Homeschool Discoveries

Happy (day after) Thanksgiving!  We had a quiet celebration with just our family yesterday:

Before Tony’s bike accident (read more about that here and here if you are just joining us), we had plans to travel to the Chicago area to celebrate with his side of the  family.  However, an 8+ hour trip in the car, while possible, just didn’t seem very practical or necessary at this stage of his recovery process.   My family lives in our area, but didn’t have any Thanksgiving plans.   Figuring this wasn’t the year either to invite friends or family over for a big shindig, we just celebrated as the six of us!  I think this is the first time in our ten years of marriage and maybe only the second or third time in my whole life that Thanksgiving didn’t involve some kind of big gathering of family and/or friends.

While I was feeling kinda bummed about our lack of big plans for Thanksgiving in the days leading up to the holiday, when the day actually arrived, I really enjoyed the laid back day! We have so much to be thankful for!

Here are a few highlights from the rest of our (short) week:

1.  After spending the week following surgery with his leg in splints/gauze/ace wrap, DH was given a big “boot” at his clinic appointment on Wednesday.  He’s still not supposed to put any weight on it, and he should still spend the majority of time with it elevated, but the boot provides a bit more protection for his leg and makes it seem a little more reasonable for him to sit on the floor with the kids or leave it not-propped-up and under the table at dinner and not worry as much about it getting bumped!

2.  We had beautiful weather this week (up until the temp started dropping like a rock yesterday afternoon!) — weather in the 50s and 60s in November is MN is heavenly!  After 60 degree weather yesterday morning, now as of last night we have snow on the ground!  Fun Minnesota weather!  (And yes, I was closely watching J with the sticks! He thought they were pretty fun to scoot along with).

3-5.  We did light school days on Monday and Tuesday, with our “Thanksgiving Break” starting on Wednesday.   For spelling this week we played games.  On Monday we reviewed spelling words outside while running, hopping, jumping, and so on.  Then on Tuesday we played the Logic of English games of Phonogram Bingo and Phonogram Tic-Tac-Toe.

6.  For math this week, I worked on two RightStart B lessons with Mr. E on telling time, and worked with Miss M on subtracting time and adding/subtracting measurements with feet and inches.

7-8. On Monday afternoon we headed to the monthly “homeschool day” at The Works, a science and engineering museum we recently got a membership for.   The kids did an hour-long workshop about electrolytes that involved testing various substances to see if they could conduct electricity.  Then they made a wet-cell battery!

9. Yes, we jumped the gun and put up the Christmas tree before Thanksgiving.  Typically I wait until after Thanksgiving to do it…but with our lack of travel plans this year for Thanksgiving, I was looking for a few extra fun diversions…and we started the decorating process last weekend.  🙂

I made a super quick trip to Target last night while everyone was asleep to get a couple items, but the rest of our weekend plans are for fun and relaxing at home as a family. Well, maybe I’ll do a little online shopping! 🙂 I hope you have a wonderful weekend, whether you are shopping or relaxing or doing more celebrating!

I’m linking up with:

First, an update on my DH, Tony (read about his bike accident in last week’s collage post if you missed that).   Tony had a doctor visit with a specialized surgeon on Tuesday, who then performed the second surgery Tony needed on his leg on Wednesday to repair the larger of the two broken bones and to do final reconstruction of the ankle joint (the bones were broken just above the ankle).  This was even outpatient surgery!  Tony and I spent the whole day at a surgery center while the kids hung out with Grandma (my mom).  We’re thankful that after this second surgery there are no pins sticking out from his leg — just a couple of strong splints tightly wrapped up to hold things in place.

Yesterday was a rough recovery day for him with lots of pain, but by this morning it looked like things were improving.  We’re still looking at about 2 weeks of DH having his leg elevated, plus several more weeks of no weight-bearing on the affected leg.  Luckily, since it is his left leg, he can start driving back into work as soon as he is off the stronger pain medication (and he can work from home in the mean time as soon as he is feeling up for it!).

My plan had been to only take Wednesday off from school, but Tuesday ended up being almost a wash as well — Miss M completed her independent work, but between Tony’s appointment, a trip to the DMV for a temporary handicap parking permit, gymnastics class and a trip to Target for prescriptions, we ran out of time for anything else!

