Counting to Two-ty and a busy morning

Today we took a trip back to decimal street... Remember the Unit's House, the Ten's House and the Hundred's Castle from earlier this year in math ?

Today's lesson was learning about those pesky numbers 10-20 that don't fit the pattern. Why is 11 called eleven and not onety-one? And why isn't 19 said as onety-nine? For those linguists out there, I once read an article (or see this one too) that hypothesized that Asian students are so good at math and science because how their language of math makes more sense and leads to a greater undrestanding of base-ten and place value. Something akin to how the metric system makes SO MUCH more sense than the English system.

That's what I love about this math program... It explains math in a way that makes sense. The underlying basis of everything is place value... Even as early as kindergarten. I am learning things myself that I never knew before. I guess I managed to get all the way through university math without really understanding basic concepts: I still count on my fingers and I never did learn my addition and subtraction facts. Good thing I have this great program to help me teach it to the kids or I would be in big trouble :-)

Today we also did some more ornaments for our Jesse Tree. We read the story of how Adam and Eve were created and how they disobeyed God by taking the apple. Elizabeth drew a great picture on her ornament with Eve and the tree. The snake is in the tree, and Eve's hand is reaching out to the apple. The sun and the clouds in the sky are worried, she said, because they don't want Eve to take the apple. Zachariah colored his apple tree and glued on sparkly apples. Mommy had fun making an apple with a snake wrapped around it.

Earlier today we built a really long train track that snaked through the table and under the couch for a new battery-powered Thomas to go on, and the kids had fun building towers with their math blocks (they really play together so nicely most days). Oh! Elizabeth also played for a long time with her nativity scene again. This pretend play that she sets up is always so elaborate and creative. I'm convinced that this is one of the biggest benefits of not having a TV in the house, because she has developed such a creative spirit. I encourage this creative free play as much as possible, because it is the earliest stages of creative writing and being able to express herself through words on paper.

Now it's lunch time. Heather is napping, Zach is pretending he's driving his pillow train, and Elizabeth is sprawled on the floor reading a silly book about spiders. This is the life of a homeschooling family. It's freezing outside and snowing and we are warm and cuddly inside enjoying every minute of it. :-)