Ah, summer. Beautiful weather, long days at the pool (or the beach if you’re lucky!), and long sunny days filled with relaxation and restoration after a long school year. Well, it is for about five minutes, until the kids either start whining that they are bored or start fighting. Then what? I understand why some people completely take the summer off. They just need the break to unwind and step back from it all. I get that. Completely. We’ve even had a few summers when we had to do that. But personally, typically we home school straight through the summer for several reasons. I’ve worked really hard to create a learning environment in our home and prefer to keep it alive. I have found that a little bit of schoolwork in the morning fosters creativity all day. And finally, it’s a chance to study things that don’t fit into our school year curriculum.
It’s no secret that I am a HUGE fan of The Well Trained Mind Press. We use many of their resources as part of our school day, including Writing With Ease, First Language Lessons, and Story of the World. So when I found out they were releasing a math series, I was downright giddy! At the moment, addition and subtraction are available but very, very soon multiplication and division will be available as well. Woohoo!!!!!
Addition Facts that Stick by Kate Snow
The series is called Math Facts That Stick and it is written by Kate Snow. It is not a complete math curriculum, it is strictly about fact mastery–so it won’t replace your Saxon or your A Beka or whatever else you choose to use. However, fact mastery is incredibly important and most math curriculum does not set aside time to really focus on it so this is a great complement to any math curriculum. Without it, children are stuck relying on calculators or working painfully slowly through their math exercises. With mastery, a student achieves confidence and self-reliance. And, it doesn’t hurt that mastery saves a whole lot of time when it’s time to break out the math book! There are four parts to the series: Addition Facts That Stick, Subtraction Facts That Stick, Multiplication Facts That Stick, and Division Facts That Stick.
But it’s not all flashcards and drills. Instead of strict memorization of facts, Kate teaches kids to master facts using strategies and visualizations so that they don’t just recite “2+1=3”, they actually understand what it means from the start. You’ll need a few basic items to get started–a deck of cards, counters for the game boards (we are using small legos), a penny for coin tosses, game tokens of some kind (buttons work!), and blank paper and a pencil.
And if you don’t feel you are well equipped to teach your kids math, I have great news for you! Like most of the other Well Trained Mind Press publications, these books spell out exactly what you should say. It’s like having a “How to Teach Math” cheat sheet in front of you as you work through the strategies and games.
I had the chance to interview the author, Kate Snow, about her awesome books. Here’s what she had to say:
Me: Beginning with Addition Facts that Stick, what ages do you recommend for each book?
Kate: I recommend that parents do one volume per year: Addition Facts That Stick in first grade, Subtraction Facts That Stick in second grade, Multiplication Facts That Stick in third grade, and Division Facts That Stick in fourth grade. However, if your curriculum expects mastery at a different pace, it’s fine to follow your curriculum’s schedule. (For example, Singapore Math expects division fact mastery in third grade, so I’d suggest that Singapore Math families work through both multiplication and division with their third graders.)
Me: Why are your methods more successful than traditional flashcards?
Kate: Since traditional flashcards rely on rote memorization, it can take hours and hours of tedious drill for children to memorize one set of facts. My approach is to use simple strategies and visual models to help children master the facts much faster. For example, with the addition facts, children only need to learn 6 strategies to master all of the addition facts from 1+1 up to 9+9. They still need practice to become automatic with the facts, but mental strategies and visual models help children become fluent much more quickly (and with less tedium).
Me:. The series is being sold by The Well Trained Mind Press, which is a publisher of Classical Education curriculum. What makes your methods for learning math facts classical?
Kate: In math, classical education focuses on making sure that young children master the essential foundations of arithmetic in the early years of elementary school so that they’re well-prepared for more advanced coursework later. The math facts are a vital part of laying this foundation.
Me:. Which of the math games or strategies is your favorite?
Kate: I heart ten-frames! They’re just a simple grid of 10 boxes, with a line between the two groups of 5, but they’re extremely powerful for helping children master addition and subtraction. Ten-frames allow kids to “see” quantities and manipulative them mentally, and they help kids escape the trap of always counting on their fingers to find answers.
