Friday, February 8, 2013

Chinese Math block

For this math block I deviated from our normal 
curriculum and used Marsha Johnson's files for inspiration.
She has the most spectacular files on her yahoo group
Waldorf home educators.  
This block focused on the four processes, columnar adding 
and subtracting, the times tables, and working with the abacus.
All of the information was brought to Matthew through a collection

I told two stories a week and introduced concepts based on 
these stories.  He enjoys math very much and this block 
was fun for him.  This was a bit of review and 
mostly solidified multiplication.  We all had fun learning 
the abacus.  Tom had to take over this area for me!
I thought it was hard, Matthew seemed to really like it.
Counting large numbers on his Chinese abacus


We also took time to review last years foreign language.
I tried something new this year, and we bought a language program
for the computer called the learnables.  It's o.k. but we 
don't use it as often as we should and the one on one 
with the teacher was a lot better.  We are going to sign him up
for the Chinese language classes again asap. For now 
we are reviewing from his class material and using the 
program.  


 Although I know yoga did not come from China
I thought we could become more zen like incorporating it
thus, we have begun our mornings with a 1/2 hour yoga
video.  Even the baby does it with us :)



To bring in the littles more we crafted Chinese dragons 
and panda bears.  We learned a little about the 
Chinese new year traditions and the giant panda.


We spent time painting and learning new technique.

Matthew's castle- Perspective

Wesley's clouds- pulling paint from the paper

For read aloud they almost finished the book 
By Grace Lin
This book comes HIGHLY recommended from our family.
If you are looking for a chapter book to read aloud to 
your second or third grader this is very good.
Every morning I hear all about what happened to Min lee


We also enjoyed the snow!!!!



Until next time
~blessings

No comments: