We Read Books:
We read a lot of books (all featured in the widget above) about money. The more we learned, the more TB wanted to know. I particularly liked Shel Silverstein’s poem “Smart” that’s featured in his book Where the Sidewalk Ends. It is a fun tale of all the great trades that a child makes with his money. It’s a great discussion starter for you and your child. There are several video presentations and lesson plans to go along with the poem online.

One of the things that really seemed to concern TB is that the value of coins doesn’t match their size. He is thoroughly convinced that the dime should be the value of a penny since it is the smallest coin. He’s also not a fan of the half dollar being larger than the dollar coin. One of the reasons that I really like the Coin Counting Book is because it shows the relative sizes and real appearance of the coins. TB has accepted all of the correct values of the coins, but he really dislikes the system. Can’t say that I blame him. He’s also lobbying for a metric system for time – good luck with that, little man!

We Played Games:
We played Triple Play Math Money as Alvin looked on – TB has a serious “Chipmunks” fascination. In this game, you compete against one another to get the most matches of coins and prize cards. TB learned a lot about sportsmanship playing games this spring because he didn’t always win and he wasn’t always happy about it. We had a lot of fun, and he learned a few hard lessons along the way.

TB used his Learning Resources Teaching Cash Register extensively. I like this toy because it has a bunch of different modes and can reinforce money recognition as well as adding and subtracting. I wish the cash drawer was larger, though. There’s only room for three kinds of bills, but it comes with four denominations. We also have a Teaching Cash Register Activity Book that I think I bought separately when we first got the register a couple of years ago. It has some good extension activities for writing prices, making change, multiplying to get prices of multiple items and the like. The cash register is definitely one of our most heavily used learning toys. Here’s TB working on adding coins for use in the cash register:

Tornado Boy played with coin cards. They’re a self-correcting set of cards that has the child match the coins shown to their correct total value. I love this type of exercise because he doesn’t need my help to know if he has them all right. This type of activity allows me to get other lesson elements prepped, unfortunately these cards (originally from Learning Resources) no longer seem to be available.

We absolutely loved Cash Cow for the iPod. This was where TB really had a breakthrough in how coins add up to other values. When you click on five pennies, they magically become a nickel in the game. The same is true for any other valid combination of up to ten coins. Here’s a preview of the game play:

We Watched a Few Videos:
There are several money related videos on Brain Pop Jr. if you have a membership or access through your school. Their content is top notch and they have additional learning activities based on the video content as well. If you have an iPod, iPad or iPhone or use Google Chrome, I definitely recommend getting the free Brain Pop daily featured movie app. The content is older than the Jr. site, but still done very well and worth watching.

TB watched Money & Making Change by Rock n Learn in the car several times. I never saw it in full, but he loved it. This video caused another small rabbit trail for us as TB was fascinated by the Golden Dollar coin featuring Sacajawea. We ended up reading about Lewis & Clark’s expedition and doing a side history lesson to learn more about her, including reading the Value Tales book about her called “Adventure”.

Here’s a preview of the Money & Making Change video:

We Used Real Money:
We reinforced the “rule of halves” that my Father-in-Law introduced to me last year. Tornado Boy desperately wanted a Crayola Magic Light Brush toy that the reviews were not very good on. Santa Claus failed to deliver back in December, so TB got to pay for half of it. Here he is counting out the dollars that he had in his piggy bank and then proudly displaying his purchase:

We talked about real money, its history and some of the new security features of our bills. Tornado Boy and his Dad designed their own currency – the $11,000 bill featuring a photo of TB (not sure where it’s wandered off to at the moment). We have started collecting the state quarters to learn more about U.S. Geography. Each time we get change somewhere it’s like a treasure hunt to see what kind of quarters we may have gotten. There are an amazing amount of free resources online if you Google “elementary school money lesson plans”.

We also opened a non-college savings account for TB. We were lucky enough to hit a special with an online bank that gave a $25 bonus when you opened an account so that TB could see “real” (though unrealistic) rewards of putting your money in the bank. We talked a lot about saving, spending and giving your money.

