Watercraft of the World, Week 4 - Division

This week we talked about the Chinook People and their canoes, and the Inuit people and their kayaks.

We started outside on Monday, and I wrote out the 9's times table in chalk on the driveway, and wrote out the 7's times table for the first time.  Grant walked them forward and backward before we set out on our morning walk around the lake.

Once we were in the school room, we said our morning verses.  We always start out with this one:

With joy we greet the morning sun,

Who shines with love on everyone,

Who shines in the sky, on the land and sea,

And who fills me with light when he shines on me.

After that we reviewed more of the time's tables while singing them to their familiar tunes.  Grant has really picked up on the songs, and if he needs to remember skip counting for something else, I can hear him singing out the songs.  It really has helped to put them to music. Like Cory said the other day, he'll be 40 years old and still singing those songs to himself,lol.

Once we were done with that, we moved onto our penny whistle lesson.  When we were done with that, I told Grant about the Chinook People who lived (and still live) in the Northwest United States and Canada.  I told him about the canoes they would make out of a single tree, which they felled using stone tools. After that they would burn out small amounts of wood and then scrape out the burned parts.  They had two different kinds of canoes.  One was called a salt water canoe, and the other a sweet water canoe.  The salt water canoes would hold many people and were used for hunting seals and whales. The sweet water canoes were used in the rivers where they fished for salmon and trout.

Here is a description of the Chinook canoe.

(I guess I should have drawn a person in this canoe, as Grant pointed out to me that a canoe wouldn't be out in the middle of the river without a person in it. Thanks, Grant!)

I also told him a Chinook Legend called "A Yakima Legend" that I found online.  There are many online.  This one involved Coyote, which was a very familiar character in many Native American Legends.

After we were done with that, Grant and I drew pictures in our main lesson books.  We started out by drawing five canoes.  Then I said five people wanted to get into the canoes, how many would fit in each canoe?  So, we drew one person in each canoe.  Then five more people came and wanted to get in, now how many people in each canoe?, and so on until we got up to four people in each canoe.

Mom's Picture

Grant's Picture

I also wanted to draw some oars, because the Chinook oar had a very distinctive crescent shape to help them catch on to rocks or roots if they were in strong currents. Grant decided all of his people should have oars because they were in a race.

After we were done with our drawings, I wrote out some simple division problems for Grant to work out on the chalkboard. He used some jewels to help work them out.

On Tuesday, we took our morning walk enjoying the warm SPRING day before heading into the school room.  I put the 9's and 7's times tables to their own tunes.  "Twinkle, twinkle little star..." for the 9's and "My Bonnie lies over the ocean..." for the 7's.  We practiced that and some other times tables.

We practiced the penny whistle, and then I had Grant re-tell me what I told him yesterday about the Chinook People.  I also read two more Native American Coyote legends from this book:

Afterward, while Grant was having a snack, we worked on some mental math problems using division.  I told him how the tribes would share the hunt and food they gathered with everyone so no one would go hungry.  I asked Grant, what if they caught 20 rabbits and there were 10 families?  How many rabbits would each family get?  What if they gathered 15 baskets of berries, and there were 5 families?  How many baskets would each family get?  What if some of the people caught 12 fish, and there were 4 families?  How many fish would each family get? 

Later, Grant worked out some more problems on the chalkboard, and wrote out the division tables for 2,3 and 4.

Once he was finished with that, we looked at an example of Northwest Native American artwork, and drew our own versions.

Mom's Picture

Grant's Picture

Julia was drawing her own picture while Grant and I were drawing ours.  This is her drawing.  I was especially impressed by her spirals!

The Chinook People also had an interesting jargon they used for trading that was a combination of many different languages.  We didn't have time to go into it, but you can find an encyclopedia of the Chinook trading language here.

I also found Julia and Boji enjoying some bonding time in the school room.

On Wednesday, after the kids had some free outdoor play time, I had Grant walk the 7's, 8's and 9's times tables I had written out with chalk on the driveway before heading into the school room. Inside, we reviewed some more times tables while jumping rope, and then we had penny whistle practice. 

After that, I told Grant about the Inuit People of the far North, and their invention of the kayak.

You can find a short description of the Inuit kayak here.

I also read the chapter from this book called, "Little Folks From the Far North."  Now they have a lifestyle that is really different from ours!

After I read that story, Grant and I drew pictures in our lesson books:

Mom's Picture

Grant's Picture

You will see an inukshuk in our drawings.  We talked about inukshuks and why the Inuit people built them. They have become a very familiar symbol of the Inuit people. You can read a short description of inukshuks here. Below is a photo of an Inuit inukshuk.

Here is an inukshuk we made:

We certainly had no shortage of rocks to make it!

