Math Activities: One-to-One Correspondence

The concept of one-to-one correspondence requires two skills: (1) matching pairs and (2) comparing sets. Matching places two like items together as a pair while comparing determines which set has more or less. In these projects, the key is to focus on the language, emphasizing mathematical terms.

Books to Read
The following books teach one-to-one correspondence using stories. I love the impact a story has on a child’s understanding, and these books do a great job of packaging the mathematical ideas in a way that young children can comprehend.

Two of Everything: A Chinese Folk Tale by Lily Toy Hong
Knots on a Counting Rope by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault
Seaweed Soup by Stuart J. Murphy
A Pair of Socks by Stuart J. Murphy
Missing Mittens by Stuart J. Murphy
Monster Musical Chairs by Stuart J. Murphy
Just Enough Carrots by Stuart J. Murphy
Some Things Go Together by Charlotte Zolotow


Projects to Learn Matching
Project #1 – Take opportunity to point out situations where there is a matching set. Word emphasis: match, even, pair, each.

“There are three cups and three straws. It is even.”
“Three children and three cookies. It is a match!”
“A pair of socks for your feet. One foot for each sock, and one sock for each foot.”

Project #2 – Provide the following items and allow the children to sort into pairs. Word emphasis: pair, match.

1 ice cube tray
2 screws
2 washers
2 electrical circuit binders
2 matching butterfly clips
2 matching hair pins
2 pennies
2 matching buttons

Project #3 – Have a tea party with stuffed bears. Set one place setting for each bear. You could say, “One seat for each bear, and one bear for each seat.” Word emphasis: each.

Project #4 – Serve a lunch with matching shapes to make their own snacks. I used cookie cutters to cut the bread, cheese, and lunch meat into matching shapes. I provided at least two different shapes so that they would have to find the match in order to build their sandwiches. Word emphasis: match.

Project #5 – Play the memory game. Word emphasis: pair, match.

Project #6 – Get the kids involved in the laundry. The kids can sort socks and match outfits. Word emphasis: pair, match.

Project #7 – Sort through shoes or mittens to find their matches. We have a pile of shoes in storage for the kids to grow into and a box of mittens put away for the summer. Jumble them up, and have the kids sort them. Word emphasis: pair, match.

Project #8 – Have the children set the dinner table. Give the following instructions, “Set one plate, one fork, and one cup for each person.” Word emphasis: each.


Projects to Learn Comparing
Project #1 – Take opportunity to point out situations where there is not enough or there is too much to go around. Word emphasis: more, less, fewer, even.

“Oops, I grabbed one straw too many. There are three cups and four straws. There are more straws than cups.”
“We have six chairs at our table, but only four people in the family sitting at the table. That leaves two empty chairs because there are more chairs than people.”
“Today we have company, so we have eight people and only six chairs. We have fewer chairs than people, so we will need two more chairs.”
“Three children and four cookies. There are more cookies. If I eat one, it will be even.”

Project #2 – Invite the children to collect toys to put inside two hula hoops. Then count to see which hula hoop has more toys and which has fewer. Ask, “Which set of toys has more? Which set has fewer?” Word emphasis: set, more, fewer, even.

Project #3 – Pour two cups of water and compare the volume. Which cup has more? Which has less? Word emphasis: more, less, even.

Project #4 – Make sugar cookies and put chocolate chips on the frosting. Compare two cookies to see which has more chocolate chips. For an added lesson, determine how many chocolate chips need to be added to make them even. Word emphasis: more, fewer, even.

Overall Approach and Focused Lessons

We recently looked at our state legal requirements as M will be in first grade next year. This upcoming school year will be our first "formal" homeschooling experience. It is not that this year was not real homeschooling; it is that I determined that kindergarten would be a trial period. If I could not do it and work too, then we could just say that we held her back a year.

So looking at the state requirements, I began to think ahead to what we would cover over the next year. With this in mind, I write today on our overall homeschooling (unschooling) approach.


