School This Week
We're not really doing school this week, but we sort of are. Like that? lol.
It's summer, we're feeling hot and lazy, and the pool beckons. We will do as much as we feel like and no more.
I used two pinterest ideas this week.
One was to have boxes for each continent filled with things from that continent. This week we are studying Africa (geography, social studies: old vs. new cultures, compare other cultures (art, clothes, markets, houses, etc.) to America).
I made a box filled with animals from Africa (these we had), I made a house out of toilet paper rolls that looks like a lot of houses in Africa, and I printed a bunch of pictures of the cool trees there, the different kinds of houses, markets, art, sports, etc. I got about 7 books from the library - each one about a different country - South Africa, Madagascar, Botswana, Congo, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and another one I can't remember.
She really responded to the books and LOVED the Africa bin. My goal is for her to learn geography of the continents even better by being able to picture what it's like there. Not to mention all the social studies we're getting in there.
Another pinterest idea I saw was teaching fractions using paper plates.
Second and third grade only teach 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4, so that's as far as we went. Today I wanted to teach Kara adding, subtracting, 2/4 = 1/2, and the bigger the denominator, the smaller the piece of pie. Of course, she figured out 2/4 = 1/2 without me saying anything. Whether it was her brain or the paper plates, I'm glad it made sense to her! Holding the colorful pieces in our hands made it easier to see which pieces were bigger and I explained when you made more pieces (and the denominator went up), the pieces got smaller. I think she got it.
I loooooooove fractions. I love adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing fractions. I love reciprocals. I love improper fractions, mixed numbers, whole numbers, and I love reducing fractions. I love greatest common factor and least common multiple. It was hard for me to stop with today's lesson. :-)
That's about as far as we got in two days, which is all we had this week. (Mon I work at the church, we did school Tues and Wed, and Thurs I'm leaving for my trip to Alabama.) Better than nothing!
It's summer, we're feeling hot and lazy, and the pool beckons. We will do as much as we feel like and no more.
I used two pinterest ideas this week.
One was to have boxes for each continent filled with things from that continent. This week we are studying Africa (geography, social studies: old vs. new cultures, compare other cultures (art, clothes, markets, houses, etc.) to America).
I made a box filled with animals from Africa (these we had), I made a house out of toilet paper rolls that looks like a lot of houses in Africa, and I printed a bunch of pictures of the cool trees there, the different kinds of houses, markets, art, sports, etc. I got about 7 books from the library - each one about a different country - South Africa, Madagascar, Botswana, Congo, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and another one I can't remember.
She really responded to the books and LOVED the Africa bin. My goal is for her to learn geography of the continents even better by being able to picture what it's like there. Not to mention all the social studies we're getting in there.
Another pinterest idea I saw was teaching fractions using paper plates.
Second and third grade only teach 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4, so that's as far as we went. Today I wanted to teach Kara adding, subtracting, 2/4 = 1/2, and the bigger the denominator, the smaller the piece of pie. Of course, she figured out 2/4 = 1/2 without me saying anything. Whether it was her brain or the paper plates, I'm glad it made sense to her! Holding the colorful pieces in our hands made it easier to see which pieces were bigger and I explained when you made more pieces (and the denominator went up), the pieces got smaller. I think she got it.
I loooooooove fractions. I love adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing fractions. I love reciprocals. I love improper fractions, mixed numbers, whole numbers, and I love reducing fractions. I love greatest common factor and least common multiple. It was hard for me to stop with today's lesson. :-)
That's about as far as we got in two days, which is all we had this week. (Mon I work at the church, we did school Tues and Wed, and Thurs I'm leaving for my trip to Alabama.) Better than nothing!
Comments
It is so easy to teach Kara with the internet and facebook and pinterest. Everyone else has the great ideas, I just have to find and use them.
I appreciate the compliment though. I'm going to file it away to re-read on those days when I'm not feeling so fabulous. ;-)