Since Halloween is fast approaching, I figured that the Brothers Grimm were a good place to start with the fairy tale reading. However, since the boys are still pretty young, I thought it best to stay away from the super creepy tales that they invented. The Germans can get pretty twisted in their storytelling at times. I had forgotten that the Brothers Grimm made quite a collection of tales with good morals to their stories. So, that is what I am focusing on for the moment. I have the list of books we read here.
With the books we read this week, the morals we focused on were be kind to others and sharing. With each story, we talked about the main characters and what their problems were, how they solved them, which characters we liked the best and the least, and we discussed how the story ended and what lesson the story taught us. Mostly, I wanted Hayden to start learning how to discuss a story and how to pick it apart a bit. I also wanted him to try to be creative with coming up with new endings, putting himself in the characters' places, etc.
Since a lot of fairy tales focus on gold, trade, money, etc., I thought this would be a good time to start teaching Hayden about money. This week was all about learning the names and values of coins, and next week will probably be similar. I had no idea what a hard concept this can be for a child to learn. It is incredibly difficult to remember which coin is which, what value belongs to each, the characteristics of each coin....and we haven't even touched on dollar bills!
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| Making patterns with pennies and nickels |
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| Using a number chart to count nickels. Great way to count by 5's. We will also do this with dimes and quarters. |
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| Coin Exchange and Counting Game |
For the Coin Exchange and Counting Game, Hayden had to learn first that 1 nickel equals 5 pennies, 1 dime equals 10, and 1 quarter equals 25. Then we were able to play a game where we roll a die and collect the number of pennies that the die shows. Once 5 pennies are collected, you can trade them in for a nickel. When you have 2 nickels, you can trade them in for a dime, and when you have 2 dimes and a nickel, you can trade them in for a quarter. We played until we each got to the quarter. He really enjoyed this game, and we'll probably play it as many times as he wants!
We also used money and a chart with a letter code to see how much each of his spelling words were worth. Each letter had a cent value, and Hayden would add up the value for each letter after writing out each spelling word.
Last, but not least, we did a science experiement with the pennies. I set out various ingredients to try to clean the pennies (vinegar, salt, ketchup) and some ingredients that wouldn't clean pennies (water, flour, milk, etc.). The boys guessed which ingredient would clean the pennies the best and which would not clean them. This one was a lot of fun, and I found an extension we can do with this experiment as well which we will do next week.
And for a completely off-subject project, a friend of mine sent me a link - the happy scientist - that has lots of fun science experiments, some of which are free. This particular experiment involved collecting mushrooms and making spore prints, and they are definitely in abundance around here since we've had so much rain the last couple of weeks. We collected at least 8 big ones. It took us a couple of tries to get it right because they have to fully opened for the experiment to work, and the first ones I picked weren't completely mature. However, in the end, we got some really good ones. Below is a picture of our favorites.
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