First Day of School

The kids were so excited to get back to school yesterday. My third-grader and second-grader are so grown up now--they're allowed to get on and off the bus without a parent present. They convinced me that they were ready, but it still felt pretty weird letting them walk to the bus stop by themselves. Harder than letting them walk home from the same spot yesterday afternoon. It's a safe little rural road, nothing to worry about, right?

I'm really not the worrying, overprotective type, or so I thought, but it was hard for me to let go!

Alaska Highway Bike Trek

I just got home from biking 106 miles on the Alaska Highway with 5 other tough Alaskan ladies from our ward! We started at Mukluk land in Tok. Then we biked 53 miles to our campsite (AKA a large open space with a short gravel road where our support driver could drop our trailer and we could set up our tent and rough it wilderness style) and tried to sleep under the midnight sun after lots of laughing and chatting like girls at a slumber party. The rains and the wind beat upon our tent, but it did not tumble down nor did we get wet, which I consider great blessings! We woke up and pretended to feel rested enough to tackle the next 53 miles back to Delta. The view was gorgeous, like a little piece of heaven!

I am so glad that these ladies let me join them despite my utter lack of training! While it certainly reinforced lessons in enduring to the end, I loved it! Such a refreshing, physically demanding change of pace from the daily emotional demands of nurturing young children.

And wow am I sore!

Math Monday: Go Fish

There are so many ways to play math fact still games. Using my three different types of flash cards (triangle, dots, and standard) we deal them out and play Go Fish, asking for the sum. "Give me all your 14s." The act of checking your cards to see if you have it is great practice!!

Memory also works well, using 2 kinds of flash cards. The possibilities of games you can turn into math facts are endless!!

Math Monday: Number Sense

I use to do this activity a lot with Elodie when she was preschool age to help her develop number sense. I simply put all the cards face down in a stack and we took turns choosing a card and placing it in order. I've also done "beat the clock" where they see how fast they can order all the number and dot cards.

The kid I'm tutoring was mixing up 4 and 14 and the like, so we played a couple rounds of this to emphasize what the digits mean when you write 14.

More Math Mania

Adding and subtracting using actual objects laid out in these 10 frames helps deepen their conceptual understanding of addition and subtraction while developing a better sense of the meaning of numbers and place value.

For example, a lot of kids say 12 when they mean 20. These type of activities reinforce what numbers actually mean. And if you play it with a fun snack like fruit loops, subtraction really gets fun!

In this picture, I was tutoring a 3rd grade kid who was struggling with understanding the quick trick of adding and subtracting nines. It wasn't clicking when he just looked at the numbers, but it was cool to see it click as we took it from the abstract to the concrete with these 10 frames. He quickly got to where he could just imagine the subtraction problem by looking at the 10 frames and reasoning out loud, without using the manipulative.

Hope!

"It feels like spring is never going to come." --Elodie while waiting for the bus this morning in yet another snowstorm.

Yesterday afternoon the hope was alive, the sun was shining and snow was melting and puddles for splashing abounded. You can see in this picture, underneath the new layer, that right around the house we could actually see some grass again! Officially, I think it was in the high 30s but it felt like the 50s in the sun! I didn't even wear a jacket to get the kids from the bus stop after school! The hope of spring seemed to make everyone just a little peppier.

That was yesterday. Today it takes a bit more effort to have that pep in my step and smile all the while!

General Conference was a snowy weekend for for us, too. Just when the winter wonderland was losing it's wonder, Elder Porter's over-the-top cheerful roommate Bruce reminded me of the wonderful power of optimism. Maybe I need to read that talk again. Or my good old standby from Elder Wirthlin, "Come what may and love it." Or maybe I need to move back to a climate slightly closer to the tropics and further from the arctic!! No, no, no, I love the snow!!

Math Monday

It's my teaching license renewal crunch time so I've had math on the brain. Per request I thought I'd share some of our favorite math games.

I use three different types of flash cards (triangle fact family cards, 10 frame dot cards, and standard flash cards) to encourage flexible thinking, fact mastery, and number sense all at the same time. My kids love this game I call Treasure Trail. I pick around 5 facts to work on and pick them out of each set of flash cards. I lay the cards out in a long trail (using another card to cover up the answer on the triangle cards) and place an upside down bowl at the end of the trail, under which I hide a "treasure," like a piece of popcorn, sweet cereal, or a skittle. No peeking when I bury the treasure under the bowl. The kid chooses a small toy to walk down the path, saying the answer as the toy hops to each card. If they get a fact wrong, they have to go back to the beginning!! My kids usually want to do this over and over, giving them the repetition necessary to approach mastery.