It’s here! It’s finally here! We have had beautiful weather this week. I am sure it won’t last, it never does. But, we’re enjoying it while it’s here. Yesterday after our study time we spent the afternoon outside playing. We also managed to get our starters planted.
Okay- I have to gripe for a minute:
Curriculum companies are always trying to up-sell you on these overpriced “math manipuatives”- they come in a kit that cost 50- 80 dollars. It is full of crap that you can make at home, with crap you already have lying around. That is a math lesson in itself. In fact, the kits include these things (and people actually buy them) called linking cubes- they are basically big legos. So we use legos and blocks, or cars, or pipe cleaners- whatever is in eye sight when we are doing our lessons. I made a kit for under 5 dollars. I even found an old pack of flashcards in the closet, that I grabbed from a dollar bin a few years ago at Target- how lucky was that? I know! I will add to our kit (which is a shoebox) as needed. 80 dollars- I think we can all see why they call it a “manipulative kit”. I will never understand why I am so angry about this.
Another thing I have learned is that I love to laminate things! I would laminate my neighbors dog if I had the chance. Chase loves it too. He loves to write on dry erase boards, so I made him some laminated math pages to do his work on.
