Grammar Box - Adjective Command Cards

Nito and Bubs dabbled with some command cards from various grammar boxes today.  I wanted them to spend some time together working nicely while I had to step away and these usually work well since they have to stay active and move around the classroom.  

In this picture, they had to use pieces from the pink tower.  The adjectives were large, largest, small, and smallest.  Sorry, the pictures aren't the greatest.  Poor lighting!

Ok, so I was clearly not available to help them with some of these, but they improvised nicely.  They were supposed to use the circles in the plane insets.  However, they chose the globe, the clock stand, and a clay shaping piece.  The adjectives were large, small, and intermediate.

Oh my!  Here is another example of how they didn't read the card correctly, but they still made it work.  They were supposed to only use one color of tablets, but instead they chose white, yellow, brown, and black.  The adjectives were light, lightest, dark, and darkest.  

Ok, so these guys are hilarious!  At least they keep me smiling in the sometimes very stressful school day.  I would have chosen the smooth and rough boards for this work, but they chose a music staff board, a metal inset, a rough basket, and a rock.  The adjectives were smooth, smoother, rough, and roughest. 

Here we have light, lightest, heavy, and heaviest.  They actually whipped out the scale for this and somehow managed to put the candle and the thesaurus on it to see which one was heavier!  This makes me think that perhaps I should go and check on the status of our scale.  It could be broken at this point!

The brown stairs were used for this one.  The adjectives were thick, thickest, thin, and thinnest.

Overall, I have to say that they did a decent job.  They are moving on to some of the other command cards in the next week or so.  I'll be sure to post their interpretations of the cards.

Global Cuisine

Puerto Rican Chocolate and Coffee Flancocho

I am finally getting around to posting (hopefully keeping it updated weekly) a page on the blog about the meals that my husband, DJ, cooks for our family every Sunday.  This tradition started almost a year ago when DJ cooked a meal for me for our anniversary.  Now, to give you some background information, my husband does NOT cook.  Well, at least he didn't a year ago.  His cooking consisted of oatmeal pancakes and anything on the gas grill outside.  That was the extent of it.  He decided to surprise me for our anniversary and cooked me all of my favorite foods.  Now, to be honest, I was a bit skeptical and a bit disappointed that we didn't go out for dinner.  With 6 kids, we don't get out much and an anniversary was a great excuse to get out of the house!

To make a long story short, his dinner was fabulous and he actually thought it was fun to cook for me for a change.  The following week he decided that he would try cooking for all of us on Sunday since he didn't have a lot going on.  He chose to cook something from Spain because we have been planning a trip there for awhile.  It was a huge success so he decided to make it a tradition.  I told a friend of mine about the idea and she took it a step further and suggested that I turn it into a homeschooling project and the kids would have to research the country that he was cooking for.  They would do a play, song, or give information on that country after dinner.

The kids have had a blast with this and my oldest daughter writes plays or musicals quite a bit.  They also dress up as close as they can to the traditional clothing from that country.  I will try to include pictures of their clothing, but it might prove to be a bit difficult since I do not include their faces.  I will also be posting pictures of the dishes he makes.  Music also makes an appearance at the dinner table and the kids love to learn new songs in different languages.  Their favorite is a Portuguese song called, Roda, Roda, Roda, (Caranguejo peixe e).  They did this song for Brazil.

DJ chose the first country, but then each week a different child chooses the country they want.  For the ones who can't read, we spin the globe and they point to a country.  We have ended up with some very, let's just say, interesting cuisines for our boring palates.  This has really helped to expand our children's tastes buds and try new things.  Ok, let's be honest, it has helped expand their mama's tastes buds as well!  I am quite the picky eater sometimes.

Here is a list of the countries that we have already done.  There were quite a few weeks when we had visitors or were away for some time so the meals did not happen every Sunday.

Spain, Italy, Angola, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Sudan, Brazil, Chile, Jamaica, Libya, Singapore (not a repeat), India, Belize, France, Guatemala, Japan, Lebanon, Turkey, Switzerland, Egypt, and Vietnam.

The picture above is from our last Sunday's meal from Puerto Rico.  The dessert was super yummy.  I was very impressed with my husband's ability to make a flan!  Next week: Venezuela!  Stay tuned.

Distributive Law for Multiplication

Nito was shown another presentation in the sequence for Distributive Law for Multiplication.  It seems that I have never posted anything for the Commutative Law, which is usually a prerequisite for this presentation.  I'll have to get on that!  However, I do show at the end of this presentation how to check your answer using the Commutative Law.

