Easy Make and Learn Projects: Human Body (we’re doing Human Body this year)
25 wacky and Wonderful Stories that Boost Vocabulary (Daegan wants to learn about prefixes, suffixes and roots, and this humourous book looks perfect!)
Paragraph Power (D is learning to write paragraphs)
Grammar Cop (notice this humour theme so far?)
25 Mini Plays World History (reader’s theatre as an intro to history works awesome for us)
Great Map Games (elementary map skills are another theme this year)
Read Around the World with 20 Great Picture Books (we’re bibliophiles!)
Mega Funny Division Stories (nice complement to MUS Delta)
Math Practice Puzzles (puzzles over dull drill anyday!)
Origami Math (how fun!)
Funny Fairy Tale Math

and the list goes on and on. I used some of the new material as our math ‘warm-up’ today: Gareth did a few pages from an Algebra Readiness book, while Daegan did some math facts practice in this fun ‘riddle’ format. They both loved the new materials.

I was able to make this an even better deal by using the code 10THANKS in the coupon code slot, saving $10 from my order. Not sure if the code is still working—a friend of mine had some difficulties tonight—but worth a shot. Oh, and you’ll have to hurry—the sale ends tomorrow. Happy shopping and I hope you find some fun additions for your homeschooling / afterschooling!

So my very tentative, no-doubt-will-be-altered-as-we-go-along plan for Daegan’s grade 4 year is as follows: (I’d love feedback if you’ve used any of these!)

Math: Math-U-See finish Gamma (multiplication), start Delta (division). Various Critical Thinking Company (CTC) books as a supplement: Math Analogies, Balance Math, Mathematical Reasoning. Games, books, online math fun, like Tux Math. Aiming to start Life of Fred: Fractions, in the new year.

Logic: Logic Countdown. Various CTC books as supplement: Building Thinking Skills, Mind Benders. Analogy Challenges and Perplexors from Mindware.

Language Arts: All About Spelling 2 (learning along with Gareth), Growing with Grammar 3. Reading Detective and Language Smarts from CTC, along with ‘riddle/puzzle’ books like Word Benders. And a bajillion books for both solo reading and me reading aloud to the boys. Audio books too.

Languages and Etymology: English from the Roots Up cards, Word Roots software from CTC, Rummy Roots game. A smattering of French and Spanish from some introductory videos found here. Possibly a French or Spanish class as well.

Writing: Handwriting Without Tears, lots of free cursive practice (like when doing spelling words from All About Spelling). We are also going to start typing with Dance Mat Typing from the BBC (and possibly Tux Typing, a free download). 

History/Geography: Our focus will be on Canada.  I am still sorting out resources here, but so far have My First History of Canada (Dickie), Canada, My Country (Ward), Canada: A People’s History DVD series, The Kids Book of Canada, Wow Canada!: Exploring This Land from Coast to Coast to Coast, New Updated Edition, and That’s Very Canadian! Selected novels from the Dear Canada and/or Canadian Flyer series, as well as this amazing list here. Kayak magazine. We may also include some material on Ancient cultures (esp. Greece) and world geography (Geography songs).

Science: We eat, live, and breathe science in this house, and will continue our less structured approach of nature walks, educational videos, and the occasional experiment or kit. I am pulling together resources for a units on the human body and magnets, as the boys have expressed a particular interest in these topics.

Arts: drama class at Evergreen Theatre again. Simply Music program for piano. Do-it-ourselves visual arts using the Smart About Art book series (like this one here), Raimondo’s Art Explorers series of books on art styles (like this one here), and The Artist’s Specials DVD series (like this one here) as inspiration for projects. Possibly additional in-person classes/workshops as well. Attending various performances (plays, music, dance, etc.)

Physical Education / Health: karate, swimming, Xbox Kinect. Looking for options now that Daegan has outgrown Sportball (most classes in our area end at age 8). Helping shop and cook healthy foods.

Feedback welcome—and I’d love to hear about your plans for your kids next year too! 

My impish son, with a handful of worms after digging in the back garden. Hard to believe some days that this is the same boy asking for more, more, more Mom!

There are a few special squares: if you land on a number square (2, 3, 6 etc.), you roll the operations die and move forward (+) or backwards ( – ). If you land on an evens or odds square, you roll a number die and move forward if you roll a matching number (e.g., 4 if you land on evens); otherwise, no move. And to exit the endless loop, you must land exactly on the ‘exit’ square. The boys and I had a fun time playing a quick round:

Well, except when Daegan got frustrated rolling 2 – 2.

Overall, I think this is quite a good game for maths practice, particularly for boys. You could easily create something similar, of course, but my two like the swamp setting and animal pieces, and I bought the game by cashing in airmiles for gift cards, so I can’t complain. I like that the game is quick to play (10 minutes or so), and has very intuitive rules that the kids picked up easily (in fact, they were able to explain to Jim how to play the game after playing only once)—meaning they can play it alone. The downside is the game is one of pure chance, no strategy / skill is involved except math facts practice. But as I can hear them playing another round on their own in the family room as I type this, I have to declare this game a success.    

