Life of Fred: Butterflies

Life of Fred is the new buzz in all my homeschool circles. I took a look at them when I went to my local homeschool store.

Life of Fred is...interesting. The story line is so "out there" that it really does capture the mind of my most imaginative, math-lovin' kid.

The homeschool store was all sold out of the first Life of Fred book: Apples. So we started with what they had: Butterflies. So far I don't think it's mattered too much.

It reminds me a bit of our "hippie unschooling" days. It's learning all wrapped up in a fun make believe story.

Here are some of the lessons from the book:

One Yard = 3 Feet
Numbers that Add to 9
Counting by twos
Reading 5:10 on a Clock
Facts about Butterflies
Chrysalis vs. Cocoon
Braces
Parentheses and Brackets
Christina Rossetti
Sheet Music for “But Not Alone”
Domenico Fetti’s Archimedes Thoughtful
Exclamation Points
Bad Things about Sugar
One Good Thing about Sugar
Marvin Stone’s Invention of the Paper Straw 1888
Orion’s Belt
Betelgeuse
Why Not Every Three Stars Can Make a Triangle
Collinear
Reading 5:55 on a Clock
Book Signings
Why You Can Not Walk In a Room
Deliberate vs. Inadvertent
How to Say Toenail in German
Ordinal Numbers
Yurts
Half Past Six
A Nebula is Not a Star
Light Years
The Alphabet Game
A Dozen
Perpendicular
P.M. (post meridiem)
Syncope
Sheet Music for “The Crash of the Bell Tower”
Quotation Marks inside of Quotation Marks
A Baker’s Dozen
Spine of a Book
Naissance
Lie vs. Lay
Whole Numbers
Cardinal Numbers
Trillion, Quadrillion and Quintillion
Aleph-null
States that Begin with the Letter M
∞
Saying Thank You
Virgil’s Aeneid
History of Pizza
How to Set a Table.

So far we are on chapter 5. I think we will definitely continue on with the next book, "Life of Fred: Cats."

Saturday Afternoon Math

We had some catching up to do and plenty of free time to do it.







It was probably the most productive day we've had for math in a while.

The Math Tutor

Saxon Math

This is our fourth year using Saxon for math. It's an incremental program that works well for my kids. The older kids start their day with a lesson on the computer with the D.I.V.E cd's. Then they do a few practice problems followed by about 25-30 review problems. Actually Ishmael and Joshua only do odd or even problems.

Jeremiah gets a weeks worth of lessons on Monday and a "math packet" for the week. This is simply 5 days worth of math worksheets that he turns in on Friday when he takes a written assessment. So far this method works well for him.

I haven't been very strong with the flash cards. I know the kids would do better with them, so using them daily is my new goal this year.

Thursday

This week has been pretty good for math. I'm impressed with my 7yo--who has a memory like I don't know what. He has already memorized a large chunk of his multiplication table. I just feel bad for my 6yo who has a hard time and feels he has to keep up. He's gotta learn to fly his own ship some day.Today is errand day. I don't want to go anywhere. I wanna stay home and dig up some good books. We will probably go to the library today so that, at least, is some compensation.