Math is Fun!

DEVOTIONAL - We started out today with a Devotional. We did the Pledge of Allegiance, another new thing this year (hopefully). We've done it regularly before, but it's been a while. We sang a Primary song, had prayer and then I read from Psalms 124 about birds and how if we avoid temptations, we feel like a bird being let out of a snare.
READALOUD - We then read some from The Trumpet of the Swan, our book for Book Group this month. While reading, we ran across two language arts elements, homonyms (like the word dumb) and antonyms (like the words brave and cowardly). Idea! We will use these later today.
MATH - Today's math involved many activities using...BEANS! I started by giving the girls an 18 ct. empty egg carton, Clarissa numbered each of the cups. Amber had to put the amount of beans for each number in the first row, Krystal the second and Clarissa the third. Then I showed them how to put the beans in pairs to see if there were any "odd men out" if there were then the number was odd, if there weren't then the number was even. Clarissa wrote the numbers down and noticed that there was a pattern, they went back and forth between being odd and even. She also found the pattern that the number in the units place starts to repeat after you get to 10, Family Math pgs 24 & 25. While the girls were doing this, Jared was working on making a Three Bean Salad, Family Math pg. 134 & 135, working on ratios and proportions. Example 1: This salad contains: 2 Lima Beans, Twice as many Red beans and 10 beans in all. Then I gave him the task of finding out how many total beans there were in the egg carton. Next I sent Jared to make a fraction kit, Family Math pg. 120. I gave Clarissa and Krystal each a paper with addition probs. on it like 2+5= and told them to use manipulatives to get the answer and then find the commutative problem using the same numbers, 5+2=. Amber made some patterns using cubes and blocks. Clarissa finished early so she and I played a calculator game, Family Math pg. 236. She loved it! The best part is that she thought she was sneaky when she figured out that she could choose which two numbers to add together to get her markers on the path she wanted. Of course, this is exactly what I hoped would happen. Score!
LANGUAGE ARTS - Enter Homonyms and Antonyms. I found some reusable worksheets using homonyms and antonyms and the kids had fun with those.
VOCAB - Jared learned the word Guerrillas for his word today.
GEOGRAPHY - Jared learned that Juneau is the capital of Alaska.
SPELLING - I had the kids use Bananagrams to build their spelling words and Amber worked on remembering the names of letters, she knows about 8 of them; O, X, C, A, B, K, M, S. They also helped to sort the letters.
READING - The girls had to do a lot of reading with the language arts worksheets, but I still wanted them to practice their sight words so we ran through their flash cards again, level PP. Krystal only needed help with four of them and Clarissa knew 25 out of 40, I had her draw some pictures on the backs of the ones she still needs to learn.
HISTORY - Lunch, and then off to art class, we listened to Story of the World, Volume 2, Chapter 1-3 in the van. Also, we had some extra time after art so I read a Celtic Fairy Tale to the kids called, The Battle of the Birds (it had some Greek elements and some from Jack and the Beanstalk).
ART - Miss Hannah taught the girls some techniques with pastels, drawing animals on textured paper and she taught Jared tessellations and he made a mid-easternesque tile that he still needs to paint.
SCIENCE - Jared read a book to everyone about Hurricanes and the weather chasers who fly airplanes into the storms to get information that helps to save lives.
COOKING - Jared cooked dinner for us tonight. He made Stroganoff with peas. He made the menu, made the grocery list, and bought the food with $5. He discovered that if you put enough sour cream in it, you can't tell that he used the value brand of Cream of Mushroom Soup.