Mathology – The Study of Math with a Twist

 

 

What do sugar cubes, chess pieces and robots all have in common? They all stimulate enthusiasm and love for mathematics. I am excited to announce I will be offering hands on math workshops this summer and fall. During each session I will teach problem solving techniques, use manipulatives to solve and explore math functions and facilitate discussions. Math is not one dimensional, yet it is normally taught in a one dimensional atmosphere where students are expected to push a pencil across a flat sheet of paper and apply it to our vast world.  Mathology puts the world into math. Every week we will explore how math is used in everyday life.

 

 

Grade Level: Students should be strong in addition, subtraction and have a working knowledge of multiplication, division and fractions

  About Me: My name is Trinda Mushambi and I have been homeschooling my two sons for four years.  Before picking up my “homeschooling wand”, I owned my own accounting business.  Both of my boys love and excel in math.  I say this to give you piece of mind that I will create an environment that will cultivate your child’s creative and analytical side.
  

 

 

 

 

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!

Sometimes Life Goes Zig Zag

THE ZIG: The funny thing about life is you can only see from point to point. So, when I Zig happens you must decide if you’re going to go back to your original starting point or change (Zig) along with it. Early February, my husband got wind of a job opportunity that would require us to relocate to Houston, Texas. After much prayer, we decided that it would be the best interest of our family to move to Houston. The night we told our boys was tough and full of tears. Their poor hearts where broken and filled with such sadness and fear. The next few months were arduous, getting our house ready for sell, numerous scouting and a taxing house hunting process.  During the whole process, I kept hearing, “Oh your boys will be fine, they are homeschooled, and at least they don't have to worry about leaving their schoolmates”. Okay how idiotic is that? Yes, I knew they would be fine, because I knew God would heal their hearts and give them many more friends. It had nothing to do with not having schoolmates.  One thing I truly believe non homeschoolers misconstrue homeschoolers’ relationships. In many cases, not only are the kids best of friends, but the parents are best of friends too. Our families mesh together and unite for the betterment of both households. We love each others kids, we pray together, laugh together, and even cry together.  There is little more annoying, than someone to brush off the relationships that you deem so vital.

The Zag - We have officially moved into a new home. We love our new neighborhood and we are working diligently to make our house a home. We are working on building relationships at church, in our neighborhood and in the homeschooling community.  Even though we only moved five hours away, the culture is totally different and we miss our friend and families back home terrible. Needless to say, 2014 - 2015 will not be as I so gracefully planned it out in January, but it is okay because is control.

Chemistry or Physics?

Chemistry or Physics? or in our case, both. Last year we did biology for ten weeks, chemistry for ten weeks and physics for ten weeks. We loved them all so much that when it came to planning for this year’s science I toiled and toiled about what to do. Thus, I did what any logical science loving homeschooler would do. I decided to do one year of Chemistry and Physics simultaneously followed by another year of Anatomy and Biology. I know it sounds crazy, but it really makes logically sense to me.  (You can’t reason with an addict and my boys  and I are addicted to science.) I treat both sciences as two totally difference subjects. We do Physics on Mondays  and Chemistry on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  Needless to say, our classroom looks like a tornado has touched down right in the middle of it for the most part. But who cares, we are having fun and learning volumes and volumes of information.   

For those who know me, know I can't just follow one curriculum. I normally pick two or three curriculums to be my spine and then add in a lot of living book, games, Youtube videos and other education movies. Planning season around my house, starts sometime in December and ends around March. If you come to my house during these months you will likely find stacks and stacks of books lying about by house.  

Our Math Experience: Two Math Crazed Drivers Coming Through

Who's driving this math car anyway. Well, I may have made the road map, but these boys are definitely driving the math car. I am just clearing out obstacles along the way.

Understanding the importance of symmetry by studying kite designs.

  Twizzlers make learning fractions, decimals and percents so much more fun.

                                  Addition fractions is so sweet!

