8th. 4th. 3rd.

Today we started off with a field trip! I contacted one of my friends who lives in the neighborhood and she said we were more than welcome to drop by her farm and visit with the animals!


So early morning, we hopped on our bikes and headed down the street. The kids were so excited. We saw tons of horses, tons of chickens, two baby chicks that just hatched, ponies, a donkey, and a huge (tame) wild hog that sits on command! They even got to collect the eggs from the hen nests and ride a horse!

 

 

We all had a blast. We took our four collected eggs home and had breakfast for lunch today! Yum!


After lunch, EVERYONE napped, me included. Apparently the bike ride and excitement knocked us all out.


After we all woke up and came to, I had Babe do a bit of Math to make sure she was solid in subtraction. I know she is very good at it, but we are finishing up Chapter 4 this week and I just need to know she's good.


I gave her a homemade worksheet of some pretty challenging math, but I've been working with her in understanding that all numbers are connected in some way - how a subtraction sentence can be read as an addition sentence backwards, etc. I think this will get her very natural at Math, even more so than she already is.


One the left side of the sheet, I wrote nine groups of three numbers. On the right side, I had Babe use each group of three numbers to write one addition sentence and one subtraction sentence. She did very, very well at this. I was impressed. And so was she. I told her it was "hard Math" and her smile got really big.

And with that, we ended the day. Tomorrow will be another light day and Friday is another big field trip! Stay tuned!

8th. 3rd. 1st.

Today, Babe blew me away in Math. We have moved on to Chapter 3 already, which covers addition, so my plans were to skip through the first four lessons of the chapter since it covered how to build an addition sentence (something she already knows how to do).

To start, I handed her a first worksheet to see how well she could do. She ended up getting them all correct, so then I read aloud some math stories that she was able to figure out quite easily. Then I read her a new kind of addition story but I got out the number line first.

The math story was having Babe figure out one of the two addends that made the sum.

She looked at the number line, and within two seconds, told me the answer.

I was shocked, so I told her another story, and again, within seconds, knew the answer.

“Can I try it without looking?”

“Sure!”

So I took the number line away and told her a similar story.

She answered within seconds! Amazing!

“Babe! This is very hard math and you are making it look easy!”

“That’s because I’m easy!”

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahhahaha

Sorry. Had to.

So with that, I told her Math was finished. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to her. Figuring out the missing addend was actually something I was stressing about on how to teach her, but she showed me today how ready she is to advance to it. Brilliant.

We jumped into Reading Comprehension, where we were supposed to read “The Enormous Turnip” again from months and months ago. I was going to recycle the activity we did with it, but I wanted to see if Babe remembered the story.

“Do you remember the story called ‘The Enormous Turnip’?”

“Hmm...”

She did think for a few minutes.

“Is that the one where first the farmer tried, then his wife, then the girl, then the dog, then the cat, and then the teeny tiny little mouse?”

I was flabbergasted! Seriously, we read this story back in the first month!

I told her she was exactly right, and because she knew the story so well, I was going to read through it quickly so she could do her worksheet.

And we did. She did her worksheet, and drew this little guy for one of her answers. So cute!

I explained to her that next, she was going to type a story on the computer. I set her up with the laptop and handed her the story she wrote on Friday about what would happen is a cow came to her house. While she did this, I went to the back room with Z and Bubs.

Z was excited to see new bins and went right for the new rice bin where colored beads were hidden for him to find and match with color cards.

Bubs saw the new egg activity and was a little bummed that they weren’t sound eggs, but I made this activity specifically for her.

On each of the six eggs, I wrote a lowercase letter that corresponded with the farm terms she knows so well (cow/cat, farmer, dog, pig, horse, and rooster). Inside each correct egg, I placed the picture of the animal that starts with that letter. I then handed her a pile of capital letters from a foam puzzle and one at a time, had her match the capital letter with which egg it goes into. She liked this a lot, especially since she didn’t know there were animal pictures inside until she opened the first one!

Z saw her opening the eggs and wanted to join in, and once he put his own bin away, Bubs was done and I modified the bin for him.