Prior to the start of the new school week, on Sunday afternoon, the kids and I headed to the Minneapolis Institute of Art for their monthly Family Day.  This month’s theme was “China” due to the opening of a traveling exhibit featuring some of the Terracotta Warriors from the First Emperor’s tomb.  This exhibit typically has a hefty ticket fee, but it was free for family day! Yay!

They didn’t allow photography in the actual exhibit (just of this replica chariot outside the exhibit), but WOW! It was cool to see six warriors and two horses in real life (we’ve read about them in several books in past years).   Plus there were many other smaller artifacts to see.  I’m hoping we can go back for a tour with our co-op to hear a tour guide give more information about the exhibit.

The kids also enjoyed sculpting their own terracotta warriors, making animal hats (I missed getting a picture of this) and going on a “gallery hunt” to find pieces of Chinese artwork in various museum galleries.  Baby J is so happy to sit in his stroller and take it all in.  I’m happy to have a 4th child who is content to do this!

A few other highlights from our week:

• We got out the math balance for Mr E (Kindergarten) on Monday, and whizzed through the three lessons that use the balance in RightStart B.  Both Mr. E and Mr. K had fun playing with the balance. We completed two additional lessons as well, for a total of 5 math lessons (not bad considering he really only did school work on three days!).
• Mr. E decided he wanted to read a “harder book” this week, so over the course of the week he read about half of Danny and the Dinosaur with me.  We did a bit of spelling review, and that was all for formal Kindergarten work this week!
• I worked with Miss M on three lessons in RightStart D this week on numerical patterns and adding and subtracting time.  She did some additional work on her own from some of the earlier lessons (review material she can complete without a new lesson from me).
• In spelling, Miss M took the test on lesson 16 and wrote a long story using this lesson’s spelling words.  Unfortunately, she only got about half of the words correct on the test for this lesson, and I’m not sure where the breakdown in her understanding is happening.   Miss M also did her usual science reading/notebooking with Sassafras Science, and read some assorted history books.
• We had our first real snow of the year on Monday.  It mostly melted by the end of the day Tuesday, but that didn’t stop the kids from donning their snow gear and playing on Monday.
• With Tony less able to help around the house, it’s the perfect opportunity to give the kids more responsibility.  I taught Miss M how to make pancakes and french toast, and she was able to make the pancakes with almost no assistance from me — I just needed to get out the griddle and turn it on!
• In contrast to last week, we did tons of reading this week. We finished a couple of history read-alouds,  worked on “Liberty or Death” by the Maestros, and started a new family read aloud read by daddy — James and the Giant Peach.  We decided that reading time was a good way to spend the evening when daddy needs to stay lying down!  Grandma also read many, many extra stories to the kids while she was babysitting.  Lucky boys get three stories each at bedtime when Grandma is doing the reading!!!

Have a wonderful weekend!

I’m linking up with Collage Friday and the Weekly Wrap-Up.

This week started out like any other…and quickly changed in a way that will define our next two or three months.  Tony called shortly after he left for work to let me know he had taken a nasty fall on his bike and needed me to pick him up.  I quickly shuffled the kids across the street to the neighbor’s house, and left to pick him and his bike up.  It wasn’t but a few minutes later that he called and said I would just be picking up his bike — he couldn’t put any weight on his leg and thought we should call an ambulance.  I took the bike home, and he went to the hospital.

After Tony spent many hours in the ER, the verdict was both bones broken (quite badly) in his lower left leg.  He had one surgery Monday night, and then was able to come home Wednesday night.   He’ll have a second surgery next week.  Needless to say Tony is taking it easy and spending nearly all his time with his leg elevated at the moment (and there are lots of pins sticking out from his leg right now, making it tough to do much of anything!), and he’ll have to keep weight off of it for up to 12 weeks.

So, the kids and I have a new focus over the next several weeks — helping out Daddy, getting him what he needs to be comfortable, and picking up the slack around the house to make sure everything still gets taken care of!

We really have a lot to be thankful for given the circumstances — the accident could have been so much worse, it happened pretty close to home, we have tons of family and friends offering to help us out, and Tony is able to do much of his work from home (his employer is being very helpful in getting things set up for him to work remotely as long as is necessary).   I’m finding a lot of little things to be thankful for too — I had just done a lot of “stock up” grocery and Target shopping so I have most of what I need at home, we had most of our fall “outside chores” taken care of, we recently got a larger dishwasher and our first snowblower, and it didn’t happen in the summer when we would have been expecting to spend a lot of time doing outside activities as a family.

