Homeschool: Volume

In the morning we talked about different volume measurements and colored, cut and pasted Mr. Volume Robot from HERE.

In the afternoon I was feeling a little Montessori and decided to break out a HUGE bag of rice and the measuring cups!

We talked about the different sizes of measurement and they had great fun playing in the rice!

Nothing a good vacuum cleaner can't clean up! :)

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Printable: Math Dot Helper

Math has become a bit monotonous around here lately, so I've been trying to make things fun and give my first grader a few different strategies for adding and subtracting.

Here is my Math Dot Helper printable! You can print this and have your child place it in front of them when they are doing some math facts. Instead of counting on their fingers you can teach your child to used the dots inside the numbers and eventually transfer this to the numbers on their worksheets!

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Make It Monday: Bird Seed Feeders

Materials:

• 4 cups bird seed
• i package gelatine
• 2 T corn syrup
• 1/2 c flour
• 1 C water
• containers or cookie cutters for molds

Combine the water, flour, gelatine and corn syrup in a large bowl. Stir in bird seed and mix well.

Spray your molds with cooking spray so the seed mixture doesn't stick

Scoop the mixture into your molds and press it down firmly.

Be sure to make a hole somewhere in the middle so you can tie a ribbon or sting through to hang it up. Allow the seed feeder to dry for 3-4 hours, then remove from the mold and dry for 24 hours.

Unfortunately we don't have any pictures of our seed feeders in action, because it rained and they dissolved! :P Bummer! Silly central IL weather!

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Spiral Math Fact Race Game

I have to thank TIPS blog for this game idea!! We didn't glue the cards to a poster board like she did, that way I thought we could change it up every time we played! The game was a big hit with my kids, although we may need a few lessons on sportsmanship and being a good sport even if you lose! Competitiveness runs in our family :). 

Here is what you need to play!

• 1 dice
• 1 deck of cards
• start and finish labels (optional)
• markers (we just used whatever the kids wanted, Lego man, blocks and a pencil sharpener)

First decide if you are doing addition or subtraction facts. Roll the dice and move forward in the spaces between the cards. Have the kids say the whole number sentence out loud for practice. First one to the end wins! 

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