Grade 4, Lesson 4, Day 1 ~ A Fantastic Morning

Today we had one of the best kinds of lessons we can have. Our Monday main lesson is math and this week we are to review, among other things, simple division. After having the boys recite a few multiplication tables for me I told them we were going to talk about division again.

T-Guy whispered "Division is so hard."

I'm not sure how he came to think that; we've only done division orally and using manipulatives and both boys understood it well. In Enki Grade 1 our math story had King Dominick Divide and the boys loved it; I used King Dominick Divide for a couple of years whenever we were working on division or when I wanted them to share nicely.

When asked why he thought division was hard T-Guy said, in typical 10YO fashion, "I don't know."

Maybe it is just a scary word. Maybe someone else told him division is hard. No matter what, my job today was to help him see that division isn't hard.

I pulled out some Miquon Math Lab sheets and our Cuisinaire Rods and we started working together, and within 10 minutes they both understood how division is related to multiplication. T-Guy declared that division wasn't hard after all. Mama succeeded in knocking down the mental roadblock.

We also had a nice art lesson (T-Guy was pleased with his work!) and a great guitar lesson. Having learned two simplified chords we were able to play several songs, including a few favorites such as "Skip to My Lou" and "London Bridge". I can't help but channel Mary Thienes-Schunemann when we sing nursery rhymes ~ they were such a large part of our early years schooling and we loved Mary.

I went ahead and assigned The Search For Delicious as silent reading and had no complaints or whining. I need to read the assignment myself tonight and tomorrow we can discuss the book, giving me a chance to check for comprehension. Our funny for the morning? I asked J-Baby what he thought of The Search For Delicious and he told me "We aren't reading The Search For Delicious. The book is called "Natalie Babbitt". If you take a look here you'll understand his confusion ~ in children's books the author's name typically isn't larger than the title of the book.