Satori Smiles

I chose RightStart for the lack of emphasis on boring worksheets, but we did have a few short worksheets this past week. No problem, they were short and Satori whizzed through them! I have the order mixed up on the photo below, but the first worksheet was the simple addition by 1, for which Satori did not need the abacus. (She doesn’t need it for simple addition either, as she has been figuring simple sums in her head. She probably does this by counting, which I’m not sure is the RightStart way, but she does it fast anyway.)

We covered Level 41 on Monday, which built upon partitioning 10. Instead of memorizing addition facts that add to 10, here’s how RightStart Math approaches this. The past few lessons we’ve been using a Part-Whole Circle set with 10 in the whole circle, and another number in one of the part circles. (We previously photocopied the Part-Whole circle set and then I laminated it, so we can use dry erase markers to use it over and over.) Using the AL abacus, Satori can figure out the other number easily. We practiced this with all the sums, even writing all the possibilities down when solving word problems. We then did the Handshaking Game which was a unique game and used her toys in adding to 10.

A few days of doing this, Satori was familiar with equations for partitioning of ten. She completed the above worksheet on the left, relying on her abacus for all the equations. Then, we played a game that helped her learn her equations in a much more fun way! Addition Memory is a twist on the basic memory game in that you must find two cards that add to 10. The first time we played with all cards facing up, just to get the idea of finding cards that add to 10, such as a 6 and a 4. Then we started for real.

We like to start our Memory Games with a fun design, like a flower or pyramid. This is a smiley flower.

As we found pairs adding to 10, we lay the numbers in pairs face-up so we can visually see the numbers as added reinforcement. The first game Satori used her abacus for all but a few sums.

Mom won the first game (I do not cut her any slack), so of course we played again and again! I think we played 4 times total, each time Satori was relying on her abacus less and less. She knew when she picked up an 8, that she would need a 2. When she found a 5, she’d need the other 5. 9+1 and 10+0 were easy to figure out, I think the only ones she still needs an abacus were for 7+3 and 6+4 and vice versa.

Next time, we will start out playing the Addition Memory game until she has the last two sums memorized, and then we will play yet another RightStart Game to learn our sums to 10 – Go to the Dump!

The cards we use came with the RightStart Level A Starter Kit, and are very nice cards, sturdy and glossy, which should hold up to hundreds of math games through several children!

As mama previewed our RightStart math lesson today, it called for two abacuses (or abaci) if you have them. Luckily, I had a make-your-own abacus kit so we put that together! I see this is no longer available unfortunately, but I got it for just $2.50 from RightStart. Here’s the cached page of their AL Abacus “Mini-Abby”. It is easy to make your own if you can find those little dowels and then some pony beads, popsicle sticks, and binder clips. It came in a little bag with everything (but the glue and pen) shown here.

The orange and yellow weren’t too inspiring for us, so I had Satori choose her own light and dark colors. We have tons of pony beads from our craft room, so that worked out well.

She couldn’t wait to play with it.

We just think it’s super cute.

This particular lesson today covered a multitude of things. We are finally getting back into place value (where we left off from Math-U-See last summer). So we had a bunch of tens and ones laying on the floor, and I would call out 4-ten and she would pick the number up and enter it on her abacus.

That was just a review, we had done that yesterday, and I’m finding we don’t need to review so much. We proceeded to learn how to enter 8-ten plus 1 on the abacus and call it 8-ten one. (We will call numbers these weird names for a bit longer, it makes math make so much more sense if you think of things in terms of tens and ones.)

To conclude the lesson, we learned a new game – Swim to Ten! Satori loved this and after the lesson, she played it by herself for 20 more minutes. “Swim to Ten” allowed her to practice her decision making skills as she chose which of her swimmers to move when she rolled the dice. If one lands on an “X”, she has to go back to the beginning! In beginner-mode, you can give the child a second chance. In harder mode, she has to move the first swimmer she touches. To win, you must land your swimmer exactly on the 10th spot.

I would’ve never heard Satori say the below phrase back when we used Math-U-See last summer! Satori said this to me after our RightStart lesson.

Mom, is Math all Games?

Mama replied that she indeed thought math was a lot of fun. There are certainly many games we can play using math.

In particular, RightStart sure does make math interesting and fun! And we were doing fun stuff that they didn’t even label as their “games”. I finally ordered their Math Card Games book and DVD, should arrive later next week. All the game cards already came with our RightStart Level A Starter Kit. I really wish we had focused on RightStart all fall, but since Satori has been looking forward to doing math lately, we should get caught up soon.

Here she is making her first fractal. I admit I didn’t even know what a fractal was until this afternoon! Now we have a nice little 10 triangle design to admire.