READING, WRITING, AND LANGUAGE
I do not cover every subject in the course of a day, or even in the course of a week. Instead, I focus on skills I want them to learn to prepare for the future. I once heard someone complain about their kid's school: they spend one week on a math concept, and before the kid has mastered it, they are on to the next skill.

It is not that we do not do other lessons other than the skill that we currently learn, but the other stuff is "life." Art, music, and reading are things we do to enjoy life, very much like playing. It is what kids do.

Right now, M's focus is on writing now that reading is doing so well. She still reads, of course, but I no longer have to sit with her and help her through it. So, to cover writing, I write the story, and she copies it. My purpose in this to guide her towards writing on the lines (this was a major problem) and towards learning to spell, and now I am using it for vocabulary words too. She loves to write so much that, to her, this is a fun activity.

R's focus is language. To prepare her to read, I encourage her to talk. Several times a week, I sequester myself in her room with her at bedtime, and the two of us read books together. Sometimes, I read, and we talk about the book. Other times, I encourage her to make up the story for me. We also have a game that we call "The Floor," which teaches them not to interrupt and to take turns talking. We play this game at dinner, and whoever has "the floor" gets to tell a story. Normally, she let's M do the talking for her, and this gives her the opportunity to talk and not be interrupted.

ART
So, we focus on one subject that seems to need work, and then we have lots of fun in other areas, like art and music and math games. Art is something that we do everyday. The girls have access to art supplies (markers, crayons, paint, chalk, paper), and they often make up their own projects. We got some craft books, so every few days, we do a more formal craft.

For Christmas, we got for the girls a lot of sewing kits and some wooden models in order to explore new areas of art, other than paper-oriented crafts.

MUSIC
Music appreciation is also a constant part of our day. Little Einstein's opens their eyes to great composers, and then they just about go haywire over that piece of music. Stravinsky's Firebird is one of their favorites. We also have children's music for them and they each have their own CD player that they are always listening to.

In the upcoming year, we have some plans to increase their music education by giving them access to some music programs on the computer and then to enroll them in some piano lessons.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Physical education is also part of being a kid. As long as they are not put in front of the TV, they will exercise, and we often take nature walks and ride bikes--when the weather is not so cold.

We intend to increase this by enrolling the girls into some YMCA classes: swimming, dance, and gymnastics.

MATH
Unfortunately, math fell by the wayside for a little bit of time as we focused more on language, but truthfully, I think that is only because I am still used to the typical school math curriculum, which is all paper oriented. What we do with math is focused on R, and so I use a lot of games and activities that I found in the Count On Math book. We justed started chapter five, which is about one-to-one correspondance, and I doubt we will be on the topic long because M & R seem to both have already mastered the concept.

At the same time, we have worked with M on adding. She did it on paper using a number bar, but I wanted to take her away from the paper and see it more visually. So I took eleven blocks and three pieces of paper. On one paper, I placed 1 block, and on another paper, I put zero blocks. Finally, on the third paper, I wrote "1 + 0 =" in one column and "0 + 1 =" in another column. We did that ten times, adding one more block each time, to help her understand adding by ones. The next day, we added by twos.

We also started using paper and objects to practice counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's. I would set blocks in groups of twos and have her count them, and then I would reinforce the lesson by writing all the numbers 1-20 and putting circles around the even numbers. I'd have her read the circled numbers, and then we would go back to counting the blocks.

We also have some math workbooks that we have not used in a while. Very shortly, M will focus on her workbooks instead of writing.

SCIENCE
Last summer, we spent a lot of time on science. It was a natural part of our exploration and part of our reading. We actually have a first grade science curriculum that we have worked more than halfway through. We have covered plants, animals, insects, and weather. I treat the book as more of an idea book. I get a few worksheets that the girls enjoy, which I use to introduce a subject, and it has some good book suggestions. But for each chapter that they offer a week's worth of lessons, we plunge into the topic for at least a month.

Right now, we are learning about birds because the girls expressed some interest in the topic. M was birdwatching and making up names for the birds she saw (she called one a "sweet bird" because it likes to eat sweet stuff, according to her), so we got out our old field guide and also ordered some books from the library.

