Tractor Math

What do Tractors and Math have in common?  Little kids.

We had a beautiful oak die in our back yard recently.

It was home to many squirrels who barked and swatted their tails at my dog. 

Home to cardinals, mockingbirds, and bluejays along with other birds that we enjoyed watching.

But it was right next to the house. Smack dab between my neighbor and us.

It had to go.

I called my most favorite tree guys who are legit lumberjacks.

They don't have giant trucks with buckets to hoist men into the air.  They have a man who climbs up the tree with a chainsaw attached to his belt.  This lumberjack then ties himself to the tree, carefully ties the branches he will cut so they go down gently to the crew beneath, and then he cuts the enormous tree up.  In 3 hours they are leaving my house and all I am left with is a short tree stump. 

The one piece of big equipment they brought however was a tractor.

My boy was in heaven.

We stayed outside all morning long watching our lumberjacks take care of our oak.  All the while, the  tractor went back and forth delivering the cut up tree to dump truck.

My kiddos were entertained and it was done before naptime.  #winwin

Aaaaannnnnd, it was the perfect premise to our Tractor Day from our 

Farm Unit from Experience Early Learning (EEL)!

Tractor Day was filled with playing with tractors and cars, reading our new I Can Read Book and playing Tractor Math.  

Materials: die, pencil, manipulatives (pigs from EEL), and a "tractor" (EEL sent us this picture, but you could use anything including a box or a toy tractor)

How to Play: roll the die.  Using your manipulatives, place that amount into the tractor bed. Roll again.  Put that amount into the tractor bed.  Now add the two.  To challenge my Kindergartener, I whipped out some lined primary paper and had her write her math equations.

She loved this game so much!  She loved picking out her pigs each time she rolled. I think writing the equations on the lined paper really gave her this sense of accomplishing some kind of work.  It was great practice writing her numbers, and I was extremely impressed as some of these equations were starting to come to her mentally without having to count one by one.

What did the man child do all day?  Besides yelling at the window about the "Tractor" that was no longer there, he played with a toy tractor, tried to steal the pigs from the basket (leading to a sister meltdown and sharing of the pigs), played with said stolen shared pigs, and played with stickers.  

Tractor Day was enjoyed by all... including this momma.

Turning Preschool into Kindergarten

Hi! I'm Leslie- a homeschooling momma to a 5 year old girl and 22 month old boy.  The 2 are as different as night and day.  I share our adventures here to both inspire learning at home and chronicle our lives, because honestly, I never started the baby books and my kids will just have to look back on their childhood through this blog... ha! #keepinitreal

For three years now my little girl has been able to use the 

Experience Preschool: Mother Goose Time curriculum, and I am so excited my son will too.

However the recent challenge has been: how can I make it a little more challenging for my Kindergarten daughter while still using if for my toddler son?

Little ones love to do what the bigs are doing and my son is no exception.

This can be quite a challenge, but MGT has really made it so simple for us to boost math and reading while my son gets to enjoy learning too.

Here are a few modifications we have made to meet the need of our family on our "COW" day...

READING

Who doesn't love a good Mother Goose Rhyme!? 

A poster of Hey Diddle Diddle came in our Cow Day discovery bag and I laminated it.

We read it with the beat and my son danced around and smiled.

I read it slowly several times, pointing to each word as I read it being careful not to go faster than I was pointing.  Then I wrote the sight word "the" and asked my little girl to circle them on the laminated poster.  It took her a little bit.  

She then counted her circled sight word  and wrote it in the moon.

This activity alone helped her in word recognition, writing (drawing her circle shape), counting, and writing her numbers, and my son was able to enjoy the rhythm and cadence of the poem.

And I have a beautiful nursery rhyme poster to practice reading with again and again!

MATH

Each month, Experience Preschool sends us counting clip cards.  Kiddos can clip clothespins to the cards to indicate which number is represented (great for fine motor skills).  Instead of clips, my girl wanted to place pigs, which are our monthly math manipulative, so that's what we went with.  