Despite the unexpected turn in our week’s schedule, we still got a lot done.  All four kids had their well child appointments, I voted on Tuesday (Tony sadly missed out — we learned too late on Tuesday that he should have requested an absentee ballot on Monday, as soon as he knew he would be staying in the hospital over election day), and we went to co-op on Thursday where all three big kids were in the talent show:

Miss M sang and danced to “Dem Bones” (an act planned before the events of this week!), Mr. E played a mouse in a skit of Aesop’s fable “The Lion and the Mouse,”  and Mr. K sang a fall song with his preschool class.

Despite everything else going on this week, we did manage to get a surprising amount of regular school work done — Tuesday was the only day we took completely off from school:

Family Science Saturday:  Last Saturday, before Tony’s accident, the kids spent the morning with daddy playing with dry ice!  They haven’t gotten to do any science activities with daddy in a long time and they have been begging for weeks to use dry ice, so that was a perfect way for them to spend the morning while I was doing my grocery shopping.  My rock and mineral samples arrived yesterday from Home Science Tools, so I am excited for us to start a new family science study on rocks and minerals next week!

Miss M’s learning highlights this week (3rd grade):  Miss M read about Australian animals in Sassafras Science Adventures, including reading several library books about marsupials.  She was so excited for me to take a picture of her reading, don’t you think.  😉  We also did lessons 25,28, and 29 in Right Start Math D (plus some earlier worksheets for independent work — we’re skipping around to just cover lessons that are new to Miss M), and we started lesson 16 in Logic of English Essentials.   For History this week, Miss M read a few Jean Fritz books about key figures in the American Revolution this week, as well as a biography of George Washington by the D’Aulaire’s .

Mr. E’s learning highlights this week (Kindergarten):  Mr. E and I kept things pretty simple — He read to me every day, we reviewed his LOE-E phonograms that he has learned so far, and we did some RightStart B math, finishing lesson 45 as well as doing lessons 46 and 47.   In the lower right picture above, he is calculating the number of days in a year.  We get to use the math balance for his RS-B lessons next week.  We’re looking forward to that!

Probably what suffered most in our distracted school week was read-alouds.  I still fit in my bedtime read-aloud with Miss M most nights (We are loving Sophia’s War by Avi), but we were at a standstill with our other history read-alouds all together, and in general I didn’t do nearly as much reading to the boys as usual.

Have a wonderful weekend!

I’m Linking Up With: Collage Friday and The Weekly Wrap-Up!

This week was definitely a little more on the out-of-the ordinary side.  Tony was gone from Sunday through Wednesday morning for a work trip.  Then Sunday night baby J started running a fever, causing a few changes to our plans.  Between the fever and teething, J did not sleep well those nights Tony was gone.  I was pretty tired, but luckily coffee was my friend and I made it through.

Here are a few highlights from our week:

Art Museum Trip (Top Row):  On Sunday afternoon we went to Family Day at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.  The MIA’s monthly family days feature hands-on activities revolving around a specific theme.  This month’s theme was “Sky”.  The kids made sun catchers and kites and watched a short planetarium show in a mobile planetarium brought to the MIA from the Bell Museum of Natural History.   One highlight for the boys was a display of guns we spotted while on the way to one of the activities.  They were excited to see some muskets that are probably a little bit like some of the guns we’ve been reading about in our American History studies!

Lots of Math (Middle Row & Bottom Left): We had a very “mathy” week here.   Most of the lessons on the schedule for Miss M (3rd grade)  in Right Start C were involving fractions, so I declared a “Fraction Fun Day” on Wednesday.  You can read more about that in this post.   Mr. E  (Kindergarten) loves fractions too.  I was amazed on Monday when he started answering the questions I was asking Miss M as a part of her math lesson!  So, instead of his regularly-scheduled math lessons, I went over a lot of the same material on fractions as I was covering with Miss M, but in a bit less depth.  He was so proud of himself for assembling the whole fraction chart on his own!  He also did lesson 36 in R.S. level B (the main highlight of that lesson was playing addition war).

