Friday, January 7, 2011

Back At It

Well, the holiday break is over and we are back at it with our school work again. We are trying to get at least halfway through the year in all of our subjects by the end of January. Dakota is already halfway through language and language extensions. He is almost halfway through social studies. I think we will get there next week. We are way behind in science. But that is entirely my fault. I just don't like science so it is way too easy for me to say, "Let's just skip this for today." Fortunately there are not as many lessons in science so we will be able to catch up. So that leaves us with math. Dakota loves math. Or at least he did until we started working on multiplication. Now he is really struggling. Part of me wants to follow the math curriculum straight through. But I am finding it much easier to skip around with it. If we work on multiplication one day and then go on to something more interesting for a day or two, he is much more willing to work on multiplication again. One of our homeschool friends loaned us a copy of Times Tales. This book uses cute little symbols to represent the different numbers, 4 is a chair because it has four legs. The first grade class is represented by the number 6. Then it tells a story to help you remember the multiplication fact. The first grade class played musical chairs for 24 hours. 6 (the class) times 4 (the chair) equals 24. It's a great program. I think it will help a lot once we get used to using it on a regular basis. We had just started using it when the Winter Holidays started. Another thing that I am doing to help Dakota with his math skills is to let him play online math games. It's great how he can have so much fun playing the games and still be learning.

Today we are learning about being snow bound once again. On the news last night they said that we would probably only get about 2 inches of snow. We've already passed that and the worst part of the storm has not arrived here yet. Dakota loves it when it snows. Tomorrow we will start the four or five changes of clothes again as he runs in and out all day. Ah, winter. Only 74 more days until spring.

3 comments:

  1. We are starting back to our regular schedule next week - we have to log 1,000 hours per calendar year, and right now we are behind where I'd like to be. BUT...Jan, Feb and March are usually our big months for getting lots of bookwork, projects, etc. done so we should catch back up.

    I use online math games and Math Blaster (available from Scholastic) to break up math with my guys, too. There needs to be a math game for wii!

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  2. If Dakota likes earning money, another way to work on times tables is with pennies. He works out counting four groups of six, or whatever, and once he has learned the facts well enough, he gets to keep the pennies!

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  3. Hi Kathi, This is John (yes, I'm logged in as Jenn). SNOW, I was up north over the holidays (DC, NJ) and spent some time in the snow for the first time in years.

    I'm supposed to go to Boston this weekend for a family event but the weather report makes it sound unlikely. I like your site name. A lot! Reminds me of long-ago and far-away.

    john

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