How did I change this to make it more challenging for kindergarten?

Once she had finished with her cards (which I also laminated because I LOVE my laminator), 

I had her write the number of the amount of pigs on her cards.

Then I had her add the 2 cards together.  She could count the pigs, but she also counted her fingers to come up with 7.  I turned around to do something with her little brother and turned back and she had used the 7 pigs to make the number 7 all on her own! I was so impressed!

Little brother had a fantastic time moving pigs from number card to number card.
I tried to get him  to place them on just the dots, but he wasn't going for it.
He sure is cute though....

STEAM

There are some things that are just perfect as is for my little learners!  Our STEAM station was awesome as my kids got to practice milking cows using disposable plastic gloves.n  I filled one with water and the other with mud.  By then end of our experiment, my girl could definitely tell that the thicker the liquid, the harder it is for it to come out!

Please know that my poor girl decided to not listen when I and her Daddy told her not to run in the house.  She tripped and hit her face on the coffee table resulting in a dent in her forehead and seriously bruised nose.  We took her to the doctor and had a CT scan done and everything came back with good results.
 She also learned her lesson. Unfortunately it was the hard way. 

Our monthly boxes might be a little over his head and need a little addition to challenge my girl,
but I could NOT ask for a better resource that I can easily make fit my kiddos needs.


Have fun experiencing all the learning!!!

Kindergarten Homeschool Space

Hi! I'm Leslie- a homeschooling momma to a 5 year old girl and 21 month old boy.  The 2 are as different as night and day.  I share our adventures here to both inspire learning at home and chronicle our lives, because honestly, I never started the baby books and my kids will just have to look back on their childhood through this blog... ha! #keepinitreal

It's happening yall....Kindergarten is upon us.

A new school year (but does it ever really end) means a new school room set up.

My little girl turned 5 this July.  She is such a gentle and nieve child.  I know homeschooling is the best thing for her and her personality.  I am a new director for Classical Conversations, and am totally enthralled with the Charlotte Mason method.  Not to mention we are continuing our love of

  Mother Goose Time!  You will see all 3 coming together to create our current school space. 

Welcome to our once formal unused living room. I has been a playroom, preschool room, and now it is our Kindergarten Homeschool room.

Let me show you around.

This picture is taken from our doorway.  There are no doors, so the kids and I try to pick up this room each night because seeing a clean room just helps me breathe.

Both white bookshelves are from Walmart (link here) and have been in the kids' rooms. We had rain guttering for bookshelves for years, which I loved, but I needed to house more of our books, especially my science books I had stored in cabinets around the house.  Collecting books is my hobby yall.  My husband cut the guttering in half, and now both kids have 3 rain gutter shelves for their books in their room.

I love that the bookshelves create a table top that my son can not reach and destroy... yet lol.

Above the bookshelves are some of our Timeline cards from Classical Conversations.  My husband hung three rows of wire using eye hooks, and I attached the cards with mini clothespins.  The first 7 cards are missing since our first week of CC is coming up and I used them to make my Tutor board.

Do you have those Childcraft books from when you were a kid?

I jacked them from my parents' home long ago, and we have used them numerous times this past year of CC.  Most of the other books on these shelves are Science books, but one shelf is World History/Cultures and the other is American History books.  If I need to add a book to our collection, which happens almost weekly, I always check out Thriftbooks! Best prices fo sho!  Our Melissa and Doug abacus is missing a row, but I bought it for next to nothing when a preschool was going out of business in my town last year.

We love spending time outside and going for walks.  Charlotte Mason is my jam. 

I display our findings in this tray I bought at Dollar Tree. Right now it houses different acorns, an abandoned robin's nest, pinecones, cardinal feathers (and a few others), and a perfectly intact butterfly.  There is a container of fine sand from a friend's trip to the beach that she brought back to me. The giant leaf on the wall is one my girl found on our most recent walk.  She chose it because of it's size.  I didn't want it to crumble as it dried out, so I laminated the leaf and stuck it on our wall.  I am definitely going to laminate more leaves this fall.  Laminators are not that expensive and I am so glad I have one! This one from Amazon is less that $25.

