Satori Smiles

Here’s a few things we’ve been learning in math and science.

For math we filled 5 different containers all up to the same level. Satori then had to guess which container held the most liquid, and all the way down to which held the least.

She wrote down her estimates on paper and was pretty close. The bowl with the tapered bottom threw her off. We then measured them with measuring cups and wrote down the milliliter amount of liquid.

For science, we learned about sound and sound waves. After experimenting tone and pitch with rubber bands and guitar strings, we then did an experiment to see how the sound waves traveled through the air. The marble experiment was a hit with Satori, really drove the lesson home. This is explained in our science program, Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding. We shot one marble at a group of 4 marbles touching each other and only the last shot off. The energy of the moving marble transferred to the next, lost its energy and stopped. The energy kept transferring until it reached the last marble, which was the only one that moved. Just like particles in the air transferring sound waves.

Then we fired up our BrainPop and BrainPop Jr. subscriptions to see what Moby the robot had to say about sound. Satori really thinks he’s so hilarious!

So we love BrainPop, but I have to renew our subscription. They have a 5-day trial if you wanted to check BrainPop out.

This summer we are going to be adding a new math supplement – MEP math! RightStart is fine on its own, but I couldn’t resist peeking into this last week and it looks like it will be a great complement to RS. MEP is a free online math program covering over nine years of math. Several homeschool parents who I respect their curriculum choices all say they love this program, and most use it as a supplement to either RightStart, Singapore, or Miquon (some may use it as a stand-alone).

Satori and I just did the first 7 lessons in 30 minutes tonight out of Year 1A. I can her see zooming through 1A this summer and then slowing down in 1B. So far it was a fresh perspective and Satori loved it. Now we have two fun and effective math programs!

I must admit I spent the entire weekend printing out all the lessons and worksheets and then placed them in cool binders. I’ll give a more thorough review soon.

I know with the co-op there is a big rush to buy RightStart Math this month, and some people have been asking in the homeschool forums and a few emails to me whether they need to get all the manipulatives. The most important manipulative you’ll need is the special AL Abacus. A normal abacus won’t do unless it has the special coloring of 5 beads one color, 5 beads another color and then switching at 50 beads. You’ll want the math card games, but the DVD and manual aren’t necessary for Level A. As for the rest, some households just might have the rest of the manipulatives. If not, you’ll be happy with the normal Level A Starter Kit. (We’ve only done Level A so far, so I can’t answer for other levels.)

STARTER KIT OR DELUXE STARTER KIT?

A year ago I purchased RightStart math and only got their Level A Starter Kit ($115 at the time), as I couldn’t afford $200 for their Deluxe Starter Kit. Since the Deluxe version is $80 more, I just wanted to assure people that you don’t need to get that, not for Level A. I see their Deluxe kit only got 2.5 stars out of 5 on their own website, although it doesn’t show any review comments. Maybe it’s because other people realize the extra manipulatives aren’t totally needed right away. Here’s the extra 8 things you get.

• RightStart™ Mathematics Math Card Games Book
• Math Balance
• Casio Calculator SL-450
• RightStart™ Mathematics Levels A and B Appendices
• Plastic Coins
• Geometric Solids
• Dry Erase Board and pen

As mentioned before, you don’t really need the Card Games book (or you can get separately when you’re ready). Most households will have a calculators well as a dry erase board/pen. You can use real coins or may already have plastic ones  on hand, either way, you don’t need the coins right away.

One of the “deluxe” manipulatives is their math balance, which looks pretty neat. However, it is NOT needed for Level A if you already have some sort of scale at home. We just did the only RightStart A lesson that involved a scale today. It was way easier for us to use our simple balance we already had. If you use theirs, you have to add your own home-made pans so you can weigh things – not something I wanted to do. Here’s the scale we used, the Learning Resources Pan Balance Junior – it cost just $16.99. Unfortunately, it is frustratingly inaccurate, even when you adjust it to balance out (see the yellow sliders). Once I finally got the empty scale to balance most of the time, and added some weight to each pan, it worked okay for this simple lesson. So I guess this is my negative review for this particular product. I now see there is a non-Junior version of the Pan Balance that got better reviews. I’m tempted to try that one out.

The very last RightStart lesson uses Geometric Solids, which is included in the Deluxe version, so I had to order that manipulative. I just ordered some on Amazon and got free shipping. But again, some families might already have this on hand, and if not, you have the entire level to get a hold of some geometric solids.

Hopefully this post may help someone out if they’re deciding on purchasing one of the RightStart Starter Kits. I started with the normal Starter Kit, but during the year I did buy the Card Games book, the Math Balance, Plastic Coins from them, and the only thing I’ve used after almost an entire RightStart level was the plastic coins.