                                 Friendly game of fraction war.

Our Math Experience: Going Back into Time

When I started mapping out this year’s math journey, I wasn't sure exactly what path I wanted to take, but I knew I wanted my boys to activity experience the world of math. From ancient times to the modern day math, man has used math to explore the world in which we live. There are some many fascinating stories about numbers and hidden patterns that are skimmed over or left out altogether in traditional math books. For months I thumbed through countless number of "boring and nonchallenging" math books. Without fail, they seem to suck the joy out of math. So I decided to devise my own math plan. The task of coming up with my own plan was not an easy task, but well worth the effort.  My kids love math and have grown in leaps and bound in their mathematical abilities.

Ancient Egyptians made simple but effective shadow clocks and sundials.

Our ancestors measured time by counting and watching the Sun, Moon and Stars

Before we had Arabic Numeral we had Roman Numeral. When in Roman, write like the Romans!

Contenders of the Faith: Giving Back to Others

I am so proud of my boys. Over the past four years they have collected/purchased over 400 toys to distribute to sick kids.  This year they set a goal to distribute 100 toys. God showed them favor and they were able to distribute over 150 toys to sicks at a local hospital.

Sorting Toys

Proud donors

Distributing toys at hospital.

Contenders of the Faith: Senior Citizen Helping Badge

A few weeks ago, the Shane and Nigel had the honor of helping out at a Senior Citizen Olympic Event at local  assisted living center.  They had a blast and are already planning a return visit. 

Contenders of the Faith: Building Diversified Children

Raising Godly, responsible, loving, well educated boys is not an easy task.  It easy to focus on one area, but what good is a well educated child that does not love and respect God. What good is child that loves God, but does now how to teach others how to love and respect God. I take educating my boys very serious. Of course, I want them to be book smart, but I love them too much not to work on their character too.

I am amazed how much work and effort my boys will put forth for a solid piece of recognition. We have been doing  Contenders of the Faith (COF) for around three years now and the boys LOVE it.  What impresses me most about COF that it is easy to modify to meet my family and yet is powerful in help me teach my boys life skills. My boys love earning their badges and showing off their badges of honor to anyone who will listen.  I can't help but crack up when my boys share nonchalantly share how they earned their Africa badge. They don't know they are doing extra ordinary things for kids their age. By the way, they had to learn all the countries in Africa to get their Africa badges.

So far the boys have earned approximately 45 badges of honor and they have their eyes and mind on quite a few more badges.


                                                                 Editable Fruit Badge

Trampoline Badge

Monday School

So two of my closest friends and I have decided our schedules are not full enough and we needed to add something else to our plate. (Yes, I am being sarcastic). But on a serious note, I am so blessed to be able to share my home school journey with two like minded, fun and high qualified women. Last year our three families came together once a week for a shared science experience.  I can't even put it in words how much the kids loved and enjoyed science last year. What I can say, is that it was such a success we decided expand the concept.  We added hands on math, grammar, geography and of course kept science to come up an energy packed day we call "Monday School". 


Hands On Math: Studying how in how ancestors devised the our modern day calender by studying the moon.

                                     Grammar: Playing "Grammar Jeopardy"

                                           Lego Science: Floatation

                                            Lego Science: Wind Force

                                                   Lunch Time

                           Hands on Math: Learning to add fractions and cupcake at a time

Geography: Giving mini speech on country logo

                                 Geography: Looking for unclaimed land. (More about this later).

Step One: Admit Your Addiction

Hello my Trinda, and I am addicted to books.

I feel like I am the little women that lives in a shoe that has so many children she doesn't know what to do, except for I have so many books I don't know what to do. You think that would deter me from buying more books, right?....ugh wrong. I just recently purchased well over one hundred books at a library sale.  How could I resist such treasures scrumptiously priced at $.25 each?

 I absolutely have no room on my bookshelves to house these newly acquired treasures and that is no joke. So I decided that I needed to find another purpose them.