Finally we’ve reached the lessons where we go over multiple 10s. For the next few months we’ll be referring to these as ten, 2-ten, 3-ten, and so on up through 10-ten which we call hundred. Here she is showing me 6-ten and the AL Abacus. We covered this in Math-U-See, but gave these 10s nicknames like two-ty, three-ty, four-ty… MUS did an excellent job getting Satori to understand her 10s, now to see where RightStart takes us…

We’ve also learned our evens and odds this week (up to 10), something we left off on back in late September before we took our long hiatus.

Hopefully her interest in math will continue. Right now she is even asking to do Math before Spelling! She told her Uncle Ken over the phone yesterday that she loves math. Yay!

We’ve been kinda slacking on math, but finally tonight Satori was ready to do some math! We are practicing tally marks and I think this lesson also covered the beginnings of addition. The lesson ended with a fun RightStart game – More Game!

Satori was about to put Mia to bed, when I thought of recruiting her favorite American Girl doll to play. Satori said that Mia was tired, but okay, she would play. We then had RightStart cards from 1 to 10 in their 3 styles (fingers, tally sticks, and abacus). The object of the game is to see who can get to 10 first, by drawing a card and seeing who has “more”. It is excellent practice on both recognizing at a glance her numbers in the different styles, as well as writing tally marks correctly.

Satori and Mia had so much fun that Satori wanted to play again! (She never asks to extend math lessons, so this was a big SCORE.) She said that even though Mia was very tired, it was past her bedtime and her eyes were getting red, Mia wanted to play again too.

And it was a tie in the end, both Satori and Mia won a game! (The neat tally marks circled was my writing, the rest is all Satori.) We only played to 5 the second game. Satori wants to wake up tomorrow morning and play again. She also wants to show Grandma and Grandpa how to play next week. So, Math can be Fun!!

For sure, I will now go ahead and purchase the rest of the RightStart games the week we get back from our Wisconsin trip. For those of you using a different math program, you can still take advantage of RightStart games! The link above will get you the game manual and a DVD, but if you want it ALL, you can get the entire Math Card Games Kit. This includes the games book, DVD, cards, abacus – everything you need.

RightStart Math Card Games Kit

Documenting our experience with RightStart, today we did Lesson 11 which had us pulling out our Geoboard among several other things. The past week we’d been covering things such as “parallel” and “perpendicular” and now I see where that was leading. We made squares on our geoboard today.

Big squares, little squares, diagonal squares, as long as they had 4 sides the same length.

A review on numbers 1-10 using our hands, tally sticks and the abacus… Satori can now look at any of these numbers (chunked into 5 plus) and tell me the number without hesitation. It is indeed so much easier to think of things in terms of 5s!

Here’s our AL Abacus Staircase, where Satori makes numbers 1-10 on the left side, making a pretty staircase design.

Yesterday we covered writing tally marks, which we’ll need a bit more practice in and I think she’ll get it. We’ve been extending writing tally marks in our other activities.

All summer, I kept hearing about this awesome math curriculum that had some math games that families and math students were having a blast with. Naturally I had to check it out, so I ordered RightStart Level A. It sat for about a month, but recently we started in!

RightStart Mathematics Level A

WOW. I had NO idea of exactly how cool this program was… I read the first 10 lessons and realized this program will rock in getting to understand math in your head. No counting on hands to do math. How is that? They break up numbers in chunks of 5 and 10. It’s easy to visualize with all their manipulatives and extra activities.

First off, your hand naturally has 5 fingers, both hands have 10. So you always have a “handy” way to see the numbers in the chunks of 5! Next, tally marks are grouped by 5. Here is the number 8:

Tally Marks - 8

This concept of chunks of 5 is so important, they even have a song for it! It’s easy to memorize and helps you remember your “chunks”. Here’s the first verse, included in a CD in their Right Start A Starter Kit.

Yellow is the sun, SIX is FIVE and ONE.

Finally, the manipulative they are most famous for, is their special AL Abacus (not sure what the AL stands for). Specially marked beads designate groups of 5. A row is 10. A half board is 50. Then they swap the colors to mark 51, and the full board is 100. See for yourself.

RS Abacus

Students do not have to count at all, it is easy to visualize 5 + 3 is 8, so they slide over 8 all at the same time. No more slow and erroneous counting of 1… 2… 3… and so on. Just simply 8.

AL Abacus - quantity of 8

Soon, Satori will be able to do addition and subtraction in her head! Not only that, but each lesson is very interesting and covers multiple concepts and so far in the first 7 lessons, we are learning days of the week, parallel, and so much more. You won’t be doing an entire year of just addition, now you’ve got fun, games, and an intuitive way to think of math so you “get it”.

I got RightStart for the games, I almost forgot about that in my excitement about the actual curriculum. I really think Satori is going to rock in math because of their approach. Instead of boring worksheet/flash card drills, these games will help reinforce what she’s learned. I cannot wait.

Here’s what we ordered – the Right Start Starter Kit Level A. Includes most of the manipulatives and materials we’ll need, we already have some of the extras at home. It came in a big box:

RightStart Level A Starter Kit

Here is a sample page out of a lesson, the manual/workbook are included in the above kit. As you can see, it uses visual, auditory, and kinesthetic activities to help with the lessons. And it’s fun!

