This was pretty amazing. I was surprised that we did not have to pay for it. The actors and actresses were dressed up well and their show kept Megan's interest. We had never read the books, so I was surprised she knew what the characters were and what was going on. This was her first theatrical play and was well worth it.
May 2013 Archives
Today we went through the pictures of Santa Cruz and printing out the necessary ones. We also wanted a movie on the delicate balance and history of this island.
Megan is given picture of a word she has had previous practice with and has to spell it. She pretended this was hard today but she ended up doing it just fine, words like lamp, nest, list, mask, desk, jump, and fist.
I know Megan knows how to measure with a ruler as we have done this since she was little, but I skipped the concept that she can measure with other things, paper clips, your feet, pennies, quarters, etc. So, today , she did a worksheet where she measured pictured fat pencils using pennies and then answered questions related to it.
Megan discussed how, using blocks , she would build number the number 135 and also she told me how you would say it. Then, she wrote the numbers 1-20. This was on page 42. On page 43, She had to math individual green blocks to their corresponding single block and then color them according to math-u-see's colors. Then, she had to count the number of the block and color it the color that block is . Today it was the 4 unit block and she colored it yellow. Then, she had to answer what is the color of the three block and she colored the space pink accordingly.
I didi a lesson where I drew a clothesline of shirts and their sleeves each had a blend and I read a blend and she had to try and write the word on the shirt. Well ,Megan was efficient I guess and just wrote the letters that come after the blend, like for plane, she wrote "ane" Then I had a gluing activity where she glued pictures of the blends in the right places. I checked and she did this. So, it seems she understand constant-L blends fairly well.
Tens place and understanding units (page 160)
This is just serving as a review because math-u-see did place value but not a lot in the 10s-90s range, so I am making sure Megan understand all numbers follow the basic rules in math-u-see.Counting By 5's
She counted by fives up to 95. This is just a review and reinforcement.
Ordinal Numbers , Reading and Writing color names
This was a good review of ordinal numbers, reading them and spelling and writing out colors. She had to write the color of the race car that was in the certain positions up to the tenth position. I have taken a picture as her handwriting was beautiful.
Megan did a problem of place value with hundreds tens and ones and wrote her numbers out to 20 on page 40. On page 41, She counted blocks on the left, matched them to the same number on the right, and then colored them according to her block colors, then counted the blocks to find the total for one problem, 5. And then colored the space with the color of the two block.
Given letters in three boxes and a picture , Megan has to select the right letters that spell the word and then she has to write the word. Next, She has to read sentences and answer yes or no , determining if it is possible or not. Finally, on t he last page, She has to read the sentence and pick the one that best describes the picture given.
Megan and I were on a boat going whale watching for her birthday. We did not see any whales, but we saw a lot of dolphins. We will try again another time. Anyway, while we were on the boat, I overhead a mom tell somebody that her and her kids went to see a tidal pool. I asked the boy what he saw and he said everything, hermit crabs, anemone, etc. Megan was nearby and I said I think you sold us to this. We are going. I asked the mother where should we go and she suggested Laguna Beach.
So, after buying some souvenirs, we headed to a pizza shop where I got a map and better directions.
Megan was taught the words, source, streams, bank and mouth of rivers. After learning these terms, she labeled them on a picture of a river.
We found a lot of sand crabs in Huntington Beach. We are studying them carefully.
Today , we went out to the Channel Islands by boat. The first day, we went to Santa Cruz. The boating experience was new to Megan and a little rough the first day, so she was a bit scared. The boat rocked a lot in the waves as it was going pretty fast. She held onto us. On the way down , we saw dolphins. This was exciting as it was new. After we reached the island, we sat on a bench awaiting the trail guide and there was farming equipment all around and she explained there was a farming community on Santa Cruz (1880s) . This was the Justinian Caire Era. Getting equipment to the island was difficult. The trail guide also told us how the islands came to be, that the Pacific Ocean plate pulled away from the North American Plate. We will look more into this later. On her hike, we learned about the native or endemic plants on the island, such as island morning glory. We were able to see the island fox.we also played a predator -prey game where we learned about a sequence of events that shaped the island. The island was used for farming and so their were feral pigs and cattle on the island. The pigs dug everything up, tearing up the island. The cattle over grazed,eating all the island's native grasses. Then, the Golden eagle, attracted by the pigs, came to the island. These eagles are huge with a large wingspan. Because of this new predator and the lack of tall grasses in which to hide, the fox numbers went down. They have since removed all the problems, the golden eagle, the pigs and the cattle, often by in humane methods.
