Thursday, March 31, 2022

Growth Mindset Resources - Pop, Buzz, Zap!

A few days ago I attended the Growth Mindset online conference that Big Life Journal put together. I was very pleasantly surprised. They even had speakers representing a few progressive education models (such as Acton Academy and Brave Generation Academy). The first keynote speaker was from Mineola Public Schools, and she explained the work they had been doing to explain neuroscience to kindergarteners (meaning that they found analogies, simple language, and body movements that kids could act out).

Here's some language I liked from the conference. Which is your favorite?


Smart isn't born. Smart is made.

Mistakes are expected.

Effort feedback and process feedback, not person feedback.

Learning takes time.

Fail Fast and Fail Forward.
Fail Fast - don't sulk over it
Fail Forward - what can you learn from this?

Your brain grows the most when you make mistakes, then learn from them.

Every person who enters our door is a genius who deserves to find a calling that will change the world.


Pop! Buzz! Zap!

    Pop! - make fists then pop all your figers out wide
    saying to yourself, "This is hard" or "I'm curious"

    Buzz! - vibrate hands
    the productive struggle

    Zap! - clap
    our neurons find one another and start connecting

    "That's what smart is."


They decided to share their work with the world in this series of videos. These analogies are great for learners of any age (even adults) who are stuck in a fixed mindset. Enjoy!


Hello Learners! Meet Your Brain!


Meet Your Neurons!


Pop, Buzz, Zap!


A few days ago they posted two new videos designed for middle schoolers: Recognizing Mistakes Improves Our Brain! and Growth and Fixed Mindset.

They also have a self-regulation series of videos. Go Mineola Public Schools!


Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Lucky Beans and Crockpot Applesauce

Crock Pot Applesauce... a wonderful applesauce recipe! We substitute 1 tablespoon white grape juice for the lemon juice. It's the secret ingredient!

Just in case it disappears off the Internet, here it is:

    4 lbs tart apples (peeled and cut into chunks)

    1⁄2 cup sugar

    1⁄2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

    1 cup water

    1 tablespoon white grape juice

Mix apples (about 12 cups) with cinnamon and sugar and put into crock pot. Stir. Pour water and white grape juice over apples. Cook on low for 6 hours or on high for 3 hours. For the perfect texture, mash with a potato masher.


Easy enough to make in the classroom, and everyone gets to taste it before the school day is over!

(If you find you are out of cinnamon, substituting lime juice for the white grape juice and ground ginger for the ground cinnamon is a tasty solution!)

This worked really well in our Math class today for a review of Muliplication (and Lucky Beans by Becky Birtha) and an introduction to Division. I also incorporated estimating and making tally marks.


Yesterday I happened to make Crockpot Yogurt in my medium sized crockpot, and I thought it might be fun for them to be there for the big reveal when I unwrapped the bath towels. And then I could compare the two side by side and show them that all crockpots are not the same size.


The crockpot at the bottom of the picture really is smaller... you just can't tell because it is generously swathed in bath towels.


I'm going to pause here and put in my Crockpot Yogurt recipe as well. That's another one that I don't want to disappear from the Internet!

    Pour 1/2 gallon of whole milk into a medium sized crockpot.

    Warm it on Low for 3 hours.

    Unplug and let it stand for 2 1/2 hours.

    Use a wire whisk to thoroughly stir in about 1 cup of PLAIN yogurt as a starter culture. (If you are doing this with a class, you can also ladle some warm milk into a large jar along with the yogurt starter. Put on the lid and let everyone shake it vigorously to blend the yogurt into the milk. Then pour all of that into the crockpot and stir well.)

    Note: You want the yogurt cultures to be well distributed throughout the warm milk but don't take too long, because it is important for the milk to keep its heat.

    Take the crock insert out of its base and wrap it with three bath towels (I do two around the sides and one over the top).

    Leave it on the kitchen counter overnight (minimum of 12 hours). If I'm making yogurt with a class, I like to start the milk warming at 9:15 am, add the cultures at 2:45 pm, and let it stand until breakfast the next day. They are always very excited to taste it! (The yogurt is unsweetened but you can serve with fresh fruit or stir in a bit of jam.)

    Store it the fridge once it has cultured.