As TB’s money fascination was winding down, we had the following conversation in the car one day:

• Me: TB, I have a question for you. If you went into the store and you wanted to buy something that cost 80 cents, but you only had a dollar, how much change would the clerk need to give you?
• TB: (thinks for a moment) 2 dimes.
• Me: Ok, what if the clerk didn’t have 2 dimes, what else could she give you?
• TB: (thinks again) Well, she could give me a half dollar and then I could give her 3 dimes.

I was completely floored. I was totally expecting four nickels or twenty pennies. Nice way to think outside the box, little man! I was really, really pleased with this rabbit trail. It was not at all what I had planned for us, but I really feel like Tornado Boy learned some valuable lessons and had a lot of fun doing it. I’m curious to see what his next fascination will be.

I’m also linking this post to the math lessons on love2learn2day.

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.

MathRider is a program that helps your child to drill/study their math facts for addition, subtraction, multiplication or division. This program, which is based on the Adobe Air platform can be on Windows, MAC and Linux system. The program was created by an Australian company called Sharper Edge Pty Ltd. The standard price is $49.95 (U.S.), but it is currently (as of 2/24/11) on sale for $37 via instant download. In order to purchase the program, you must be able to pay through PayPal. The program includes a 30 day money back guarantee. Any child requiring help in learning their math facts could use the program, but it’s probably best suited to children ages 6-10.

The following video will give you an idea of the structure of the program. Each child is given a magical “quest” and then is rewarded when they are able to correctly complete 30 problems in a given area with a time limit. The product recommends you pick one type of math subject and work through it sequentially – through the easy/medium/advanced levels and then to master. Here’s a sneak peek at how it works:

As a parent, my very favorite part of the program is the visual progress chart that you can see for your child. The chart gives you a quick way to assess how your child is doing what they still need to work on. It also shows you the specific facts that are a challenge for your child, so that you can work to reinforce them.

Some of the best features of MathRider:

• The child can use the “practice” mode to learn the program without impacting their scores/statistics.
• You can use the program for basic facts in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
• The child’s status is shown after each round. You can see how long it took them to answer each question in relative terms. If you hover of the bar for a specific problem, you can see their performance on that question vs. past answers for the same problem.
• Over time, the game remembers which problems were missed and will continue to repeat those problems as you progress through the quests.
• Multiple players (up to ten) can each have their own accounts.

A few things that give me a bit of concern:

• You can’t be working on two different operations at once. If you want to work on a new division quest, any work on your current quest will be erased.
• The number of required problems to complete a quest can’t be adjusted – 30 problems per round is a lot for a really young child.
• I ran through several of the multiplication tests to see how the program adapted to me. It did speed up the individual questions that I saw, but even though I showed full multiplication mastery for all problems through number 12 according to their chart; I still had to answer another 300 problems to complete the quest.
• The placement of your typed answer vs. the problem that you’re given is a little awkward. You can’t always really see both the problem and the answer at the same time, so you may mis-type and answer and not know it.

Overall we enjoyed trying out MathRider and it definitely helped Tornado Boy continue to learn his addition facts.

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of MathRider, you can visit our Crew blog.

Thanks so much for reading!

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.

Disclaimer: I am a member of The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew for 2010-2011 and receive free products and services in exchange for a thorough and honest review. Though I am compensated with free products, I am not compensated in the form of cash for my reviews. My reviews will always reflect my honest opinions, findings, beliefs and experiences with the products and services that I have received.

I wanted to share this video, and I apologize in advance, because the quality is pretty horrendous. We were in a diner and it was loud and I’m definitely not cut out to be a cinematographer by any means. I just really feel that this shows so much of TB’s innate personality – outgoing, friendly and incredibly curious.