We read and Megan colored and placed important events into a pocket as we went.
This chapter introduces and compares the Imperial system of measurement to the Metric system. It was interesting to see how many countries primarily use metric and those that don't primarily use it. It was an interesting thought, if the metric is easier , why don't more people use it. I will try to use both with Megan. It reviewed 1/4 again and showed what it means. Then, she had to solve a few problems.
Show that 8 +5 = 13 by drawing 8 horses and 5 horses. 2.) Show a set with cardinality equal to five 3.) 5x + 8 x = 4.) 9y + 4y =
5.) 6 abc + 7 abc = 6.) What value of x makes this true? x + 5 = 13
7.) Draw a segment, a square, and a cube
8.) Draw a triangle where all three sides have the same length.
In this chapter, Megan learned what a Century is and a half-century and it was compared to a dollar is 100 cents, a half dollar is 50 cents. She also learned about homonyms, cent, scent , and sent. Also, about caret, karat, carat, carrot. She also learned about what the last four words mean, that is karat 1/24th pure gold, carat one-fifth of a gram, caret insertion mark, and carrot to be eaten.
Finally, she learned the different units for a line, area and a volume, miles, square feet, cubic inches, etc.
On page 59, Megan is given a picture and she has to write the word. This is the final activity before going onto new beginning blends. On page 60, it begins Lesson 8. She is being introduced to blends at the end of words, like -mp in stamp, -st in cast. -sk as in mask. She has to look at the picture and choose the ending letters that go with that word. For example, mask ends in -sk so she has to choose this letter combination. She had no problem with this.
Megan, on page 57, is still working with beginning blends. She is shown a picture and has to pick the letters in the row of boxes that spell the word. On page 58, she had to read
a sentence and say yes or no to it, like "Can a truck skid in the mud?"
Megan learned about the Saint Lawrence River. She learned the source of the Saint Lawrence River is Lake Ontario, she learned that the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River, where the river ends, is the Atlantic Ocean.
Filled out the missing numbers going from 1-20.
We are watching Australia HD where the narrator steps us back to the beginning of Earth's formation and discusses with us How life first got started. We learned how earth was formed and how our current moon bombarded with us to become the moon we have to day. We learned about how in this earlier world, there were zircon crystals
Today, I walked Megan through threading the bobbin, loading the bobbing, threading the needle , all of which she actively participated in. Then, her and I sewed a strip of cloth to be used in a game we are having on Predator and Prey.
Megan filled out more of the missing numbers from 1-20. She did two of these on this page. On page 25, she counted the hundreds, tens and ones blocks and wrote and said the resulting number (462). Megan colored in the blocks associated with the given number (379), Then she filled in the numbers 1-20 again, where only one or two are missing. I guess it has less numbers as she goes along. On page 30 , she has to count the blocks and write down the associated number, in this case 146. Then, she has to use the blocks to build the numbers 203 and 81. On page 31 and 32, she did a dot-to-dot for numbers 1-20.
This lady has written out a whole year of planning for first grade. I am just grabbing bits of it I like. One happens to be the story of a little Robin called the Tale of Jolly Robin and she has her kid read a section of it on his/her own everyday. Megan is not yet at this reading ability so I read it to her. We did the first four days. She was told to write down the title, the author and the Illustrator and one the last day, it said to write down one of her favorite Sentences. She wrote down "But if you squall like that, the cat will get you."
Megan is studying the habitat of these crabs, where they live in the world. She learned that they need brackish water so one place they can be found is in mangrove swamps.
We are working on understanding the Title, Characters, Setting, Problem, and Solution. We read the first two stories, "A house is built at Pooh Corner for Eeyore" and "Tigger Comes to the Forest to have Breakfast". We drew ovals on paper and described each of these story elements. We have Pooh and Tigger there listening.
Still filling in missing numbers from 1-20. Some are there but some are missing. Megan is bored, but is persevering. I am not making her do many of these.
On this page, Megan is given a list of words, such as step, grin, trick, dress, smell, track , and twig (among others). Megan is show a picture and has to write the associated word.
