Beautiful Bean Butterflies

Beautiful  Bean Butterflies

This week Madison learned mixed numbers. That girl really loves learning new things and that makes my job easier! We are still working in our Saxon 2 Math workbook, well...because we bought it and because the family that we share schooling with two days a week uses it and so its just easier to teach only one math to both girls for those days but I gotta tell you...for us...doing Saxon is like pulling teeth...OUR TEETH! I see the value in it, I do. It's a mastery curriculum and so it covers the ins and outs of every crack and crevice of 2nd grade math. If it doesn't, it certainly feels like it does. It does not match my teaching style nor Madison's learning style but it's a means to an end so that my friend and I can swop teaching responsibilities and in turn get 1 day off from teaching each week. Plus, at the end of the day, it reinforces our regular math program which is Abeka.

Here's Saxon, making us add 5+1...

Fruit for Fractions dividing her orange into fourths

I guess what's most irritating is the pace of Saxon. It feels soooo laborious and slow and rather easy; versus Abeka which, to us, feels rigorous and faster paced...it fits us better.

I kept Chelsea and her school friend, A, busy with beans this week. I first died them with food coloring and popped them in the oven to dry so that I did not have to send A home with pink and purple fingers. We used the only type of dry bean that I had in the pantry which were black eyed peas. I kept some of them white or grey or beige...whatever color those peas are. And used the only food coloring that I had on hand (I thought) which was red and purple. I later found blue and yellow. Imagine my disappointment when after the girls finished, I realized we could have made more colorful butterflies. At any rate, I would have taken a picture of them both, but I sent her home with her project before taking pictures. I drew an outline, used school glue and had them place the peas on the glue and voila; a very good occupier was born so that I could work with the older kids in Spelling, English and Math.

After they finished the butterflies, I had them sort the peas in this silicone cupcake mold and just in time for "the month of love." While I do approach each school day with a lesson plan/working idea, neither of these activities for the four year old girls were planned. I just kind of came up with them on the fly. The girls work so hard doing their math worksheets and phonics each day that I wanted them to have a day filled with hands-on activities (which four year olds love) and so this is what we did.

In the spirit of math though we also worked with geo-boards and geo-shapes and writing numbers.

A pretty run of the mill week for us but very successful! Stay tuned for our next Silly School Song - The 5 Senses, it's shaping up to be very "catchy".

Thank you for reading and check out the blogs that I'm linking up with this week. Collage Friday, WUH, Homeschool Creations!


Crazy Kid Creativity Pic of the Week:

Madison and Chelsea "made" these after getting ready for bed and said that they were the horses' night gowns. They made them from copy paper and designed them with markers.  If you think this is "nothing" check out the elephant costumes that they made a few months back.

Stephanie

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