I’m getting more and more glimpses lately into how TB’s mind works. The wheels are always turning, from the moment he gets up until the time when he finally rests at night. He plays hard and he sleeps hard. He is getting more creative as the days go by. The other day he called Tornado Dad and I into the bathroom to show us his new “hat”. Besides the fact that he couldn’t see it from the vantage point that we could, I thought that this was pretty clever:

My final tidbit actually happened tonight. We were playing around with Dreambox Learning. It’s a K-3 Online Math program that I’d read several reviews of recently. Tornado Boy is totally loving it. He’s spent about 5 hours with it and is still doing their “assessment” exercises. So far their program has him in the early 2nd grade area. I’ve been sort of surprised at some of the things that he’s been able to speed through – like comparing 3 digit numbers. I’ve also been somewhat surprised at some of the things that have been more challenging – like working with a number line. It is interesting for me to watch. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with him from a math perspective. I’ve been pretty resistant to just drilling the facts with him because I don’t want him to get bored. He also seems to have a more natural grasp on multiplication than his does on addition. He seems to like to play with the mental math facts more with multiplication.

Anyway… the Dreambox trial has a countdown that it shows each time that you log in and it tells you how many days are left in your trial. It also is on display on the top of the play screen as well. This seems particularly troublesome to TB. I think that he’s worried that Dreambox will just disappear at the end of the trial. I told him that we’ll consider purchasing a membership if we like it enough. Tonight after we finished our work, he asked if he could play with our Math-U-See blocks and I said sure. About a minute later he asked me to come over, that he had something to show me and I found this:

Tornado Boy decided that he wanted to show me exactly when Dreambox was going to go away. We have ten days left in our trial, and he represented each day with a corresponding Math-U-See block. He told me that the blue 10 block was today, and after today, we would only have 9 days left, the day after tomorrow, we would have 8, then two days after tomorrow we would have 7 and so on. I was intrigued, so I asked him what today was, and he said “Monday”. I said if today is Monday, what day will our trial run out? He counted out the days by name, through next Wednesday and then announced dramatically that on next Thursday, there would be no more Dreambox. I told him not to worry about it just yet.

I was truly impressed by TB’s conceptual understanding of math and dates. He’s still using his fingers for most addition problems, but he clearly gets how it all works together. I love that he’s really enjoying and soaking in math, but I’m really wondering what to work on with him next. I’m going to link this post to the Hip Homeschool Hop. Please feel free to leave me any suggestions! Thanks!

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.

I was asked to review the Times Alive program as part of my participation in the TOS Homeschool Crew. The Times Alive program employs excellent usage of mnemonic device to help children to remember their times table facts. The program is based on the book “Times Tables the Fun Way” by City Creek Press. The program uses stories, songs and quizzes to teach and reinforce the times tables.

Here is a sample of one of the songs that the program has – this one is to help the child remember what 6X6 is:

You can see other sample lessons here.

I was a little bit concerned about how Tornado Boy would handle his exposure to the Times Alive program. He is definitely young compared to the target audience for the program. Typically the program would be used by 7-10 year olds. We spent our first session using the “Try it” feature so that Tornado Boy could play around without having his scores recorded. The program assumes that the child understands the basics of how multiplication works and that they just need to memorize the facts. I spent the next couple of weeks after we played with the program explaining how multiplication works conceptually. He has a pretty good grasp on addition, so he picked up on how multiplication works pretty quickly. The question for me really was could he grasp enough to be able to reliably learn the times tables.

The above picture is one of the “reward” sections of the program where the child gets to paint a scene from one of the lessons. In this one, the three blind mice each have three tails – giving them nine. The program states that “blind” and “nine” rhyme. I find that to be a bit of a stretch, but Tornado Boy certainly remembers the fact, which is what is important. He also had fun with this little painting scene.

We had a few issues with the navigation while using the Times Alive quiz sections. If the child does one of the problems out of order during a quiz, the “enter” key on the keyboard will no longer work correctly to take them to the next problem.

One of the stated program objectives of Times Alive is that the “Student will develop a positive attitude towards math prompted by the success and entertainment value of the program design.” I was surprised at the 3X4 video clip (Cheers at Southgate) that starts out with a classroom of sullen kids with the heading above them “None of the kids at South School liked math.” I was a bit taken aback and I definitely didn’t want to give my son the idea that it’s okay to act in that way.

