Learning tools: Math (age 5)

Math in our house looks like a little bit of everything. Calvin does a few sheets from a curriculum a few of times a week, but most of our math now comes in the form of games or real life usage. I am finding that the real opportunities for learning math come when a question presents itself and, instead of simply answering it, we work with Calvin to reach the goal, doing all the steps together along the way.

In fact, the more comfortable I become with the unstructure of the unschooling life I always wanted but was afraid I could never do, the more I find that I am able to leave the curriculum behind and seek learning in life itself. Calvin has never been the problem—it's me who keeps getting in the way. (and I have many unschooling bloggers to thank for my increasing courage, especially Stephanie at OLM—thank you for sharing what you do).

So here is a list of math learning tools from a mom that desperately wants to be unschooling, and is getting closer every day.

Math in everyday life:
Cooking
Keeping a calendar for library books
Measuring and building, or measuring and making crafts
Recording the savings and spending of allowance
Telling and measuring time

Workbooks/Traditional:
Lollipop Logic (books 1-3)
Math-U-See (blocks and books—now on Beta)

Board games:
Any game that requires adding up a score
Blokus Junior (Mattel)
Math War (School Zone)
Monopoly (Hasbro)
Qwirkle (Mindware)
Shut the Box (ours is by Melissa and Doug)
Totally Tut (Learning Resources)

Other games and activities:
Art
Legos
Making games, graphs, mazes
Pattern Play (by Mindware)
Piano (now on Piano Adventures, level 2A)
Puzzles
Tangrams (Puzzles by Chris Crawford, and Grandfather Tang's, by Ann Tompert)

Internet games:
Feed Fribit (addition and subtraction, coolmath-games.com)
Math Lines (addition, coolmath-games.com)
Count the Cubes (coolmath-games.com)
Turtle Pond (graph manipulation)

Shut the box

Puzzles (Dec 2011)

Cooking (February 2011)

Math-U-See (Sept 2011)

Monopoly

Qwirkle, and keeping score (Aug 2011)

Legos (July 2011)

Piano (sept 2011)

See other great lists of math tools over on OLM.

Kitchen science—demonstrating matter

I admit it. I ordered a book of science curriculum. It was highly recommended by other homeschooling moms, and it isn't filled with worksheets and quizes, Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding is more of a guideline for parents, and that's a "curriculum" I can live with.

The "lessons" start with categorizing, so last week we took a walk and categorized everything by its manner of life or lack thereof. Is it living? Is it organic non-living, or inorganic non-living? It was a fun talk, and walk.

The second section deals with matter and the states of matter. I don't feel the need to keep up with the book's suggested pace, or even necessarily stick with its order (although it strictly warns me that deviation is unacceptable, I think rules were made to be broken), but since we've been reading Bang! The Universe Verse Book 1 on our journey through evolution, which starts with the Big Bang and the formation of matter, yadda yadda, I thought now was as good a time as any.

So we hit up the library for some books on the matter and read them. Of the books available there, States of Matter, by Suzanne Slade, was the most helpful. To connect the activities with the things we've already been reading about we took it down to energy, then to atoms, then to molecules and matter.

Then I put our books of experiments in Calvin's hands.

Demonstrating matter: marbles in a boxtop—tightly packed is a solid, lightly packed is a liquid, loosely packed is a gas. He played with that for a while, and explored items in the house with reference to their matter.

Changing states of matter: Of course. Ice from the freezer, melt it in the pot, bring it to a boil and watch it steam, allow the steam to condense on something and, if so desired, re-freeze it.

Molecules on the move: two identical glasses filled with the same amount of water. Heat one in the microwave. Add one drop of food coloring to each cup and watch the color move through the water.

Air is matter, too: sweep an air tight bag through the air and quickly close it tightly, then notice that the bag is full of...air.

Displacement of matter: fill a glass and mark the water level. Add an object and note that the water level is now higher.

Air is matter, too, two: fill a bowl with water. Find a glass smaller than the bowl and stuff a sheet of paper in the bottom so that it won't fall out. Push the glass, top down, into the bowl of water, keeping the glass completely upright. Remove, still keeping the glass straight upright, and note that the paper is dry.

