KNITTING FOR LOVE: KNITTING FOR CANCER

Someone dear to the boys heart was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. For the past few weeks, the boys have been using their free time normally allocated to playing video games to knitting hats, scarfs and pink ribbons. They have set fundraiser goal of $300. I am so proud of the them.

                                         My precious boys!

Limited Supply of  Hand Knitted Breast Cancer Ribbons

One of a kind knitted purse.

Matches purse above!

Beautiful Sassy Hat

Mathology: Beyond the Pages

Math is more than just questions on a flat sheet of paper. Math is real! Math is fun! Math is interactive, yet many children are taught how to do math via pushing a pencil across the page. For the past two years, my family has had a "burn the math book mentality".  Don't get your panties in a wad, we don't actually burn our math books, but we are not slaves to them either. Math books should be viewed as tools and not as a holy educational instruments.

I have so many people ask me what math curriculum I use with my boys. I normally jokingly say "You don't want to know!".  I am being honest though. Even though they are asking me what curriculum I am using, what they really mean is what text book are you using. So in quite honesty, this is not a fair and accurate question.  I use two, three sometime four text books, along with a boat load of games, DVD's, living math books, YouTube videos and hands on activities. So the purpose of this blog today is to finally answer the question of what math curriculum I use. Well, sort of, this blog would be way too long if I shared EVERYTHING we used for math.  

                                      Textbooks used with my 3rd grader.

Textbooks used with 2nd grader.

A good bit of our homeschooling budget goes toward board games and other manipulatives.  The last I can counted we had over 100 educational games. One of these days I am going to blog about the games we play for the various subjects, but for now I am just going to spotlight some of the math games we like to play. 

Some of our favorite math games.  

A few of favorite card games. The great thing about card games is that you can take them just about anywhere.

We also read a lot of living math books.

Use a lot of hands on tools!

   

    other great resources...

We host a bi-weekly Math Club. All the kids (an adults) have so much fun!

Paperless Wednesday!