Even though I had a few reservations about the program, I can say that it really does work and it works well. Tornado Boy now knows his times tables for 0′s, 1′s, 2′s, 5′s, 10′s and some of the other facts based on our work since starting this program. For some of the facts, he will recall the answer to the problem if you remind him about the story that he saw. For example, if I ask him “what is 4 times 4″, and he gets stuck, I can ask him how old you have to be to drive a car and then he’ll say “it’s 16″. The program shows a teenaged boy driving a 4X4 truck, and says that he has to be 16 to not have to walk up the hill. Once that association is solid, TB is unlikely to forget the facts. We will definitely finish using ths program to completely TB’s times table facts.

The Times Alive learning game software is available for download for PC or MAC for $44.95 or via CD for $48.95. The CD will work on a PC or MAC. City Creek Press also offers a variety of kits that include multiple items at a discount.

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of Times Alive, you can visit our Crew blog.

Thanks so much for reading!

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.

Disclaimer: I am a member of The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew for 2010-2011 and receive free products and services in exchange for a thorough and honest review. Though I am compensated with free products, I am not compensated in the form of cash for my reviews. My reviews will always reflect my honest opinions, findings, beliefs and experiences with the products and services that I have received.

Tornado Boy and I were able to try out a program called Math Facts Now! as part of my membership in the TOS Homeschool Crew. This software (available for $15.95 for either download or on CD-ROM) can help your child learn addition, subtraction, multiplication or division facts. The software is Windows-based only, it does not work on MAC or LINUX computers. The software allows you to setup user accounts for multiple children. They share the list of lessons that you create for them. It is probably best for children who are 6-10 or so depending on the strength of their math skills.

When you first set up the software, you’ll need to create an account for each child. Next, you create lessons. You select one of the four areas of math, such as addition, and select the types of problems that you want your child to work on (such as adding +5). You name the lesson and then set the criteria for the lesson – how fast the child must answer the question (anywhere from 2 to 60 seconds), how many times the child must type out the entire problem if the answer it wrong or too slowly (between 2 and 10 times), and how many correct answers must be given to complete the lesson. You also have the option of entering in a “reward” message. I had a message that seemed to be too long and it didn’t display properly. The message will display each time the child completes that lesson, so make sure that you really mean it! You can edit the reward, speed, correction and number of answers for any lesson later, but not the base criteria for the test. Meaning that if you chose to test your muliplication by threes, you cannot later change that to be threes and fours. You’d have to delete it or just create a new lesson.

I did not see a limit to the number of lessons that you can create. It is important to give the lessons a meaningful name in a short space, though. You get about 25 characters per lesson name that you can see on the screen.

Once the child selects the lesson, the testing starts. This is a non-frills environment, very similar to using flash cards, except that the program remembers what your child got wrong and it automatically reinforces those problems. Your child will be required to re-type the entire equation at least twice and then they will be given the problem again later in the session with a warning to help them remember that it’s a problem that they missed before. The program also creates reports at the end so that you can see the number of problems that your child missed and how long it took them on average to answer the problems. If you click through the detail report, you can see the specific problems that were missed. The reports make it easy to see how your child is improving over time.

Things that I like about the program:

• Lessons are very easy to set up.
• It is nice that you can easily set up multiple users of the program.
• The reports are easy to read. You don’t have to sit and look over your child’s shoulder.
• I like that I can control the number of problems in a lesson.
• I like that the child can use the enter key to submit their answer rather than having to use the mouse.
• I like that the program automatically re-tests questions that the child has answered incorrectly.

Things that could use some work:

• There is no parent-secured area for the program. My kid is insanely curious and he can easily delete or change lessons. He could also log in as another child since there is no password security. Not an issue for my single child household, but this could be an issue for multi-child families.
• I’d like the option to not have a time limit for each problem. My child is young enough that I’m okay with him taking the time that he needs to come up with the correct answer. He’s forced to type out the problem if he takes too much time.
• I would like the ability to test addition and subtraction together to reinforce their relationship, but you can only have one or the other for each lesson.

Overall, I like the program. It is simple and effective. Tornado Boy tends to like more “visual” and game-like lessons, but he definitely learned from this. We haven’t been using flash cards, but I can see this program being helpful as we get to the point where he’s memorizing his times tables. If you’d like to try out Math Facts Now! for yourself, they have a free trial that you can download or try online on your Windows-based machine.

