I just love learning breakthroughs! Our dear Schmabbers struggles with spatial and abstract concepts. God bless Grandma B! When she visited in November, she spent what seemed like hours sitting with Schmab and going over how to round numbers up and down, and it finally clicked! Thank you, Grandma!! We've been cruising along until this week when it was time to introduce measurement conversions. Story problems like "Timmy is 4 feet tall. How many inches tall is he?" resulted in glazed-over stares and answers like "13?" "10?" "40?"
After praying for a bit of inspiration to help our little princess wrap her mind around this new concept, I realized she needed to see concrete examples of what feet and yards look like and how they break down into inches. We have Italian tile floors that are the bane of my life during school hours. Someone inevitably drops small pieces of mechanical pencil lead on the floor, which then get stuck on the bottom of the chair legs, which wouldn't be such a big deal if the chairs never moved. But we end up with black pencil marks all over the floor near the dining/school table, and it drives me nuts! This week, however, they became the spark we needed for a hands-on activity in measuring.
Banana was the first victim in our little game, but all the kids took turns being measured, even our biggest dorks, who were upset when they thought we'd left them out! Everyone's length was measured and marked with the wonderful mechanical pencils I was earlier cursing. The the kids worked together to mark off 1 foot increments, then inches within each foot. Schmabbers got to count the number of feet and try to figure out the inches, then she counted the inches to double-check her answers. After a couple of tries, by Jove, she got it!! (As did her younger sister!) "Every foot is 12 inches, Schmab, so 2 feet is just two 12's!" (Banana's been having fun writing out and solving multiplication problems this week. Between dress-up princess games and coloring, of course! I don't think she realizes 5 year olds aren't supposed to understand any of this stuff yet.)
Daddy came home to find the floor covered in markings, with one tile listing everyone's stats, and a proud 7 year old eagerly waiting to explain it all to him. These are the homeschool moments that make the nutty moments worth it. I didn't even grumble when I mopped the floor that night.
After praying for a bit of inspiration to help our little princess wrap her mind around this new concept, I realized she needed to see concrete examples of what feet and yards look like and how they break down into inches. We have Italian tile floors that are the bane of my life during school hours. Someone inevitably drops small pieces of mechanical pencil lead on the floor, which then get stuck on the bottom of the chair legs, which wouldn't be such a big deal if the chairs never moved. But we end up with black pencil marks all over the floor near the dining/school table, and it drives me nuts! This week, however, they became the spark we needed for a hands-on activity in measuring.
Banana was the first victim in our little game, but all the kids took turns being measured, even our biggest dorks, who were upset when they thought we'd left them out! Everyone's length was measured and marked with the wonderful mechanical pencils I was earlier cursing. The the kids worked together to mark off 1 foot increments, then inches within each foot. Schmabbers got to count the number of feet and try to figure out the inches, then she counted the inches to double-check her answers. After a couple of tries, by Jove, she got it!! (As did her younger sister!) "Every foot is 12 inches, Schmab, so 2 feet is just two 12's!" (Banana's been having fun writing out and solving multiplication problems this week. Between dress-up princess games and coloring, of course! I don't think she realizes 5 year olds aren't supposed to understand any of this stuff yet.)
Daddy came home to find the floor covered in markings, with one tile listing everyone's stats, and a proud 7 year old eagerly waiting to explain it all to him. These are the homeschool moments that make the nutty moments worth it. I didn't even grumble when I mopped the floor that night.
2 comments:
LOVE IT!! What a stroke of genius!!
WTG Schmab!! (and Banana!! ;) )
Very clever!!
and your flooring looks awesome! (how many dishes have been broken? 8-( )
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