Learning Log 15 for Fox Lover

Friday, May 22

We Read:

Chapters 20-23 Story of the World, Volume 1 by Susan Wise Bauer (History)

• Greece Gets Civilized
• Medes and the Persians
• Sparta and Athens
• The Greek Gods

We Played:

• Telepathy (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking) -- We played twice.
• 20 Days Around the World (Geography, Strategic Thinking) 

Learning Log 14 for Fox Lover

Thursday, May 21

Games:

Telepathy (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)

Prime Pak (Math: Patterns & Algebra; Computation)

20 Days Around the World (Geography, Strategic Thinking) 

Sequela -- (Math: Computation; Patterns & Algebra)

Bird Bingo -- We read the bird facts as we went along. (Biology)

Also:  

We used the Sequela cards, arrayed as a multiplication table, to do the Sieve of Eratosthenes again. (Math: Computation; Patterns & Algebra); she has been researching geology, on her own, and recording her findings in a notebook (Geology)

Learning Log 13 for Fox Lover

Wednesday, May 20

Games:

• Telepathy (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)
• 20 Days Around the World several times. (Geography, Strategic Thinking)
• 10 Days in the USA (Geography, Strategic Thinking)
• Impressionist Art Game -- We also read pages 18-25 of the accompanying book; we read about Camille Pissarro (Art Appreciation)

We Read: Story of the World, Volume 1 by Susan Wise Bauer -- Chapters 16-19

• Return of Assyria
• Babylon is Back
• Life in Early Crete
• The Early Greeks

(History)

And:

• We reviewed multi-digit multiplication, long division, and computation with fractions. I introduced addition and subtraction of fractions with unlike denominators. (Math: Computation)
• She has begun researching geology, on her own, and recording her findings in a notebook.
(Geology)

Learning Log 12 for Fox Lover

Monday, May 18

Games:

Telepathy (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)

20 Days Around the World several times. (Geography, Strategic Thinking)

Tapple

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

Other Learning:

We reviewed multi-digit multiplication, including multi-digit multiplication with decimals, and worked on long division. I am trying to challenge her without getting to the point where she is excessively frustrated or feels math is "too hard." And I love her perseverance and confidence in problem solving! I think I killed that in my older children by pushing "book math" on them.

Fox Lover hasn't mastered her multiplication facts yet, but I love her problem solving process. For example, when asked "What is 6 x 9," she realized that 3 x 6 = 18, and 3 x 18 = 54, so 9 x 6 = 54.

We also talked about adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions in terms of halving and doubling recipes. I feel that makes it much more intuitive. (Math: Computation & Number Sense)

Lapbooking, Multiplication, and Ghanian Food -- Learning Log 11 for Fox Lover

Friday, May 15

We Played:

• Scrabble
• 10 Days in the USA - We played twice. (Geography, Strategic Thinking)
• Telepathy (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking) -- This is her ABSOLUTE favorite game, and we play it every day. I talked more about it here.
• Prime Pak -- This game reinforces multiplication facts, factoring, prime factoring, and prime and composite numbers. Trisha has mastered prime factoring super fast. We are working on multiplication and preparing for algebra simultaneously. (Math: Patterns & Algebra; Computation)

We Also Worked On: Multi-Digit Multiplication of:

• a 2 digit number by a 2-digit number
• a 3 digit number by a 2-digit number,
• a 3 digit number with a decimal by a 2-digit number

Alena, a teacher with Waldorf training, introduced me to an alternate way of doing multi-digit multiplication, using the distributive property, that has worked beautifully for Fox Lover:

Fox Lover started practicing it for fun, checking her answers with a calculator. :-)

Learning About Ghana:

We made a West African meal, including jollof rice and fruit salad.

We also put together some notebook pages using lapbook materials on Ghana from Homeschool Share, which is an amazing resource. 

(Geography; Cooking)

Learning Log 10 for Fox Lover

Thursday, May 14

We Played:

• Telepathy (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)
• Book Lover's Memory Game and talked about some of the authors, novels, and quotes included in the game. (Literature; Visual Memory)
• Impressionist Art Game -- We also read pages 34-41 of the accompanying book; we read about Berthe Morisot (Art Appreciation)
• 10 Days in the USA (Geography, Strategic Thinking)

We Also reviewed multi-digit multiplication and practiced "long" division using the base 10 blocks. Fox Lover said 64 divided by 4 was easy for her because she is used to dividing stacks in Minecraft. She also practiced addition with very large numbers. I noticed she has made a transition to using traditional "carrying" when adding multi-digit numbers after years of using more intuitive (but slightly more time consuming techniques. (Math: Computation)

Learning Log 9 for Fox Lover

Saturday, May 9, 2015

We Played:

• Telepathy several times. (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)
• 20 Days Around the World several times. (Geography, Strategic Thinking)
• North American Wildlife Memory Game -- My awesome father gave this to us many years ago, and we have gotten a LOT of mileage out of it. I was so disappointed when I couldn't find any more games made by this company. I'd hoped there was one for every continent. :-) (Biology; Visual Memory)

She Read:

 

• Usborne Pocket Nature (Biology)
• I Didn't Know That Some Bugs Glow in the Dark and Other Amazing Facts About Insects -- which her Granddad sent her this weekend. (Biology)

Also:

We practiced multi-digit multiplication and "long" division with base 10 blocks.

We tried a different method of multi-digit multiplication, suggested by Alena, using the distributive property:

This seemed to work better for Fox Lover than other methods we've tried.

We experimented with various division techniques.

 Here we were dividing by 6, so we chose 6 ten-rods. Next we used red blocks (negative numbers) to subtract 6, creating 54. Then we divided the ten-rods and red blocks by 6, getting the answer (9):

(Computation; Number Sense)

And: Soccer ... of course. (Physical Education)