Me: I have the PDF version of the series, making it easy to print the game boards and practice sheets for use with my child. What is the format for the hard copies of the books? Do parents and teachers have permission to make copies of these pages as needed?
Kate: The printed books have perforated pages for all the games and worksheets, so they’re easy to pull out and use. Families may make as many photocopies as they’d like for use within their own families, and the Well-Trained Mind Press offers schools and co-ops licenses to make photocopies at a very reasonable cost.
Me:. As a fellow lover of math, I have to ask. What’s your favorite number and why?
Kate: 360. I find it fascinating that even with all of our calculators and computers, our GPS coordinates still use a system invented by the Babylonians.
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You can purchase Addition Facts that Stick and the rest of the series from the Well Trained Mind Press or from Amazon (Amazon even has a Kindle version!). Check out how it’s going with my four year old in this post!
Two years ago, my husband made me go on a Disney cruise without my children. Guys, I was MAD at him. I honest and truly got on that airplane and said, “Do NOT even talk to me until we land. I can’t even LOOK at you right now.” I had never been on a cruise before and I had never left the country, either. To do both of those things while the kids were back home completely freaked me out. Plus, we weren’t just going on any cruise. We were going on a DISNEY cruise. Without our kids? It just felt so… wrong. I was certain it would be miserable, that the ship would be overrun with children, and we’d have a terrible time.
In a previous blog post, I shared with you the horrible experience we had with stroller theft at Walt Disney World. We felt so violated and just so broken-hearted to have something so cruel happen to us in a place that is always supposed to be HAPPY!
Keep your stroller safe and happy at the most magical place on earth!
After the stolen stroller incident, I was very anxious as we planned our next Disney trip. I ended up deciding to re-purchase the same stroller that was stolen because quite frankly, I loved that stroller and wanted it back. I was so scared of dealing with it being stolen again but we really still needed a stroller–my four year old could simply not walk 10-12 miles a day in the September heat of Orlando. And so, I scoured the internet for all the ideas I could find to protect my stroller. Here’s the best tips I’ve found. Continue reading “How to Prevent Stroller Theft at Walt Disney World”
I decided I should start a blog series on what life really looks like in our house over the course of a week. I certainly will not be doing this EVERY week but I want to at least do it once a month. If my promise on this site is to show how Classical Education is still a relevant model of education that can absolutely THRIVE in the modern world, I figure I should share what it looks like in our daily lives and what our daily lives look like. So here it is, Volume I of Classical Education Meets the Real World!
We actually managed to sit down and do morning basket time together on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday last week. That is the bulk of our schooling for the summer (and yes, we are already on summer break, but we never stop doing school around here, we just lighten the load when it’s nice out). The big kids also have a goal for finishing their current math books this summer, so they typically do two math lessons a day.
Art Appreciation During Morning Basket Time. Don’t they look thrilled?!?
Loop scheduling has saved the day for us. Seriously, it has taken away all my mom guilt, all my frustration, and all my OCD issues with getting everything done on time. Because nothing ever got done on time and then I’d feel so discouraged and overwhelmed that it was easier to quit than keep going. Loop scheduling erases all those issues. Really, it’s like a magic cure. And it’s SO SIMPLE. I had read about the concept for a couple of years and I don’t know why I was so stubborn about piecing it all together and actually doing it. It’s working. It’s changing everything about our home school day but most importantly, it’s changing my attitude and mindset.
See back in the beginning of our home school journey, I would plan the entire year out before we began. I even typed it. I had what we were going to do every single day for all the 180 days of school we needed to complete. It was a disaster. By about two months in, I’d feel behind and rushed and overwhelmed and always trying to catch up. There is no joy in learning when there’s that much stress. Loop scheduling has fixed that for us.
What is loop scheduling? Well, you can read more about it here, but essentially, it’s just making a whole year of lesson plans for each subject and putting them in a list format. And then you don’t assign the lessons to a date. On the first day of your school year, you start at Day one of history, then day one of science, and so on. If you get through all your subjects, you stop. If you have a busy afternoon and only get through two subjects, that’s OK! You just pick up where you left off the next day. You are never behind because you just keep looping through the subjects.