Lesson page

Today we wrapped up our rowing of The Rag Coat by exploring some math concepts that tie in with the quilting theme. I pulled this game out that we’ve had for two years, so it was like a brand new game for Satori! This is Tangoes Jr, little magnetic tangrams that you place on the puzzle. Side 1 is easy and show the shapes, Side 2 is more difficult and just shows the outline. Satori did both.

Tangoes

She worked on her Tangoes while I read the book for the 5th day in a row. A few parts I would ask her what comes next and she knew the next sentence by heart. One time I wasn’t paying attention and I accidentally said the wrong word, and she corrected me. She also likes to suggest how I should expressively say some of the things Minna says.

She saw the next project lined up so she started playing with the Geoboard. This was her first time playing with the rubber bands and the geo-board, making shapes.

Geoboard

When she was done, she described the “town” she made on the geoboard.

Science Day we were to learn where coal came from, but in our prehistory studies we very thoroughly went over the fact that coal came from the great forests and swamps of the Carboniferous period, 300 million years ago. In fact, that is why it is named “Carbon”-iferous.

Also today, mama got out her huge fabric bins and cut up some fabric for her to make her own rag coat picture. I cut out scraps and Satori glued them to a coat that we drew on heavy cardstock.

So I was reading my Math-U-See Primer Teacher’s guide that I forgot I had, and thought I’d play around with a few of their ideas. Introducing “Decimal Street”, the MUS way of making the Place Value concept come alive. Satori already “gets” this concept (they make it soo easy!), so I didn’t want to get too elaborate, but maybe it will come in handy for (hopefully) future children. You can use their glossy insert, or you can make your own colorful one! They give dimensions to make your own.

MUS Decimal Street

This will fold up in a file folder neatly when done. I then copied the numbers they offer in the teacher’s guide on colorful red, blue and green cardstock, and laminated them. Only 9 of each place value will fit in our Red Hundreds Castle, or Blue Tens Townhome, or Green Units Apartment. Now, I hope I get more minute’s use out of this then the time it took to make it! These early learning concepts go by so quickly.

I admired a few different versions of Decimal Street other homeschoolers had made, and then found this cool idea for the blocks! This is not our real phone number, but Satori did make our home phone number and this should help her memorize it.

MUS blocks telephone style

Thank you Kellie from Blue House Academy for this idea!

I also learned about the StartWrite software, and promptly downloaded it to print the phone number out. It is an AMAZINGLY cool handwriting software that utilized Handwriting Without Tears fonts, in almost any way imaginable! How cool is that. If you like it, and want to continue using it past the trial (one-time use), then you can purchase a license for $39.95. I think I will invest in that.

Just wanted to document our progress, if you’ve read enough of my blog, you’ll know I do this for myself as a form of record-keeping, for my husband and mom or anyone who wants to know what Tori is up to, and finally for any other homeschoolers curious about a curriculum we use.

First off, Math-U-See (MUS). After a week of working with all the different colored blocks, Satori and I pretty much have them memorized. 8? Easy, that’s Chocl-EIGHT! Looks like a candy bar. 3? The Three little pigs. 5? Five blue skies (rhymes anyway). And so on.  We’re also starting simple addition and it’s presented so nicely that Satori is understanding it. Last lesson was to line up the two bars, and find the matching one. So as you see below, 4 (yellow) PLUS 3 (pink) EQUALS 7 (vanilla). Today we started addition by 1, and Satori was able to give the answers without thinking in most cases.

MUS addition

Each lesson is 6 worksheet pages like above, but only 3 are practice on that lesson, and the other 3 are a review of the current and past lessons. We plan to cover 2 pages a day, EVERY day of the week except vacations. I decided this based on feedback from other homeschooling families.

For All About Spelling, we haven’t actually started spelling yet, we are still on the spelling preparations. We finished lesson 3 and one of the motivational devices they use are these little charts. Satori marks off each lesson as she completes it. I found these frog stickers that look appropriately ecstatic to cheer her on.

All About Spelling Progress Chart

Since Satori covered place value up to hundreds last week, I splurged on this Dino Math Tracks game that people had recommended. The whole family played last night. We liked it! It is a good quality, fun, learning game. And it had the coolest dinos, how appropriate during our dino month.

Dino Math Tracks game

The rubbery vinyl dinosaurs were a hit, Satori wanted to be all of them at one point. You take your herd of either brachiosaurus, stegosaurus, triceratops, or wooly mammoth and race them across the screen. The four numbers dice corresponds to 1s, 10s, 100s, and 1000s places. Since Satori has only hit up to 100s, we only did the first 3 values. There are included math game cards, but they are more for advanced math players.

This game was by Learning Resources, and it looks like they have other math games. I look forward to playing Money Bags and Sum Swamp as well.

Dino Math Tracks