Spring 2012 School Revamp

I have decided to STOP re-inventing the wheel!!

When I told hubby that I was tossing my hands up and I was wanting to purchase some pre-planned, box like curriculum because I was tired of creating my own he said, "Yay!!  I might get my wife back now!!"

You see, when I started homeschooling I didn't like ANYTHING I SAW.  

There are many reasons for my dislike but I was THOUGHT I was super-mom and I COULD DO ANYTHING BETTER THAN "THAT" curriculum.    So, off I went to pull my own lessons together and create my own stuff.

Then I started battling some other things.  My time, motivation and energy started to wane.   The next *fun* thing just never measured up in reality as it had in my head.  The researching was painful and it was just easier to say "ahhh, we'll just skip that for now."

A few months ago, I was asked about curriculum.  The child of the family questioning me is doing an online program but the mom hates the computer and wants to use books.  I know the family and started researching what would work best for them.   In the process, I realized there were some items out there that would actually be BETTER FOR US!

So, below are the curricula that we will be using (as soon as I can look at them and get us started).  YES!!  I am starting BRAND NEW CURRICULUM NOW!!!   IN MARCH!!!  YEP, because I homeschool and other than state laws that I already follow...when you homeschool, the only rules are the rules you make up yourself!!!

PRESENTING OUR SPRING 2012 CURRICULUM REVAMP

Gracie (3.5)

In the fall, I was doing a full out pre-school circle time routine with Abram and Gracie.  It took us ALL MORNING.   It was exhausting.   They had fun but I'm pretty sure we were just doing fun routines and were not actually LEARNING all that much.  I don't have it in me to continue this on a daily basis so the following is what I will be doing instead:

 * I will be more purposeful at reading nursery rhymes, little kid stories and doing musical action songs with this wee one.  

* I will randomly work on counting (so far we have: one, two, wee, or) and colors and numbers.   I might even start physical recognition of such things.   

* I ALSO WILL BE WORKING ON enforcing the "PICK UP THE TOYS BEFORE you get something ELSE out!!" rule.

Abram 5.5 - but "Pre-K"

* Reading: We will continue to work on Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading.  I think we are on lesson 35 or something (first 26 are phonemes=we skipped).   Abram has an INCREDIBLY (painfully so) SHORT attention span.  Reading a 3 letter word can take us 4 minutes because he is so quickly distracted.  I often only do 1/4 or 1/2 a lesson with him at a time. When he is focused it is AMAZING!  When he is not I wonder if I will need a wig by the time he turns 6.

* Math: We will continue to poke along in Saxon 1.  Our hardest part of math right now is that he does not yet have the handwriting part down.  So I do some simple math with him (as the lessons say) and then we work on handwriting some of the numbers.   He really loves his math but again we only get through about 1/2 a lesson due to attention span.  I am also debating if I want to move ahead in the lessons with HIM dictating the answers to me.   I think he can DO the work, he just can't write the numbers down yet. Again, I am thinking this over.

* Handwriting:  I use Handwriting Without Tears techniques.  They are SO INCREDIBLY gentle.  They make so much sense.  They are so much easier than other handwriting styles (Yep!  That's my non-humble opinion.)  I do NOT have a kindergarten workbook for him.  (Maybe someday.)  For now we practice letters and numbers using Wet, Dry, Try and then we have MANY miscellaneous handwriting books.   I open the book up to the letter he is working on and he practices.   Currently our biggest obstacle is helping him remember that just like brothers and sisters, the letters LIKE THEIR OWN space.   He will make an "R" on the left side of the page but the tail of the "R" will slide ALL THE WAY to the right side of the page.   **Boy, oh boy is this child VERY DIFFERENT from my rule following, perfectionistic first born!!**

* Science and History:  I do not have these officially scheduled for Abram but am hoping that he will listen in and pick up much from my sessions with his big brother.   I think the read-a-loud chapter books will capture him!  :)

Otto (turns 8 in June) - 2nd Grade

BIG CHANGES IN THE WORKS FOR OTTO!!!

