Math and Word Families

Well it has been awhile since I have posted about our lessons. We have been very good about working on them everyday. After we finished our Alphabet Journey, we started our Math block that includes all kinds of fun games. We made our own math board game, taped a hopscotch board in the kitchen, played bean bag and clapping games and solved math problems. Ryan seems to really enjoy math. Next week he told me he wants to work with the Math Gnomes again.

Our Math board game. Basically we rolled the dice and added up them up, and moved our pieces to the cooresponding number spot. Simple, yet Ryan kept wanting to play it many times!


Ones :

Two's :
Three's :
Four's :

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Word Families
We had worked on the individual letters for some time now and I felt it was time to move on to see if Ryan was ready. He is and is enjoying the word families. He has caught on pretty quick and is even able to add words before I come to them. We spend time on the families and their words and then Ryan and I work together to form a sentence from them and draw a picture to go with it.

AT family. We started with this family and wrote them on the chalk board. Here is the sentence he came up with.

AD family.


AN family :
This time we added a few extra words with the an in the middle of the word. He also wanted to add a bonus word at the bottom - panda.
This was the sentence he came up with. He was not in the mood for drawing today. He even knew it, because he told me that I would not like his drawing. UGh - that makes me feel horrible as a mom. I try not to be over critical, but there are days when I do tell him that I can tell he does not feel like drawing, writting ect... . I have showed him in the past the difference between when he wants to and when he does not - although I have never criticed his work. When he does it quickly and sloppy then asks me if I like it , what do I say? I dont want to automaticall say "good job" even when obviously it was rushed and not thought about. But I do not want to tell him I think it is horrible. I think that is the hard part for me , Is letting go and learning the right thing to say to encourage him without hurting his self esteem. Giving him confidence and the ability to critize his work, without worry of feeling like a failure. I feel it is so imprortant to be able to judge our own work and know in our hearts whether or not we have done a good job and if not be able to accept that "today was just not a good drawing,handwritting, ect day" Anyway..... I got off on a tangent there : )





We also spent lots of time playing, hangin out with friends, learning about electricity, listening to The Magic Tree House books of tapes

Cooking:

And starting a weaving project