The Morning Meeting Book

Since first grade we have been using Saxon Math. This worked fine until about midway through last year when their lessons seemed to go a little haywire. I found that I was throwing out their lessons and doing my own on the subject. The practice tests and worksheets were agonizing for Maddie and took up and hour or two of our time. We were both starting to dread math every day and felt like having mini parties on friday when we just did fact practice! So something had to change. Brian and I found Teaching Textbooks and decided to give it a try this year. This program is based on a CD-Rom so Maddie uses the computer for her lesson which is basically self directed. She watches the lecture segment then completes some practice problems. There is a workbook where she completes each problem but then she puts the answer into the computer and gets immediate feedback. If she did it wrong she gets another shot at it. If she still gets it wrong then the "tutor" comes out and shows her how she should complete the problem. At the end of some lessons there is a bonus round. Brian and I can view her answers and score in a gradebook which can also be printed out should anyone else ever need to see it. We have only completed the first five lessons but the difference has been amazing. Maddie may not ever enjoy math but now she feels like she can complete it without difficulty. Sometimes thats all it takes to help you understand a subject. I've found it funny to hear her tell me some of the rules of math that I've been trying to drill into her head the last 1 1/2 years like its something new and amazing. Hopefully this good attitude and attention will continue.

As much as we like the new program it was missing some things. I feel that daily drills on basic facts are necessary at this age. It creates the foundation you need for higher math later on. Last spring we found Xtramath a free online program that drills math facts once a day. This also gives immediate feedback and a gradebook. Maddie does this right after doing her math lesson for the day. Its working quite well...hopefully she will have all the facts memorized soon! You have to learn all the facts for one operation (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) before you can move on to the new operation.

The other missing item was some sort of daily calendar practice so we made one ourselves. I found a couple spots online that had print outs we could use. One blog is called 1+1+1=1 and the other is (funny enough!) Mama Jenn. I used their print outs along with a book called Daily Math Practice. Here is what we came up with!

Cover page-Maddie has been adding doodles to it every day!

Calendar page-Maddie writes in the month, year and then keeps track of the days here. We also printed out the calendar connections page from 1+1+1=1 which corresponds to a daily fact I do with the day care kids. 

 Today's number is a spot where Maddie creates her own problems with the answer being the number of the daywhich is the date. So on 8/10/12 she created problems with an answer of 10.

This is a bit of handwriting practice. She copies over the name of the day here....

 and the month here!

  

The "number of the day" here!

Saxon math had so many graphs we needed to complete it made me think of Ross Perot. However it is an important skill so we are keeping it up with a weather graph.

 This is practice with place value. For every day we are in school Maddie changes the number and adds a sticker to the card above the number. Once the card reaches 10 stickers it will move into the tens colum and she will have to make the number 10 below with a 1 and a 0. I'm hoping that doing this physically will help her understand this better.

 Another graph....I know, I know, Ross is proud of us. This one is for tally marks to count the number of days in school.

More number of the day...this time making the date in change.

 This one was kind of a whim. Brian did US Geography with Maddie last year. I thought it would be good practice to locate a state or two a week on the map. As you can see Maddie thinks its too much fun so we have to do a state a day. I will need to figure out in short order what else we can do here!

 This sheet I made up myself. I realized in the middle of the week that we didn't have anything to practice time. So I found a printable clock face online and made one up. Each day I will either write in a digital time or make a time on the clock and Maddie will have to do the opposite.

This is her Daily Math Fact Practice book. It has some word problems and basic facts to practice every day. On Friday there is one big problem/puzzle to complete. This week we had to do it together! It stumped me too for a bit but we worked it out.

So thats our new math  and how we filled in the blanks! I'm really hoping this continues to work well beacuse it runs right up to pre-calculus which, quite frankly, I do not want to try to teach on my own!

I end with our paper mache attempt! We tried to make a globe as our first art project from Geography through Art. When we added paint we had a very lumpy mess of goo. Maddie suggested pitching it and suggested that we try it again later....much much later. The balloon next to her with a band of paper around it was done by one of the preschoolers who thought it looked like fun but the attention span wasn't there!! We pitched that one too but don't tell her!