Dear Friends,
Time escapes me right now, so I would like to give you just some snapshots from the first grade showing you how me make everything connect to everything else. Lately, we have been connecting every subject and adventure to math. Just as a quick reminder, I will refer to the 1st graders by the month they were born in to conceal their identities from those who don't personally know them.
The first grade has created these 10 digit symbols in colored clay and various forms of art with me:
(0) The brown egg.
(1) The purple flower stalk.
(2) The indigo blue swan.
(3) The turquoise sea horse.
(4) The dark green mint branches full of little leaves.
(5) The light green slice of lime.
(6) The yellow banana.
(7) The orange cashew fruit.
(8) The red Jamaica flower.
(9) The pink flamingo.
When we were on our river adventure last Friday, July call everyone in excitement down at the river. "Look!" he cried out in joy. "The light on the water is making the number 3!" Indeed, the light above was breaking through the tree in the perfect shape of a number three. Then everyone started pointing out different color plants whose colors reminded them of the numbers.
After learning Hebrew letter to number associations like B, K, and R (remember Baker) are all part of the family of two, we found out what the color of each student's name was. All the students have a color and a number now. For example, using my names, Sky is 8 (red) and Thoth is 9 (pink). Since all the students luckily had a different color and number value for their names, they each got to use their own color spray paint to mark the sides of their step up to the new play ground fort.
Counting has become a favorite free pass time of students on the playground. They sing their way enthusiastically up the number line on the swings on their own on recess.
Addition as also become a team spot even at different still levels in class playing the horses in the fields game. Advanced students added their way fast up the number line taking all the digits of a number and adding them together, like 1 + 1 + 1 = 3 for problem number 111 and 1 + 1 + 5 = 7 for problem number 115. Once the advanced students got bored on their own of freely racing ahead into triple digit addition as I allowed them to do, I then let them teach and coach the students falling behind to test their ability to explain and teach their skills. Each slower math student had two green squares of colored paper that I called fields. The had little colored squares on those fields that I called horses. And in the groove at the top of each desk they has the horse market to collect more horses and return unneeded ones. To play the addition game for 5 + 2, the student would put 5 horses in one field and 2 in the second field. Then they would make the two fields join together and have all the horses run together and make noise and play together. They would could the new group of joined horses and discover that 5 + 2 = 7. It seems that everyone in the class is mastering addition very quickly in this fashion including our new student December.
We have also had a chance to connect virtues education to math. I have been teaching the students about fairness and kindness and healthy expectations in class for themselves and for others. On the playground, March who has had September as her boyfriend for a few days decided that she would take August as a second boyfriend and have two boyfriends when she asked whoever wanted to be her boyfriend to raise his hand and found that August raised his hand by September did not. After listen to this for a little while and seeing and uncomfortable social tension beginning to rise between March, September, August and December who was left out, I stepped in and told the children that they couldn't have two boyfriends or girlfriends until they could juggle two mangos one hundred times without dropping either one. I said that usually people only have one boyfriend or girlfriend in the world, but a small number of people have two at the same time in an honest and fair way where everyone agrees and knows what to expect, but that this is rare. I said it is hard work like juggling two mangos at the same time. September and March quickly ran from the swings to collect mangos to start practicing. They got between 5 and 10 acts of juggling before dropping the mangos. March accepted that it was too much trouble to have two boyfriends and decided she was happy to just stick with September. September decided that it was two much trouble for the time being also to try to have two girlfriends. It seem likely however they will come back to be later seeing how long they can both juggle and count before they drop what they are juggling. This seems like an exciting enough playground game that it will reappear and develop a life of its own.
Later this week we will finally get our Singapore Math workbooks, so I can coach the children individually on racing through all of those exercises. After they are finished with those workbooks one by one, with parent support and consent, I would like to see if students can start bring iPad's to class to move on to Khan Academy after spring break or after summer break at the latest. I have both an iPad and an Apple laptop that I can use with August and December who don't likely have an tablets or iPad's at home that they could use for Khan Academy. I will ask parents about this idea soon in person, and I will consult with the Waldorf Spanish teacher as well who will likely adjust to this idea best if she is also informed of it well in advance of implementation.
Limitless learning to all!
Sky
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