First Big Change:  *History/Literature/Reading: SONLIGHT CORE (IG) C = Second 1/2 of World History with both 2nd grade and 3rd grade readers.

We read through Story of the World - Volume 1 and enjoyed it.  Volume 2 was going to drive us crazy so after the Vikings (which we spent at least a month on) we deserted it.   I needed to find a history/social studies program.  I wanted to find some good grade level chapter books for him and some good read-a-louds for me.   Many friends recommended Sonlight.    I bought only the Instructor's guide (and reader's guides x2) and am able to find all but maybe 10 books at my library.  I have already found at least 8 books used and super cheap or free (Paperback Swap has given me 3!!)   It will be a bit challenging to get the books from the library on time BUT they have a wonderful little list at the beginning of the IG that tells me what books I need for what week!  HELPFUL HUH?

I am unsure of Otto's reading level.   He has always struggled a bit. Sounding and blending letters to make words was torture for him.  We cried OFTEN at the beginning levels.  Around Christmas something clicked.  I've heard of this happening and IT DID!  He is now reading much of anything in sight and it is GREAT.  He still struggles with the weird vowel blends ("ea" says both E and eh) but he is coming along.  I was afraid to miss anything and with the Reader Schedules only costing $5-6 I purchased both 2nd and 3rd grade so we didn't miss anything.  :)

* Reading Instruction: We will continue to work in and review the last clump of lessons in Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading.  (By the way:  If you cut the spine off this book and 3 ring hole punch the pages it is SO much easier to work with, especially with 2 kids!!  The reason I like this book so much is the lack of pictures.  Otto, when he was learning, would look at a picture and say what the picture say and then argue with me that I was "reading the words wrong." There is nothing but black and white print on these pages and the lessons are very thorough and progress very sequentially until the end when it seems the exceptions just are crazy weird!  Really like this book.)

*Math:  Saxon is our stronghold.  Otto THRIVES on Saxon.   Right after Christmas we jumped into Saxon 3 after finishing Saxon 2.  We are on lesson 38!  There is some awesome "big boy" math in this book!

*Spelling:  All About Spelling.  We started level One fervently after Christmas.  We are flying through it.  So many of the words in this book he can read easily. There are spelling rule lessons along the way and so I want to work our way through it, but we are doing so very fast.  Level 2 is here and ready when we need it.   We have slowed down this week as we work on blends "th", 'sh" "ch" etc.  The book has recently introduced dictation and we find this addition is actually really fun!

*Handwriting:  HWT Volume 1.  Otto fought handwriting tooth and nail as well.  I have taken this workbook and covered all the pages with clear page protectors.  We are using the workbook with dry-erase markers.  Because my state can not assess my work I am not concerned about having this record permanent.  I have other pages that show his writing but this is a way that I can use this workbook and still save it for my youngers.

*Grammar: is another switch.  We had been using First Language Lessons Vol 1 & 2 (combined in one book).  I REALLY think this is a great book.  It goes into great depth but it just wasn't magical to us.   When we hit the 3rd or 4th lesson on "ANOTHER kind of Noun" MY excitement had burned off and was wondering where were the **activities**.    I am not a person who needs to do a whole unit with a party for every subject BUT.... to sit and "talk nouns" for a couple of weeks had me hitting the head on the table.  We just received our Growing with Grammar.  We have done just a few pages on page protectors.  I think I'll eventually have him write IN the book but I have a really hard time wrapping my head around using disposable books. We shall see.   I also think I will be peeking in on First Language lessons and adding in some verbal teaching along the way.  At this time GWG does not go into ALL the nouns but they will get into the other kinds of nouns (proper, pronoun, etc) later on.   It DOES have Otto writing and finishing sentences by adding in the noun that completes the sentence.   This we like.   (What can I say?  We are workbook freaks!)

