Satori Smiles

I took these pictures a few weeks ago, but I want to get more posts of us using our curriculum in action. So the next few weeks, look for updates on how we’re doing in all our favorite programs! I then tag our curriculum by its abbreviation I use. So all Math Mammoth posts should have this link: http://satorismiles.com/tag/mm

In Math Mammoth 1-B, you’ll be doing a lot of 100-chart and place value work. These have actually really helped Satori lately, she now has another tool aside from her abacus to think of numbers. The way she’s been talking, I know she’s got this 100-Chart in her head now. Here’s a sample page of work she did a few weeks back.

Since she totally loves hands-on, mama-daddy-interaction, I knew this floor Hip Hoppin Hundred Chart Map (by Learning Resources) would be a hit. Before you use it, let it AIR OUT for like a month somewhere. We had lots of fun playing with her number mat, and she wants it out everyday now. She teaches Daddy math on the weekends with it as well.

Back to Math Mammoth, here’s an online math game that Maria (creator of Math Mammoth) linked to on our sheet. At first it took Satori a long time to figure out where the numbers were on this blank chart, but after some practice, she’s a real pro now.

Play it yourself here! Find the 10 hidden bones on the 1-100 number square in less than a minute.

The past month people have been buzzing about Math Mammoth’s huge 40% off sale coming in March at the Homeschool Buyers Co-op. Well this morning I noticed it was already up! If they hit 50 orders, the best discount of 40% off will be offered. I can pretty much guarantee they will hit that mark.

Math Mammoth 40% at Homeschool Buyers Co-op

We use Math Mammoth as a supplement to the more teacher-intensive RightStart B Math. On days I don’t get to RightStart or if we are traveling without our manipulatives, Satori still can get in her math. She usually does 2-3 pages in one lesson. It has a unique combination of being probably the most affordable and easiest to teach out of the math programs available today, while still being extremely effective. This whole program is based on worksheets that are surprisingly easy for the student to teach themselves or learn with minimal parent help. Some people do use it as a stand-alone math program.

Years 1 through 6 can be purchased as the Light Blue full curriculum for just $70.80 (or $11.80 per year). The year is broken up into A and B for each year, and this offering covers up through year 6-B. If you already have a math curriculum, you can supplement with their Blue package, which covers single topics for years 1-6 (1,700 lesson pages) for just $9 a year. If you get their downloadable PDFs, you have to factor in printing expenses of course. Here is our Year 1 A & B printed out and in their binders.

People on the homeschooling forums I hang out on can’t get enough of Math Mammoth. It’s certainly been one of the hottest math topics since they had their last big sale when it went for 40% off before.

Here is the home page for Math Mammoth.

Although Math Mammoth is a mastery program (you cover one topic  until you master it), we like to mix it up a bit and make it more of a spiral. So we’re in 1-B now and reviewing place value, but will be going back to 1-A this week for a month. Here’s a page Satori did today.

Here’s a page we’ll be doing later this spring.

NOTE: I can’t claim to be an Math Mammoth expert, as we’ve only been using it very lightly as a supplement.  I can’t say Satori has learned anything new with Math Mammoth’s methods, as we learn things first in RightStart, and then use these worksheets as a review. We also mix it up instead of the intended order.  Either way, I thought I’d talk a bit about it to let everyone know they can get this math program next month for a great deal. It is a popular math program, and people using anything from Singapore to RightStart to Saxon to (insert math program) have been finding ways to take advantage of Math Mammoth.

If you go through the co-op, I do think you’d have to wait until after it’s finished to get your download or CD. So that means not until early April will you have it available. If you want it faster, head to Kagi store to get it as an instant download at 20% off until Friday, February 25, using the coupon FEBSALE.

I have to admit we’ve fallen behind in our RightStart schedule, as we’ve been doing Math Mammoth. We should really be toward the end of RightStart B, rather than in the middle. This is really one of the more special and amazing curriculum we both love, we’ll be doing this more often to catch up.

Satori keeps asking to do the fun math (RightStart), so here she is, abacus at the ready!

Here’s Lesson 47 out of RightStart B. In this lesson, we work on adding up all the days in a year. At first, this sounds a bit tough for a 6 year old, but not if you do it this way! We first sing the song “30 Days Has September” and make a chart with the months and their days. Then I had Satori guess how many days are in an entire year. She guessed 100.

Using our abacus side 2, we take each month and add up the days. Since January is 31 days, we slide 3 beads over in the 10′s place, and 1 bead in the 1′s place. Every time we add a new month’s days, we read the new number and we ask ourselves if we can “trade”. So after a few months, we are able to trade ten 10-place beads in for one 1-hundred bead. We kept doing this until it was easy to see (below photo), that the total amount of days in 2011 was 365 days!

And here’s the chart Satori made to help her figure out the days in a year.

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.