Grant also wrote out the division tables for 5,6,7 and 8.  We also worked out some more division problems, and I introduced the concepts of remainders, and showed him how to write the answer out when he had a remainder.(for example 11 divided by 3= 3,r.2) 

We also went outside to enjoy the last day of warm weather we had for the week, and I read this book:

This was our first "supplemental" Spring book.  Some of it was a little advanced for Johanna, so I left some sentences out.  We didn't have time to do a fun bird related craft this week so I'm hoping to get one in next week.

On Thursday, I had some errands to run, things to take care of in preparation for Grant's 8th birthday party next weekend, and even treated myself to a little facial.  So, Dad had the kids and we took the day off of school.

Well, we started out the week with temperatures in the 80's, and ended it on Friday with snow!  We didn't go outside Friday morning, and the kids were perfectly content to play inside.  We did go into the school room and review some the of the times tables with songs.  We put the 8 times table to "London Bridges". 

Once we had reviewed the tables, we had a short penny whistle practice, and then I read Grant this book I got from the library:

There were also a few things in this book I didn't read, such as the last sentence of the book which said something like, "the biggest challenge facing the Inuit people today is alcoholism."  I just didn't think that was something my 7 year old needed to know.  For starters, I don't even think he knows what the word alcoholism means, at least I hope he doesn't!

After I read this book, Grant finished up writing the division tables up through 11.  When he was done I showed him how to write out a division problem using the "L", and he worked out some of those.

I also found this book at the library, and we read a few of the legends from it throughout the week:

We had a lot of fun doint this math block, and next week we will be talking about money!

Watercraft of the World, Week 3 - Multiplication

Well, on Monday there was no writing on the driveway with sidewalk chalk, and there was no sign of Mr. Bee as it snowed ALL day.  The temperature was right on the freezing line, and it was a heavy, wet snow.  The ground was also slightly warmed up, so only about 1-2 inches accumulated, but I wonder how much total actually fell. We stayed in because we had put a lot of our snow clothes away, and I just didn't feel like messing with all that wet messiness again.

When we got into the school room, we did a lot of skip counting review with movement and our "times tables tunes".  All the good stuff we've been doing over the past couple weeks. 

After that we did our penny whistle lesson, and then I told Grant a story about the Portuguese cod fishing boats, also known as dories (In Marsh Johnson's waldorf home educators files, where I got the idea for this lesson, she recommends talking about the medieval cod fisherman, but I couldn't find much information about them online. There was plenty of info about the Portuguese fisherman from the early part of the 20th century, so I went with that.  It was still really interesting, and got the same idea across.)

You can read more about the Portuguese Dory boats here.  You can watch a series of short videos from a National Geographic documentary about it here.

These were some hard working dudes!  Gone from their homes to fish 4-6 months of the year. In a one man dory boat (made of wooden planks about 16 feet long) in the Atlantic ocean for 12 hours a day!  Then, once they filled their dory with fish, they had to go back to the schooner (which was the larger ship that carried all the men and dories), and clean and salt all the fish. Only when their ship was full to capacity could they return home.  This was some seriously dangerous work!  Grant thought it sounded like fun to live on a boat so long. If only he knew!!  The above videos are really pretty interesting to watch.
We also talked about how plentiful the cod used to be in the Great Banks region of Newfoundland, and around the coasts of Greenland.  It was said that you could dip a basket into the water and come out with a basket full of fish, and that at times the water was so thick with fish, you could hardly row your boat through them.

After I told Grant the story, we drew pictures in our lesson books.

Mom's Drawing

Grant's Drawing

We looked at this picture of a cod fish, so we could get a good sense of what they look like:

Once we were done with our drawings, we worked on some math problems using our "jewels" as fish.  We started with counting them out by 2's and then by 5's.  After that, I had Grant start with a big pile of jewel "fish".  I told him only 10 fish could fit in the hold of each boat.  He divided up the fish into piles of ten, and then we counted by 10's to see how many there were.  In in this case we had 7 piles of 10 and 8 fish left over.  I also showed him how that was 7x10.  After that I took a few fish out of our pile, and told him each boat could now only hold four fish.  He divided the fish into piles of four, and then counted by 4's to see how many there were.  This time he had 15 piles of 4 fish, with 1 left over.  So, we had a total of 61 fish.  Then I showed him that 4x15 was also the same answer.

We worked on our knitting projects in the afternoon, and for dinner we had fish nuggets, made out of guess what??  Cod!! We have had these many times before, and the kids love them!

On Tuesday, we started out with outdoor playtime and our walk.  Only about 2 inches of snow accumulated because of the ground being warm. If not, we would have had around 8-10 inches of snow.  After our walk, we went into the school room and reviewed the time's tables with movement and songs.  I also introduced Grant to the 9's times table.  After the math review, we did our penny whistle lesson, and then I read the kids this fun book for St. Patrick's Day:

After that I had Grant re-tell me the story I told him yesterday about the Portuguese Cod Fishermen.  After we had talked about the story once again, we wrote out the times tables for the 2's, 3's, 4's and 5's. 