Megan did a version of their analogies. It consist of shapes filled in certain places and she has to complete the analogy but picked the shape . Like the top half of square is filled and then followed by one that isn't , followed by a heart that is half-filled on the top and then what comes next, an unfilled heart laying the same direction as the first one. She does about 8 of these.
On page 54, Megan is given a picture and she has to write the word for that picture. For example, there is a picture of the stem of a flower and so Megan has to spell and write the word stem. Then, page 55 is a review lesson. Here she is given a picture and she has to pick the best word that describes it from the words available, such as a car with a flat tire, the words are flat, fat and flag. The words are very similiar.
We went to the Evelyn Meador library in Seabrook today to study bugs and phonics. The phonics was basically replaced by the Library program. I found this program quite good and it was longer , or felt longer than most programs. They read several books, performed some songs and some exercise with body parts and a common song. Anyway, we really liked the books she read. I should bring a camera next time.
After that , we went looking for bugs. We found a tiny grasshopper, a metagreen fly (could be green bottle fly), a black and white striped bee, love bugs, we saw normal bees, a red wasp (hornet ?) and others. Then, we went to the table at the end of the trail and discussed bugs. I showed photos of all kinds of animals and they had to guess if it was a bug and why. Megan knows all this stuff so I have to say that she stilled learned, but more about crabs than bugs.
But she learned a lot from looking for Fiddler Crabs
Megan took home a couple of fiddler crabs. After seeing them lined up on the other side of the water, I don't think she is causing their extinction or even making their population threatened in any way. We set up a house and used math in caring for them. Ocean water on average, we learned is 35 ppm in salt concentration. This means there is 35 grams of salt/1000 grams of water. The fiddler crabs, we read, required brackish water. I knew this before starting because, my daughter, do not ask me how she knew, said the water was a bit salty :). Anyway, so I read that they need 1/5 of the salt concentration of common sea salt. So, using the 35 grams/1000 grams and dividing 35/5 = 7 , I used 7 grams of salt /1000 grams of water. We also researched what fiddler crabs eat. We thought fish and other live aquatic bugs. It turns out they rarely kill their prey. They eat whatever they can find, that is they are scavengers which eat dead insects and will eat vegetables and fruit.
After that , we went looking for bugs. We found a tiny grasshopper, a metagreen fly (could be green bottle fly), a black and white striped bee, love bugs, we saw normal bees, a red wasp (hornet ?) and others. Then, we went to the table at the end of the trail and discussed bugs. I showed photos of all kinds of animals and they had to guess if it was a bug and why. Megan knows all this stuff so I have to say that she stilled learned, but more about crabs than bugs.
But she learned a lot from looking for Fiddler Crabs
Megan took home a couple of fiddler crabs. After seeing them lined up on the other side of the water, I don't think she is causing their extinction or even making their population threatened in any way. We set up a house and used math in caring for them. Ocean water on average, we learned is 35 ppm in salt concentration. This means there is 35 grams of salt/1000 grams of water. The fiddler crabs, we read, required brackish water. I knew this before starting because, my daughter, do not ask me how she knew, said the water was a bit salty :). Anyway, so I read that they need 1/5 of the salt concentration of common sea salt. So, using the 35 grams/1000 grams and dividing 35/5 = 7 , I used 7 grams of salt /1000 grams of water. We also researched what fiddler crabs eat. We thought fish and other live aquatic bugs. It turns out they rarely kill their prey. They eat whatever they can find, that is they are scavengers which eat dead insects and will eat vegetables and fruit.
Megan counted the hundreds , 10s and units block and wrote and stated the resulting number (591) - Page 12
Megan filled in the missing numbers going up to 20. She did this twice. Math-u-see is doing this a lot at the moment.
jam , to ham to sad to sat. He had ____ and eggs for Breakfast, A boy's name, Not happy, She _____ on a chair.
Wag the Tail - Page 12
wag, a bag (a sack- change the first letter), tag, A game to play at recess (Change the first letter), To keep asking someone to do something - nag (change the first letter), To sleep for a short time - nap.
Megan had to finish page 51 where she had to pick the letters to spell the word in the picture and then write this word.
She did words like stem, step, swim, wig, stuck, twin, stop.On page 52, She had to read the sentence and say yes if it is true or possible and no if it can not happen or is not true. On page 53, she had to read two sentences and pick the sentence that describes the picture shown.
