Jazzy Journals

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September 3, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

We began Jazzy Journals for review and they’re fun and will make an awesome gift for Grandma!

We read the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and counted letters. Letters on the tree and letters on the ground.

I searched for “coconut tree” and got an outline for the girls to color and cut out.

We used letter stickers. I had them go through and pick a color for each letter of the alphabet and place it on the tree or on the ground to look like the book.
$Counting Letters for Math Notebooking$

The girls had so much fun choosing the colors for each letter in ABC order.

Later, we worked on lesson 5 of Life of Fred Apples.

The girls were tickled to draw 7 elephants. Fred’s elephants looked funny!
$Drawing Elephants for Math Notebooking$ $Math Notebooking with Elephants$
We read many living math books this week and have math journal work based on the books we read. We did some lapbook printables I made with time and measurement. We doing the basics with Tori and Katie and review with Liz on these basic concepts.

We measured our height in ancient Egyptian methods: cubits, spans, palm, and digits.

Katie was quick to point out that everyone is different and the measurements wouldn’t be standard. I love that child. She’s five and got that right away!

We read a book about the Princess and the Pea but it was “mathemagical.” We read a fun art book with math combinations in it. The girls really liked that one – and Dad and I did too!

We use these notebooking resources in our math journaling…and every other subject!

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Math Monday: Games and Notebooking

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August 27, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

We did a lot of games and manipulatives this week

but not so much on paper…

Tori and Katie with clock works (heehee)

I found the clock flashcards and foam clocks from Target dollar spot last year sometime. I cannot for the life of me remember where I got the clock cards that Tori has. If you know, please tell me!

Don’t you love the crowns? They were a history project.

I introduced some three-part cards with time references. They were a bit lost but I helped with the reading.

Here is the completed work.

Tori and Katie are learning multiplication and skip counting.

The filled in a “counting by fives” card for their math journals. I helped them do it on the board first and then they copied it.

Our cat, Rubeus, gave Tori moral support.

I got the CUTEST Hello Kitty packs online for free and Katie is completing one of the math pages here.

Alex is loving our new math apps. He’s playing iLiveMath Animals here.

Alex likes to play with tangrams. He’s getting so much better keeping his work on his mat and cleaning up!

He still loves our little piggy bank

Liz had to research to fill in her math foldables. These were review, and she obviously needed it!

We worked on Life of Fred too.

Elizabeth still loves it and reads parts of it to me so we can share a laugh. It’s SO fun!

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Math Journals

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August 20, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 10 Comments

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.

I also found these fun cards for geoboards!

I have some printables to go in their math journals to help with multiplication.

I hope these changes to our math program help my girls (and me!) to understand math better and learn to love it!

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My Favorite Math Sites

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August 6, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

We’re going in a different direction for math this year.

I just love the idea of math journals.

I’m using Life of Fred math with Elizabeth. We just got the Fractions book. She does the lessons so quickly that I am having her complete a couple each day. We’ll try to do a journal every other day. I am so not a math teacher, so this will be difficult for me to get in the groove. I plan to start out slowly to help us get the hang of it. She can do her LoF work in the journals to keep everything together. I will supplement with mathbooking (math+notebooking!) as needed. Liz really hates lapbooks, so I will have to make it not so artsy, more note taking and visual interest. We’re collecting living books; a few I have already, and lots of others are at the library.

With Tori and Katie, we’re doing Singapore math 1B and I will supplement with Life of Fred and we’ll do journals maybe once a week or so. Tori really loves math and makes her daddy proud. I’m going slowly with these two because there’s no rush. We’ll do a Singapore lesson every Monday, then LoF on Tuesday. Wednesdays will be journal day. Thursdays and Fridays they can do apps, board games, or Funnix.

After searching the Internet for ideas, I’ve come across some awesome websites with a plethora of math ideas. I’ve listed them here in no particular order.

I love middle school math blogs since most middle school teachers only teach one or two subjects and if these math teachers have great blogs showing all their fun ideas, then they are probably great math teachers!

The elementary blogs often have lots of great fun teaching tips, but you may have to dig to find the math goodies in between all their other fun stuff.

Enjoy my ten go-to sites for math:

This is what started it all. I have ruminated on this for about a year, y’all. My husband is old-school. He would love to have a cute little one room schoolhouse in our basement, but that’s just not feasible or desirable with a toddler, 2 primary girls, and a middle schooler! Often, I have 4 different levels to teach! (Tori and Katie are a year apart in age, but eons different in personality and sometimes quite different in abilities!). Tori wants to learn cursive, for instance, and Katie is still mastering manuscript.

1. Middle School Math Madness. I think this lady really enjoys what she does! I wish I had had a teacher like her in 7th grade!