Grant also worked out some multiplication problems on his chalkboard.

On Wednesday, the kids enjoyed some morning playtime in the sunshine before we went into the school room.  Once inside we reviewed the times tables with their tunes, marched out the 9's and 11's times tables, and I gave Grant a stack of cards with the 9's times tables written on it. I asked him to go as fast as he could to put them in the correct order. At first he thought it would take him forever, but he quickly got the hang of it.

After that we did our penny whistle lesson.  Once we were done with the penny whistle lesson, Grant wrote out the 6's and 7's times tables, and I showed Grant how to multiply in columns. 

I also introduced Grant to the concept of greater than, less than, or =.

After we talked about that for awhile, I read the kid's this book:

And then I read them a fun leprechaun trickster story out of this book:

Once I had read the stories, we made these pots of gold sun catchers.

This one is Julia's:

On Thursday, we reviewed the times tables with movement, songs and jump roping.

We also changed up the star count game from the Games For Math book a little bit.  The first roll of the dice was supposed to be the number of "baskets" we would draw, and the second roll was supposed to be the number of fish inside the basket.  Grant decided he wanted to draw pots with pieces of gold inside.

We each had two turns, and Grant figured out how many total pieces of gold were in each "set" of pots.

Afterward, Grant finished writing the times tables.  He wrote out the 8's, 9's 10's and 11's tables.

When he finished with that, we worked on some more multiplication problems and reviewed greater than,less than, or =.

Once we were done with math, I read the kids this book:

We also did some fun things for St. Patrick's Day, but I'll write about that in a different post.

Next week will be our fourth and final week for our watercraft of the world math block.  We will be reviewing division while talking about the Chinook Canoe and the Inuit Kayak.

Watercraft of the World, Week 2 - Subtraction

Alright, here we go.  Week 2 of our watercraft math block, focusing on the Chinese Junk ships. For this week, the major focus was on subtraction with a lot of other little math tidbits mixed in.

On Monday, we started outside with some free play and then I wrote out some times tables on the driveway in chalk.  I wrote out the 2's times table in yellow chalk in a square.  I wrote out the 3's times table in purple chalk in a straight line, and finally I wrote out the 4's times table in blue chalk in a circle. The kids were very excited when they saw me starting to write the numbers on the driveway (especially the girls), and soon they were all following the numbers and running around in circles and squares.  I let them just run around for awhile, and then I had Grant step on each number while counting aloud.  When he reached the last number, I had him walk backwards while counting backwards as he stepped on each number.  Finally, I had him walk each time's table while singing the tunes with them that we learned last week.  I will add more time's tables everyday this week until our driveway is filled with numbers!

Once we were inside we had some warm "flowering" tea waiting for us.  This kids thought this was pretty neat.

After our tea, Grant and I did our penny whistle lesson, and then I told him a story I made up about a Chinese Junk ship and it's crew of traders heading to the spice islands.  I told how the ships were big, but still the fastest on the seas at the time.  I talked about how these ships were able to roam the seas, and were seen in ports all over the world, and I talked about the goods they would trade.  In my story, they would be trading bolts of precious silk for spices. 

You can read more about Chinese Junk ships here.

Once I was done telling the story, Grant and I drew a picture of the ship in our lesson books.

Mom's Picture

Grant's Picture

In the hull of the ship we drew some large clay jars like those they would have used to carry the spices.  We took some ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and cardamon and rubbed a little of each one onto the page inside each jar. The girls wanted to be involved in this too, so they did their own drawings with some spice rubbings.  All of them thought it was a lot of fun smelling all the spices, and even giving some of them a little taste.

While we were doing our spice rubbings I brought in some subtraction problems by talking about trading.  If our Chinese traders had a total of 15 bolts of silk, and they had to trade two for some ginger, how many did they have left? What if they traded three for nutmeg?  How many left?, etc.

After that we used some whole cloves to work out some more subtraction problems.

I also introduced the Chinese characters for the numbers 1-3.

Grant and I did some knitting in the afternoon.  His elephant is coming along slowly, but surely.

On Tuesday, we started off outside with some light rain joining us for our walk.  Unfortunately, the rain wiped out the times tables I wrote on the driveway. 

Once inside, we used our times tables tunes, and the small step/small step/(this time a large step instead of a jump) pattern to review some of our times tables.  Grant also did some rope jumping while counting out some of the other times tables.

We also reviewed even and odd numbers.  I wrote the even numbers on the board in one color, and Grant filled in the odd numbers with a different color.

When we were done with that, I called out numbers and Grant had to write them in the right color of chalk.  Red for even numbers and blue for odd numbers.

