Week 14: Contagious Math

DJ has a lot of friends. He is a very social creature. But he has known one of his best friends, A, since they were both just a few months old. A hasn't been to preschool yet except for some awesome outdoor preschools that have taught her wonderful things about nature and herself. But a couple of weeks ago her mom asked if they could do a day of school with DJ for me to show her some math.

Week 13: Reading, Writing & Geography

I am hopelessly late in writing this post for last week. Sorry to keep you waiting!  The holiday season has kept me running faster than I can keep up.

I started DJ on a modified version of Phonetic Object boxes. This is an early reading activity where a set of objects and written labels are matched. Typically the labels would be written on slips of paper and I may eventually get there but without the time to prepare the materials in advance, I punted and wrote the words out with the movable alphabet and then had DJ match the objects.

Week 12: Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving! We certainly did so "school" was light this week.


Although DJ can easily count to 50 now, when I asked what he wanted to work on he chose to go back to the beginning and do the Cards & Counters. Because he has done this many times before I let him do the non-traditional pattern for the counters. Typically the counters would be placed in pairs so that odd numbers would stand out with the extra counter standing alone. But DJ fully understands odd & even already. After completing the layout, he chose to add the Bead Stair by matching each bead strand above its corresponding number. You can see he's also still in his PJs. Now that it is mostly too cold to go outside he has decided there is no point in getting dressed. Lol.

Week 11: Golden Bead Division & More

I presented Golden Bead Division to DJ this week. I had been most nervous about this operation and I don't know why because it seemed DJ understood it better than any of the others. I started by having him roll the place value ice to choose the starting quantity. He first rolled 9,290 so I began to use my calculator to figure out how to adjust it to a number evenly divisible by 3. But before I finished, DJ picked up the unit dice and said, "I'm going to change this to 7 because I don't want 0." Hah! Lucky me, 9,297 IS divisible by 3.

Week 10: Birthday Gifts

DJ received this neat US map placemat for his birthday last week. It has images on the various states representing things you would find in that state. Then the border has some of the same images so you can play a game of finding which state each one belongs in. It also sparked questions like why the pig was in Iowa and the alligator in Florida.

Week 9: Happy Birthday!

This was another short week in terms of "schoolwork" and I'm a little late in getting this post up. DJ turned four years old this week. He insisted he wouldn't be 4 until he ate cake. Hah. He also is very nostalgic for babyhood and does not want to get bigger. I miss my baby too but I'm also loving how well my boy is growing.

Week 8: Happy Halloween

We did almost no school this week. I spent most of the week sick and uninterested in being a responsible homeschool teacher. So this is going to be a shorter post than usual.