2. Runde’s Room has some great products for sale and lots of fun freebies. Very exciting stuff! She’s pinned all over Pinterest and has a great teacher store. I love her math journaling ideas.

3. Homeschool Share has some great math notebooking and lapbook materials! Subtraction lapbook and games and a division lapbook. These will be fun for Tori and Katie. Liz won’t do them, I bet. We’ll see. She can choose if she wants to or not.

4. Math N Spire: Some really great math lab ideas. Some really “getting in and doing it math.” Innovative! Liz might like the projects. Great for kinesthetic learners!

5. Step Into Second Grade: A good blog for primary work, not just math. I love the flip book idea! Also printables and freebies! Great pics and examples to help me, a visual learner.

6. Tales of Frogs and Cupcakes…is that not a great blog title? I’m so jealous, lol…Great pics and examples for math journals. Again, I’m visual and this has eye candy!

7. The First Grade Parade has many great ideas! I love this one for money learning. I have to adapt some stuff for notebooking since it’s classroom poster type stuff.

8. Homeschool Math blog with great resources and sister site Homeschool Math. Great articles!

9. Blog, She Wrote: math journaling article with great links to other sites. A mom in action with math journaling her kiddos! hurrah!

10. Our Journey Westward. Lovely examples of using living math books. Cindy writes her own curriculum at Shining Dawn Books – Now Our Journey Westward.

So, I hope to begin with our math journals in a couple weeks with our math journals. I have some lovely composition books, but I may go get some blank journals instead. Liz has a summer math course the next two weeks which I hope will give her some much-needed review and more confidence in math.

I’m kinda excited to get started. I fear math. I really do. I can do money math and the basics and that’s about it.

I am so pleased that Elizabeth loves the Life of Fred books. I probably projected my math fears onto her. My husband says so. This whole pre-algebra thing is at my math abilities limit. I really don’t know how I got through algebra I&II and geometry in high school. So, I’ll do things differently with Tori and Katie. I’ll probably have to do everything differently with Alex. He’s a boy. He throws me for a loop every single time.

Check out more of my math favorites here:

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Math Monday: Unifix

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July 10, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Tori and Katie are working through Singapore Math 1B.

I’m actually trying to slow them down! All they want to do is math, math, math!

They love it. They beg to do it. They prefer it over any other subject.

Not that I’m complaining…

They like using the Unifix cubes to do their subtraction problems.

One of their exercises in their book was like a Sudoku game. So I had them build little towers to represent the numbers in the puzzle. They loved that.

And wouldn’t you know: I have the Unifix Sudoku hidden away! I will bring that out as a surprise later!

They have their first review in their math books and I’m sure they’ll do great.

Aaron had to confiscate Tori’s math book the other night. She was curled up in her bed, under her covers, a couple hours past bedtime, doing subtraction drills.

How can you not love that?!

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Creating Books and Math Journals

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March 25, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 2 Comments

These girls are growing by leaps and bounds!

Weekly Homeschool Update

The girls got a wild hair and starting creating these little books from my leftover paper stash.

They wrote fun facts and illustrated them in the cutest little them books!

They got their Draw Write Now, Book 1: On the Farm-Kids and Critters-Storybook Characters and copied the facts and drawings on cows and turkeys.

They made little St. Patrick’s Day books all on their own with info about leprechauns and rainbows.

I just love how they planned this project all on their own. It wasn’t an assignment. They really applied their learning! I love times like these!

We have lots of paper and craft scraps lying around for the girls to use in free play. They got so creative making them into these little books about what they learned.

Food fun! The girls graphed marshmallows from Lucky Charms cereal.

I finally printed math journals.

Katie wasn’t interested this week and I won’t push it. yet. I had these all ready and just set them aside and forgot about them! Tori just loved it. I will do one page each month with a theme.
Here are January’s shapes snowflake and February’s Valentine cookies. We also did gold coins for March’s leprechaun. The ideas are from Jazzy Journals.

The girls are slowly working through Artistic Pursuits Grades K-3 Book 1 An Introduction to Visual Arts.

This week, we drew a picture from a photograph.

I pulled out some old photos and we looked at them and Tori chose one of me at age 4.

Katie chose an adorable pic of her sister, Elizabeth, as a baby in an Easter bonnet. My main focus for Tori is confidence in her drawing. She is such a perfectionist that she gets paralyzed.

I have really enjoyed seeing the girls learn this month.

They have grown leaps and bounds and can read and write so well – all of a sudden!

We read about Alexander the Great and the beginnings of Rome in history.
We’re almost finished with our astronomy study in science. We read about the outer planets. We’ll do the Earth and Moon this week.

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