Monday, November 3, 2008

Math Unit 1: Money

We have been having fun learning all about money.

We began by learning the who, what, where and why of money using One Cent, Two Cents, Old Cent, New Cent: All About Money (Cat in the Hat's Learning Library). TS has never been a big fan of the Cat In Hat because of the constant rhymes, but he really enjoyed this book. It doesn't constantly rhythm and it is a non-fiction book.

The book also covers the basic of who is on our current money which was a good tie in with our Presidential election unit study. Did you know there have been only six non-presidents on our money? Can you name them?

I think skip counting is an essential skill set to have mastered before tackling counting money. TS mastered skip counting by 2s, 5s and 10s last year with the Hooked on Phonics Kindergarten Workbook. Before proceeding with money counting I wanted to review the concepts in a new way. I found the perfect tie in with our mini unit study on Pumpkins with the book "How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?" by Margaret McNamara. (We enjoyed her Robin Hill School series.)

The implied exercise, based on the story, is to take a pumpkin and count the seeds in groups of 2s, 5s and 10s. So after pumpkin picking with our co-op we bring home our pumpkin and try to estimate the number of seeds like Sid the Science kid. The process was then to open it and scoop out the seeds.

This is where life got interrupted because once we opened the pumpkin, TS started to look a little green about the gills. "Mom, the inside of this pumpkin looks like orange buggers and smells disgusting." Then he got the look, every parent knows that look …their eyes get wide, they clamp their lips and sway ever so slightly. You got it ..upchuck central. It turns out TS had a nasty little stomach bug that took that moment to present itself. Needless to say we are done with pumpkins for a long time in this house.

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