This blog thing....

This blog thing is harder than I thought it'd be. We're a little busy...just since the last time I wrote, we've had viola lessons, tap class, ballet class, karate, and a trip to Seattle for my mom's birthday (which turned in to a whole weekend), and chess club.

Between Friday and the weekend, Elli was able to get caught up on math. We decided if she could do 8 pages a day of mathh M-Th, then she could take Friday off this week. Just 15 minutes per page (which she can do if I sit next to her and encourage her), 4 pages per hour, 2 hours. That was a fun division problem. The most fun I've ever seen Elli have with a math textbook was this weekend's Invent-Your-Own story problems. If you have "354,900 people and 90 lightbulbs and everyone is divided into equal teams, how many people does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" Or how about "235,897 guys and 70 bbq grills. How many guys per grill?" It was entertaining, even if it took several hours because she was being so creative and had to think of just the right thing. Couldn't be just any answer. She had to make each one a joke. I'm so glad she found something in math she could enjoy this week. And she's starting to get the process of thinking in groups of numbers, estimating, etc.
*Instead of the traditional 7 goes into 23 how many times? where you start (for 235,897 divided by 70) with traditional math, this book emphasizing thinking bigger (70 goes into 235 how many times), and then rounding your number to the nearest ten for the best ballpark figure- I don't know, I certainly don't remember doing that in math. But I hated division. I just remember covering my scratch paper with multiplication and finally ending up with the closest answer and doing it that way...But this book is good about teaching you to think mathematically.

Well anyway, she got all of Monday's math done, and yesterday got 5 or 6 pages done. We also reviewed Ch. 1 of Rod and Staff grammar (grade 6), and are moving on to Ch. 2 today. She's worked on Latin, on the Fall of Rome folder and her Colisseum model. So since she was pretty much where she's supposed to be, she went to middle school group last night. She loves it. She's making new friends that are her age. I'm glad she's doing this instead of Girl Scouts this year. She needs to be able to unwind and have hang time that isn't so structured.
Grace is looking forward to Brownies starting next week. So it'll be kind of crazy on Tuesday afternoon/evenings. This is why we aren't driving 30 minutes to the other town for ballet anymore. If Elli wants to switch back, she'll have to drop viola and tap. Grace is actually really enjoying her math; she's almost done with next week's math in fact! Of course, the material is really easy. But I don't want to skip because they are emphasizing the thought process and it's really good! Instead of counting balloons and that kind of addition, it's teaching names of concepts like "comparitive sentences" and "order sentences". There's addition in the book, too, but right now we just moved onto greater than/less than/equal to. And it's not just for the numbers, but weight, area, height...it's cool. I recommend Making Math Meaningful from the beginning. Paired with Addition the Fun Way, Grace is really loving math.
Friday is our big Roman Feast. Today we have to finish getting fabric for our costumes. The girls and I are making tunicas and I don't remember the name of the wrap for ladies but we're making that too. And a good ole toga. We have mosaic art and brooches to finish, too, because tomorrow we decorate.
So! Good times. Busy. But school is good I think.