Well, here’s part of our solution…:

…giving each boy 12 buckets to fill with workbooks, games and so on. The buckets are easy to insert and remove, and can be taken out completely if a child wants to take his materials to work in another room—or outside, as we did today, with crazy warm 22C (72F) weather in November! It’s part of the Trofast system from IKEA, intended for children’s toys, but I think a great solution for homeschoolers, or anyone looking for a storage system kids can use themselves. We’re going to live with this for a bit and then see if we need a few more shelves and bins.

I’d love to hear what works for you in your homeschooling to help keep things organized.

My kids were quickly engrossed, as you can tell by the looks on their faces—and their tongues!

One great feature of this activity, for our purposes, is that it encourages tenacity and a stick-to-it attitude. There are many times where the shape will not be created without some mistakes made in a trial-and-error fashion. Finally, a concrete way to demonstrate to my kids that there is nothing wrong with making mistakes—we all do. And they are meant to be learned from! Here’s Gareth going down a wrong road:

By card 18 even I had to pause a minute and use some trial and error in solving the shape; my mind’s eye just doesn’t “see” how 2 large squares, 1 small square, 1 triangle, and 4 diamonds make a house:

After card 18 there are a few ‘transition’ cards, in which you are no longer given the tiles needed to solve the shape; rather, a few tiles are filled in on the large grey shape. Here, the boys need to create a large triangle, and are told only that there are two small diamonds—the green and blue—in the two spots you see them covering:

What tile shapes do they need? And where should they go? Here’s the boys partway through a solution:

At this point they decided something didn’t look right, and fine tuned. It didn’t take long to sort it all out:

Another great feature of this activity, for our purposes, is that Gareth (age 5) finds it slightly easier than Daegan (age does, something that wasn’t a huge surprise to me as I noted Gareth’s stronger spatial / building skills as a toddler. But it is so nice to again have something concrete to demonstrate to Daegan, for whom learning to read was about as difficult as learning to breathe or walk, that  different people have different strengths and “gifts”.

The set progresses to cards where no tile hints are given, as below. This particular card provided a funny moment as well. We all puzzled over what to make of it, Rorschach test fashion:

In the end, Gareth felt it was a cat on roller skates. Daegan, however, thought it made more sense turned sideways as a rooster.

I kind of favour the cat on roller skates myself.   If you get a chance to try them, Mighty Mind makes a fun addition to math lessons. There is a follow-up set called Super Mind (US) as well. Perhaps Santa will see fit to bring it in a few months.

Daegan is now working on multiplication in his math (Math U See Gamma), but does not yet have a completely solid grasp on his addition and subtraction facts. I wanted to new ways to get such practice in, without sheet after sheet like:

9 + 7 =           6 + 5 =          8 + 8 =          5 + 3 =           6 + 7 = ………

I found Balance Math and More, which gives practice in basic facts while also introducing algebra in pictorial form. Daegan LOVES them. Here’s one of his completed pages from the book:

They have two other kinds of problems in addition to ones based on keeping scales balanced: Inside Out Math and Tic Tac Math. I gave him a page of “Inside Out Math” problems to do, with no instructions, just asked him to look things over and see if he could puzzle out what he was to do to solve them. I was very pleased to find he stuck with the task and in just a few minutes had worked out what was being asked of him, and the strategy he needed to follow to solve Problem 1. He saw that he couldn’t solve for b right away, as there was not sufficient information given. He realized you needed to solve for c or d first, using the given facts that a=1 and a+c=6, or a+d=3. Here’s his completed page:

More sample pages from Level 1 (grades 2-5) of Balance Math and More can be found here. If you have a child that loves puzzles and riddles, but find most math drill boring, you may want to give these a try.

We watched one on Belts & Gears, a nice extension of the activities we’ve been doing in the science crates class at the Calgary Home Schoolers Association. The DVD series explains physics concepts and technological application in cartoon format, with characters living on Mammoth Island. Each DVD is quite short, engaging, and focussed. There are 26 DVDs in the series:

Ballooning Belts and Gears
Cooling
Electricity
Engines
Flight
Floating
Friction
Heat
Inclined Planes
Levers
Light
Magnets
Musical Instruments
Photography
Pressure
Pulleys
Pumps
Screws
Sensors
Sinking
Sound
Springs
Steam Power
Telecommunications
Wheels and Axles

I highly recommend finding the series at the library (local folks, Calgary Public Library has them), as it is quite pricey and hard to find details on. Amazon.uk has some customer reviews here, but that’s about all I could find. I suggest trying one or two and seeing if your kids like them. Mine do, but I think it’s due to the presence of cartoon mammoths on the island as much as the science learning.  

Note that the DVD series is based on the very popular The Way Things Work  (Canada) (US) book by David McCauley. It’s now available in an updated version.

