No Book Days

Sometimes I will announce a no book day. Selena realizes that does not mean there won't be a lot of learning through the day, just that we are putting the books aside and learning a little differently. Last Thursday was one of those days. We usually start these days with one concept that we play with on the whiteboard. This particular day we or I should say I chose to work with fractions. We started with a paper plate, Selena was asked to represent 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16. She easily cut the paper plate into the appropriate fractions. We took this a step further in adding fractions. Using the pieces and writing the equations on the board Selena quickly learned how to add fractions step by step to make a whole.

We then talked a bit about time using fractions. Selena enjoyed piping in and reminding me that I say we will do something in a half hour, oh brother now she watches the clock to make sure that we do it in that half hour. No more fudging on my part.

I then took out the play money and we refreshed our memory on the denomination of the bills and how fractions play a huge part in counting change. I then told Selena to go get all her play food and we would play store. You can see above that Selena worked real hard to set up her store and priced each table. Later she added a toy section where the toys were worth $100.00.

I gave her a certain amount of money and she had to go shopping. The goal was to stay within the amount she had without going over. Her first attempt was pretty funny as she picked something off each table or chair. When I informed her she was over her $1.00, she put the $1.00 item back, it wasn't as healthy anyway as it was chocolate milk. I changed the amount of money she had several times and she went shopping realizing after the first attempt she had to pay more attention to the prices and not the "I wants." We left our store up through the day, I thought it would be fun for her and her friend to play store that evening.

We did a lot of other things with fractions, using different mediums, even triangle shaped chips. We looked for different things in the house that could be broke into fractions, or the different ways we use fractions, like in cooking, baking, and quickly Selena realized we even use fractions in telling how much gas we have in the car, (one of her quirks is to worry about how much gas we have in our car when ever we go somewhere, and no we have never ran out of gas.)

With her friend coming over that evening, Selena chose to make meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy. Now the picture above is a first for Selena. She has never touched raw meat before. It has only been within the past couple months that she will even eat meat. She had so much fun mixing the meatloaf and did a very good job of it too.

When we picked J up (who we do babysit) she had homework to do. I normally do not assign homework for Selena but J asked if Selena had some math to do too. I obliged by giving Selena a page of math to work on while J worked on her homework. I got my first good taste of common core math and believe me I am so glad that I homeschool. After reading the problem twice, I was still so confused as to what they were asking. I finally stopped reading the story problem and just looked at the basic math shown which then gave me an understanding of what they wanted. My word, a full paragraph of information that no child even knows anything about just to figure out if there is x amount of females in a town, and the total population is y, how many males live in the town? (Silent Scream)

Yes, the girls had fun playing store, and sat up a Walmart for Papa and I to shop in. It was unlike any Walmart I had ever shopped in, every item in the Deli cost $30.00 and there was nothing under $10.00. Once that game was over and picked up and put away we sat around the table and played Apple to Apple Junior.

That night Papa went out side to discover a tree frog clinging to our door. We found the only thing we could and captured it. We had to wake Selena up to take a look at it. She has been hearing a frog and trying to figure out where it was for the past week. How could we not let her finally see it?

She loved the opportunity to look at the frog up close and named it Sam. After a good look, Papa took it out and released it. As I walked by the back door, I discovered Sam had returned.

Now perched on the sill of the window looking inside. I do believe this little fellow really would have loved for us to let him in where it was warm.

This is a look at what "No Book Days" look like in our homeschool. Still lots of learning going on just a break from anything that resembles a book or workbook.