We’re doing math differently this year. We’re focusing on math journals as our primary math learning.

We’re using Life of Fred and Singapore Math as our math texts. I’m gathering living math books from the library and our home bookshelves. And I’m adding more to our holiday wish list!

Math Journals

I found some interesting articles and supplemental materials.

Scholastic has an interesting article explaining why math journals are successful for understanding mathematics.
Let’s Play Math! has math journal prompts and links for articles about what to add to journals.
Information and videos about how to use Kindergarten and 1st grade math journals. These are from a classroom teacher, but the ideas can be adapted for homeschool use.
Graphic Organizers and a video help get you started with interactive math journals.
Mathbooking info here
This math teacher has a plethora of information on his site and in videos. He discusses living math books and has a lesson plan with a fun math video.
And look what I found! I am so excited! The girls have been using them all week! I just Googled Life of Fred notebooking pages and I found some here. Perfect! I love the format and I know I can probably make some similar for Elizabeth for her Fractions book.

We read a chapter in Life of Fred Apples and then we do the Your Turn to Play together. I write their oral answers on a white board and they copy it onto their notebooking page.

Katie always cracks me up with her expressions! After they copy the answers, they draw a picture representing something in the lesson.

For lesson 1, they drew 7 trees. The lesson was about the commutative property of addition with the sum of equations equaling 7.

The math journals will be like a math scrapbook, with the fun foldables and other neato lapbook-like printables. The Life of Fred pages will just go in a binder. Tori and Katie also still have Singapore math workbooks that we’re working through a couple times a week.

Here are the journals I found – and fun Duck Tape to decorate them! I also picked up a fun Jazzing Up Journals book at a teacher store.

Here are Katie’s and Tori’s journal all decorated. I’m sure they’ll add to them, but that’s it for now. I made stencils out of cardstock. Cutting Duck Tape with cardstock stencils is work!
$Decorated Math Journals$
Here is a page I made for Elizabeth to put in her math journal. Tori and Katie don’t have a fear of math like Elizabeth does. I hope this will serve as a reminder that she can do all things through Christ.
$Math Creed Scroll$

I got the scroll page idea from this math teacher guide. This guy’s website is wild! I love the Indiana Jones theme! He must make math so much fun for his students. Why didn’t I have great teachers like this?

Elizabeth just completed a transition math class through our local school district. It was eight mornings of review and she really enjoyed it. She won a scientific calculator for being the top of her class! Proud Mama moment!
And here I am, getting all organized. When I find something awesome to go in the math journals, I pin it, I save it, I print it, and I put it in my folder here. Now, I just need to remember to use them when we get to it in the math lessons!

I found this neato mosaic puzzle at the Target dollar spot. Everyone has been fighting over it! Maybe I should go back and get a few more. It’s great for art and history too.

Tori and Katie are starting to learn skip counting and multiplication. Liz is reviewing the concept since I realize there are gaps.

I made this little booklet out of these charts and look at these fun mazes! The mazes will go in their binder too. Gotta keep those journals special! The girls use the booklet when working on their Singapore math workbooks. They’re learning beginning multiplication.
$Math Maze$
I had to help Katie a bit more with the whole skip counting concept, but she understood after trailing off on her own a bit. That rabbit finally got his carrot!
$Dot Math Maze$
They’ve been singing the rather catchy skip counting song from this DVD. The kids all love them and Alex is learning so much too! We have several LeapFrog DVDs and keep them in the car DVD player.

The girls have really loved our new math apps for the iPad. They’re playing Operation Math here. It’s like a Mission Impossible game with math equations. Fun music too!

Multiplication activity: making squares and rectangles on the geoboards…I told them to do a 4 by 5 or a 3 by 4 and they counted the pegs to put the rubber bands in place.