Math ~ week 1

If you are walking towards a distant wood you first see the wood as a whole, and only when you come near it do you perceive that it is made up of single trees.  This is just how you must proceed in arithmetic.  You never have in your purse, let us say, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 coins.  You have a whole heap of coins.  You have all five together, which is a whole.

~Rudolf Steiner, Kingdom of Childhood

This a different approach to numbers than I am used to.  

I have to consciously remind myself of whole to parts

when I am trying to teach him.  Also, I have to focus on making numbers beautiful!

Here is how our new block began.

We talked only about numbers 1-4.  

I introduced a new number everyday.  

We drew about it.

Matthew's number pictures

Wesley's number pictures

We have been playing a lot of counting games.

Wildcraft and a lot of Mancala.

They enjoy playing games and it's nice and fun counting.

I introduced him to Roman numerals along side our numbers.

We revisited forms this week too.

We did some review and then tackled running forms.

I told stories to accompany the forms.

We went on a field trip Wednesday to Pied Piper Crafts.

It was so fun!!  

We learned about wheat and all the steps to bread.  

We took the grains and thrashed them.

Then, we went outside to winnow the grains.

We ground the grains into flour.

Brought the flour home and made bread!

Bread

whole to parts :)

We took beautiful big hike this week and found signs of Jack frost!

of course we read tiptoes and how she tries to find Jack Frost.

We also started a new book called 

The Seven Year Wonder Book

the children are going crazy for it.

We love it.

Over the weekend Matthew will continue on with his 

Chinese language classes and Hockey is in full swing again!

next week more math

until then

~blessings