Sporadic Math

In my quest to find some help in answering my school homework yesterday, I stumbled on some nice Math sites perfect for my little tutee.

It was a gold mine of activities and ideas for our Math lesson. I almost gave up on this subject but having found this site inspired me one more time to continue on. This one has the basic and leveled activities and really, a gold mine.

After P requested if he can play around with the keyboard but was refused coz F was taking a nap, the math gold mine was in line. The about-to-cry-face looked a bit better and gradually turned into a hopeful one. His face lit up and after a few more minutes, we were into the activities.

We covered the problem solving on arranging stuff with the simple hints given. First one was the cake (it covers the fraction concept of same, half, or equal.) Hmmm..better do it in a bullet point.

Activity

• cake (concept on fraction, equal, same, etc.)
• balloon (concept on colors, counting, a bit of graph, the words most, and few)
• crown jewels (concept of shapes termed as "jewels")
  
• train cars (concept on the words before, after, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th)
• sequencing picture (although he missed the dog burying bone thing again)
• time sequencing (he missed the time kids go to school, he answered kids go to school at 3 and goes home at 8 pm)

Points to work on:

• digital clocks vs. analog clocks
• sequence of things that happened everyday
• review the 1st, 2nd, etc., more exercise on that
• do some homemade drawings and letting him finish it before answering

Some more time and follow up on these things we should try again.

Measurement, anyone?

For the past two weeks that Teacher Mommy had resolve to get back to numbers, measurement lesson is what TM tried. TM prepared some real things for P to measure and put in a table. It took us a couple of days to finally finish the page coz it wasn't really very interesting for him. We finally finished the table yesterday, (it wasn't really a lot) but it took a bit of time. TM still has to take another shot at that next time. We were bounded with just a 6 inch paper ruler this time so perhaps we'll try a longer one next. Something that he can actually feel more enthusiasm in measuring.

TM has to get back to the drawing board for that lesson.
Uhmm..now that it occur to TM, since Mom is planning to make a pizza crust, perhaps we can try another unit of measurement this time. Off to the cupboard now.

Oops! Another one, an extension on the astronomy thing last week. Found some nice sites with ppt presentation and lots of cool photo slides for P. Started it two nights ago, but it's quite long so we're taking our time.

Street Astronomy 2009

Based on the stuff Teacher Mommy has heard from the short program on the opening of the event and read a bit on the online website of the event, 2009 was designated by the UN as Astronomy year. Why? This year marks the 400 years anniversary of Galileo using the first telescope ever and ?th hundred year that the first book on astronomy was ever published. (TM was really not very good in remembering numbers, you see.) Nonetheless, it was an event marked off on the calendar days before it. Right after I saw the poster around our street.

I can write a long entry on the things that happened but as usual, this will be just a quick report. The narrative will be for next time.

There was a short shadow storytelling on local sky mythology before the actual "star show." It isn't just astronomy, it's also local literature.










This was just 2nd night of the show but we still had to wait in line for more than 30 minutes.










The initial photo exhibit of some photos taken by national astronomy enthusiasts.
















This looks like out of an astronomy lab at school. (Not my school, though.) The nice guy explaining how the moon rotates around the earth, showing the phases of the moon. I really like this part but unfortunately, the team after us were a bit noisy that I didn't get to listen very well.
I do hope P will remember even just a fragment of this set up though.
















It was hard to take a picture and at the same time assist P as he take a peek of the moon. ;)
Hmm... the queue that we have to endure might seem worth it as we see P highly involved with the things around him.

We went home at around 11 pm. A bit late for the little one, but definitely worth it.
















Some nice sites here and here about astronomy.

PSU Museum

Palawan History is at the Museum