Here are our story books, including Fairy Tales, Classics, Poetry, the Bible, Art, and Math books.  The top far right cubby houses all the books I really want to use for CC this year. I just wanted them in one spot to make them easy to find and grab as I plan out our year. The pink basket on the bottom is home to our Audio books and our Monthly Cds from Mother Goose Time.  The green basket is our recent stash from our library.  On top of the shelf, we have our books for this month from

  Mother Goose Time (Little Red Riding Hood and the Lonely Wolf) and our Tea Time afternoon read, Mercy Watson.  Both my kids love the Mercy Watson books!  

They are an easy and fun read aloud.

During the month os September we will be focusing on Family and Pets with Mother Goose Time.  I set up our monthly calendar (love how it teaches patterns with the colored numbers), monthly number focus, and our Theme Poster.  I found the map at Target for like $3 and had to grab it!  My girl already drew on it though.  She a line from Texas to Siberia because "that's the way you get to Mimi and PopPop's house."  Ugh.  At least she knows that a map is for directions.  Our table was $20 from the preschool that was closing down and I love it!  Perfect size for both kiddos.  

I still want to paint the top in chalkboard paint.

I moved this bookshelf back into our room because I needed a place for my things and for my son's toys.  The tall tower to the right houses our MGT curriculum and supplies I don't want the kids necessarily getting into...but is there really anything a toddler doesn't get into?  He opens these drawers all the time.  He also hears "No, sir" all the time.

My deep book cubbies from Walmart.  I love these things!

I have one for Workbooks, Art Materials (paper), Writing Journals, Mother Goose Time, and Classical Conversations.

This shelf holds a few curriculum binders and our Timeline cards.  The teapot is one my former roommate made in our Ceramics class in college.  I have always loved it.

This year we will explore Space with CC, so I nabbed this craft kit from Alex.  I bought a bunch of learning cards from the Dollar Spot at Target, and our Geoboard (love it!) is from MGT a year or so ago.  The basket holds rubber bands and my girl gets this down and plays with it quite often.

The bottom two shelves are pretty much my son's materials.  The big folder box houses coloring books that they both enjoy using.

We used to have a teepee in here that we read in, but my girl fell on one of the wooden stakes, broke it, and I never have replaced it.  I just stacked our pillows under the window and moved our rug to this side of the room.  We have a little light box that is on the floor and the blue basket on it houses all our transparent blocks that are so fun to use on our light.

I got rid of the really ugly wooden cabinet, and dragged this green beast of a buffet into our room.  It holds more materials that I don't want little hands getting into and it provides another flat top surface for all the things!

My dry erase board from Hobby Lobby that I have had for years is home to our Routine cards that MGT sent me a few years back.  I never used them because my girl just didn't need them at the time, but they are perfect as we journey into this new year.  Especially since we are exploring the Charlotte Mason method.  She encourages short increments of time for each area of study but using the habits of full attention and best effort for that small amount of time.  

These cards are going to help us stay on track!

With our new September box from MGT, we received some colorful and very sturdy Loose Letter Parts.  I added some magnetic tape ($3 from Hobby Lobby and then used my 40%) and vo-la! Magnetic letter parts!  Cookie sheets make it easy to take this anywhere.

On top of the buffet we have more materials from Mother Goose!

I placed our monthly manipulates which happen to be shapes, our puzzle that matches our story of the month, and our two math baskets for our first day of learning.  We are ready for September!

Our golden Bailey does not miss out on any action that happens in this room.  She loves us so much and is never far from where we are.  This month we will be studying the letters H, F, and T.  I used wide painters tape to put the letter on the floor.  My son tries to practice jumping over the lines.  He's adorable.

Well, that's our Homeschool space this year.  It'll change next year I'm sure.
I am so excited to document our learning adventures here and I wonder what my kids will think years from now as they look back on these posts.


Have a wonderful school year friends!