SOCIAL STUDIES
Social studies includes history and geography as well as building an understanding of our world. We just went through the Little House in the Big Woods, which is great for learning about history and for seeing the world from a very different perspective.

Now we are about to embark on a new road: a study of the different cultures of the world. M has a Dora World Adventure CD that has music from many different cultures, so I will use that as a means to branch into this new area. We will post a world map on our living room wall, and then we will focus on each of the major countries. The map will be a reference point as we move from culture to culture.

We will start with Russia because that is where Stravinsky's Firebird takes place, and so the girls have heard of Russia before. I have ordered from the library books that cover art, music, stories, food, and even a little of the language too.

Facing Opposition

Many people support us in our home schooling quest while others lecture us on the fallacies of our choice, and still others (grandparents) outright oppose us. Someone told us that we could not effectively discipline our children, that children need to learn that the world does not revolve around them and that they will only learn that by being one out of many.



In some ways, there is truth there. Children need to learn that they don't run the universe. In other ways, there is a big nasty lie in that message because learning that you are just one in a million does not teach you that you are not in charge. It only teaches you that there is nothing special about you and that blending into society, hiding in the masses, is the best road for life. Living by society's standards and getting by with the status quo is not the road to freedom on which our founding fathers built this nation.



Facing the opinions of others has been one of my most challenging homeschooling dilemmas. I faced it with the "I am going to prove them wrong" mantra and then overdid the homeschooling efforts until we all burned out. I really should not have allowed myself to be concerned. The appropriate response was to let it go and to carry on as normal.


So this last weekend, the grandparents came to visit. Memaw was quite impressed with our progress. She joined in with our art activities, and we talked a lot about M's progress, how well she can read, etc. We talked about R, and what she is doing too. Then Memaw talked about when TJ was young and how she taught him many things before he even started school. I did not say it, but she really was an unschooling mother. She told me how she never set out to teach him anything, but she answered his questions, which is how he learned to read and tell time before he even started kindergarten.

These last few visits, not one word of opposition has been said. The truth is we do not need to argue with opposers. When we procede as usual, the results will speak for themselves.

I think the one criticism most misinformed people state is "socialization." And I have met my share of annoying, bratty, "unsocialized" homeschooled children, especially when I was a kid. But I have also met my share of annoying, bratty, "unsocialized" schooled children as well. Being thrown in a school does not make you "socialized."

When my oldest was just a baby, I remember meeting one young lady who was homeschooled. Every time I spoke to her, it shocked me to think she was only 6. She talked with confidence, she looked you in the eye, she acted like an adult. She had no bigotry based on age as she seemed to think of herself as an equal--but not in a bratty way.

homonyms and compound words

I mentioned before the writing exercises that we did as part of our lessons. These lessons were originally meant to build M's handwriting skills: to keep her words on a straight line and approximately the same size. This has been a great success, and so I started using this to build vocabulary and other skills. One thing I wanted to help her learn is about homonyms and compound words.

The following story uses the compound word "pancake" and the following homonyms: cent, sent, and scent.

Big Sister Dog and the Pancake
Big Sister Dog smelled the scent of a fresh pancake. It smelled so good that she wanted to have one, but it cost one penny. One penny is a cent, but Big Sister Dog had no money. So M sent her one cent. Then Big Sister Dog bought the fresh pancake and ate it all up. The End.


NOTE: You can replace "Big Sister Dog" with an imaginary friend of your own making and replace my daughter's name with your child's own name.

no labels, no comparisons

There is this book that M loves to read. It is called Pip & Squeak, a story about two mice. Well, Pip and Squeak are brothers who live in the same house but cannot tolerate each other. Pip is an artist, and Squeak is a singer/songwriter. The two brothers are always saying things like, "My side will be cleaner than your side," and "My cart is faster than your cart!" Ugh. Finally, in the end, the two brothers realize that they can overcome their differences and work together.