He had no problem at all with the concept of even and odd numbers.  He even began counting by 2's and telling me the even numbers before I had anything written on the board.

After this we had snack, and the kids tried some rice candy.

It is actually made in Japan, but hey, the kids will never know.

While they were having a snack, I had Grant re-tell me the story I told him yesterday about the Chinese Junk ship trader's voyage to the spice islands.

I also showed him how to subtract in columns, and we practiced a few problems.

I also introduced the rest of the Chinese numbers, 1-10, and they're spelling and pronunciation (Hopefully the videos on youtube have me somewhat close to sounding correct).

In keeping with our "winter wonderland" (not for long!) theme of books for Johanna, I read the kids this book:

On Wednesday, I re-drew the 4's times table in chalk on the driveway, and introduced the 6's times table.  I only did these two because we were supposed to have more rain.

So, I came outside a few minutes after I sent the kids out to find Grant wearing my rain boots!  I asked him why, and he said he stepped in a puddle with his boots on, and both of them leaked water.  I guess it's time for a new pair of rain boots for Grant!

Grant walked each times table forwards and backwards.  After that, he walked them forwards again to the "times table tune" they go with.

Once we were inside, we did our penny whistle lesson and reviewed the story I told once again.  I also read a cute story from this book:

Grandpa Paul gave this book to Grant awhile ago (Thanks Grandpa!).  We read the story called Little Folks from the Land of Many People.  I'm not sure how accurate this book is right now since the last publish date was 1943, but it was still fun to read and gave Grant more of a feel of the difference between children living in China, and children living in the U.S.

After I read the story, we brought in some pre-geometry skills and drew some "math pictures". We looked at the patterns in skip counting, and drew them out like this:

(We drew a wrong line there in our 7's circle, so, uh, just disregard that line and pretend like you don't see it.  Just be content in knowing that it's supposed to look like the 3's circle.) 

Grant really enjoyed drawing these, and couldn't wait to see what they looked like when they were finished.  He especially liked how the 5's and the 10's circles turned out.  He thought those were pretty funny.

After our math drawings, we worked on some more subtraction problems, and I introduced the concept of borrowing.

On Thursday, Grant walked out the times tables on the driveway before we took our morning walk. Once we got inside, we had some fun doing zoo-robics.  In keeping with the Asian theme, we did the duck walk (they eat a lot of duck, right?), and egg rolls.  The kids liked doing the egg rolls the best.

After that, Grant and I did our penny whistle lesson, and I read a few tidbits about China from this book:

Once I was done reading, the kids helped me make our snack for the day.  Chinese sesame cookies.  At least food.com said they were Chinese.  They had fun shaping them into balls and rolling them in toasted sesame seeds.  We baked them in the toaster oven in the school room, so we had the lovely scent of "Chinese Five Spice Powder infused cookies" wafting through the school room, while we worked on some math.

We added in some more pre-geometry skills using triangles and squares in patterns.  I took the following drawing from Melisa Neilson's, A Journey through Waldorf Math, and changed up the story to go along with our Chinese Junks. We also did some mental math problems while we were drawing.

I started out drawing the outer square on the board, as Grant was following along drawing on his chalk board. The outer square was the "map" for our Chinese traders.  The corners of the next diamond shape became the stops they made at four different spice islands.  At each "stop" on an island, I gave Grant some problems to work out.  For example, when they reached the first island the traders wanted to trade bolts of silks for spices.  They started out with 20 bolts of silk.  If they traded five for some cloves how many would they have left?  What if they traded four more for some cinnamon?  How many left?, etc..

(I had to step out of the room for a few minutes to do something while we were doing this, and when I came back Grant's island had grown feet.  If you look close enough you can see them up there.  He was told to erase those, because as far as I know, islands do not have feet.)

The traders moved onto the next island and wanted to trade tea for spices.  We did some more math problems there.  Then I changed it up on the third island, and we talked about the traders on our ship talking to a group of 15 traders from another ship.  If four of them left to go explore the island, how many were left?  What if two left to go to the bathroom?  How many?, etc.  On the fourth island we talked about the number of ships in the harbor coming and going.

The next square in became different stops they made on the islands, and finally the "x" in the middle showed the shortcuts they found to cross the island while they were exploring.  So, we started drawing from the outside-in.  Here is Grant's final drawing:

Snack Time!  We settled down to a yummy snack of tea and sesame cookies.

After snack, we worked out some more subtraction problems.

Once we were finished with that, we practiced the characters for 1-10 on the chalkboard, and then wrote them on our junk ships.

On Friday, we spent a lot of time outside in the morning since the sun returned, and the temperatures warmed up.

Later, I helped Grant make an origami boat, and Johanna make a pink cat.

I also read Grant this funny story involving math:

Stay tuned.....Next week we will be talking about Portuguese cod fishing boats and multiplication.