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)

Learning Log 8 for Fox Lover

Wednesday, May 6

We Played: 

• Telepathy several times. (Deductive Logic, 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)





This time we divided the animals in the set by class and sorted the mammals by order, including ungulates, rodents, lagomorphs, carnivores, and sirenia. We also watched a powerpoint presentation on orders of mammals. (Biology: Animal Classification)

• 10 Days in the USA (Geography, Strategic Thinking)
• Ultimate Mastermind (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)
• Stratego (Strategic Thinking)

Ice Cream Math and More Board Game Schooling -- Learning Log 7 for Fox Lover

May 4, 2015

We Played:

• Telepathy (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)
• 20 Days Around the World several times. (Geography, Strategic Thinking) 
• Sherlock (Visual Memory)
• Constellations Memory Game -- We read about all the constellations included with the game, in the accompanying booklet, and read about Draco and Pegasus. (Astronomy; Visual Memory)
• North American Wildlife Memory Game -- We also read the descriptions of all 50 animals included in the game, in the accompanying leaflet, and discussed nocturnal/diurnal animals, camouflage, and other physical and behavioral adaptations. (Biology; Visual Memory)
• Sequela (Math: Computation; Math Sense)
• Ultimate Mastermind (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)

We Read:

Story of the World, Volume 1 -- Chapters 14-15: The Phoenicians & The Israelites Leave Egypt (History)

Ice Cream Math: (Math: Computation; Math Sense; Patterns & Algebra; Probability & Statistics)

I bought 3 kinds of ice cream and 3 toppings and presented several problems. For example:

If you have 1 kind of ice cream and 1 kind of topping
(Peanut Butter Chocolate Ice Cream & Hot Fudge)
and you're allowed one scoop plus one topping,
how many choices do you have?

1
(PBC & Hot Fudge)

If you have 2 kinds of ice cream and 2 kinds of topping
(Peanut Butter Chocolate or Mint Ice Cream & Hot Fudge or Nuts)
and you're allowed one scoop plus one topping,
how many choices do you have?

4
(PBC & Hot Fudge; PBC & Nuts;
Mint & Hot Fudge; Mint & Nuts)

If you have 3 kinds of ice cream and 3 kinds of topping
(Peanut Butter Chocolate, Mint, or Vanilla Ice Cream & Hot Fudge, Nuts, or Caramel)
and you're allowed one scoop plus one topping,
how many choices do you have?

9
 (PBC & Hot Fudge; PBC & Nuts; PBC & Caramel;
Mint & Hot Fudge; Mint & Nuts; Mint & Caramel
Vanilla & Hot Fudge; Vanilla & Nuts; Vanilla & Caramel)

and so forth ... how many choices would you have if we had 10 kinds of ice cream and 10 toppings?

We worked this out with a simple tree diagram, and she quickly figured out the pattern and solved the problem:

1, 4, 9, 16, 25 ... 100

She didn't realize this was a sequence of square numbers until I pointed it out. She had worked out the pattern this way:

1 + 3 = 4

4 + 5 = 9 (5 is 2 more than 3)

9 + 7 = 16 (7 is 2 more than 5)

16 + 9 = 25 (9 is 2 more than 7)

and so forth.

I am always looking for "natural" ways to reinforce probability, patterns, and so forth, and this was a fun way to go about it. I love the fact that we packed so many concepts into a quick and simple activity, not to mention that eating ice cream was involved.

Banana Bread, Anasi, Mummies, Art Journaling, and a Trip Around the World -- Learning Log 6 for Foxlover

Friday, May 1, 2015

We Baked:

banana bread. We tripled the recipe because we had so many aging bananas to use up.(1-1/2 cups of flour becomes 4-1/2 cups of flour, and so forth) Fox Lover already knows how to halve or double recipes using intuition and basic math.

I used this as an opportunity to show Fox Lover, in a real-life context, how formal addition, subtraction, and multiplication of fractions works. This reminds me a bit of Gleamer's cooking classes. (Cooking, Math: Computation)

 

We Played:

• Impressionist Art Game -- We also read pages 58-65 of the accompanying book; we read about Mary Cassatt. (Art Appreciation) 
• Telepathy (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)
• 10 Days in Africa  (Geography, Strategic Thinking)
• 20 Days Around the World several times. (Geography, Strategic Thinking) We love these 10 Days In ... games! Now I've downloaded instructions for a trip around the world.
• Prime Pak -- This game reinforces multiplication facts, factoring, prime factoring, and prime and composite numbers. Trisha mastered prime factoring super fast. We are working on multiplication and preparing for algebra simultaneously. (Math: Patterns & Algebra; Computation)
• She invented a different version of the dice game Pig which involves practicing multiplication. (Math: Computation)
• Stratego  (Strategic Thinking)
• Ultimate Mastermind (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)

We Read:

• Since we just read about the Middle and New Kingdoms of Egypt, we read You Wouldn't Want to be an Egyptian Mummy!: Disgusting Things You'd Rather Not Know by David Stewart (History)
• First Palm Trees: An Anancy Spiderman Story by James Berry, illustrated by Greg Couch This is part of our discussion of West Africa and cultural variations of Anansi stories. (History; Mythology)
• Anansi and the Magic Stick by Eric Kimmel, illustrated by Janet Stevens (History; Mythology)
• She and her sister have been reading The Wizard Children of Finn by Mary Tannen. (Literature; Mythology)

Also:

• We practiced division and mult-digit mulitplication using base 10 blocks. (Math: Computation)
• She has been playing soccer.  (Physical Education)
• We've been art journaling. These are some of our mandalas and other circle designs. (Art) 

This is Fox Lover's. She learned this technique from Alena, who teaches math and art.

These are Fox Lover's too. (The second one isn't finished):

 

 

 

Some of my art journal pages (in progress):