The last demonstration, from the book Chemistry for Every Kid, by Janice VanCleave (a great book, by the way), was Calvin's favorite, but really he had a great time with all of these. And I liked the time together; science was my mainstay in college.

Antarctica Unit Study, by Evan-Moor Education (review)

I purchased this "complete" curriculum from Currclick as an e-book for $12.99 back in August. The download was smooth and easy and viewing the book as a pdf was no problem.

Subjects covered by the unit are:
• An introduction to geography as a study
• The basic use of a globe and more complex map skills
• Icebergs and glaciers
• The landforms of Antarctica
• The plants and animals of Antarctica (penguins in particular, and the food web)
• Exploration and explorers of Antarctica
• The people (research stations) on Antarctica
• Politics of Antarctica
• Pollution
• A brief overview of the Arctic for comparison

Worksheets and other printouts in the study include:
• short report forms
• a number of charts
• some question and answer forms
• trivia cards
• a crossword
• a word find
• a glossary
• a bibliography (to be filled out)
• comparison charts
• maps for marking and for reading
• a timeline
• a booklet to be cut out and assembled

I have been hesitant to use curriculum because I don't want to become reliant on it, because I was afraid they would all be formulaic (I was disappointed by what I felt was mindless busywork and jabber in the Amanda Bennett unit studies), and because mostly I try to follow Calvin's interests when we go "exploring". Having done this once, though, I'm likely to do it again with the right publisher. The Evan-Moor study had a handful of busy-work projects, but even these had some purpose, and mostly it was a number of open-ended worksheets. More importantly, this was not a collection of short readings with comprehension questions to reinforce learning. Instead, the unit provided short readings as a jumping off point, and any questions that were posed required additional research outside of what the unit provided.

The study is meant to be used in a classroom, and there  is plenty of material directed at the teacher suggesting ways to present material, but I didn't even read these pages. I did not follow the order of presentation, and I skipped over some of the sections completely. The great thing about the study is that it was completely bendable to our specific needs.

As a warning, the physical page numbers are not the pdf page numbers—the title and cover page are existent here in the pdf but not numbered in the physical book—so when printing specific pages be sure to add two to the desired page number. I found this out the hard way.

Math-U-See

I mentioned in a journal post a week or so ago that we'd ordered, and received, the books and blocks of the Math-U-See curriculum. At the time I mentioned it in relation to my fear of a strict curriculum and an inability to find a way to use it that was loose and open. In retrospect I laugh, and I also chide myself for not knowing better. It's not like anyone was saying to me "hey, you bought it, now you must read and follow the directions." And it's not like I don't have a mind of my own. And when the the pages upon pages of study, test, and review seemed a little daunting at first I just let Calvin do as he would with them and put it out of my mind until I was more comfortable.

We picked the blocks back up this week because while we were exploring the middle ages I wanted him to have a better grasp of the time difference, and he also seemed interested in this. If this is to be a review I will first say that, just as I suspected, the books are both unnecessary and a little dry for my taste. That being said, Calvin seems to enjoy having the practice work sheets to play around with and if I just let him do what he likes with them they get at least a little use so they aren't a total waste.

The blocks, though, are exactly the manipulative I was looking for. They provide a very visible, tangible element to conceptual learning—ten units make a ten, ten tens make a hundred, and you can be absolutely sure of this not because someone said so, but because you can see them, feel them, count them, compare them, and snap them together. Calvin took to the concept quickly and smoothly, and he really enjoyed the exercise as well. The blocks are relatively nice. I love their weight and feel and, though I'm usually a bigger fan of wood than plastic, I like how well these blocks snap together, which is something wood blocks wouldn't really do.

My only real disappointment is that we paid good money for the storage boxes which we were assured had been made especially for these specific sets of blocks, and all of them fit in nicely, albeit with a few gaps in some of the partitioned squares, except for two of the tens. Really? You're selling custom made wood boxes, at $40 for the pair, and you couldn't even custom make them to hold all of the blocks in your double set??? Even I can look at the boxes and see where a partition could have been shifted in one direction just enough to make room for those two tens, and these blocks are not my livelihood. It may be a little thing but I think I'm going to harp on this one for a while, and the company will probably get an annoyed letter.

So we'll see how things continue to play out, but for right now the blocks themselves get my A vote, the books get my B vote, and the boxes are an utter failure.