Mini Piwi & the Scales

There are so many nice printables for Christmas! Mini Piwi had fun with the tracing ones -she wanted to do all the ones I had printed in one go..

 

Every day this week we had at least one set of scales out for Big Sis's Math. Mini Piwi usually claimed it after our lesson and weighed everything from Christmas decorations to toys.

 

I really thought this decorating activity would be a hit but Mini Piwi is started to frustrated if a star  wasn't perfectly placed....We moved onto something else.

 

Christmas Super Shapes inspired by Team unizoomi as part of our Hands on Math projects

 

Also as part of our Hands on Math projects this week we did allsorts with Candy canes. Comparing sizes and mass and using them to measure the table.

 

 

 

Mini Piwi also became her big sis's fashion model this week and I was treated to multiple fashion shows.

 

Check out Piwi's adventures in Math this week 

 

 

 

 I am linking up to these blogs and this weeks 1+1+1=1 Tot School

 

Printable packs we were loving this week:





1plus1plus1equals1 Christmas tot pack and Nativity pack 



Christmas Printable @ Gift of Curiosity



E-book and printables

 



Christmas Hands on Math

Here are the Hands on Math activities we got up to this week...

Our hands on Math projects are something the Piwis can  work on together, and learn from even with their 4 year age gap. For more on our this see my first HOM post.

Measuring Metric Mass in Kg

We started our week with measuring mass. This year we are studying metric measurement. The Piwis were excited to play with all the different types of scales we have. Out first project was collecting items, weighing them and grouping them by their mass. The three categories: about less than 1kg, about 1 kg, and more than 1 kg.

Elf Math -measuring in grams

In order to investigate measuring mass in grams we did some 'Elf math'.
I gave the Piwi's a list of weights, the kitchen scales and a huge pile of mini candy canes. Their mission was find out how many candy canes you needed to make 25g, 100g, 150g and 200g. They tried it with little candy canes and the bigger fruit flavored ones.

Even Perry helped.....

I think Mini Piwi misheard me because it seemed like she was trying to eat her weight in candy canes.

I gave Miss K a challenge to use her results to see if she could work out how many candy canes you would need to make 500g, 1kg. Miss K didn't know it but she got an introduction to Multiplication.

Mini Piwi helped Miss with the Elf math and then used the balance to compare the weight of the big and small candy canes. She also measured the table using candy canes.

Next week we are going to solve some more real world problems with Mass like comparing masses.

Super Shapes!

Mini Piwi asked to make pictures like Team Umi Zoomi -why didn't I think of this one!!
We made lots of Christmas pictures from shapes just like Geo. We made some from our plastic tan gram shapes and others from paper. Here is Miss K's tree and Mini Piwi's snowman.

 

 

Test prep

One of our goals for the new year is practicing test taking so I encouraged Miss K to log on each day to IXL. She said she had forgotten that it was so fun and has consistently spent 20-30 mins on it all this week. Mini Piwi has taken to asking to go on Starfall.com when Miss K is on IXL.

 

 

I have a Spectrum test prep book ready to go too. So many homeschooling moms have recommended this to me.



 

 

Talking of multiplication, this weekend we are going to use the Christmas Multiplication freebie from The teacher in Me. Ms. Mills you saved me a lot time with this cute printable, thanks!!

 

 

 

 

 

You may also like

 

Christmas Science Fun

 

What our 2nd grade looks like

 

Hands on Math week 1

 

 

 

Science for Christmas

Language, Math and History became our focus this month with our unit studies. Science, I thought, would need to wait until the new year. Thankfully, I came across a link on Science about Christmas Science Ideas. Pre K Mini Piwi will definitely love these ideas, she is all about ice! For Miss K (Grade 2ish) I went looking for more ideas. Several google searches later I decided we still had time to fit in some science by investigating electricity in order to find out how Christmas lights work. When I taught at a science camp several years ago I just went to radio shack and bought all the components for electrical circuit experiments. This time around I decided to 'cheat' and look for a kit.  I was so excited when I found a Magic school bus electricity kit.

Why is this exciting? Miss K loves the books and the episode re-runs so I purchased the Magic school bus DVD set last week. It was at such a great price I couldn't pass up the chance to add it to our curriculum. We received the kit and have started with the Static electricity experiments. So far I have been impressed with the quality of the information and materials included..

UPDATE:
Thanks so much to all the great posts added to this post! I have a follow up post with pictures from these links....