Days of learning - elementary

Wow, a flurry of new interests and activities this week. Binx has been desperate to get on the computer for some time now but I was holding back while I searched for some good content, we are not by any means ready to just let her loose on the internet. Khan Academy has filed that gap for us, I certainly haven't explored the whole site yet but what we have used is amazing. Binx has been doing the maths and the computer programming. I was happy to see her doing maths but amazed to see her progressing through the computer programming at such a rate. This is something I have zero experience in and could never have taught her but here she is (only 3 days in), creating shapes, colours and using variables in code. She is practicing all four operations, graphing, plotting points, and pretty advanced algebra formulas and best of all she doesn't even realise it because it is fun! I was getting left behind by the whole thing so I created an account so I could learn too. As a parent/educator you get progress reports including how long they spend doing each thing, which areas they are focusing on and which areas they need help in. I think we are quite late to the party here because Khan Academy has been around for a good while but we are excited to be joining in now. Note: no one paid me to review this site, I am just a mum and a homeschooler and we like it!

Of course, the more traditional materials still continue, below was a lesson on suffixes which involved the invention of many random words and was pretty fun.

We explored different types of mountains and how they are formed several weeks ago and this week binx revisited it and created posters showing the main types of mountain.

Story of the World has been great for history and projects this week had binx building a ziggurat out of blocks and painting a shirt to make a kind of dress coat.

Here she is exploring a lesson on ways of combining. We mixed water with salt and water with copper sulphate to show solutions, water mixed with chalk dust to create a suspension, sand and iron filings made a mixture (that could be separated with a magnet), and bicarbonate of soda and vinegar gave us a chemical reaction. The albums that we are using have many chemical reactions shown but I can't seem to get hold of the chemicals because I am not a "proper" educational establishment and I don't have a license. 

Quite a lot of maths got worked on this week. Addition and subtraction on the bead frame, the division board, multiplication of fractions and this fun work on square numbers. While drawing out these squares binx said out loud "I think I get this!" in a really excited voice, and that is what it's all about.

Days of learning - elementary

Lots of good work on the bead frame this week. Binx has been working on addition of 4 or 5 addends in the ten thousands. One (of the many!) thing I love about the montessori materials is that really complicated processes are achievable and enjoyable because of the way they are taught. Just being faced with a huge addition sum on paper might have been intimidating but because we got to know the bead frame and worked through the steps then it is just a natural progression and before you know it you are working on problems that seemed really difficult before.

Binx is working on learning division facts here, this is an activity designed for younger children but she wanted to revisit it because she still has difficulty recalling division off the top of her head.

We read a good book about Van Gogh this week and that set off an impromptu art session that everybody got involved in.

Looking at the notation of squares of numbers in a very hands on way. Sneaking in some times tables practice too! 

Binx is always one for the science experiments so I usually do them at the end of the day because I know she will spend ages on them. After looking at the properties of solids, liquids and gases last week we looked at solids in more depth today. We looked at the properties of rigid, elastic and plastic solids (using a ping pong ball, a sponge ball, and a ball of clay), and we also looked at how a solid can be made to change by applying weight. The experiments involved changing the amount of weight, and also the length and thickness of the solid. Lots of fun!