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of this Math Facts Now!, you can visit our Crew blog.

Thanks so much for reading!

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.

Disclaimer: I am a member of The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew for 2010-2011 and receive free products and services in exchange for a thorough and honest review. Though I am compensated with free products, I am not compensated in the form of cash for my reviews. My reviews will always reflect my honest opinions, findings, beliefs and experiences with the products and services that I have received.

We were recently given a trial membership for Time4Learning to review as part of my participation in the TOS Homeschool Crew. We already have a Time4Learning membership, but for review purposes, I was asked to take a look at the Pre-K to Kindergarten curriculum. I was curious how my son would react to it since he was already using some of the higher level Time4Learning modules. I was pleasantly surprised when he really enjoyed it. The Pre-K1 section – that my son calls “Time4Learning Bags” due to the look of the interface – is divided into topics such as “Feelings”, “Colors”, “Shapes” and Tornado Boy’s personal favorite “Vehicles”.

The Pre-K2 section (shown above) continues with more in-depth treatment of several of the PK1 themes, plus adds more advanced topics such as time and measurement. Each topic typically contains a story or interactive content such as a song along with activities such as matching, painting and making choices. Tornado Boy particularly enjoys the topics that have a music component, like the “Wheels on the Bus” song that’s part of the PK1 Vehicles activity.

The games in the PK1 and PK2 have minimal interface and instruction. This is typically good for a pre-reader, but I found it frustrating when TB wanted help doing something and there were no tool tips for me to work with. In general, a preschooler only needs basic mouse skills in order to use the Pre-K levels of time for learning. The content is fun, educational and easy to deal with.

The Kindergarten curriculum is significantly different from the Pre-K modules. There is a lot more walking the child through the modules and introductory instruction in understanding and using the interface that was absent at the Pre-K levels. The process can be quite tedious, especially if the child already has good mouse skills. One of the things that frustrated me is the “this (ring) means that you have assignments” on the launch page (see above graphic). I wanted to be able to assign certain modules to my son and send him on his way, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to use the feature. It took extensive digging in the background Parent area of the site to see that the feature is not currently in use. I really wish that it would not display. It’s confusing to both parents and students.

The Kindergarten content is divided into Language Arts, Math and a few introductory Science lessons that are actually intended to be part of the 1st grade curriculum. One of my favorite things about Time4Learning is that while there are suggested sequences of lessons, the children are not required to follow that sequence. In several instances, we started with the “test” section of a topic to see if the individual lessons were worth spending our time on, or if we should move on. Also available for the Kindergarten units are extensive lesson plans and worksheets in pdf form. They are in the parent login area of the Time4Learning site under the “additional resources” header. I like having this type of resource for the content because I can review the content in advance and select items that match things that I am teaching in our homeschool. The worksheets typically use the characters that are in the animated T4L sequences online, so they’re familiar to the student. These enrichment materials are not available at the PK1 and PK2 levels.

One of the things that I really like about Time4Learning is the score reporting system. I typically sit with my son as he completes lessons, but I do like that I can easily review what he’s completed and see if there are areas that require review. To access the reporting, you’ll need to click on the “bookbag” labeled “My Portfolio” on the assignments/”launch” screen. From there, you can select reporting by category and time range. The report is displayed on-screen, but can also be saved to a pdf file for printing or later review. Each lesson, quiz and test is shown in detail. You can link to the individual lesson to see the content that the student was shown. The quizzes and tests actually display the student’s answers on the quiz as well. The student can review any content at any time. I love the level of detail that the reporting affords. I feel confident that I can easily identify areas that my son needs more work on.

A parent can opt to allow their child to play on the “Playground” after their lessons are done. There are time settings in the Parent Login area that allow the parent to set the minimum lesson duration and the maximum playground time, either for today or for all sessions going forward. The Playground is the part of the site that I have the biggest beef with. Many of the activities are not at all educational. There is also access to commercial sites like PBS Kids that I want to control my child’s access to. I also don’t want him to waste a half hour playing “Asteriods”. It seems like this section needs to some work.