Lots of math card games were played at our house this week.  Besides the Addition War that I played with Mr. E, I played the fraction games “One” and “Fraction War” with both of the older kids.  Mr. E and Mr. K (Pre-K, age 3.5) even played regular War with number cards together!  Miss M was grasping concepts quickly this week, and somehow we flew through the content of seven lessons (137-144) this week!  We didn’t do all the multiplication practice associated with these lessons, but that will come.   I told Miss M I wanted her to do 15 minutes of multiplication practice each day. She’s not super fast at it yet, but that amount of time is just right to help her not get too stressed out about finishing a certain # of problems.

Spelling (Bottom Right): Miss M finished lesson 13 in Logic of English, while Mr. E started lesson 3 (though we only got through the first section of the lesson – we didn’t do any spelling dictation this week).   We played a phonogram game all together on Thursday — a modified version of the LOE game “Rotten Egg” — everyone had their own bag of phonograms.   🙂

Other stuff I didn’t take pictures of:

• History: We finished up a couple read-alouds from the Colonial/French and Indian Wars period (Sign of the Beaver and The Matchlock Gun), and started reading the next book in the American Story series by the Maestros covering the Revolutionary War (Liberty or Death).  Miss M read a number of books about this next topic from our “book basket”, and we also started watching the animated series “Liberty’s Kids” that takes place during the Revolutionary War.  Episodes are available on youtube, and we watched the first four of them.
• Science: We didn’t do a lot of science this week other than Miss M completing one more chapter of Sasafrass Science Zoology, and the boys enjoying a few more library books about space.
• Mr E  started reading set 4 of BOB books as well as a few other readers.  Check out my post from earlier this week about books for new readers if you are looking for easy reader book ideas.

On Thursday afternoon/evening we had another fun adventure:

After checking out one of my favorite regular book sales (a semi-annual library sale in a suburb 20 minute from home), we went to the Minnesota Children’s museum to see two new exhibits (The Amazing Castle and Ball-O-Rama), and a special demonstration by The Kinetic King — a guy you may have seen on America’s Got Talent if you were watching in the summer of 2011.  He does “Kinetic Sculptures” that “explode” in a matter of seconds.  It’s pretty amazing to watch thousands of craft sticks flipping up in the air in sequence!  After our museum exploration we had a late dinner next door at Mickey’s Diner — a well-known local establishment.

Have a wonderful weekend!

I’m linking up with Collage Friday and the Weekly-Wrap Up!

I think I may have discovered a new axiom of homeschooling (at least for us, this week): If nothing else is planned for the day, school (or at least finishing school for the day) can and will expand to fill the time allowed for it.  On Monday/Wednesday/Friday when we had no specific afternoon plans, we really didn’t get everyone’s work done until mid to late afternoon.  On Tuesday and Thursday when we had someplace to be right after lunch (gymnastics class and our co-op, respectively)…low and behold, work was done quickly and efficiently.  I guess I need to find some better motivators for the days we don’t plan to leave the house…or better incentives to not get distracted.  🙂

Here are a few highlights of what we accomplished this week for school:

Miss M (Age 8, 3rd grade):

Math: It must be a record for us — we completed six lessons of RightStart C (#s 131-136).  Miss M loves fractions, but thinks pages of multiplication are the equivalent of a medieval torture device.  😉

Spelling:  We completed lesson 12 in Logic of English Essentials, with Miss M asking to test in the middle of the week, and we also started lesson 13.  I am really liking the Logic of English Spelling Journal.  This week I tried combining it with the spelling lists by phonogram I discovered on the LOE site.  On two occasions this week I copied a list from the site (-tch words and -kn words) and asked her to read the whole list and circle any words she did not know the meaning of.  Then I had her copy ten or so words in the spelling journal.  I think this was a good exercise for her.  My intention had been to do dictionary practice on Friday with the words she didn’t know from the two lists, but we didn’t quite get to that!

History: We’re finishing up with colonial America.  We finished Witch of Blackbird Pond as well as finally finishing Struggle for a Continent by the Maestros, and reading a few chapters of Sign of the Beaver.  Miss M has been reading “Fire by Night”, a historical fiction work from an out-of-print series of chapter books called “The American Adventure”.    We’re excited to move on to the Revolutionary War this coming week!

Science: Miss M read Ch. 4 in Sassafrass Science Zoology and learned about the desert habitat and animals through the assigned chapter and supplementary readings.  I want to to the lesson on Rocks and Minerals from BFSU with the kids, but I keep forgetting to get my act together and order rock and mineral sample sets.