We first did a review of the estimation strategy in Lucky Beans (fill a jar with beans and count the beans, empty the jar, use that same jar as a measuring tool and fill it with water and pour the water into the crock, continue to fill the crock with water in order to calculate how many jarfuls of water fill it completely, then multipliy the number of beans in the jar x the number of jars that fit in the crock). We talked about the difference between a wild guess and an estimate that was based on some evidence. I asked them to estimate how many cups of water would fit in my big crockpot. Then after 10 cups of water, I gave them a chance to revise their estimates. The answer was 19, so the child who said 18 and the child who said 20 tied for the win!

stopping after 10 cups to revise estimates


We will continue to work with estimation activities over the next few months. It is a skill that takes some practicing. Keeping track of how many cups of water we were putting in the crockpot also gave us a chance to practice making tally marks. PLUS, it was exciting! Even the big kids came to watch and offered their estimates.

The other fantastic thing about making Crockpot Applesauce today was that it gave me a chance to act out being Mr. Divide, and portion the yumminess out fairly!

four silks in our dress up colors to play the characters

green - Addition - Farmer Plus

blue - Subtraction - Mr. Minus

yellow - Multiplication - Tommy Times

red - Division - Mr. Divide


This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

JGB series 2 - First Semester

I don't have my teacher's guide (I always write ideas in the margins) from my old school, of course, so as we begin to go through the anthology I am sure different ideas from the past will come floating up to me. I'd like to keep track of them here. I find my blog and website much easier than paper notes because I can't lose them! If you are also teaching with this anthology, and have a great connection to share, please feel free to leave a comment!


Junior Great Books Series 2 First Semester Teacher's Edition (1992)


The first semester stories are as follows:


First Semester Student Anthology

    "The Happy Lion"
    by Louise Fatio

    "The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin"
    by Beatrix Potter

    "How the Camel Got His Hump"
    by Rudyard Kipling

    "Kanga and Baby Roo Come to the Forest, and Piglet Has a Bath"
    by A.A. Milne

    "Arap Sang and the Cranes"
    African folktale as told by Humphrey Harman

    "Blue Moose"
    by Daniel Manus Pinkwater

    "Anancy and Dog and Puss and Friendship"
    West Indian folktale as told by James Berry

    "Jack and the Beanstalk"
    English folktale as told by Joseph Jacobs

    "The Magic Listening Cap"
    Japanese folktale as told by Yoshiko Uchida

    "The Jackal and the Partridge"
    Punjabi folktale as told by Flora Annie Steel

    "Nail Soup"
    Swedish folktale as told by Linda Rahm

    "The Apple of Contentment"
    by Howard Pyle


Misc. Notes

"The Happy Lion"
by Louise Fatio


"The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin"
by Beatrix Potter


"How the Camel Got His Hump"
by Rudyard Kipling

    we will try this peer feedback activity that I learned from an Acton Academy guide and which I think relates to this story (and if we like it, we will adopt it as a weekly routine); at her school, at the end of every week, the children have a meeting and give one another public verbal feedback (on a scale of 1 to 10) on the following attributes:

    making your best effort

      to be kind
      to work hard
      to stay focused


    this was shared at a Growth Mindset conference and is part of building a growth mindset classroom community; it is done to be helpful and all comments are made in the spirit of loving kindness


"Kanga and Baby Roo Come to the Forest, and Piglet Has a Bath"
by A.A. Milne

    at a recent SWI conference, the suggestion was made to study a sentence of the week (first by identifying the parts of speech -- which we do with the Montessori grammar symbols -- and then doing some Structured Word Inquiry with any words of interest)

    for us, this means that our rhythm of exploring the JGB stories will be as follows:

    Monday - first reading of the story, symbolize the sentence of the week (using the paper grammar symbols and chart paper)

    Tuesday - first discussion

    Wednesday - second reading (close reading, underlining and making notes in the book), SWI explorations of the sentence of the week

    Thursday - second discussion


If you are interested in more about using the Montessori Grammar symbols in a Waldorf environment, join my Ruzuku course! Montessori Grammar is a perfect fit because it's visual and kinesthetic and beautiful and engaging!


Grammar 3/4

$30.00


"Arap Sang and the Cranes"
African folktale as told by Humphrey Harman


This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Junior Great Books - series 2

I absolutely love JBG and taught series 2 (old edition) many times at my old Montessori school. I finally invested in the teacher guides and enough student anthologies to be able to do it with my class here! Their anthologies are quite lovely. Grade 2 is a good year to begin JGB, if you wish. One story is done each week. The stories and shared inquiry questions are so rich that you can easily use them in later grades as well (through middle school). I'm using it with students age 10, 11, and 12 with no difficulty, and they love it.