*Writing (not handwriting but Composition writing): Winning with Writing.  Again, this one is new too.   I am SO GLAD I ordered this book.  It is a companion to Growing with Grammar but it takes the grammar into the next step of actually COMPOSING sentences and by the end of the first book he will be pulling together main thoughts, finding support for those thoughts and composing proper paragraphs!  It's pretty fun!

*Comprehension:  We have a really fun book that I bought used really cheap.  Reading Grade 2 by School Specialty Publishing.  It is a 141 pages of stories revolved around the family of Little Critter (you've seen those books right??)   Each left hand page is a story, each right hand page is full of comprehension and grammar questions.  (Ex: State the main idea, What did Little Critter do after his dog dug up the neighbor's rose bushes?, State a word in the story that rhymes with ball, What is the past tense for the word run?)  My kids LOVE this book.  The littles run in to hear the story (I read these out loud and we do the answers orally.)  I might have to find the next book some place when we are done with this one.  This is our FUN school book!

*Science:  I will be purchasing Science Core B from Sonlight.  Again, I will only be purchasing the Instructor's guide and will need to find the books from the library and used but this will give us a solid science program where everything is included.  I have heard very mixed things about Sonlight science from many different people groups.   I hope to let you know what I think.  Right now, we just need to try something and I hope this works for us.

Did I miss anything?

Oh!! ART:  I plan on pulling out the Artistic Pursuits.  I reviewed their products last year and have never, ever been more impressed with an Art Program.  I think everyone NEEDS TO HAVE ARTISTIC PURSUITS IN THEIR LIVES!!!  Even you public school people out there who read my blog (*ahem* cough *Kim*).

(Nope, I am not paid by them to say that and I HAVE actually purchased their second book to use after we finish the first book!!!)

Now? Did I miss anything?

How is it going to all fit in our week??

Who knows??

But my state only requires me to progress forward in a sequential and cumulative manner, so as long as we are doing something in all topics every week we'll be JUST FINE.

(And if I actually DO iron out a schedule....that I actually STICK TO.... I'll let you all know!)

One more note:  I just realized how much of the above is workbook based.   I remember starting off in this ever changing homeschool adventure thinking how much I HATED workbooks.  Workbooks are done in public school.  I want my kids to do hands on, fun, action filled activities.  

Now that I've been at this for some time I must be honest: workbook like texts are VERY HELPFUL in certain disciplines.  If done well, they are laid out in a very educational, informative, fun manner and the fill-in-the blank stuff can actually help solidify the material.  

I think part of my effort to re-invent the wheel was to get away from being dependent upon someone else teaching.  *I* was the teacher and I think I felt that when I used such books *I* was being kicked out of the educational loop.   Now that I've been at this for many years I have realized *I* am still the teacher but *I* now just have to follow the guide before us.   I also, along the way, somehow forgot that my oldest would BEG for MORE worksheet pages when he was in Kindergarten.   I am not sure WHY or WHEN I decided that filling out fun pages was evil or less educational.  I guess we shall see how this new revamp works before I make too many judgments.   From what I see so far, Otto REALLY likes his grammar and writing books.

Friday's Fave Five - Feb 26, 2012

I know it's no longer Friday but it seems I am a bit slow on many things lately.

Here is this week's Friday's Fave Five 

hosted by Living to Tell the Story.

5 THINGS IN MY LIFE THIS WEEK

1.  Hubby has worked two doubles in a row.  This is good as it allows us to step one more small step closer to getting him home to be a full time farmer but..... it means that he will be away from home for at least 60 hours before we get to see him again.  (That is if he does not get/accept a double tomorrow as well then you'll need to add on 24 more hours.)  We miss him but we all take-one-for-the-team when the doubles appear because they help us move forward.

2. My Growing with Grammar and Winning with Writing arrived yesterday!!!

YIPPEE!