Mr E (age 5.5, Kindergarten):

Math: We worked on the material in lessons 30-31 of RightStart B on Monday, and made it through lesson 35 by the end of the week.  We didn’t linger on most of these lessons, allowing time to also work on pages from Singapore 1A and Challenging Word Problems 1.  In an ideal world we would play more RS math games, but he likes the workbook style problems too, so it works out well for the mean time to do this.

Phonics/Spelling: Mr E read from “I See Sam” books and another series called “My Phonics Readers”.   He finished up lesson 2 of Logic of English Essentials (we’re not doing the grammar portion at all, just the spelling).   We also tried out Explode the Code book 3, since he seems to like workbook-based activities.

Handwriting:  Six weeks or so ago, Mr. E though that “A Reason for Handwriting Book A” looked too hard.  This week, he thought it looked too easy.  LOL!  He really wanted to jump right into copying verses, and copied two this week, as well as asking me to help him spell a variety of statements about God that he wanted to write out for himself.  And he asked to start learning cursive.  We’ll see how that goes!

History and Science:  Mr E listened to Sign of the Beaver, and the boys picked lots and lots of science-related library books to read this week about deserts and about space!

Mr. K (3.5, Preschool):

Mr K likes to listen in on most of what Mr. E is doing.  He also started asking me to “do math”, so we are having a special math time together most weeks while the two bigger kids are in their gymnastics class.  Having done math the “RightStart way” for a few years, it’s pretty easy to just wing it and start teaching him some of the basic concepts without even referring to the level A lessons.

All together…The kids watched some of the new complete School House Rock video I bought them.  That counts for grammar, math, science, history…right? 🙂  They also enjoyed three more episodes of the PBS show SciGirls!

And for the fun stuff:

1-2:  Lego Fun, including a boat inspired by last week’s trip to The Works.

3:  Look where I can scoot under! (Yes we have an old-style crib…we zip-tied the sides so that the drop-side is secure!).  🙂

4:  More leafy fun this week…though most of our leaves have blown away!

5-6: The kids made more Halloween crafts of their own inititative

7: Enjoying a new stack of library books!

8.  My handsome boys on co-op picture day.  Miss M didn’t really want to pose for me!

9. Painting a model canon from a kit

I hope you’ve had a good weekend and are ready to face another week! Tony left this morning for a short work trip, so I am brainstorming about how to keep the next few days fun and interesting!

Linking up with Collage Friday and the Weekly Wrap Up!

I just finished up another one of my quarterly freelance editing deadlines tonight.  Consequently, the blog has been a little bit neglected again these past couple weeks.

Besides my cramming in as much editing time as possible during the last two weeks, we’ve been busy in the past week or so…

Enjoying beautiful fall weather:

Reading books I really hope I find some time to write about at some point:

Picking apples:

Playing games:

Dressing up:

Looking cute (Baby J turned 11 months old this past weekend!):

Coloring and Creating:

Building:

Celebrating:

Learning (These are sundials!):

With any luck I’ll find some time to write a “real” week in review at the end of this week…and maybe a few other posts too.  🙂

It’s already time for another week-in-review.  It hardly seems possible…but I guess since I wrote last week’s review this week (on Monday), it does make this week “seem” a bit shorter.

I tend to write a lot about what I’m doing with Miss M (3rd grade), and less about Mr. E (Kindergarten) and Mr. K (age 3.5 — Preschool).  I tried to take a few more purposeful pictures of the boys this week!

1. While we occasionally pull out Phonics Pathways for reading practice, these days most of Mr. E’s reading practice comes from easy-to-read books of his choosing.  I typically set a timer for 10 minutes.  If he wants to keep going after that, great…if not, 10 minutes of practice per day is fine for his age.  Lately I’ve not been introducing too many new phonics concepts — we’re mostly just practicing what he has already learned over the past few months and developing greater fluency with those blends and phonograms.

Mr. K always listens when Mr. E is reading or doing phonics exercises.  Usually, after Mr. E reads, Mr. K picks a book for me to read to him.  🙂

2. Speaking of phonograms and spelling, I invited Mr. E to play Miss M’s spelling game with us (more on that below).  He did a great job with writing and spelling cvc words, and a few trickier four letter words and words generally considered sight words (like “the”). Mr. K ignored us while we were playing this game for the most part, but joined in at the end trying his hand at writing a few single letters. He can write some nice vowels, but that’s about it (fine for a 3 year old!).

