subtract, minus, give away

This week we're working with Mini Minus's verses and subtraction. To the left, J added Mini to his drawing, in a splendid blue dress, giving one of Paddy's cherries to Max.

Well finish our drawing next week after adding King Dominic Divide to the group.

Zoo Boy's Mini is giving one of Max's cherries to Paddy.

As we were pulling out our Good Books to do our drawings, he observed, "I know why we do this. It's so we learn to draw better." I just mumbled "Oh?" and he continued, "Well, it's working, I'm drawing MUCH better!" I simply stated, "Things tend to get better with practice," and he nodded in agreement.

J works on his subtraction sheet, lining up his counting rocks, then pushing away the number that are given away.

His completed sheet.

Zoo Boy works in a similar fashion, and surprisingly much quicker than J. He got one problem wrong, but he discovered the mistake himself and fixed it without my having to draw attention to it. He's definitely got this whole math thing down pat (so does J). We'll see how things go next week -- he struggled with the concept of division when we first introduced it in the Spring. My guess is that he's more ready for that sort of thinking now.

The Boy's verse (J's is at the top of this post) and completed sheet.

As he was writing out the verse, he had a sudden realization. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "I know why you write that out," pointing to the large print version of the verse I provide on an easel for them to read and write from. "That's so I know what to write!" I just smiled at him. Categorizing why we do the things we do seems to have become important to him lately. Earlier in the week he asked me why taking walks is part of our "homework". When I offered, "Getting exercise is important in everyone's day," he said "Yeah, that's what I thought." I'm thinking that he's trying to find connectedness between what we do and what other families do. I'm going to start letting him and J take a peek at some of the other Enki Homeschool blogs to show them other kids' work and help support that feeling of connectedness and belonging.

My drawing so far, for comparison.