3. This week I discovered Paperback Swap.  With my Sonlight Instructor's Guide in the mail I am hoping that I can find some books that our library does not have on this website.   THEN!!!   A friend gave me some of her credits too!   YAY!

4. I read Lulu and the Brontosaurus to the children yesterday.  WHAT A CUTE STORY!!!  I was a bit worried at the beginning when I realized that Lulu starts off being a rude little girl.   I dislike reading such books because more often than not these books do not teach my children how to CHANGE and be good, they teach my kids bad behaviors they had never imagined before.  The humor of this book drives through this though.  The author herself interrupts the story often with side comments.  The little lulu sings songs that were torturing my oldest, which in turn delighted me.  :)  This is a sweet story of a selfish, rude little girl who in the end learns how to be polite and kind.  Oh!  About the end, there are three endings and your child gets to choose which one he thinks is best.  A great, fun read indeed.

5.   Last night I decided I needed a bath and a movie.  I usually do not do this unless Hubby is here to take care of kids if they need.   Last night I put them to bed, took a phone call from a mom debating a homeschool adventure and then hopped in the huge hot tub bath that came with the house.   I watched Mrs. Doubtfire who I had borrowed from My Lois.   I knew Robin Williams was super funny but had forgotten how endearing this story was.  I loved the family reconciliation story line.  A great oldie, you can even see a small bit of what will later become dialogue for Good Morning Vietnam in this show!

Well that's my Fave Five?

How was your week?

What to do with those Flower Bags from Valentine's Day?

Did any of you get flowers for Valentine's Day?

Did they come in one of those clear triangular bags?

If so, I hope you didn't toss away the bag because back in July of 2010 I blogged about a super fun craft the kids can do with those bags.

READ ON TO DISCOVER SOME SIMPLE FUN!

A Fishy Craft

JULY 31, 2010

Wednesday was the last session of summer Story Time at our library. 

Make a Splash at the Library! was the theme.

I love our library.  Our librarians are so lenient.  The summer program is for school aged children who are going into Kindergarten or older.   YET..... they gladly let younger sibs sit in on the story reading and on occasion let them participate in the craft activities.

Now, I personally LOVE crafts.  BUT... I REALLY HATE doing crafts with my kids.  I am meticulous, organized, neat and purposeful.  If ANYONE has done art or crafts with a barely 6 year old and 3.5 year you KNOW that doing crafts and art is NOT any of the adjectives above!

So one reason why I REALLY LOVE story time is that I can count their programing as school in both the language arts AND art categories!  LOVE THAT!

This past Wednesday they finished up 5 weeks of learning about all things water by reading Swimmy and The Rainbow Fish.  THEN.... there was a special librarian visitor from a nearby metro who brought A TON of crafting supplies.  I saw the table when we got there and drooled.  Sparkly crinkle shreds, tons of tissue paper in every color under the sun, paint brushes, staplers, modge podge and more!

WHAT WAS THE CRAFT GOING TO BE??  AND how was I going manage an overly tired 20 month old girl with a 3 year old in a 4 year old's body as he would surely throw a fit when I told him that the craft was ONLY for the big kids.

They made fish!

AND...... they let the kids make 2 and 3 fish 

and younger sibs were welcome to craft as well.  :)

Hooray!!!

It is so hard to see these pictures, I'm sorry. 

But they were SO easy and fun to make I wanted to talk you through it.

I unfortunately do not have pictures of the assembly process, nor do I have the supplies at home in order to take new pictures but the supplies are easy to come by (I would think a grocery store with a florist would GLADLY donate a few bags and sticks).  They are SO CUTE.  I hope you will be able to figure out my directions.

The body of the fish was made out of a small triangular florist bag like the one shown here.

You then take 3 or 4 single sheets of tissue paper and wad them up loosely.  

You decide which one you want at the tail and you put that in the bag first.

Then you put the rest in loosely.

