Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Living Math

I am thinking maybe some living math supplements will help with Nathan's trouble areas in math. This website has a lot of good suggestions that I think will go along nicely with our workbox system. I plan to find some good resources for the littles on this website too.

This is just a list of books suggested on the website that our local library has available. There are many, many more on the website. I'm not sure what the age level is for most of these. I'll have to check them out to see. I'll blog on each as we come to them.

Animal Math
Bar Graphs
Beanstalk: The Measure of a Giant
Planet Dexter's Calculator Mania
Can You Eat a Fraction?
The Great Pyramid of Giza: Measuring Length, Volume, Area and Angles
Construction Math
Family Math
The Grapes of Math
Kitchen Math
Map Math
Math Appeal
Math Doesn't Suck
Mathamazing
Mathamusements
Medical Math
Money Math
Music Math
Pictographs
Pie Graphs
Piece=Part=Portion
Space Math
Sports Math
Tally Charts
Travel Math
Weather Math


This is just the short list. I don't have time to list them all right now. More added later.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Getting ready for the first day of SCHOOL!!

Our first day of school is August 3rd! I have been working on getting our schedule completely and printed, organizing and decorating the school/play room (one half of the room is for school and the other is for play), and putting together little gift *baskets* of goodies for each boy.

Here is a look at some progress in our school/playroom: I decided to do individual bulletin boards for each boy so they will have their own personal space to show off their own achievements and such. I still have to make the names for each board. The camo board is Kaleb's, the space board is Nathan's, and the animal print board is Gabriel. I let each of them pick out their own border/theme on our last trip to Mardels. You can see part of the ABC border and just a bit of the sun poster on the ceiling. Since we're studying astronomy this year, I thought we'd do our own solar system on the ceiling. I put the sun poster up already so it wouldn't get torn up by the littles. It shows the different layers of the sun and has a little solar system on the bottom part of the poster. I'm going to have the boys draw and color the planets (along with the moon, astroids, coments, etc) to be added to the ceiling as we study them. Kaleb and Nathan's board are above the table and their workbox grids are in between the boards.

Right now we live in a rent house so we can't do anything with the walls. I seriously do not like paneling so my plan is to cover as much as I can with posters and other school related things. =)






Our school sign that will go above Nathan and Kaleb's workbox grids after I cut out and laminate it.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Because it's all about the workboxes right now....

I am working on getting the workboxes ready for the first day of school in two weeks. Today I let the boys decorate their workbox grids. I helped Gabriel and Daddy helped Drake because I wanted to make sure the grid and name showed enough to use. I let the boys rummage through my sticker stash and then I laminated them with my new Scotch laminator (which I LOVE!!!). I think they turned out GREAT and a little more fun than just a bunch plain-looking grids.



Jolanthe
has a great listing of pre-k links on her blog. I LOVE all of them!! Some wonderful printables and game ideas.

Friday, July 17, 2009

I color-coded the kids!

I decided this year we need MORE organization. Our house is small but I'm trying and trying to have a place for everything. I want to know where everything is at any given moment (probably a dream, I know, but...I'm trying).

To help me with this, I really think I need to know who didn't put away their own things. With all boys, it's sometimes hard. Then we get into the "I didn't do it...he did" business that I would REALLY like to stop.

I read somewhere about color-coding their kids school supplies to keep the fighting down and got to thinking about it. What if I color-coded the kids??? Everything that isn't community property??

So here is the plan:
  • most definitely color-coding school supplies and such. Notebooks, binders, pencils, glue sticks...everything.
  • how to color glue sticks and fun pencils with a thousand colors?? YARD SALE STICKERS!! Everything that belongs to one and is multi-colored will have a sticker of that child's color!
  • backpacks, bedding, and clothes won't be color-coded since they each have their own special *theme* for the backpacks and bedding and their clothes are *for now* different sizes.
  • toys won't be color-coded since they share.
I let the boys choose their colors with the only stipulation being it couldn't be a funky hard-to-find color. I asked that they stick with bright colors and (being a little ocd-ish) preferred the colors look good together.

So....here they are!!

Nathan

Kaleb

Gabriel

Drake (yes even the baby...starting YOUNG!!)



After reading a couple posts on a forum board about this idea, I really really think this could solve some of our organization problems.

(so would a much bigger house but....we'll have to wait on that one)

Monday, July 6, 2009

school and workbox excitement!!

First I just have to share my 5 year old's new *hobby*. He is writing a book! I don't know how far he plans on taking this but so far he has this:::the title page and a couple illustrations. The title is "Alien Boy Goes to Earth." It is very important to him that everyone knows the E's are made like that on purpose....aliens are strange so of course the E's must be too!

Now I must apologize for the lack of quality in these pictures. I forgot my camera at the inlaws house so I am using my phone camera.

Also I still have to finish cutting all these out and laminating them. I was just too excited to wait!! =)

Tracing cards.


These will be lacing cards once they are laminated and hole-punched.
The first visual of our workboxes. Still working on putting it all together, but the ideas for using them are flowing!! So excited to get started!!
Several cvc flash cards.
Dominoes....let's see, I printed colors, shapes, dots, and numbers. FUN!!
Astronomy flash cards. My husband suggested I print a second set so the boys can play Memory.

August 3rd (our back to school date) cannot get here fast enough!!! Actually, I do have quite a bit more to finish so July can hang around for a while longer. ;)