While Mica is using ALEKS for her math program, Rinoa stayed with Saxon which she started using for Math 1 this fall. It amazes me (and I’m sure I’ve mentioned this countless times before) that Rinoa is not eligible yet to enter kindergarten due to age requirement but is finding 1st grade math easy.
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The first thing we do during her math class is work on her “Meeting Book”. Everyday, before her actual lesson, we go through the same routine with her Meeting Book.
- She opens it to the current month-calendar and I ask her what year it is, what month it is, what date it is, and what day of the week it is.
- She figures out what the shape of the day is based on the month’s shape pattern and draws it on the calendar together with the day’s date.
- She writes the full date on a “meeting strip”. (This is what she’s doing in the picture above.)
- She also completes a number pattern on the same meeting strip. The number pattern will either be counting forwards or backwards.
- She counts the coins in a coin cup and writes the value of the coins in her meeting strip. (As of now she’s just counting pennies but we’ll slowly progress to counting nickels, dimes, and quarters.)
- When she’s done working with the calendar, she checks the weather outside and draws the weather in her weather graph. Then we analyze the graph to see what kind of weather we’ve had the most so far – sunny, cloudy, rainy, or snowy.
- After working on the weather graph, she turns to the hundred number chart and counts from 1 to 100.
- Then she adds a number to her number line, which is also in her Meeting Book.
- Lastly, we practice her lefts and rights – like I’ll say “Raise your left hand.”, “Raise your right hand.”, “Turn your head to the left.”, “Turn your head to the right.”, etc.
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After the Meeting Book, we discuss the lesson of the day. We use her Lego blocks and other toys to illustrate math concepts like ordering, measurements, more or less, math operations, etc. It makes learning fun for her.
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Her math lesson culminates in the completion of a 2-page worksheet. This picture here is actually a funny blooper. I was reading the instructions to her, and I said “Write a t on the last line.” … She wrote 80. … Haha! Can’t say she made a mistake there.
Anyways, we started doing Math 1 with me reading the instructions to her, but now she can do her daily worksheets independently – although I’m still beside her just in case she needs assistance.
She’s also learning the concept of time. I made her a clock that says morning, afternoon, evening, and night. She moves the clock hand appropriately during the different periods of the day. And she really likes this.
Here’s a video of Rinoa working on her math worksheet during the 3rd or 4th week of school. It shows how easy the lessons are for her. Also by this time, she’s already learned to write her first and last name. Her name is actually longer, but I don’t want to give her that agony yet. (Forgive my crappy voice and the squeaky foldout table.)
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