We’ll be finishing up RightStart A next week and then we’re taking a break. We’ll be going on summer vacation to National Parks and then mid-July we’ll be starting up RightStart B. Hopefully that level we’ll be able to use our RightStart math balance.

I haven’t been the best teacher this spring. We skipped several subjects for entire months, unfortunately, all the creative and fun ones. Science, history, art, music, and math… yes we consider math creative and fun when we use RightStart. I am excited to  start in again on the fun activities and projects, and of course photograph and blog accordingly!

My excuse for slacking this time – I am on a mega huge health kick this spring, and it seems that all my energy went towards that. On the plus side, I weigh less than I’ve weighed in at least the past 7 years! Satori has been such a great sport and is eating very healthy too. We hike a lot and are just having a blast this year.

Here’s some updates on how our lessons are going.

RightStart Math A

Last month we finally learned the “proper” names of numbers. One of the most appealing aspects of RightStart is that they emulate the Asian way of naming numbers: “ten 1″ (11), “ten 2″ (12), “5 ten 8″ (58). This makes so much more sense, and comes in handy in understanding place value and visualizing math concepts. Now that Satori understands numbers in this way, she now can also say them in the normal way – eleven, twelve, thirteen… twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, and so on. I loved the lessons that taught her the new names. Now I know how we came up with “eleven” (left one) and “twelve” (two left) and so on. We still use the special AL Abacus every day we do our math lessons.

We’re also in the middle of learning clocks. Here’s our little gear clock that came with our RightStart A kit. I love how they taught these lessons as well, such a great job! As we move the longer blue minutes hand, the short orange hour hand will move as well. Behind the blue hand, is a display that shows night or day, making it easy to show if 12:00 is midnight or noon.

Of course we finish up math lessons with a fun math card game, they have clock cards, time cards, hour cards, and Satori is totally thrilled to play these games.

Every now and then they have her do a short worksheet, which is no problem…

Reading

Reading is one subject we finished all our lessons in this spring, as some days we’d do multiple lessons. My goal was to have her reading chapter books this summer, we shall see on that, but she can read any children’s picture book. It surprised her that she could pick up any of her books and read them to us!

This summer we will have finished all of Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading and then she will have the tools to tackle reading her favorite chapter books like Roald Dahl, Avi, and so on (right now we are reading Ragweed).

The past month she learned to tackle two-syllable words, and so much more. Here’s what we did today – Lesson 190: The Soft Sound of the SC Blend. A short and sweet lesson, which is great on a day like Saturday when we don’t even plan to do any lessons!

Reading is becoming more and more effortless that she can read her own workbooks and answer them. How fun! Here’s her Geography workbook:

We are almost finished with Lollipop Logic. Most of this workbook was so easy, we probably could have done it all in a few weeks easily. But I’ll be progressing her logic work to be more challenging for her now. Here’s a page she did yesterday, this is one of the easiest pages. But I show it because I think her coloring is getting so neat.

We are covering hundreds now in RightStart and last night Satori completed her first Hundreds Chart. She was very proud of herself. Today we learned that 10 dimes make a dollar, and 30 dimes make 3 dollars. I love how it all ties together with this program.

About a year ago I promised that as soon as Satori learned money and basic addition that I would get her a play cash register. She’s been really wanting one early last spring. I think that educational toy may be just around the corner…

To be honest, I thought we’d have that cash register much sooner than this. I feel it is my fault for choosing wrong curriculum,  and not being consistent with math lessons enough. Satori picks up everything so fast, if I had been on top of things, she would have been this far already. She now loves math. We should be doing it everyday, but we only do it 3 times a week or so on average.

I sometimes feel that I am a bottleneck to Satori’s learning and that I’m going too slow for her. There are times I get distracted by side hobbies and several days can go by in that we don’t do any lessons. This happened just last week when we both got very excited to learn about birds. Can I call that a unit study? Last fall I took several months off, can I call that unschooling?  Sometimes I question if I’m capable of being a teacher. My personality is just so spontaneous. Even more, I’m so new at this. Just over twelve months ago I had no clue I would be homeschooling.

Am I going too slow? Sometimes I don’t feel like I’m challenging her enough. Are we covering enough subjects? Is there anything we’re missing? Are we covering too much? I suppose at age five I shouldn’t be worrying about all this… I also suppose I will be critical about myself and my teaching skills even when she’s fifteen.

I don’t know why I’m thinking this way tonight, but what I do know is that I get the most tremendous joy out of teaching and learning alongside Satori. We both truly enjoy our time learning together. I think my first entire year I questioned myself and if I could continue to homeschool year after year. But what I know now, as of this spring, is that my mental commitment has been made. Homeschooling is 110% one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

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.