Grade 4, Week 11, Day 4 ~ Transitional Thursday

I have the family/learning room torn apart; it's part of an effort to simplify things but oh! it makes such a big mess in the process! I had to clear the desk so that the boys could do their lesson work today.

I was talking to a friend about how we approach teaching math at home. She said that she had tried several different math curricula but that she always comes back to teaching it in her own way. I told her that I follow the Waldorf guidelines for when to teach each subject, and that I try to bring in a math story and go from whole to parts, but that I too pretty much wing it. It makes sense to me; we can only teach what we know, so it would follow that we can only teach how we know it.

Anyway, it's working for us. Today we pulled out our Cuisinaire rods and our Miquon Math Lab materials and delved a little deeper into measurement. I would have never thought to use the rods to represent cups, pints, quarts, etc. but it was brilliant! It's far less wet messy than using water and measuring cups.

Journaling

Continuing Practice: Subtraction with Regrouping

Assigned Reading: Indian Legends

Concepts Awakened: Punctuation

Main Lesson: Measurement

Afternoon Lesson: Gardening

Other Subjects: Independent (Free) Reading and Social Studies (A History of US)