Now the creative part happens.  You grab ribbons and streamers and crinkle shreds and anything else that will make the inside of the fish pretty and you stick your hand inside the fish, along the sides and place the pretties so that they can be seen in front of the tissue paper along the sides of the fish.

Now it is time to close the head of the fish.  Grab a stapler and tuck the ends into the center and staple.  Keep tucking and stapling (like a seam) until the entire wide end is closed.

On the top picture above you can actually see my seam.  It almost looks white in this picture.  In reality it is still kind of see through.

Next, you grab ribbons and tie the tail.  So you push the tissue paper INTO the fish a bit.  Grab the pointed end so you have a little tail, then tie the ribbons around the area you have grabbed.

Sorry for the blur!

Now your fish is securely closed.  It is now time to put the outside fins on.

So you grab a small wad of tissue paper or foil paper or whatever you find and you staple it onto the top and bottom edges.

The fish on the left has YELLOW eyes and a pink fin on the bottom with one lonely green foil fin on top.  It is Otto's and I am no longer able to micromanage his work to make it more exciting.  LOL

The other fish has blue eyes (both fish are looking left).  It has pink and blue fins on top and a fin on the bottom that I can't see here and I can't remember what color it is (green maybe?).

Then this really cool librarian had taken some of this streamer stuff and had cut it into 1 inch pieces!  These are what the fish have for side fins!

At Story Time she had the kids use Modge Podge to do the side fins and eyes.

I found that clear packing tape worked quite nicely.

So, if you have closed the fish, tied a tail, attached eyes, fins on top and bottom, side fins then you are ready for the last step.

Turning it into a puppet (or tying it to a carrying stick).

She had plastic balloon sticks like what you see in this link.

She took a LONG ribbon.  Stapled it to the fish then tied it to the bouncy plastic stick.  This allowed the kids to make the fish swim.  (I found a little piece of clear tape over the ribbon secured it to the stick, other wise the knot falls down toward the hand holding it.)

Please note: the girlie INSISTED upon wearing big brother's muscle shirt.  

The Girl shirt below it is SUPER CUTE.

I took Girlie's off the stick, wrapped a paper clip around the ribbon a couple of times and wedged the paper clip in between some wood above her closet. 

She points it out to me every time I go to get her from her crib!

Pink eye...and obviously I did not staple the top ribbon in the center as this fish will always swim down.  :)

The boys have not yet destroyed theirs yet....but I am expecting it to happen soon.

That's just what they do.

B

Big yellow eye.

 

I hope my instructions make some sort of sense.  It is so hard to take pictures of these since they reflect so much light from the flash.  They are SO CUTE and super easy with just a little bit of supplies.

I bet you could use a large clear plastic bag (the corner) to do the same.  

You also could use ANY supplies to stuff and decorate with.  Any stick would do as well.  I am very tempted to dig into my supply box and put google eyes on the fish..... but as quickly as I think they will be destroyed, I think this time I will pass on this one.

Happy crafting.

Chance to Win $100 from All About Learning Press

We love All About Spelling.

They just launched a new website and are offering a chance to win $100 in their store.   Click HERE to go to their website.

If you don't use or like AAS you can still sign up and if you win let me know (clotheslinemusings@gmail.com)  I'd gladly spend it for you!!   :)

Mind Over Matter

My father always talked to me about "the power of the mind."  "Mind over Matter" he would say.  I often forget this and can allow my self-talk to push me through some crazy emotional spirals.

2 Corinthians 10:5 says:

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

So although sometimes it feels new-agey, we are actually called to take our thoughts captive if they are leading us away from the ways of our Lord.

My friend showed me this great article by Michael Hyatt that points out three actions we can take to shift emotional gears:

1. Shift your mental focus.
2. Change your posture and
3. Watch your language.

I don't want to steal Mr. Hyatt's thunder but I wanted to give you a link so that you can go read what he has to say.   I have heard that some people have never considered these things and I know that some of us that have heard them over and over and over sometimes dismissed them because our dad was the one who said them!    :)

Click here to be whisked away to Michael Hyatt's blog post 

3 Actions You Can Take Now To Shift Your Emotional State

5 Things Friday - Feb 10, 2012

There is a meme out there called 5 Things Friday where the blogger blogs about 5 interesting things from the past week.

