Kindergarten Math: Addition at the Fridge

  This has been my son's favorite kindergarten activity so far.   I think this particular method works well for us because it uses manipulatives, and requires little writing.  

We use clothespins with magnets attached to post flash cards on the refrigerator.  He answers the equation by placing the correct number magnet at the bottom of the equation.  If he knows the answer from memory, he can skip to checking his work.

Finish reading at Thriving STEM.

Five lessons from my Mom, and how she taught them

My mom's birthday card is sitting on the kitchen table, ready to dropped in the mail tomorrow.  That would be a good thing, except her birthday was two weeks ago.  If you said something about it to her, she would just smile and tell you how busy I am, and how well I handle it.  Love always believes the best about someone, and my Mom is one of the most loving people I know.  I drop the ball on things like cards way too often, but I do appreciate my Mom and her influence on my life.

As a tribute to her, would you allow me to share five of the many lessons my Mother taught me, and how she went about teaching them?

A happy life is one spent for others.

My mom started working as a registered nurse at the age of twenty.  Caring for people was not just her job, it was her passion.  I remember her taking extra to to make sure that "her residents" received the best care, although many of them were incapable  of ever expressing appreciation.  Mom always cared for our family with excellence, cooking, cleaning, listening to spelling words long into the evening.  Even today, you will find her volunteering with some of the neediest children in her area.

Read

When my mom was finally still for a few moments, there was always a book or a magazine in her hand.   Biographies have always been her favorite reading material.  She stayed updated on current world affairs and politics.  She always subscribed to professional journals and read them cover to cover.

I was well into my twenties before I realized what a rare example she had set for me as her daughter.  I will always be grateful for the quiet lesson in the importance of reading much, and of reading material of substance.

Work hard

This lesson became clear to me one day when I was about fourteen.  Mom took my sister and I with her to work so that we could volunteer at the facility where she was a nurse.  At the end of the day, she found us fast asleep in the corner.  At home, I took another nap while she fixed dinner, cleaned the kitchen and prepared for another day.  I realized just how hard she worked on a daily basis.  Yet, she never complained and even made it seem  like it was her joy to wash that last sink full of dishes.

I, her child, am valued and loved.

When I was little, my mom told me often of how happy she was that I had come into her life.  She took ten years off from her career to give my sister and I the best possible start in life.  As an adult, I know what sacrifices she and my dad must have made, but at the time she made it seem like nothing but a privilege to spend her time with us.  When she went back to work part time, I knew that it was not just so she could get out of the house.  It was part of her effort to give us the best of everything.

Trust in God

When I was a little girl, I usually woke up to the sound of my mother praying .  Often, she was praying for me.  Children have the rare opportunity to hear their parents' responses in unguarded moments.  Whether responding to a crazy driver or a head strong pre-schooler or a dramatic teenager, my mother's response was to plea God's mercy.  Sometimes, these days,  I hear myself quoting her,  "Lord, have mercy, I don't know what to do with this child."

My Mother taught me many lessons, some of which I will probably only recognize in  the coming years. But for today, I am grateful for the gift God gave me in My Mother.

Where did That come from? The spirit of science.

My son called my attention to this light on the wall.  "Look, Mom, where did that come from?"  I love this question because it shows that he has the spirit of scientific inquiry.  If we sense something, it came from somewhere.  The fun is in finding out where.  If we can perceive something in the universe, there is a reason for it, and a reason for the reason, and the questions can go on forever, at least they have so far.

It did not take him long to track down the source of the bright spot on our wall,  a high window with the morning sun streaming through.

What has your family noticed this week?

Library Treasures: A Home for Bird

A Home for Bird by Philip C. Stead is the inspiring story of a frog who dedicates himself to helping a lost bird find his way home.   My pre-schooler was attracted to the colorful pictures.  The engaging narrative interested us again and again through out the week.   I hope that my kids will dedicate them selves to helping others, particularly the voiceless, in the way that Frog was dedicated to Bird.   

What values have you found in your literature this week?

Writing on the Walls

As the mom of pre-kindergarten children, I am always on the look out for  activities that will help them improve their writing skills.  This week, we broke out the window crayons and headed for the shower.   At first I encouraged them to write their names.  I inverted their whole names and wrote them on the outside of the glass.  They traced them happily without prompting, and spent several minutes working on their names and random letters.  Then we digressed to drawing.

When the shower glass was full, we moved our art to the living room windows, and ended up with this fun result of a camel moving past a palm tree.

Benefits that of using Window Crayons

Improved form, since writing on vertical surface forces the hand to hold the writing implement correctly.

Reinforced knowledge of letter formation.

Artistic development.

Positive attitudes about writing and drawing.

A clearer idea of where soap scum is hiding, since the crayon removes easily from glass, but not scum.  

If you are looking for an activity that develops, writing, art or is just plain fun for an hour or so, I recommend picking up a set of window crayons from your nearest back to school sale.

Matchbox Math: Counting to twenty

 My son is really into his matchbox cars right now.  My mother-in-law says my husband was the same way at this age, and she has generously supplied most of his fleet.  We have been using the cars to practice counting, and he actually asks if we can count cars.  To help him understand the symmetry between one through ten and eleven through twenty, I drew this quick parking lot one day last week.  My son has seen plenty of numbered parking spaces so it was an instant hit.

Over the weekend, I finally buckled down and made some roads from old jeans.  I found the project from LilMopTop on Pinterest.  Click here to check it out.  While I was having fun with glow in the dark paint, I decided to make a more permanent parking lot.   It is seeing some heavy use!

 I ask him to say the numbers while looking at the empty parking lot, then add a couple of cars and do it again.   He is showing great progress.  

Next, I am working on putting together a science unit involving matchbox cars.  I'm really excited to practice  with my kids. Hopefully, it will be ready share sometime next week.

Do you have any fun projects that you like to do with matchbox cars?

More Fluid Dynamics in the Bath Tab

A few nights ago my son and I enjoyed playing around with these water buckets in the bath tub.  Simply watching the water stream out of the little holes at the bottom of the bucket is entertaining.  As the water level inside the bucket decreases, the speed of the water coming out of the holes, and the distance it travels decrease.  The proportional relationship requires some real algebra skills to quantitatively describe, but we could see it pretty easily.  The less gravity can push down on the water in the bucket, the less the water coming out of the holes is accelerated.

Here is another fun little experiment.  Push the empty bucket down into the water and watch it fill up.  How high will the water level inside go?    Since there is more water outside the bucket than inside the bucket, there is more gravity pulling down on the water outside the bucket.  This tempts many people to believe that the bucket will fill up higher than the surrounding water.
However, the water is a fluid, which means that it is affected by pressure.  Pressure increases when force increases and decreases when effected area increases.  The bucket will fill only until the inner and outer pressures are equal.  Since the inner surface area is smaller, the same pressure can be reached with less water.




So what about those demos that show the bottled filled with water above the water line?  We didn't play with those, so I will have to save it for another post.  I will say, that the different results demonstrate why I think it is really important that we spend time playing around with the typical every day world.   We need to fully appreciate the every day events before we can really enjoy the special cases--and that's exactly what we did.


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