While Bubs did the new rice bin, I worked with Z and his colors, having him pick the color egg I called out and finding which animal was inside. He loved it! And did it all right!

Magical.

To end their lesson time, I had Bubs match the farm cards she does so well with, then I tried taking the picture cards away to have her read just the word cards. She was able to get horse and farmer, but then grew really frustrated really fast, so I just ended it there. It was a pretty good start though!

I then gathered them together and read them “Big Red Barn” by Margaret Wise Brown, which is so so cute and perfect because they were each able to find the farm animals on each page. Z especially loved it because I checked out the big version of it, the kind of book that’s nearly as big as him!

When the book was finished...free play!

I then walked back to Babe to check on her progress.

She was done.

Done done.

Like, she typed the whole story in 40 minutes (I know it was only five sentences long but holy cow...I wasn’t expecting that).

She had only a few errors - not capitalizing the pronoun 'I' every once in a while, forgetting to capitalize the first letter of the sentence in one or two sentences, but for the most part, she amazed me. Again.

I had her correct her errors and then I printed it. She didn’t like “all the white space on the bottom” but I didn’t want her to cut this precious sheet of paper so I had her illustrate her story again.

She did.

Outside play. Lunch.

After lunch, we measured our Spring Science Experiment, where we found that all three plants are now at equal height - five inches! So the sand had a major boost in growth.

“I can’t wait to see who wins.”

haaa. Cute. Apparently the plants are racing in Babe’s mind.

I then met her on the couch with two farm themed books by Nancy Dickmann. We discussed how all the animals on the farm have jobs to do - whether it be giving food or helping on the farm, and when she was clear that “when cows, pigs, and chickens die, we get to eat their meat”, she was very content with her new knowledge. Thank God, because I had no other way to explain to her how we get pork, beef, and chicken meat. My explanation was plenty for her!

She then added the two books to her reading log.

I would’ve ended the day there, but with how well she did in Math, I wanted to expand a little bit and see what she could do. I grabbed the connecting blocks and a paper cup and showed her the game we were going to play.

“OK, there are five cubes altogether. How many are in the cup?”

“Well, there are two here, so there’s three in the cup, right?”

Right...

So yeah, she picked it up very very quickly, so I made it more and more challenging, only keeping the sum under 10. She is very good at figuring out the missing addend. It’s seriously insane.

“Can I try it with you?”

“Sure!”

I let her have the reigns. I closed my eyes and heard her counting those cubes away.

“OK! I’m done. The answer is 30.”

“OK, well there’s 11 here, so there must be 19 in the cup.”
“How did you know that so fast!?”

ha! Her jaw literally dropped at my swiftness.

“Don’t worry, in a few years you’ll be doing this faster than I can!”

I was very proud of her for all the work she did today and made sure she knew it. I could definitely tell she was just as proud of herself. So cute.

And with that, I let her watch some PBS Kids before getting ready for and heading to dance!

Monday complete!

4.2.3.

As promised, today we concentrated on Math and Christmas. We started with Math, where I introduced a new activity to get Babe's mind thinking deeper into addition. I put out three piles of dog manipulatives and gave her the number and sign cards. Then had her put the cards in the correct place to make a number sentence. She did this so easily.

Math was a breeze today. We kept up with this activity until she mastered it and hardly had to look at the manipulatives for long, so tomorrow we finish up addition!

After Math, I gathered the kids on the couch and pulled out my Bible. Babe knew right away what it was, without me opening it! I told them I was going to read about the very first Christmas.

"When Jesus was born!"

Babe knew it right away. It was so cute. After I finished the NIV version, Babe ran and got her Children's Illustrated Bible, so I read the story from that version, too. Then we went over to their Nativity scene and Babe was able to label each person. It was really cool to watch and listen.

After I read the story and when Babe had a good understanding of the birth of Jesus, it was time for a craft! I found this idea, yet again, on Pinterest and I thought it was the cutest thing in the world.

