A Pancake Breakfast- twin style

Yesterday. my girls decided to make pancakes by themselves.

I

I re-wrote the recipe so they could read it. They did pretty well and only came to ask me once "Is this the baking powder?"  They stirred, and flipped and served them up.

It was a nice treat and they ended up tasting great!

Math Processes

We are continuing the four Math Processes this week with a cute story inspired by Oak Meadow 1st Grade Syllabus. The Gnome King has received a desperate letter from the Elf King. He needs some Gnomes to come and help his elves count out nuts for the animals for the winter. Of course, The Gnome King send his 4 favorite's Plus, Minus, Times & Divide to assist!
The girls are so much enjoying the way the Gnome's interact and they love the "jewels".

Here is a lesson we did with Plus.

Plus took 10 elves with him to gather nuts and acorns. They needed 100 nuts total. There were 10 elves.

Each elf carried 10 nuts in their wagon. I gave each of my girls 100 "nuts" to work with. It is interesting how they separated their piles so differently.

Here is another blogsite that has some Fun with Math Gnomes...

Math Block- The 4 Processes

I have been secretly waiting for this fun math block since the fall!  I LOVE the stories of the gnomes and how they embody the temperaments and help explain the processes with the cute stories.

We have had a few gnomes around and my girls haven't really played with them much, so I wasn't sure how the gnome thing would go over.No worries! They are playing with them and the jewels right now. I finally made the 4 process gnomes (during my drive to Fla and back last week!) and they came out so cute (and easy) Here is a link to Ancient Hearth with instructions

I have several math books I am using to combine info and stories. Barbara Dewey's 1-3 grade math guide, Oak Meadow 1st grade syllabus, and Melisa Nielsen's (A Little Garden Flower) Math Book.

Here are the gnomes drawn on the blackboard with their sign above and how many "jewels" they brought to the king.

We drew in our main lesson books the four gnomes and added some manipulative jewels.

Tomorrow, more stories about each individual gnome and how they go about their jewel collecting!

The Trees are Letters

Something happened yesterday that made me jump for joy, as a homeschooling mom!  You know that thing that let's you say-This method works!  Here is mine.

My little artist L, was in the school room for about 30 minutes drawing intensely. She came and asked for a stapler to put her pages together. She, then, presented me with a booklet of her "Letrs" (letters)

The first page had a tree drawn and a big "L" beside it. Then she wrote out the word "chreey" (I found out later that was her phonic spelling of  "tree"- try it!)  The next page had a tree with 2 branches extending up, like antennae and a "Y" beside it, this continued on for "V" (all with Chreey beside it)  Then some pages with our cat, Olive drawn. One had her tail curved around in a "u" and "U" written beside it, "C" followed..
The last was Olive climbing steps with her hands out-stretched into a "K" and she wrote "Steps"

I smiled from ear to ear when I knew that she really internalized the letters..She told me she looked outside in the yard and these were the tree forms she saw (she showed me the V tree, 2 trees hooked at the bottom shaped in a V!)
I took a deep breath and let this success reach my soul.

Word Families

Since we have completed all the consonants and the vowel *keys*, we started a review of word families.
I have been using the Oak Meadow 1st Grade Syllabus for some great ideas. Did you know there are 38 word families? In this guide, they recommend introducing 3 per week for 10 weeks, then 4 for 2 weeks.
There is a word family reader that come with the OM package. I read the story for a particular family, then we do the activity and write in our main lesson book.

 

On the pages where we wrote out the word families along, I had them do a form drawing around the edge to make a border and decorate the page.

I am also using "The Wise Enchanter" by Shelley Davidow as an alphabet review. So far, it is a wonderful story about 4 children all around age 7. They have been chosen for their kind hearts and curious minds to help bring light and words back to the world.. **NOTE: It is a continuing story starting with A,B, C..so if you are going in another order to introduce letters, you may have to wait until you are done before reading this book. That is what we did, as we introduced the vowels last.



My girls continue reading the Bob books as easy readers. I hope to transition over to a more Waldorf-y reader as soon as I introduce the consonant blends.