Some suggestions to improve Time4Learning:

• Offer “tool tips” (pop-up text) for lesson content in the parent areas and the reporting. There is an icon guide, but I can’t easily view it and the reports at the same time.
• Allow parents to constrain “Playground” activities by type, or perhaps select only specific games to access.
• I think that there are a lot of resources on the Time4Learning parent site that aren’t that easy to find. They really do add a lot of value, so it might help to do more to “feature” them.
• The science section doesn’t have the same feel and presentation as the other sections. The tests are harder to take and require more specific mouse skills as the answers require selecting a small radio button rather just touching the object beside it to automatically select the radio button. This can be problematic for small children. I also found several “resources” linked in the science area that were dead links to Internet content external to the Time4Learning site.

Overall, my son loves the site. He was just as happy playing around with the Pre-K content as he is learning in the 1st and 2nd grade areas. In my opinion, the content is typically well-developed (especially with the extra resources available at the Kindergarten level and beyond) and it seems to be a lot of fun for my child. I really appreciate the flexibility that Time4Learning offers. I like that you have access to 3 years of lessons at any time. I like that we can do the lessons in the sequence that we choose and repeat lessons as desired. I wouldn’t use Time4Learning as my entire curriculum, but it’s worthwhile as an enhancement, especially if I pick and choose the lessons in advance to coordinate with what we’re already working on. It also has helped me to “catch” a few things that I hadn’t thought to teach my son yet, so that was valuable as well.

Time4Learning has varying costs depending on the number of people in your family who want to use the program and typically offers introductory offers as well as lesson demos on their site. The program is entirely online, with no additional software needed. You can access your account from any computer with Internet access. If you need to adjust the grade level (PK-8th) for your child, it is easy to contact T4L and have them make the adjustment for you, keeping three grade levels of content available at all times. There is a great Hints & Helps page here that gives great insight into using the site.

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of this product, you can visit our Crew blog. Different crew members reviewed Time4Learning affiliated products such as Time4Writing and Spelling City, so you can check to see if any are of interest to you as well.

Thanks for reading!

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.

Disclaimer: I am a member of The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew for 2010-2011 and receive free products and services in exchange for a thorough and honest review. Though I am compensated with free products, I am not compensated in the form of cash for my reviews. My reviews will always reflect my honest opinions, findings, beliefs and experiences with the products and services that I have received.

We are lucky enough to have a play bank center at our local Children’s Museum. It is a great place for cooperative role playing for groups of children. I love the oversize coins on the wall. Tornado Boy loves to play here. He loves being either a banker or a customer.

Tornado Boy waiting for his first customer.

Tornado Boy presents his savings passbook.

TB doles out money from the vault.

Trading bills with another banker.

It’s pretty easy to setup a play bank at home. We have a great play cash register from Learning Resources. It comes with bills, coins and a credit card that are great to use for playing bank and other money games. We are using the bills and coins to explore adding money and the concept of whether TB can “afford” to purchase something that he wants. It’s a good idea to alternate who gets to be the banker and who gets to be the customer so that the child can see the game from both perspectives.

Additional Resources:

• The Coin Counting Book is a good visual resource for adding coins.
• For more advanced money lessons, the U.S Mint has a nice selection of lesson plans that you can use to help teach your children more about money, too.
• The Mint.org has information on how banks work and more advanced topics like compounding interest.
• Neat Interactive look at the new $100 bill coming out early next year.

Check out what other kids are playing at Childhood 101 and to see what other kids are working on for math, check out Math Links at Joyful Learner.

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.

We were on the road for part of this week, so our “official” school time was pretty limited. We did a lot of “car schooling”. I posted earlier in the week about our wedding trip to DC, Canada and Detroit, Michigan. The photo to the left was taken in Maryland during our trip. This mosaic sculpture was outside the restaurant where we had breakfast. Tornado Boy saw it from the window where we were sitting and wanted to go investigate after we ate. Unfortunately there wasn’t any sort of plaque on it and I couldn’t find any further information on it. The tile work was really neat, though. We’ve done foam mosaics and we once participated in a group mosaic tile at our local gardens, but we’ve never done a full tile pattern. I think I’ll put that on the bucket list for this school year. I’ve seen craft kits for them at Michael’s before. I’ll have to put a note on my to do list to save one of their coupons for it.