And there are so many other excellent games out there. Gareth and I played 2 rounds of Blink (US), a superb card game I first played at my friend Tiffany’s house in Nebraska last month. To play, you deal out all the cards evenly between the players, and the goal is to get rid of your pile of cards first. You keep 3 cards in your hand at any given time, and can put a card down if it matches one of the face-up cards along at least one characteristic: shape, number, or colour. The game is simple, quick to play and so easy that Gareth (age 5) was able to play right away. And it is great fun!

There are 60 cards in a deck (meaning you can play with anywhere from 1-6 players easily), with 6 shapes—triangle, star, flower, crescent, zigzag, teardrop; 5 numbers—there are 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 of a given shape per card; and 6 colours—blue. yellow, red, grey, brown, green.

When you play, each player turns one card from their pile face-up, and you can lay one of the cards from your hand on top it matches in colour, shape, or number. The conventional game is played as a contest of speed, where the player who more quickly gets rid of their cards wins (similar to the game Snap or Speed many of us played as children).

The game Blink can be adapted as well, to make things a bit fairer between players of different ages or skill levels. Variants we have tried include giving more cards to older players, and allowing older players to match only one or two characteristics, but not all 3 (e.g., can only play a card if it matches shape or number, but can’t match on colour). You can also play this as a much calmer game, taking turns laying cards and saying out loud what characteristic you are matching. Variants of this calm version, which is a good introduction for the very young, include playing a “cheat” version (seeing if they can catch you “cheating”—e.g., laying a card that matches in colour but saying “shape!”), or allowing the younger players a bonus turn if they can lay a card that matches more than one characteristic. For example, looking at this picture again:

if one laid the brown star on the yellow star and said "shape and number”, one would earn a bonus turn to play another card. Similarly for playing the blue zigzags on the brown zigzags. But if the player lay the green flowers on the green teardrops, no extra turn would be given, as it only matches on one characteristic, colour. I quite like this calmer, more strategy-based version myself.  Happy playing!

Made in 1959 and only recently released on DVD, this is one video that ALL homeschoolers should see—we loved it so much, we’ll be buying our own copy shortly. The short video (27 minutes) follows Donald Duck through Mathmagic land, where he learns about all kinds of ways math is involved in our lives, from music to games to nature, etc. It’s fast-paced, funny, tremendously educational (“all that stuff is math?”) and yet never preachy. My favourite line is when Donald says, “Mathematics is so much more than 2 times 2!”

The video begins with Donald walking through a strange land (parents note: he is carrying a gun, which is never used or part of the story), where he meets some strange creatures: a pencil bird that writes numbers and plays a quick game of tic-tac-toe (naughts and crosses) with him, and a “shape bird” that quotes the digits of pi. He then hears the voice of the “spirit of adventure” (narrated voice over; we never see him) that tells Donald he is in Mathmagic land. When Donald protests that “mathematics is for eggheads” that spirit shows Donald many ways in which math enriches our everyday life, beginning with music. “You like music, don’t you Donald?” Suddenly Donald is whisked to ancient Greece to meet the Pythagoreans, who discovered the basis for our 8-note (octave) musical scale: it’s a matter of fractions of lengths of string. Music is played (both animated and real-world), including an amusing Donald Duck / Pythagoreans jam session.  Well, that did it—my kids (and I!) were hooked!

As Donald goes through Mathmagic land, he learns more about geometry (golden ratio), how various shapes and ratios appear over and over again in nature, how mathematics is used in games like chess and three-cushion billiards, in sports (basketball is a game of circles and rectangles, baseball is played on a diamond), the connections between math and science / technology, infinity, and finally ending with the quote from Galileo: “Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.” The show appeals to young and old, and as it is re-watched through the years different things will be understood, different connections made. Daegan, for example, loved the part about chess, as Donald turned into Alice in Wonderland and met various characters from that story, as the spirit of adventure talked about how Lewis Carroll used a life-sized chess game in one of his stories.

I’ve said enough: get thee to a library, a bookstore, see if it’s on Netflix…but WATCH THIS MOVIE. Your kids, and you—even if not wild about math—will love it. Here’s some pics to give you a taste of it (hover mouse over pics for details)

Happy viewing!

The boys liked them, and I thought them to be pretty good as well: not as stellar as his Science Guy series, but certainly better than many math DVDs, and there were a few excellent bits. Each DVD has 4 short (5 to 6 minute) segments on one math topic. On the Pre-Algebra DVD, my favourites segments were Exponents, which featured the only song on either DVD (a shame, as we LOVED his songs on the science DVDs) and Signed Numbers, about positive and negative numbers and the number line. On the Algebra DVD, my favourite was Balancing Equations, which cleverly used cupcakes and an unknown number of cupcakes inside decorative boxes to solve for x. Even Gareth, at age 5, could figure out that each cupcake box held 2 cupcakes (x = 2).

The DVDs are recommended for grade 6 and up, and include extra materials (teacher’s guide, assessment game, etc.) that we did not investigate. But even for the younger crowd, its was a fun way to introduce a topic (algebra) that is often fraught with anxiety, which Nye’s friendly, familiar, and playful countenance entirely dissipates. Happy viewing!