As I mentioned above, he has done the presentations on the Commutative Law, the exchanging of the multiplier with the multiplicand.  For this presentation, I chose a sum of two numbers for the multiplicand.  In the picture above, I chose 5 and 2. Since I am considering it a sum, he puts parentheses around the two bead bars. He will take this sum 3 times.  He uses a brown 3 card and places it on the outside of the parenthesis.  Ok, now ideally the child uses a gray card, but all I had on hand was brown construction paper when I made these materials.  I mean, who has time to drive 45m-1 hour round trip to Michael's with 6 kids just to get gray paper?!  Honestly, it doesn't matter the color paper, as long as it isn't white.

This is the box of bead bars that he uses.  It is a bit different from the checkerboard bead box because this one includes the ten bars.

What does taking this sum 3 times mean?  It means taking the 5 bar 3 times and the 2 bar 3 times.  The blue beads are the 5 bars and the green are the 2 bars.

Then the value is calculated and placed underneath the respective columns (15 and 6).

Then the beads are pushed together.

Now, the beads are exchanged to make a single number of 21.

Commutative Law Check

Since the child knows the commutative law, he can check his answer.  It says if you exchange the multiplier with the multiplicand, then you should get the same answer.  Nito laid out the problem after exchanging beads for tickets and tickets for beads.  In the picture above, the distributive law is on the left hand side and the commutative law is on the right hand side.  He laid out a 3 bead bar and now has a 5 and 2 brown card inside the parentheses. 

He begins by taking the 3 bead bar 5 times and then takes it 2 times.  He finds the answer and places the single number below.

This picture shows that the commutative law on the right hand side has an answer of 21 which matches his distributive law answer of 21.  His work checked out!

Small Bead Frame

This presentation seemed to get passed by with my older three kids, but I sat down and purchased the ACTUAL small bead frame for T-Man and the other 3 siblings after him.  I was on a tighter budget back then and had more pressing materials to buy rather than a small bead frame.  I mean, we have the large one, so can't we just use that?!  The short answer is yes, but the longer answer is no.  Clearly Maria Montessori created a smaller one for a purpose right?

The smaller frame introduces the child to addition, subtraction, and multiplication.

 

 

The first step in introducing this new material to the child is to compare the beads to the stamp game.  Hopefully the child has experience with the stamp game and would know this comparison.  Show the child that the green 1 unit tile from the stamp game is the same as 1 green unit bead on the frame.  Do this for all four categories.  This is where it is very helpful to have the small bead frame compared to the large one!  There is a lot less explaining about how the child would need to ignore the bottom few rows of beads since the large bead frame goes up to 1 million.

 

Now the child needs to know how many beads are on each line.  Count the beads, one at a time, while pushing them to the right.  

 

 Then slide the 10 units back to the left and tell the child that 10 units is equal to 1 ten.

Now, push 1 ten to the right hand side.  Continue counting tens (1 ten, 2 tens, etc.) and exchange for a hundred bead.  Do the same through the thousands.

T-Man worked with static addition problems for a day or two before he quickly wanted to move along to dynamic addition.  Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of his static addition.  For an example of static vs. dynamic, see this post from the stamp game.  Short story, static involves simple addition, while dynamic involved carrying of the numbers.  

He started by writing his equation on his small bead frame paper.  His equation is 9+7.

He moved 9 green (unit) beads to the right side of the frame.

Then he started adding 7 to the 9 green beads.  He pushed 1 bead over and stopped because he was at 10.  Then he pushed all 10 green beads back to the left and then moved 1 blue (ten) bead to the right.  He went back up to the green beads and continued counting with 2, 3, etc. until he got to 7.  

Now he took his pencil and recorded how many green beads he had.  He wrote down 6 on the green line under the units column.  He then recorded how many blue beads he had (1) and wrote it on the blue line, or the tens column.  

Here is what his answer looked like when he is done.  

He worked for awhile.

Here are more of his equations.  We will move on to larger equations in the next few weeks.  I'll try to update this post and add pictures.  

Color Changing Activity

T-Man has been working with the color tablets lately.  I decided to let him experiment making secondary colors from the primary colors.  

He started with putting a droppers worth of yellow dye in the small bowl.  

 

Then he added a dropper of red dye.

I think I took this picture before he stirred, but it will be orange.

Next, he put a dropper of red dye in the second bowl to create another secondary color.

Then he added a dropper of blue to the red bowl.

He took his handy dandy stirring spoon and discovered that he just made the color purple!  He giggled and was so excited.

Now, he took a dropper of yellow in the third bowl.

Added a dropper of blue.

Voila!  Green.

Here are the three secondary colors he made.  

The fourth bowl is for experimenting.