Junior Great Books Series 2 First Semester Teacher's Edition (1992)

Junior Great Books Series 2 Second Semester Teacher's Edition (1992)


The first semester and second semester stories are as follows:


First Semester Student Anthology

    "The Happy Lion"
    by Louise Fatio

    "The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin"
    by Beatrix Potter

    "How the Camel Got His Hump"
    by Rudyard Kipling

    "Kanga and Baby Roo Come to the Forest, and Piglet Has a Bath"
    by A.A. Milne

    "Arap Sang and the Cranes"
    African folktale as told by Humphrey Harman

    "Blue Moose"
    by Daniel Manus Pinkwater

    "Anancy and Dog and Puss and Friendship"
    West Indian folktale as told by James Berry

    "Jack and the Beanstalk"
    English folktale as told by Joseph Jacobs

    "The Magic Listening Cap"
    Japanese folktale as told by Yoshiko Uchida

    "The Jackal and the Partridge"
    Punjabi folktale as told by Flora Annie Steel

    "Nail Soup"
    Swedish folktale as told by Linda Rahm

    "The Apple of Contentment"
    by Howard Pyle



Second Semester Student Anthology

    "The Red Balloon"
    by Albert Lamorisse

    "The Other Side of the Hill"
    by Elizabeth Coatsworth

    "The Emperor's New Clothes"
    by Hans Christian Anderson

    "How the Elephant Became"
    by Ted Hughes

    "Anansi's Fishing Expedition"
    West African folktale as told by Harold Courlander and George Herzog

    "The Velveteen Rabbit"
    by Margery Williams

    "The Terrible Leak"
    Japanese folktale as told by Yoshiko Uchida

    "The Singing Tortoise"
    West African folktale as told by Harold Courlander and George Herzog

    "Three Boys with Jugs of Molasses and Secret Ambitions"
    by Carl Sandburg

    "Cinderella"
    by Charles Perrault

    "The Mouse's Bride"
    Indian folktale as told by Lucia Turnbull

    "How Coyote Stole the Sun"
    Native American folktale as told by Jane Louise Curry


This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Monday, March 28, 2022

Times Town

This post is a follow up to yesterday's Trouble with Times. In thinking up different fun ways of practicing the main idea of multiplication -- making the same amount over and over -- I thought of building towers with wooden cubes. All of the towers would be the same size. It would be a Times Town!

Over the weekend we were at the Maple Syrup Festival at Touch of Nature, and one of the favorite activities there was petting the baby goats. So I reminded them that baby goats like to be high, and will climb up whatever they can. But a baby goat would just be super confused in Times Town, because all of the buildings are the exact same size! Nothing is the highest.

In Waldorf, each operation has a color which goes with the temperament of its gnome.

    Green - addition - phlegmatic

    Blue - subtraction - melancholic

    Yellow - multiplication - sanguine

    Red - division - choleric


Montessori has given colors to the four operations also but, unfortunately, the colors do not match up. The only one that is the same between the two methods is yellow for muliplication. So here I used this Montessori material:

Multiplication Equation and Products Box


To build Times Town, the first number (the multiplicand) is how many blocks high the tower is. The second number (the multiplier) is how many towers you'll build. After you've built the town, and a friend has checked your work, count how many blocks TOTAL you used. Then find that number in the box.


The little goat is from my Three Billy Goats Gruff set (WoodMetamorphosisUK on Etsy). Isn't he adorable?

You can practice reading the number sentence several ways. 2 times 4 is the same as 8. 2 four times is the same as 8. 4 groups of 2 is the same as 8. 2 x 4 is another way of saying 2 and 2 and 2 and 2 (and is the same as 8).

I know that in Waldorf the product and the equals sign are supposed to be placed at the start of the problem (working from the whole to the parts), but I actually think in this case that that way of writing the sentence feels more like division. Like the farmer having 12 cabbages and placing them into equal rows. Division is not what we are working on here! I feel 2 x 4 = 8 is fine.

Also...

I think this was a good way to repurpose an existing material that I had on my shelf into a story-based work, which I feel sufficiently "Waldorfizes" it. And children do need to get used to seeing the equals sign in more than one place. (Vertical problems, ie. column algorithms, are introduced in Grade 2).