Science:
We attended a drop-in science class this week that was really awesome. I’ll post more about it on Sunday, but this photo is Tornado Boy holding a balloon that we were able to pass a dowel through without popping it. They had so many cool experiments set up for the kids to try out.
We also got a neat impromptu lesson in animal camouflage when we saw this Katydid on our door. If he was on the right plant, he sure would blend right in. His wings have veining identical to a leaf. We’d still hear him though, they make a tremendous amount of noise. Between the Katydids and the frogs around here, it is loud with wildlife at night.

Reading:
We turned in our Summer Reading program sheet at our local library this past week. Tornado Boy is super excited because he now has a “Star Reader” sticker on his window of the car. Unfortunately we didn’t get to Barnes and Noble yet and Borders was out of most of their free promo books, so we’ll have to try again later to complete those programs. I’m glad that we had participated in What We’re Reading for several weeks because it made it really easy to log the books that we had read on the worksheets – all I had to do was look at my blog posts.

Math:
Tornado Boy is working on memorizing his addition and subtraction facts. He can do some in his head, some on his fingers and for some others it helps to use the Math-U-See blocks. I had him do this Toucan worksheet this morning to try to evaluate where he was. He seems to know all of the +0, +1, +2 and doubles facts for addition. The remaining facts he is typically using a manipulative to solve. He taught himself subtraction, so we haven’t learned them in “families” of facts.
I’ve sort of put Math-U-See on hold for the moment and we’re mostly working on writing fluency at the moment. He can write the numbers, but he will sometimes reverse seven and the rest still require a some thought to print. He got the answers correct on this worksheet, and then I scanned it into the computer and we used the computer to do the color by number part.

Playtime:
Tornado Boy had fun doing a puppet show for me in the new studio at our Children’s Museum. They have a great selection of puppets, but he was disappointed that there was not a curtain for the stage.

He also visited the art studio for a bit of painting time. In the first one he was just experimenting with mixing colors – green, blue and yellow. In the second, he asked for my help in making a rainbow. He picked the colors using the ROYGBIV mnemonic – except that as usual, there was no indigo paint.

If you’d like to see what else happened this week, check out the “Weekly Wrap-up” at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.

The Code:

Once I had the code in place, I set out to create my first secret message for Tornado Boy. I wrote the message out in Tahoma so that I could read it, and then I changed the font to Carta so that it was all symbols. I then typed a row of underscores above it for TB to write his letters on. You may have to adjust the size of the font and underlines depending on how large your child is writing. You may want to consider large rectangles, one per letter rather than underscores. Here’s a small copy of our first puzzle:

A Puzzle to Solve:

I’d recommend breaking up sentences (or just using words depending on the child’s skill level) into multiple lines so that the child has enough room to write successfully. I printed out a large version of the code that I’m going to laminate so that we can re-use it.

Once the code is set, all you need to do is remember the fonts that you used to create it and then you can print out anything that you want in code – spelling words, quotes, facts, fun messages, etc. Have fun playing detectives!

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.

Tornado Boy is a big fan of pencil puzzles. He’s been doing dot-to-dot puzzles and word searches for the better part of a year. He recently discovered puzzles that teach you how to break a secret code where each symbol in the puzzle stands for a letter. The one above was on our coaster at a lunch at Red Robin restaurant. His writing is a little hard to read because he was using a crayon and the space is pretty small. The answer is “Chili Chili Cheeseburger”.

I love secret code puzzles because they promote several things like handwriting practice and problem-solving. Tornado Boy loves them because they’re fun! We have a couple of pencil puzzle books that have secret code puzzles in them. You can also check out a few at Squigly’s Playhouse.

Check out what other kids are playing at Childhood 101 and to see what other kids are working on for math, check out Math Links at Joyful Learner.

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.