Math

The nice thing about the teacher's strike is that we're getting plenty of extra time to catch up on our work. We fell behind in our math curriculum, but now we're ahead. I would love to get it all finished by the end of May or even part way through June so that we don't have to spend the nice weather inside doing school work. Of course, there are plenty of great learning activities that can be done outside - we just don't have to concern ourselves with the curriculum. My favourite thing is sitting on the couch swing and reading. Ds loves to take our chairs up on the play centre and write or read there. You can tell I'm looking forward to summer!

So, we just finished up a module on measurement. They had fun making a metre stick from slips of paper. They learned about decimetres. Now, HERE is where I have an issue with the Alberta Learning. Why are we teaching the kids about decimetres? Have any of you used decimetres? They learned about temperature and volume. That was a fun few days when we were playing with water and measuring the volume of different sized containers.We also did weight and then finally money.

I actually quite like the Alberta Distance Learning curriculum. We're not signed up where we have to send our work into anyone at any particular time, though. From what I hear that sounds very restrictive. We work through the modules pretty much at our own pace with finishing by the end of the year as our only goal. Some of the lessons can be too repetitive for Ds so we either whip through some or skip others all together. What I like about the curriculum is that there is a great mix between book work and hands-on activities. I'm not comfortable making up my own lessons and I find these very simple to follow and, for the most part, fun.

The flash on my camera didn't work in some of the above photos. :(