Maths, Maths, Maths!!

We have a current maths obsession in our house. Cosmo has always loved numbers, even as a small baby, but recently I discovered a website called Dadsworksheets.com, which has the most ridiculous amount of practice papers for maths as free printables. 

Cosmo has fallen in love with the 1 minute Math Facts section and completed over twenty of these in one sitting. Still unsure of the concept of a test though, he handed me a paper to mark declaring proudly 'there are two mistakes on this one'. 

'Well if you know that already, why don't you correct them before I mark it?'

'No Mummy! You have to try and guess which ones they are!'

Hmmmm.........

Still, once I pointed out that getting 100% would earn him a gold star sticker, we had perfect score sheets every time. 

I also found a little app for Lychee's maths skills, which I think I may be too late with, but I'm going to try anyway. It works on the same principles that I teach reading with, that by flashing the cards quickly to a child under two years they learn to associate the image (word) with the sound and it's unconsciously learned. 

photo credit

This app claims that babies don't count. They just know how many are there (to a certain degree), but haven't learned to associate that number with a name or symbol. The app flashes up randomly placed red dots on a white background and tells you how many there are. The lessons start with numbers 1-5. They then build up in difficulty. In one minute a day, the developer tells us, you train your baby to recognise numbers without counting. This makes them faster processors of information over all as adults (because really, if the only benefit was not having to count stuff, it's probably not worth bothering with - just count).

I'm not sure it will work, but for one minute a day I'm willing to give it a go. 

Gracies XL

Cosmo has been enjoying playing with some video editing software and has come up with a fun trailer for a movie about our family becoming superheroes. He chose all the videos and photos for the storyboard template himself, and all the clips where he is in a read cape and Lychee has chocolate on her face were written and directed by him :0)

He also did the typing for the inserts. Unfortunately the iPad keeps inserting apostrophes into things (like Gracie's when he types Gracies) and he will not allow me to correct them, so you'll have to excuse the grammar.

The 'XL' thing is a bit of a joke in our family as Cosmo and his dad like to wrestle, and they add 'XL' to their names to give themselves wrestling identities. Without further ado, I give you 'Gracies XL - the trailer'.

Letters and Sounds

Just a quickie today as we have had some friends over who have turned the house into a disaster zone! I only have an hour to clean up before the children wake up and I can't find the carpet shampoo (and yes, I do need it!)

I do love it when Cosmo has people over to play though, he is exhausted after a hard morning running around and I got to catch up with a new friend, which was a lot of fun.

Anyhow, back on topic!

A teacher friend emailed me this website letters and sounds for Cosmo to have a play with. There are loads of interactive games and teaching ideas on there for phonics. At first I thought it was too simplistic, then I realised there was more than one level (duh!) and although it's not particularly challenging for him, he does enjoy playing with it and I think it's good to practise even the easier stuff.

Anyhow, I may use it with Lychee before she gets to the reading fluently stage.

So I've posted it here in case anyone wants to try it out. I think it would be a great tool for slightly older (e.g. computer literate) children who were struggling with reading. Cosmo is the other way round though (doesn't have the dexterity to use a mouse) so it's not so helpful. I end up selecting all the choices whilst he just reads out the words.

In summary: Good for some, fun for us :-)

Plan the work, work the plan

I hear being a homeschooling mommy requires lots of organisation and keeping on top of things. That is my biggest concern/fear of the whole process.
I'm not naturally a very organised person, but I do find to-do lists incredibly helpful. I find that if I spend all morning doing household chores, it still looks like I have achieved nothing. However, if I spend 10-15 minutes writing out a to-do list before I start, everything magically seems to get done a lot faster than I imagined it would, so that cup of tea and a sit down before lunch doesn't seem so slatternly.
It could, of course, be purely in my mind. Checking off each little box makes me feel like I've achieved something and I can look back at my list and say 'yes, I have done something today'. Yet somehow there seems to be some magic in the to-do list that makes me so much more productive.
There are loads of ways to do project management (I should know, it was one of my modules at university!) but I'm a sucker for a gadget.
I'm sure it's completely unreasonable as a housewife to even own an iPhone, let alone get all your emails sent to it as though you are some kind of executive, but my husband indulges me because... ...well because he is nice. So I recently downloaded 'Things' from the app store. I think it's amazing!
Okay, so my two year old's curriculum doesn't require too much planning/marking right now, but it will, and having a system in place will surely give me a head start on it.
To be honest I'm finding it incredibly helpful just to get my plans in order for the big relocation in june. Keeping track of mortgage details, houses, estate agents, solicitors and removal quotes is so much easier with this little tool, it makes me wonder how my mother managed without it.
That's a silly question of course, because my mother didn't even use a computer last time she moved house. We have been helping her switch her dining room and office around, discovering scraps of paper from 15 years ago with 'important' phone numbers and information regarding everything and anything. My mother has been a housewife for years, and yet she has two giant filing cabinets (the kind you see in doctors office) full of paperwork - that's two more than my dad (CEO of a large insurance firm) has. He has a drawer in a desk.
So thank God for my iPhone, it saves us from needing to buy a house with an extra bedroom to store all my paperwork. The way I see it, that's worth about £50,000, so my gadget is saving us an inordinate amount of money. That's my line and I'm sticking to it!