Ya’ll, I don’t mean to scare you. I really don’t. But the reality is, as magical as Disney World truly is, there are still some people there who aren’t nice. And sometimes, when you are in that happy Disney bubble, you forget that not everyone is honest and not everyone has the best intentions. At almost any other tourist destination, you’d be hyperaware of being safe and careful but at Disney, we let our guard down. And that’s part of the fun and magic, isn’t it?
But sometimes bad things do happen at Disney World. And unfortunately, I know from personal experience. My family headed down to Orlando a few years ago when Disney did a special event where you could stay in Magic Kingdom for 24 straight hours, 6am Friday to 6am Saturday. It happened to land on the weekend my oldest child turned ten and we just lost our minds a little bit and drove 17+ hours down there to spend 24 straight hours in the park. And most of the experience was spectacular, but at 3am, we parked our stroller outside of The Carrousel of Progress and when we came out, it was gone. Just completely gone.
Don’t forget to check out local eats. Chains get old after awhile!
Mommas, I am so guilty of not taking advantage of really cool places that are local to me. I think most of us are. We know it’s there so we just kinda push it off the to do list to do “another time”. Want some examples of how that looked in my own life? On the large scale, I lived my entire childhood an hour outside of Boston. I finally walked the Freedom Trail when I was 33. EEK! That’s… unforgivable! Then I lived in Indiana for FOURTEEN YEARS and never made it to any of the beaches in Lake Michigan. And when I did, it was delightful! In my current town, there’s a laser tag place my kids ask about all the time. I finally took them a couple weeks ago, after approximately six years of asking. GUILTY.
I’ve really been trying to be better about this. We’ve been trying out local restaurants more often and walking around down town and checking out the walking paths at our lovely city parks. But sometimes, I just don’t even know where to go or what to do. I was recently remind of Groupon, because I was looking for a deal on something for an upcoming trip. Then it clicked. Oh wait, I should be checking Groupon for LOCAL things to do, not just travel. DUH! We need to have fun learning experiences and adventures not just when we travel really for away, but also when we travel just down the road.
I’m working on a list of places we need to check out locally this summer. Small things, like an ice cream stand, a park we have never been to, etc. Groupon is a great place for ideas because honestly sometimes the places listing coupons there are places I didn’t even know existed. Score!
Click Here and Head to Groupon to Check Out Deals in Your Home Town!
Most of us are wrapping up our school years right about now. The sun’s been shining, the weather’s warming up, and the kids are playing outside! It’s the most wonderful time of the year, isn’t it?
Time to play outside!
You may be anxious to shove all your curriculum into an out-of-the-way place and forget about it. But before you do, I highly recommend taking a few days to assess yourself and how the home school year went for you. I’d suggest adding your assessment to your planner so that when you begin working on next year’s school plan you can see your notes and thoughts and use it to work out what you want next year’s plan to look like.
We are two weeks away from heading out on a short road trip. We’ll be doing a test run of traveling on Route 66 to help us over the next year as we plan for our big cross country trek on the famous roadway. From all my reading and research so far, it’s a little complicated to follow and stay on the route, so we want to get a couple hundred miles under our belts.
So over the next two weeks, I’ll be getting us ready to road trip! It’s important to be prepared before heading out. Here’s my top tips for getting ready to hit the road! Continue reading “Get Your Family Road Trip-Ready”
Loop scheduling has saved the day for us. Seriously, it has taken away all my mom guilt, all my frustration, and all my OCD issues with getting everything done on time. Because nothing ever got done on time and then I’d feel so discouraged and overwhelmed that it was easier to quit than keep going. Loop scheduling erases all those issues. Really, it’s like a magic cure. And it’s SO SIMPLE. I had read about the concept for a couple of years and I don’t know why I was so stubborn about piecing it all together and actually doing it. It’s working. It’s changing everything about our home school day but most importantly, it’s changing my attitude and mindset.
