MATH! & Lapbooks

Well, I've already decided to change our math curriculum. This after I've already acquired a bunch of manipulatives for the Singapore program. I don't think Singapore is horrible, but it's a little fussy. It requires so many different kinds of manipulatives for each lesson - cards, dice, discs, blocks, etc. - that I always feel very ill-prepared and am always halting lessons to either find the right manipulative or to print something.

One of the main reasons I decided to make the switch is because we got the Life of Fred series in the mail. We started on the Apples book and really haven't looked back. So far, it's wonderful - Thing 2 wants to keep going and going. We've been doing 3 chapters per session. I feel like it's right on par with the focus of Classical Education, too, because it relies on reading skills. The more reading I can introduce, the better. In my reading up on Life of Fred, a program called Professor B Power Mathematics was also recommended. I was able to find the text books on Ebay for all three levels, along with the answer keys for super cheap. I went ahead and purchased the workbooks and charts. 

I am now promising myself that I'm not going to buy anything else until we start using the stuff I already purchased. I purchased supplies to start making lapbooks, but I'm not really sure how to start. Again, I'm feeling like maybe I dove into that one without knowing what I was getting myself into.

Hubby still hasn't gotten the cabinet together. The stuff is starting to pile up all over the sunroom. Literally piling up, in stacks. It's kinda funny, but not really.

I found a couple of free lapbook templates for Egypt, but they just seem ridiculously complicated. I have a feeling I am going to spend more time printing and cutting and arranging than Thing 2 is going to spend learning anything from these things.

That being said, I did put some of the card stock to good use yesterday. I did a project for baby Red (Thing 3) out of the Slow and Steady Get Me Ready book. It was year 1, week 20 or 30 something.  It was basically folding a piece in half and gluing/taping on either side to make sort of a pocket, then cutting out fish shapes of different colors so he could slide them in. He played with it for a while before he crumpled up the fishies. I knew he'd enjoy it, because his new thing lately has been to bring the cardboard sleeve for our Shrek movie set to someone, have them dump out all 4 movies and then help him slide them back in.

It's been a day. I've been really tired (even took a 30 minute nap with the baby). Then I realized why I had so much time to knit last night... because we were supposed to take our Explorer to the dealership because it's making this head-splitting squeaking noise. Damn thing doesn't even have 10,000 miles on it :-( And don't even get me started on that stupid SYNC system. I know I officially sound old, but I really would rather just have buttons and dials. Anyway, Big Daddy and I both forgot about it. UGH!

Still have to try to do a little history (we finished everything else in record time this morning) then make a meatloaf (yum!).