Me, Me, Me

This blog is for me, me, me. So I am going to go ahead and start posting stuff even if I don't have the time or inclination to make sense. I'm going to start posting even without pictures or even if the pictures are stuck on the camera. Why not. It's my blog and I'm writing it for me.

So, today we carved pumpkins. It was fun. I picked up the pumpkins at the grocery store on Friday. I was a bit sad about not having Wander with us as we picked up pumpkins. However, we were running out of time to carve pumpkins, and Wander had expressed concern about when we would get them. I missed the experience of all four of us picking out pumpkins together, however, the girls had fun picking out their pumpkins and picking out a pumpkin for daddy.

We carved the pumpkins in the front driveway. It was chilly. I moved into a sunny spot. It went quickly. It was morning, so we didn't light candles in them and take gobs of pictures like previous years. Sad.

This fall has felt so pressed and squeezed. Too many activities. Too many worthwhile things to do. Not enough time to unwind, relax, and find my groove.

Sparkle had her Nutcracker rehearsal today. It was really stressful because she missed the previous rehearsal because we went camping. They tried on costumes, but Sparkle didn't try on hers. I was confused until Sparkle explained that a new costume would be sewn for her. Ta Da. That's why they didn't fit Sparkle for a costume. They knew I could sew and figured that it would be easiest to have me sew her costume versus having one of the other moms sew a costume.

So while I'm thrilled that I get to sew Sparkle's costume, I'm also concerned about the additional work. Only three more weeks of rehearsals.

I thought about inviting my brother to visit for Thanksgiving, but I just can't handle more this fall.

Library

Yippie. Thanks to the book selections from Brave Writer's The Wand, Glitter got interested in the Mr. Putter and Tabby books. She liked the books so much that she picked out two more from the library on her own. This is the first book series that she's shown interest in following. For once, I didn't have to coax her to pick out books, and have all my suggestions turned down for being too boyish, too babyish, too hard, or too easy.

Sparkle has been interested in "The Buddy Files" series of books from the library's Bluebonnet Book Club, so I put more books in that series on hold. One of them arrived and I picked it up from the library. Sparkle squealed when I showed it to her. I let her have the book, but only if she read it out loud in the car. When we got home I made her leave the book in the car so she could focus on finishing schoolwork. I'll let her continue reading it aloud on our way to dance class. She's pretty good at reading aloud. She does funny voices for the different characters. Oh, and I had her read aloud because I wanted to find out what happened.

Oh yea, and my librarian totally rocks. She submitted my inter-library loan request for a book even though there are only *five* copies of the book available in libraries in the USA. Yippie. Another curriculum that I can preview for homeschooling for free before deciding on buying.

Glitter's Prayer

Glitter wrote this prayer today while I did school with Sparkle. Glitter would write a little, bring it to me and read it, and then go off and add more. Eventually she taped together three pieces of paper before she was done. I have preserved her spelling, capitalization, and spacing.

*****************

In the name uf the foter and the
Lord is whith us
God thac you for oll the
thegs. That you mad.
For givus are sins.
And Love us all.
olso and in heven. Amen.
In the Lod rgod
to thak him in
are hots. Amen.
[picture of a cross]
God I Pray I thak
you for diyeing on
the cros Ples help
me tolern a bou you.
God I tri to
understand you
When I am
frustradid a.
Bot you.
[picture of a person]
God I lve you
vare mush and I
wil srve you. for
ever. Amen.
I sal sorv you
for ever in my
lif. Amen
[picture of a big cross]

*****************

Here is my translation:

***
In the name of the Father, and the Lord is with us.
God, thank you for all the things that you made.
Forgive us our sins and love us all, also and in heaven. Amen.
In the Lord God to thank him in our house. Amen.
God, I pray, I thank you for dying on the cross. Please help me to learn about you. God, I try to understand you when I am frustrated about you.
God, I love you very much and I will serve you forever. Amen.
I shall serve you for ever in my life. Amen.

*****************

I like this prayer. It shows what Glitter thinks about God. It also shows that her command of the English language is slowly improving, even though she has a long way to go. Even Wander was able to decode her writing with only a tiny bit of help.

The moral of the story: Kids do surprising things when they have (almost) unlimited access to paper, pencils, and tape.

More math

I didn't think about skip counting as a method of learning math facts until I started homeschooling. Even then I didn't think of it much until it was time to teach Sparkle her math facts. Then I saw so many math programs using skip counting, so I bought into the idea of skip counting. I taught Sparkle skip counting and drilled her in skip counting.

Then I discovered that skip counting is slwo and error prone. It takes too long to skip count up to the higher numbers, and it too error prone because it is too easy to get numbers mixed up. Was the next number 42, 48, or 49? Does 45, 54, or 56 come next? Yuck. I find when I'm skip counting, I'm actually using my memorized multiplication tables in reverse.

So it's no more skip counting for me. Instead I'm going to teach Sparkle tricks and shortcuts for memorizing math facts. My favorite trick is for one of the hardest to remember facts: 56=7x8 (5678).

Division with fractions

This is going to be another of those rambling posts.

Homeschooling has given me a whole new perspective on grammar and elementary math. Before homeschooling I didn't think much about either subject. Now I adore these subjects. Too bad my kids don't share my fascination with either subject.

This morning I had a wonderful math moment.

To back up a bit. ....
I've been learning about math through teaching Sparkle and reading some math blogs. I read how treating multiplication like repeated addition falls apart when multiplying fractions. I've read elsewhere how many students (and many teachers) don't really understand dividing by a fraction. They might be able to do the procedure (don't question why, just invert and multiply), but cannot create an accurate word problem that reflects dividing by a fraction.

Most explanations of division of fractions that I've encountered explain division by a fraction with a lengthy discussion of division as the inverse of multiplication. It makes sense as I read it, but I didn't internalize it well enough to explain it to someone else.

Then a few days ago I was flipping through Sparkle's new math book. Dividing by a fraction is taught less than halfway through the new book. I was amazed. If you use this series of math books at the recommended levels, students would be encountering these problems halfway into the first semester of third grade! Sparkle will be older when she gets to it, but I still think that she will be on the young side for the concept. However, what really impressed me was that the concept was presented in a way that made total sense to me. I can really see a child can understand these concepts after working through these math books.

The problem (1/2) divided by (1/4) is expressed as the question "How may 1/4ths in 1/2?" It's the same way of phrasing (8 divided by 4) as "How many 4s in 8?"

My wonderful math moment was vaguely related.

Another tricky subject is subtraction of negative numbers.
I'm probably going to use incorrect terminology here, but I don't care.

Adding and subtracting are opposites.
A number plus its opposite equals the identity number for addition.
The identify number for addition is zero. (A number plus zero is itself.)
For example, the opposite of 5 is -5.
Subtracting a positive number is the same as adding the negative number.
5 - 5 = 5 + (-5)
The opposites cancel each other out. Swap subtracting with adding, Swap a number with its opposite.
So, subtracting a negative number is the same as adding the positive number because two opposites cancel each other out and everything stays balanced.

Similarly, multiplication and division are opposites.
The identity number for multiplication is one. A number times one is itself.
A number times its opposite equals one.
The opposite of a fraction would be the inverted fraction.
Inverting and multiplying to dividing by a fraction also involves two opposites. The inverted fraction is an opposite and changing dividing to multiplying is also an opposite.


Sorry if you've read this. It probably doesn't make much sense. I'm just typing this to try to capture my beautiful math moment for myself so I'll remember it later.