In this chapter , Megan practiced counting by 5's, 10's, and by 2's (starting at 36 degrees). It is also teaching Megan to divide a clock into four parts and if it is 15 after the hour, it is a quarter after , and if it is 45 after an hour , it is a quarter till that hour. It also talked about the parts of a cat and why it is built to be a killing machine.
Questions:
1.) In numerals, one million is 1,000,000. What is a dozen in numerals?
2.) Finish the pattern of sneak-sneak-pounce-claw- sneak-sneak-pounce-claw-sneak-sneak-pounce-claw- sneak-sneak -pounce-claw- sneak-sneak
Megan and I rewrote this like the author does, in groups of sneak-sneak-pounce-claw and the next one in the series is pounce.
3.) Copy
2+7, 6+5 = , 0+2= , 4+7= , 8-1 =
4) What time is it? The clock says 2:50
5.)What is the cardinality of the set of stars in Orion's belt? Three
6.) Fred had gotten into his sleeping bag and then he fell asleep. Are these two things commutative
In this chapter we learn there are two meanings of Pacific, one meaning calm and peaceful and one meaning the name of an ocean. So, this chapter talked about the Pacific Ocean and how it was the biggest ocean in the world. The deepest place in the whole world is in the Mariana Trench and this is 35, 797 feet down (almost 7 miles). Then it discussed Ferdinand Magellan and how he left Spain and went all around the wall. In 1519 he started out with 270 men and five small ships. Two years later in 1521, one ship with 18 men made it back to Spain. The only ship to make it back was the Victoria. They were the first people to sail all around the world. It said the hardest part was getting around the Southern most tip of South America. It took 38 days to sail around this rough and stormy southern tip. When he got to the ocean that is west of the South American tip, it was calm and peaceful and so he called it the Pacific Ocean, because of the definition of Pacific.
Questions:
1. Write one-million in numerals. Megan did this all by herself. I was amazed.
2.) What is the cardinality of the set of ships Magellan started with {Trinidad, Concepcion, San Antonio, Victoria, and Santiago}? She wrote 5.
3.) The set of ships that made it around the world and back to Spain is {Victoria}. What is the Cardinality of this set? One.
4.) What is the set of Magellan's ships that did not make it back to Spain? {Trinidad, Concepcion, San Antonio and Santiago}
5.) what is the cardinality of the set in problem number 4? Four.
Megan is working on learning the symbols of texas, like the state bird and flower (which she knows) the state tree, song , and motto. She needs to finish this tomorrow so we will read more about this.
Megan did a geography lesson today on Texas, filling in the state capital (Austin) and the major body of water that is southeast of texas and the river that forms the border for us in the Southwest. Also, what country borders Texas on the Southwest, which is Mexico. Also, where did "The Alamo" take place, that is its San Antonio.
After picking the everglades as our destination, we calculated time, cost and the environmental impact of going by car, train, plane and bus. It turns out that the train is the slowest (65 hours), then the bus (31 hours) , then the car at 17 hours and finally the plane at 4 hour or 2 hours (1 stop over or no stop overs). The cost was most for the train, then the plane, the bus and finally the car. The railroad is best for the environment, plane , then the bus and finally the car. Well, its not that straightforward as the plane uses a lot more fossil fuels than the car, so I will post the link we used.
This idea came from :
http://notionnexus.com/index.php/homeschooling-menu/256-math-without-worksheets
I have subscribed to their mail list for more ideas as we enjoyed this.
This idea came from :
http://notionnexus.com/index.php/homeschooling-menu/256-math-without-worksheets
I have subscribed to their mail list for more ideas as we enjoyed this.
They start out having her do three times of problems and is reviewing place value. She is given the three different place value blocks and numbers under each type and she has to color in the right number of blocks and read the number. The other type of problem , is they give the hundreds, ones and units blocks (a given number of them) and she has to write down the value of each and read the number. The last type of problem, they give her a number and she has to build it using the blocks and say the number She did pages 5-10.
In this chapter, Fred tries to feed his kitten junk and the kitten chases down a mouse. Fred learns that cats are carnivores, not only this, they are obligate carnivores. They want meat for every meal. They must eat meat. They have no choice. Dogs are not obligate carnivores.
There was a short english Lesson on the difference between adjectives and verbs. Obligate being an adjectives.
1. copy these problems on a piece of paper.
5+3, 3+ 6, 8 +0, 2+7, 6+1
2) Bears are carnivores but are they obligate carnivores (given they will eat fish, honey, peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches, etc)?