I have no idea where that blogging meme is and perhaps if I find out I might link to it for you.    ****UPDATE:   I found one called Friday's Fave Five hosted by Living to Tell the Story.***

Here is my very first 5 Days Friday Post.

Last weekend, I attended an annual Introduction to Bee Keeping Course that my husband's bee club hosts.  He is the Bee Farmer (snicker) I am just the bee keeper's wife, BUT when he pulls doubles sometimes I am asked to do things for him and I figured this year I would "officially" take the course to make sure my knowledge had no gaps.    I realized I knew more than I thought I did and that was exciting.  Next year I'll hang out with the older Bee Wives.   :)

My first 3 things come from that all day workshop.

1.   There is a product called BONE WAX.  It is a specially manipulated beeswax that is used in orthopedic surgery to plug the holes of the porous bones.   Bones will weep blood just like a wet sponge will seep water.  The BONE WAX is smoothed over the bone, it seals the pores and stops bleeding.  Cool!

2.    Honey bee swarms happen after the worker bees put the Queen on a diet to make her lose lots of weight.  They do this so that she is light enough to fly and so that she is unhappy enough to leave home!   Sound familiar to any of you dieters out there??    I just cut sugar out (okay, almost out) of my diet and there are moments where I WANT TO FLY AWAY.

3.    Honeybees, although they are Wisconsin's official state insect, are not native to North America.  The native Americans called them "WHITE MAN'S FLY."

Now onto life outside of the bee training. . . 

4.   This week I learned that it is standard to put ONLY ONE SPACE after a period prior to the start of a new sentence.  Do you know how hard that is to do when you have not been doing it this way for over 20 years?  Apparently the two space rule came about with typewriters when all the letters took up the same amount of space.  The two spaces were needed in order for the words to flow well.  According to "those who know," fonts now squish all the letters together.  The letter "i" takes up much less space than the "m" and therefore it has been deemed unnecessary to add the two spaces.   I honestly don't really get it nor can I easily adapt from two spaces to one on command.  I can say I AM beginning to better understand the old people of my youth who complained about how modern technology (you know the microwave, electric typewriters, motorized vehicles) was ruining all that was good in life.   I'm not sure I think the spacing change is going to ruin what is good but it IS certainly weird.   I told my husband about it and he responded much more emotionally than I expected.   Here is the "rant" he wrote in response to this news:

Everything is spinning out of control. A pale horse with its faceless rider charges from the East. Libraries fall to the Mongol hoards of Hulagu and the accomplishments of civilized man are exposed to wind, weather and decay. Beauty sacrificed to feed the Beast.

Hannibal marches down from the Alps led by the bloodthirsty gods: Efficiency and Need. Our sisters flee into the wasteland with their infants latched to their breasts. Our brothers faint for fear as their sons plead for direction.

Friends, Carthage must die and with it, her abuse of our sacred traditions and the desecrations of the tombs of our forebears. This aggression will not stand, man.

5.   Homeschool Curriculum:  I will now officially admit that I am in the middle of a mid-year curriculum crisis.   I see things that we are not doing because what I have just is not working.  I see areas that we have missed because, well, they just slipped away from us.   I see some great things too but mostly I have spent the last few days pounding my homeschool friends about curriculum options and asking for their opinions of the good, the bad and the ugly.   I hope to have it narrowed down soon and am praying that what I want to purchase will be found for a discounted rate used.  Hey, a girl can never stop hoping, you know.

BTW:  Did you notice that all of my sentences have two spaces behind them?   Yep, I learned to do that on an electric typewriter and I am just not sure if, when or how I will be able to alter that two space reality!

