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. 

One for the Record Books

Our first week back-to-school was superb!  I am so encouraged how everything panned, even the character building moments. We completed everything on our Agenda List and even more importantly we have fun!

I can't help but link our success back to the Texas Home School Coalition Convention I attended earlier this month. While at the conference, I had an opportunity to RESET, RETOOL and RELAX. I walked away from the conference feeling at peace with the plans that were set forth and determined to change how we were doing some things so that we could truly enjoy God's blessing of home schooling.  Some of the changes were character and heart issues, while others involved tweaking our daily agenda. I added daily devotions and exercise time to our schedule.  How can you not have a good day when you start your day renewing your heart spiritually and physically?

During the course of the week, we played a lot of board games, painted while listening to our Latin lesson, started designing our own board game, traveled through the bible with history, worked on phonics and spelling. The boys also attended their first writing and art coop class. This week was a huge success and I am glad I decided to ease into our work load.  Over the next few weeks we will add a few more subjects until we have a full course load. Next week, the plan is to add Geography and Math.