Waldorf Skip Counting Songs

I absolutely love the Youtube video Waldorf Skip Counting Songs by Sandra Ghali.

by 2 to 24 -- London Bridge (start at 0:21)

by 3 to 36 -- Row, Row, Row Your Boat (start at 0:49)

by 4 to 48 -- Kookaburra (start at 1:23)

by 6 to 72 -- Happy Birthday (start at 2:04)

by 7 to 84 -- This Little Light of Mine (start at 2:43)

by 8 to 96 -- You Are My Sunshine (start at 3:34)

by 9 to 108 -- Baby Beluga (start at 4:25)


We use these beautiful (and clever) songs all the time in my classroom. I especially like that she has them count backwards as well. The one tune I've found children have trouble with is "Kookaburra," since it's pretty unfamiliar to American children. I grew up with it because my family has always been interested in Australia, but none of my students had ever heard it!


Even though we would always sing all three verses of "Kookaburra" before trying to sing the skip counts of 4, the children never got the tune. So I have been looking for another tune that could serve as an alternative. I think "Frère Jacques" is a good fit!

Frère Jacques

Frère Jacques
Frère Jacques
Dormez vous?
Dormez vous?
Sonnez les matines
Sonnez les matines
Ding dang dong
Ding dang dong

Are you sleeping
Are you sleeping
Brother John?
Brother John?
Morning bells are ringing
Morning bells are ringing
Ding dang dong
Ding dang dong



What do you think of this?

4, 8, 12
16, 20
24, 28
32, 36
40, 44
48
Ding dang dong
Ding dang dong

48
44, 40
36, 32
28, 24
20, 16
12, 8, 4
Ding dang dong
Ding dang dong


Sunday, March 27, 2022

Trouble with Times

In Waldorf schools, all four mathematics operations are introduced at once in First Grade: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Addition and subtraction are very intuitive for children; however, some students have a hard time with "times" when they first encounter it.

You can say, "Here are 12 gems. Each gem is a cabbage. How can the farmer plant his garden so that each row has the same number of cabbages in it?" and that is fairly intuitive. And, in truth, that's actually a division problem. You are starting with the whole and sharing it out fairly. When you get to the phrasing "make three gems four times" is when it becomes confusing.


When someone says to you, "three gems four times," you hear two numbers. 3. 4. If you don't understand multiplication, you get stumped. Which one of these numbers am I supposed to make? So you pick the first one the teacher says (which seems safest) and you make a row of three gems and you stop. You have no idea what to do with that second number.

Four is not the number of gems. Four is the number of groups.

You're doing the same thing over and over. And you need to know how many times. So I've been thinking about different ways to get children used to this terminology. I think it's useful to relate it to movements. Can we go from "clap your hands six times" and "pat your head six times" and "run around the tree six times" to "make two gems six times?"


What if you used glass gems (or translucent counters or water beads) on the light table (to keep it fun and interesting) and worked with them in groups instead of rows of cabbages in a garden?


They can be fish that swim in the sea and when the groups get too big the fish become worried they will lose someone, so they make a rule to limit the size of the groups. Make three groups of four fish. Make two groups of eight fish. Make seven groups of two fish.


If your child needs the groups to have firm boundaries, you could lay a piece of paper on the light table and draw circles on it, or you can use something like the rings from canning jars.


You could also let your child trace several circles on transparency film and then overlay them onto construction paper. You could draw on the construction paper, too, but the transparency film would last longer and be reusable (if you will be homeschooling multiple children for first grade).

Or buy Swedish fish and group them (and then eat them)!

You could also work with the idea of groups with bowls, baskets, etc. on your living room floor. Sort pinecones or acorns into them. If you are outside at a stump playground, put the items on the tree stumps.

You can really use almost any nature treasure (shells) or craft supply (popsicle sticks, peg dolls) or art supply (crayons) that you have on hand. You can use stuffed animals and lay down playsilks on the floor to be their picnic blankets...

wooden animals fit well on handkerchief silks


Or take apart your sofa and use the sofa cushions... pretend they are tents and the animals are going camping. Can you set up four tents with two animals apiece?


If your child loves stickers, you can get index cards and scatter them around the floor and let your child stick a certain number of stickers on each. You could also create a bunch of index cards with stickers on them in advance, put them in a basket, and then quiz your child. Can you find and lay down the cards to go with "4 groups of 3 stickers" and/or "3 stickers 4 times"?

I think it would be good to go from something like that and circle back around to an array. Once you know what multiplication is talking about, can you see the groups even when they are all pushed together? Oh, aha! Each row (or column) is a group!

If your child struggled with the concept of times and you have other suggestions, please share them!

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!