Main Lesson Block: Money!

This week was my first try at a math main lesson block. *gulp*

First we made the Accountant Gnome.

Here he is attached to a pencil:

And here he is hanging out with Katie Grace's money bag:

And here he is helping Katie Grace with her very un-Waldorf workbook:

And here they are with our typical supplies for the week: a main lesson book, crayons, a bag of money, and our gnomies:
Oh, and an eraser, because Accountant Gnome is covering the pencil eraser.

Pennies, nickles, and dimes are great for reinforcing counting by 1s, 5s, and 10s.

We also enjoyed this poem by Shel Silverstein:
My dad gave me one dollar bill
'Cause I'm his smartest son,
And I swapped it for two shiny quarters
'Cause two is mroe than one!

And then i took the quarters
And traded them to Lou
For three dimes-i guess he don't know
that three is mroe than two!

Just them, along came old blind Bates
And just 'cause he can't see
He gave me four nickels for my three dimes,
And four is more than three!

And i took the nickels to Hiram Coombs
Down at the seed-feed store,
and the fool gave me five pennies for them,
And five is more than four!

And then i went and showed my dad,
and he go red in the cheeks
And closed his eyes and shook his head-
Too proud of me to speak!

I posted about this game we played earlier this week. The columns are labeled "pennies" "nickles" "dimes" and "total". She rolled a die and counted out that many coins, and then also drew them on the page. She then counted out the total.

Here is a main lesson book page, featuring Accountant Gnome!

Creating a candy shop was fun, as was having a gnome pay day.
But the most fun was decided what each gnome would buy, and how much change they got. See the orange gnome? He didn't have enough money for anything, so her bartered dusting the candy shop for a lolly.

We also visited the bank to get some half-dollars and a dollar coin (which she thinks must be fake!) and tomorrow we're opening a savings account. We also worked through some stuff in her Brownie book, and she will have earned her Penny Power Try-It when we're all through.

If we had tons of time, I would have done more. We'd talk about the history of money, and look at money from around the world. And who knows, maybe we can revisit it before the year is through. She's an excellent money counter though. Maybe she has a future in finance?

When in Rome...

X shall stand for playmates TEN.
V for FIVE stout stalwart men;
I for ONE, as I'm alive;
C for ONE HUNDRED, and D for FIVE;
M for a thousand soldiers true,
And L for FIFTY, I'll tell you.
~from A Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme

We started out by looking at how our hands can make the numerals: One finger held up looks like an I. When you hold up five fingers, you can see the V between the thumb and first finger. And when you cross your thumbs, you get the X for 10.

Then Michael worked on these in his main lesson book. Michael has some small motor issues, so I'm always really proud of him when he perseveres with something that isn't really his forte. But he had an idea--to hide the Roman numerals in the gladiators weapons or outfit--and he stuck with it. He wrote an explanation on the shield as well. He's planning on adding more details and a background tomorrow. He's a great kid.

Scrambled Eggs

I wanted to share a fun math game we played last week. First, I cut out 20 paper eggs. One each one I wrote a numeral from 0 through 9. Then I put them all in a little basket. I set up a white board like this:


+

_______________________

Katie Grace pulled out 4 eggs and arranged them on the white board, and then did the problems. It was great practice for adding double digit numbers.

Quality of Numbers

One thing I love about the Waldorf approach to mathematics is that in first grade, a child isn't learning just how to write a numeral or what exactly makes up the quantity of a number, but is introduced to the qualities of that number as well--one is for unity, two for duality, etc.

I'm going to post the little number poems we used with each number. She didn't copy them all in her lesson book. Sometimes she wrote the whole poem, other times just a couplet, and still other times, nothing at all.

One
One is the sun.
One is the tree.
One is the earth,
And one is me.

Two
Two ears to hear,
Two eyes to see,
Two hands to help
Those all 'round me.

I didn't like this one, and I think in her lesson book, she wrote "One, two, me and you!" instead.


Three
The world is three-
Beast, plant, and stone.
God is three-
Father, Spirit, Son.

Four
Summer and autumn, winter and spring--
Through four seasons passes the year;
Fire and air, water and earth-
Out of these four does the whole world appear.

Five
Five are the fingers on each hand,
Each foot has five toes.
Five rays has the star shining o'er the land,
Five petals has the rose.

Six
Wherever light would find its home,
In storm or cave or honeycomb,
Six is its chosen number and form.

Seven
Seven colors in a row
In a shining rainbow.

Eight
Wriggling spiders on eight legs crawl,
Spinning webs on every wall.

Nine
Nine is a mystery, hidden away,
A secret to be revealed one day.

Ten
Ten fingers have we on our two hands.
Ten toes, as on two feet we stand.
For ten contains within two fives,
Which we'll remember all our lives.

SOURCES:
Some came from Eugene Schwartz's number poems, which are floating around all over the place but, I believe, came from A Child's Seasonal Treasury. They're also here. I also found some other poems here. Some I just made up.

Have a wonderful day!

Field Trip to the Creamery and Math Musings

We decided to chuck the schedule and run to the creamery. We are really blessed by being able to get raw, whole milk from a local Amish farm.






And now, math chat. (Cross-posted on MDC)
So, we're about a month into it and I'm just not digging Miquon Math. I feel like she's not learning anything, and she doesn't seem particularly "Rah! Rah!" about it either. Not that she needs to be, but it would be nice if one of us sort of liked it.

OK, what I like:
- the playfulness
- the fact that it goes whole to part
- the fact that it teaches all 4 operations together
- the fact that it uses manipulatives
- it seems to fit in somewhat with Waldorf philosophy
- the cost
- it isn't just memorization and drill, but teaches mathematical thinking

What I don't like:
- lack of practice/drill--this may be why it feels like she isn't learning anything
- it takes a huge amount of time, and I just don't have it, with a baby and a preschooler and a third grader who might be coming home. I don't have endless amounts of time to watch her free-play with materials and then handcraft lessons for her
- the Cuisenaire rods annoy the snot out of me
- so do the workbooks
- the first grade diary and lab annotations just aren't all that helpful to me, and they seem to end come January. The directions are all very nebulous, and I don't deal well with nebulosity.

In our brief foray into k12, we used Sadlier. I'm looking for something sort of like that, I guess. Something where I can teach a brief lesson and she can then work on her own with me nearby. I wish there was a stand-alone Waldorf math curriculum. I'm so conflicted.

That said, I did feel like we did something today. We played the yellow rod game, where Katie Grace had to find various ways to make 5:
Then, I diverted from Miquon and did a Waldorf thing. She wrote down different ways to make 5 in her main lesson book. I also showed her how her body makes five-head, arms, and legs:


So, I don't know what to do with math. I don't want to quit something before I really give it a chance, but I don't want to dig in my heels and be stubborn about sticking with something that doesn't seem to be working.

Also on the math front, we finished our qualities of numbers unit through ten:

Autumn Nature Table and Some Math

It's a bit more cluttered than I generally like, but the kids really got into it this time around. We made the forest fairies today.




Gnome treasure--we matched numerals to number words, and then gave each gnome his due.


A Cuisenaire rod step ladder. I did one side, and Katie Grace did the other.