Tea House with Australian Money

There was a time when my Toads loved to play grocery store.  I have checked out many a little boy with a basket of fruits & veggies.  I have tried to move it towards playing tea shop instead.  I need the fortification of a cup to get through the activity and everyone appreciates the biscuits.  Our menu yesterday included Turkish delight.  Grandma took pity on us after our Turkish delight failure which I posted about here.

Younger Toad just loves to play and older Toad is getting a little better about change.  He can count out his money to pay for things great, but when the coins don't add up even, he struggles with figuring out what he's due in change.  With tea shop, I write out a little bill, and he has to figure it all out like at a restaurant.  He does better figuring the sums when it's written down.

Of course the novelty of this is different money - it comes in colors, and there's animals, and one dollar coins instead of bills.  We had a talk about currency and the differences among countries.


You can find images of the reverse side of the Australian coins at the Royal Australian Mint website.  The front side is an image of the Queen.  Wikipedia has images of all the bills.  I formatted them up and glued them together after printing them on card stock.
  Australian Coins and Bills

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M & M Math

I bribe my kids. Just to get that out in the open. I want them to love math in spite of the fact I'm rather math phobic. In homeschooling them I've come to realize I'm not inherently bad at math, I just got a very poor math education. So I keep my feelings under wraps and I compensate with chocolate.

Younger Toad asks to do math every day. He knows math comes with M& M's or mini marshmallows (which are his absolute favorite thing) so for him it's super great fun.

He's only 3, so it's really all about counting. I use a free math printable from Montessori Printshop (01-10 quantity, symbol and written word cards). I printed out two.  One is whole, and one I cut up for matching. He counts the red dots, puts a treat on the dots, counts the treats and then he gets to match the numbers and words (from the sheet that was cut). Some days we'll do a little addition and subtraction too before they get eaten. “If you have one marshmallow here, and you add these two marshmallows, how many marshmallows do you get to eat?” We've been doing that for awhile and he loves it. 

This week I wanted to try something a little different so I got out a ruler and taped the ends to the table (so it didn't slide around and destroy our piles). Then we counted the numbers on the ruler and placed the correct number of M&M's above the number. By building the M&M towers, it really reinforces each number is one bigger than the last. The Montessori sheets were becoming a little rote and he really had to focus on this activity so we will continue to do it for awhile.

Older Toad gets M&M's too. He gets one M&M for every math problem he gets right but I take 3 away for every one he gets wrong. This was in response to how he was handling his math. He was not checking his work.   If he didn't know an answer, he'd guess and wait for you to correct him. I'm trying to enforce him checking his own work. We're focusing on subtraction right now.  By encouraging him to check his own work we're drilling the inverse operation at the same time, but not requiring twice the work. It has slowed him down a bit and encouraged him to focus. One day he got no M&M's and that made quite an impression. After starting this, he still makes mistakes of course, but he feels the system is fair since he's getting more candy than he did before we started.

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Sharing All About Spelling and Life of Fred

While my nephew was here, I did slip away one evening for our local homeschool association monthly meeting.  It was the annual curriculum showcase night and I volunteered to bring All About Spelling and Life of Fred which had not been shown before.  This is our second year using both these programs and here are my pros and cons.

All About Spelling:

• It's easy to modify every lesson.  Each lesson has multiple components, if we're struggling with an issue we may do all components over one or more days.  Conversely, it's super easy to abbreviate a lesson to not overwhelm a short attention span.

• It's multi-sensory.  Each lesson has components that are heard, said, moved and written so it works great for sensory learners.

• It builds on previous work.  We started with book one, which was below Older Toad's spelling level but learning the rules from the get go allows us to refer back to them if we run in to trouble.

• It's a stand alone spelling program.  We have no issues with reading.  Many programs for early elementary are combined.  Toad just needs to work on his spelling.

• On the downside, it feels expensive for what it is.  It's hard to find used so it's a given expense.  Also, since it has many components, you'll need to find a way to store all the parts so nothing gets lost.

Life of Fred:

We started homeschooling with Math U See.  After one week, Toad said, "I hate math."  Toad loves math so I knew I'd made a mistake.  I bought Math U See because it was similar to the Cuisenaire rods we'd used for preschool.  I struggled for several months with what to do and then found Life of Fred.

• It's a narrative based, contextual math program.  There are no pages of worksheets that don't seem to apply to anything. 

• It's funny.  I actually have a two chapter a day rule.  Toad would read the whole book in one sitting if I let him.

• The lesson lengths are just right.

• It's more about math concepts than rote memorization.

• It's durable and you don't work in the book so you can pass them on or resell them easily.

• Which is also it's downside, sort of.  Every kid needs more or less help with something and you'll need to supplement in areas that are giving you trouble.  If you need all the curriculum laid out for you and really need to stick to the plan, this may not be for you.  It could still make a nice supplement but couldn't be your spine.  I do supplement.

* I did not receive any compensation, in kind or paid, for this review.  These are my opinions based on curriculum we've used.

Function Box

We made a function box.  It's proving fun to play with.  Older toad understands the concepts of the four basic functions (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) but sometimes he can be slow since he still usually relies on figuring the sums every time.  He is NOT a flash card kind of kid.  I'm hoping incorporating more games will help him speed up naturally.

How we play - 3" X 5" card goes in one side with a number written on it.
Then...
Option #1 -  It comes out and I tell him a number.  He has to say which function was performed on the original number to get the second number.  Example - the card says 3, it goes through the machine and I say, "12", he would correctly say multiplication.

Option #2 - It comes out and I ask him to perform a function and give the answer.  Example - the card says 5, it goes through the machine and I say, "Add 4 and what do you get?".  He would correctly say "9".

That's how I envisioned it but he likes combining them.  So we do, "4 goes into the box and 12 comes out.  What did I do?"  He would say. "You added 8." and I remind him I could have multiplied by 3.  The most important part - you have to make a noise as the card goes through the function box, otherwise nothing will happen.

He of course loves getting to man the box and be the one who figures the problems.  He has surprised me with his accuracy and obsession with negative numbers.

I made our function box out of an old sunglasses box.  When they had their paint out I painted it.  I wrote the symbols for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, one on each side.  Then I turned them loose with star stickers.  I left the ends of the box on so I could close them up and store the cards we write on inside.  It's the perfect size for 3" X 5" cards.

If you'd like to get more fun math ideas check out the Living Math website.  Living Math is all about learning math in context and has proved a very valuable approach for us.

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