it all adds up

We started our first math block of the year this week, with a re-awakening of the Four Processes (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division). We're actually doing more of a "revisiting" than "reawakening", because we're using the alternate four processes story that is provided by the Enki Education 1st Grade curriculum. (We used the other story, "Four Friends" last year.) Since Zoo Boy is so young, I thought a fuller process would be beneficial for him. So at the start of the week, I read the story "Paddy's Picnic". The kids were really excited to hear these characters brought to life again. We then spent the rest of the week working on addition (Paddy Plus).

After recalling the entire story, we read Paddy's verses from the accompanying "Paddy's Picnic" play, then we started our drawings. Above is J's drawing, and this is Zoo Boy's. These are not finished drawings. We drew all the characters separately last year when I first introduced them, so I decided we will keep adding to this drawing to wind up with just one completed drawing for the block.

In the story, Paddy falls asleep under a cherry tree, and ripe cherries fall over over him as he sleeps. When he awakens, he eats the cherries one by one. After doing our drawings, the boys ran to pull out our "Hi Ho Cherrio" game -- a game where you spin to determine how many cherries you remove from a tree to add to your bushel basket. GREAT addition game! There's been much happy cherry picking going on all week. And today, while on our morning walk, we found a choke-cherry tree chock full of little cherries!

We took yesterday off, so today we wrote out one of Paddy's verses on the top part of a page in our good books, and left the bottom blank to glue in our worksheets for the day. The boys happily gathered their counting rocks, remembering how these worksheets work from last year. (This was after a little side activity prompted by finding moth larvae in cocoons in their counting bags -- the bags went straight to the laundry after picking out and adding up our unexpected surprises....ew....). This is Zoo Boy's work, he got right down to business and worked steadily to complete his sheet. Actually, both boys did, they really enjoyed it!

J's sheet. By the way, I just want to mention to other Enki moms -- we're gluing in our sheets with Modge Podge -- I load up foam paint brushes with the Modge Podge and hand one to each kid, then they "paint" the glue on the reverse side -- it's just enough glue to cover the entire back in just the right thickness to firmly bond the paper to the good book page without unwanted bubbles or wrinkles. And the glue washes off the brushes if not allowed to dry on, so we've been using the same brushes forever.

My unfinished drawing, for comparison.

We'll be working with Max Multiply next week. Today we read "Color Painters" from the Enki 1st Grade Nature story collection and we'll work with that story tomorrow.