3.) there are nine mice in the house. A cats eats two of them. How many are left in the house.
4) What time is it? There is a clock showing 2:40.
In this chapter , Fred finds a cat and recognizes a pattern in his talking purr, purr , purr , meow, purr, purr, purr meow and so it discusses a little more about patterns. Fred also makes songs with patterns. Then, there is a brief discussion on orthogonal lines (lines that meet at right angles ). It is still discussing a dozen as well.
1.) draw a pillow case which has right angles.
2) draw a building which has right angles between the side of the building and the ground
3.) 2+5 =
4.) 7+2 =
5.) How many is a dozen plus one.
6.)What is the next in a sequence of quarter and half-notes?
Megan is learning how to recognize big numbers with lots of zeros. She is starting to understand what really big numbers look like. For now, in this chapter, she learns what 1,000 means in words. This was one of her problems. This chapter starts talking about patterns. Here questions are about:
1.) finishing a pattern that just has fluffy hearts, the next one is the pattern is obviously fluffy.
2.) How many are in a dozen.
3.) 3+4 = 7
4.) The next one in the sequence is fluffy, broken, fluffy, broken, fluffy, broken fluffy
5.) In numerals it would be 1000. What is this in numerals.
6.) pattern of deciduous , deciduous, evergreen. This ends in evergreen, the next one would be: deciduous.
Megan filled out her "My Improved Invention" sheet for the NSTA picture Perfect Science lesson. She decided to do this on Crayons and wants to invent a crayon that doesn't melt. I told her we should study how crayons are made to see if this is even possible.
We also read poems in the book Incredible Inventions.
Starting with Pan, the next clue is a metal food container , can, this blows air to cool you down , fan, a boy grows up to be a ___, man.
This is a new idea I am trying. You start at the bottom of a ladder with a given word and using the clues they give you, change the letter you are told to into a new word. For instance, starting with cat, change the word in the next higher part of the latter to "The puppy ____ on my lap", the answer being Sat (change the first letter obviously. Doing this with the clues, she got cat, sat, mat, bat. Now this may seem easy to Megan, but I started her with the simpler ones so that she can get the idea of it.
1.) a couple of word problems (daily)
2.) horizontal flips= what is the horizontal flip of an object
3.) Missing numbers on a hundred's chart
4.) Some adding up nickels and pennies and find the total amount.
5.) I am a number > 8 but < 10 type problems, color in the right number.
2.) horizontal flips= what is the horizontal flip of an object
3.) Missing numbers on a hundred's chart
4.) Some adding up nickels and pennies and find the total amount.
5.) I am a number > 8 but < 10 type problems, color in the right number.
Megan is practicing counting by 2's, 5's, and 3's in a brief time in this chapter. Megan is very good at 5+4 in this series, because the vending machines are arranged 4 on one side, 5 on the other side of the hallway. She also knew that one full day is 24 hours long, because she knew that the store was closed zero hours if it is open 24 hours.
We are doing meetups related to the five senses and today we did this on the sense of taste. Donna and her friend setup paper cups of sweet, sour, salty , and bitter and now they have savory. The kids tried these as a book on the sense of taste from read by Cynthia. Then, after this, the kids colored the sections of the tongue different colors depending on the sense it was (salty, sweet, sour, etc). After this and they had something to eat, we made homemade ice cream. During this , we discussed liquid, solid, gas and then after the ice cream was made, we discussed the changes. Well , I tried. The kids were a bit excited about making the ice cream.
Megan learned is learning about commutative, she learned about constellations that were not really constellations, but really asterisms. She is learning the basic of sets and the cardinality of sets. She is also learning the difference between cardinal and ordinal numbers. Today the book touched on fractions, a quarter and a half. I reviewed 3/4 and a whole or 4/4.
This was a great article discussing the main way that Leonardo Da Vinci learned. His main way of learning was observation. He would look at corpes to study human anatomy, to learn about flight he would observe a bird. He would not make just one observation, but many observations. He would draw things at many different angles to get a good idea about them.
Megan read a story about a lady who keeps a Betta Fish as a friend in her office at work. then she answers questions regarding it.
Today we went over the bumps on the tongue which gives us our sense of taste, and the locations of salty, sweet, sour and bitter. Megan then colored the different parts of the tongue and labeled each one. She tried all the different types of foods. She did not like the bitter ones, tea and some tamarind sauce.