3.  and 4.  The boys continued their interest in space and planets this week.  These are a few books we read from our bookshelves, plus we just picked out a bunch more space books at the library.  I also bought a Hands of a Child Lapbook ebook on “Nearby Space” (it was a perfectly timed $5 ebook-of-the-week sale!), and printed out some of these nice draw and  journal pages for Erik to draw a picture and do some handwriting. For this page he dictated to me what he wanted to say (one sentence: “This is Mars”), and I wrote it down on another pieces of paper.  Then he copied it on to his journal page! Mr. K likes having his own draw/journal pages and lapbook pieces too.  🙂

5. and 6. This week for Math, Mr.  E and I went through lessons 17-23 and part of 24 in Right Start B! This kid is just eating up math right now, as fast as I can shovel it in.  Almost every day I had to tell him that we had done enough.  I think he might do math for an hour or more if I let him!  He also sat in on some of Miss M’s math, and was fascinated by the base 10 picture cards I pulled out for a subtraction review with Miss M.  He seemed to really be connecting with how those worked.  While I don’t know that he has mastered all the concepts in those lessons we covered, I am trying to keep the pace fast lest he get bored (that happened regularly last year when I tried to actually do RS A lessons with him).

Mr K often sits with us for math too (even at times I suggest he may go play…but he just sits and absorbs it like a little sponge as often as not!).  Lately Mr. K has been asking to “do math too”, so I have been teaching him the Right Start “Yellow is the Sun” song and working with him on knowing quantities 1-5 with beads, tally sticks, etc.

7.  I pulled out the Pattern Blocks primarily for Mr. K, but everyone had a good time using them.  I think it’s been over a year since we have used these so it was fresh and new!

8. Everyone loves every chance they are given for learning or fun on the iPad.  🙂 Toca Boca Band was a new app this week, and a fave for everyone.

9. Fun table work for the boys to do while I worked with Miss M — From 1+1+1=1 I printed out Animal Alphabet printables for Mr. K (but Mr E wanted some too!) as well as Solar System printables for both boys.

Here’s a few tidbits from Miss M’s week (3rd grade):

History: Most of our work for US History this week consisted of historical fiction reading.  Miss M is reading Pocahontas and the Strangers independently.  We  finished up Puritan Adventure and started the Witch of Blackbird Pond as bedtime read-alouds.  I had really good intentions of doing some notebooking or other projects on paper with Miss M to get on paper some of what she has learned so far about the Pilgrims and other early colonists, but it just didn’t happen.

Science: I added Sassafras Science Volume 1: Zoology to our science studies as a program that Miss M can complete mostly independently.  A lot of information is conveyed via a story about two kids who go on a trip around the world to learn about various animals and their habitats.  This is supplemented with encyclopedia or other readings about the animals and some short notebooking pages.  Pictured is Miss M’s notebooking page about Lions.  She filled in the top section and narrated the bottom portion to me.  Miss M will spend maybe 15 minutes per day on this science program. She likes it so far!

Spelling: This was a review week (Lesson 10) for us in Logic of English.  Miss M identified from a list a dozen or so words from the last five lessons she felt like she wanted to practice.  Miss M’s favorite review and practice activity was Spelling Basketball.  I called out the words and she wrote them down on a half sheet of paper.  Then she could crumple up the paper and toss it in the basket.  One point for every correctly spelled word, plus an extra point if it makes it in the basket!

Math: We only made it through three math lessons this week for Miss M.  We breezed through lessons 121 and 122 of RightStart C.  Then we hit the next review lesson, 123.  We had fun playing the game pictured, which was not a RS game (inspiration from here), but fit in perfectly.  But in going through the review worksheet in Miss M’s workbook, I discovered that Miss M had forgotten how to do 4 digit subtraction with trading.   My plan to spend yesterday’s math time reviewing this concept did not go over well.  Nor did my attempt to present this material today.  The “school principal” was called in (aka Daddy) for an “after school” math lesson tonight.  This was as much a character building opportunity as it was an opportunity to review a forgotten math concept.  Eventually, the method for subtraction was remembered and (I hope) Miss M is better prepared to be a humble, teachable, ready to learn math student.  🙂

Have a wonderful weekend!

I’m linking up with:

Collage Friday, the Weekly Wrap-Up and Preschool/5K Corner!