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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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