using card games to teach my students during my career as a high school and middle school math teacher. Though the games we play now are a little different than they once were, we are still practicing number sense and math operations (just […]
More Geologic Geometry
As we waded through the creek this weekend, we collected more rocks that were of various geometric shapes. The boys started singing our Geometry song: “Geometry, geometry, let’s learn some geometry. The area of a rectangle equals length times width. The area of a square equals length of its side squared. S squared! The area of a […]
The Wonderful World of Wasps
“They are so fascinating, Mom.” The words shocked me, really. They were spoken by our 7-year-old son who has been absolutely terrified of these little creatures ever since he stepped on one with his bare foot last year. Even though he didn’t want to touch our little inactive wasp nest collection, he was definitely into this. A little background: We […]
Math Monopoly (and other games to reinforce math)
As our 7-year-old played Garfield Monopoly with his daddy, it occurred to me that they were completing an entire lesson of math review. In fact, my math-teacher brain started kicking into gear as I overheard them discussing rules and strategy. Wow! Exactly how many math concepts were they reviewing? Well, there’s: Number sense Consumer math/budgeting/money Probability Addition Subtraction Multiplication Division Percents […]
Bee Battles (& Free Bug Books!)
About a year ago, we moved to our dream home – a secluded property in a hollow with creeks & rock outcroppings – a beautiful and serene place that we have affectionately named “Half-a-Hundred Acre Wood” (in honor of one of the greatest philosophers of all time). When we moved here, the home had been vacant for a few years. But as […]
Classical Conversations at Home
So, since Classical Conversations only meets once per week, what do we do the rest of the time? What does Classical Conversations look like at home? I offer this as just one way to do CC at home, but it depends on each family’s particular circumstances and dynamic. Even our “Classical Conversations at Home” approach has […]
Handbook of Nature Study: Snails
Though we’ve always been fascinated with nature, we are starting to use it more as a springboard for science studies and investigations. One of our favorite resources for nature study is Anna Botsford Comstock’s The Big Handbook of Nature Study. At 940 pages, it contains hundreds of lessons and discussion questions about nature. This resource is ALWAYS available for download here at archive.org, […]
Norway Knowledge Quest
Because Gary has been in Kristiansand, we’ve been on a quest to learn more about Norway this week. We first located Norway on the globe in Northern Europe as part of the Scandinavian Peninsula, bordered on the east by Sweden (and Finland at the Northeast), with the North Sea to the south. We completed a coloring page on the […]
Shamrock Suncatchers
I finally mustered up the courage to make a big mess with the boys in light of St. Patrick’s Day. After seeing the Valentine Suncatchers from my favorite art blog by that artist woman, I started thinking of how we could make something similar for St. Patrick’s Day, and voila! Supplies paper towel or toilet […]