What did you learn this week?
Would you like to read more Friday's Fav Five? 

Click on the link and then scroll down to the linky where you will find many other blogs participating.

Uh oh! She's in super math-gadget planning mode....again!

We got a bit of a slow start with our routine after the holidays.  The holiday season was a hard one with influenza for me and bad things happening to loved ones (death, stage 4 cancer, felony theft).   

Now, we are back into the swing of things and have been for over a month now!  Whooo Hooo!   When we started back up my 7.5 year old second grader started with his new Saxon 3 book.   I feel like when we entered this book we went from child's math to REAL MATH.  Not that we were not doing math before but we now have multiplication and addition of fractions and big money to learn.   By the end of this book he'll even be writing checks!   I don't remember ever writing a check out until our 8th grade Life Skills class!!!

So, with these new skills I knew I needed to find some tools to help Otto quickly commit the really hard, crazy skip counting to memory along with some odd ball facts that are just simply going to need to be memorized because they don't fit into any other patterns.

I feel strongly about not letting him slack at this moment because I cheated my way through my own multiplication-table tests in third grade and continuously felt like math was a struggle because of it.   I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY want Otto to know all of his facts so well that if feels like he was born with the knowledge.    

Once upon a time my boy would CRY when he saw anything that had to do with doubles facts.   But then I made these cool space ship matching cards.  

He still didn't LIKE it but these cards helped him forget that it was AS torturous and just yesterday he exclaimed "how easy" these facts are for him.

I needed to find SOMETHING fun to help him get through these rote memory tasks.

So, here are some of the tools some awesome homeschooling friends that I met last year on The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew helped me find to ease our memorization process.

First:  A gorgeous skip counting tool which looks like it has been plucked right out of Fairy Land.  

It is called a Brownie Skip Counter and I do believe I will now be looking for our first Fantasy read-a-loud book to accompany the spirit of this gem!  :)   (Anyone know of any good beginning readers for boys with Brownies, fairies and elves??)

I think this fun tool will take a little bit of the pain away from Otto's current task memorizing skip counting by 7's!  OY.

Here is a link to this beautiful creation by The Toy Maker.  You'll find it in 2 pdf's positioned under the jump roping fairy!

Second:  Otto is also trying to learn those last pesky addition problems that do not follow the additions patterns.  They are not doubles or doubles plus one.  They are not skip counting problems of 2 or 5 or 10.   You can not double them and take one away or add 10 and take one away.   They are just pesky (like my muffin top)!!!   You know the ones:  3+5, 3+7, 4+7, 5+8....

Otto is sick to tears of the stupid rectangular flash cards that we use and I wanted to mix it up a bit.   I remembered the awesome triangular flashcards that I used when I taught third graders in Illinois.  The cards hold both addition and subtraction depending upon which corner you cover up.   So, the card below reads 5+6 with the answer hidden if you hold the bottom corner.  It reads 11-6 if you hold the left corner (covering the answer) and if you hold the right corner it reads 11-5. 

I did a search and saw that these can be purchased but I don't want to wait, nor do I want to spend my money on flash cards. 

Low and behold a friend help me find some that you can print yourself and cut out for free at Donna Young's website.  Here's the link to the addition cards that I printed.

I did not print Donna Young's multiplication fact triangles because the numbers are not oriented to the bottom.   Otto is still having trouble remembering to write some of his numbers the right direction and he will flip numbers around from time to time as well.  The last thing I need to do to him while bombarding him with multiplication is to give him a number like 6 or 9 that is not only confusing to start with but is now SIDEWAYS!  Nope.  So I left her multiplication cards alone.........but guess what GORGEOUS item I found right next to that beautiful slider???   

Yep!  Multiplication triangle cards that are to die for beautiful and that are oriented properly (after cutting or folding)!  Here is the link to the beautiful multiplication Multi-pie!

Let the math games begin!

What cool math tools do YOU use to help your young ones memorize those horrid, detested facts?