Footprint mangers! I can't get over how cute they are. All the kids did really well with this craft. They each glued some grass to their mangers and then glued a swaddled baby Jesus onto the manger. Then I poured out the markers for free design of their craft.

This is Z's finished product. He is scribbling well!

Here's Bubs'! Look at her cute little smile she drew all by herself! I was very impressed. She was proud of it after she saw my reaction to it.

And here is Babe's. Complete with the signaling angel, Three Wise Men, and a camel. Oh, and fireworks. I love this so much!

After lunch, I gave Babe and book and told her that I knew it was going to be a tough book to read. I had her read the author.

"King James Bible?"

Yes, it was a newly illustrated book, but using the words direct from the King James Bible. Babe did a lot better at this then I thought she would! She struggled over the words I thought she would - abiding, swaddling, etc., but she did so good, especially her second run through it. After her near flawless second-read, she was able to add it to her reading log.

After Bubs and Z woke up from their naps, we did one last Christmas craft that will be revealed, I believe, on Friday. Today was the prep day for them.

And with that, Wednesday ended.

Second Month, 11th Day

Over the weekend, I assigned Babe a fun estimation exercise that I remember doing practically every year of elementary school - counting M&Ms!!!

I put some mini M&Ms in a plastic container and told each family member to guess how many were in it. They went above and beyond and ended up guessing how many of each color were in there, too! It seemed like they had fun over the weekend with it. I looked over their guesses and had to laugh at Bubs's guess - 2000. That would be her heaven, her being a chocoholic and all. Anyway, Babe had some pretty good guesses herself.

I began the lesson by laying out six paper plates around the table. Then I had all the kids sort them by color. Even Z was helping for a few minutes! Everyone did an awesome job.

After they were all sorted by color, we went around the table again and I asked Babe which color she thought there were the most of. She guessed yellow, which was different from her original estimation. Then I asked her which color there were least of, and she guessed brown, which was also different from her original guess.

Then I showed Babe an easy way to organize each color to make it easy to count. She can count by tens, so I had her put each color of M&Ms into rows of 10.

Like so.

Then we started counting! We went through each color and she wrote down each one until we had six numbers! Before we added them all up, I had her build a bar graph using connecting blocks - one block for every ten M&Ms. She got the hang of that pretty quick and by the third color she was doing it herself.

Once the bar graph was made, I expressed how much easier it was to see which color had the most (yellow) and which color had the least (orange) because of the size of the bars. She agreed.

"Look at how red is just barely touching yellow, because there were almost the same red as yellow M&Ms!"

She was right! The difference was only three M&Ms!!! Amazing.

After the bar graph was complete, we did the real math. I taught her very simple two-digit addition a few months ago, and she remembered how to do that, but this was much harder because of the whole carrying-the-one issue. So before we even started this math, I told her that it was completely OK if she didn't understand it. I needed to let her know that so she wouldn't get frustrated two minutes in.

She said OK, and we used two sets of hands (mine and hers) to do all the adding up. By the last number, she was understanding how to carry the one and did the very last sum herself! Just to check all the math, I had her use a calculator. She was so proud that her number matched the calculator's number!

So voila! Here's all the math!

That was a really fun morning. Bubs was dying to eat every M&M when we were done, but she settled for one of each color, as did Z and Babe...and me.

After math was completely done, we did our quick little lesson/discussion on the color of the day: orange.

After lunch, we had very little time to do the rest of the day's work, so we rushed through a reading of the wordless story, "My Red Boat." Babe, again, did very well with that.

We did little practice with the word I, very little practice with beginning sounds, and by the time we finished that, I had no time for Science. That will be saved for another day.

So I handed her a book on colors to add to her reading log. "What Color is Nature?" by Stephen R. Swinburne was a really neat book on where you can find all the colors in the rainbow - basically everywhere! It seemed a very easy read for Babe. She is getting very good, especially with sounding out words she doesn't know yet. She read "salamander" and "surrounded", both completely new words, with ease by sounding out each letter! I was very impressed.

By the time she finished, it was time for dance. And I was ready for a nap.

Here's to me learning how to slow down for tomorrow!