Now let me tell you: I hate this book. I cannot stand reading it, even though she loves it. It is not because I have to read it over and over and over again, which as many parents know, that can be frustrating. No, it is the whole idea of labels and comparisons that makes me dislike the book so much.

After reading it one day, M said to me, "I cannot like R because she does not love to dance." I thought this was a crazy statement because R loved to dance since she could walk, but what bothered me most was the thinking that went behind this statement. These are the things she was saying with this statement:

(1) I can only be one thing (i.e. dancer, singer, artist, scientist, athlete, etc.).
(2) I cannot explore any of the areas outside by one label.
(3) I cannot be friends with anyone who does not share the same label as me.

When the children were little, I used to watch them to see their interests, and based on that, I'd give them a label. M was the artist (right-brained), and R was the analytical one (left-brained). I thought it was a compliment: what a great thing to be an artist, that's who you are, and what a great thing to be analytical . . .

However, people do not fit into categories like that. I am a software test analyst, that is what I get paid for, but that is not who I am. I am a mother, a wife, an author, an artist, a dancer, an appreciater of good music, a cook, a home educator, an eternal student, a Christian, a teacher, a thinker, a philosopher.

No labels. God does not look at us and see only a fraction of who we are. He sees every part of us, and he values our multifaceted personalities. We were made in the image of God. Just as he is a creator, builder, artist, musician, lover, friend, and father, so we are so much more than a label that we have accepted for ourselves.

So no labels. And no comparisons.

I might not be coordinated or naturally good at athletics, but that does not mean that I do not find any benefit in exercise. It is good for my health. It is good for my well-being. I have no intention of competing in the Olympics, but that does not mean that I should not pursue a sport.

I am not Mozart, but that does not mean that I do not bring value to the musical world. Someone may be able to play a piece of music technically perfect, but they cannot give it the same emotion that I can give. There is more to music and art than perfection, and no one else can capture my depth of feeling like I can. Someone might be better at scrapbooking, but I can scrapbook my pictures with more love than they can.

You cannot compare Van Gogh with Renoir. There is no value of one over the other. Sometimes Van Gogh had odd proportions and angles, but the vivid colors portray a world that no one else can imitate. Renoir used more sedated colors, but the romantic feel of the characters in his paintings cannot be matched by anyone. If every artist produced the same style or the same work of art, then there would be no reason to go to an art museum.

It seems kind of obvious why we should not compare children in a negative manner to another: "Your sister's room is always neat, but yours is always a mess. . . " Those kind of statements are painful. But statements like "You are always so much neater than your sister" can be just as destructive. The message is "I am valued only because of what I can do. I better make sure that I keep that status and hope that I am always better than my sister. What would happen if my room gets a mess? Or if my sister's room is cleaner than mine? Would they still love me?"

The fact is no one else defines us but ourselves. What other people do or do not do has nothing to do with our value. Just because someone else has curly hair does not mean that my straight hair is terrible. Just because someone else has darker skin, does not mean that my light skin is awful. If every woman looked the same, acted the same, talked the same, men would eventually be bored with women.

We were not meant to be carbon copies of each other. You cannot compare apples and oranges. You just cannot define yourself by who someone else is or by what someone else can do, whether you think they are better than you or worse than you. All you can be is the best you that you can be. You don't win the race by being first. You win by getting up in the morning, getting to the starting line, and running the race until you get to the end.

It is time to give our children the opportunity of living with no labels and no comparisons.

discipline vs. punishment

I think of punishment as "I am going to make you pay." On the other hand, I see discipline as a means of teaching a lesson. The question is: what lessons are you teaching? Have you thought through what it is you want your kids to take to adulthood?

Mindless obedience is actually not a characteristic that I want my kids to have. Why? Because that is the road to giving into peer pressure. If you want your kids to say no to drugs, no to sexual predators, no to the teenage boy who wants to climb into the backseat, no to shoplifting, then you have to teach them something more than mindless obedience.

One of the marks of homeschooled children is their innovative minds. Homeschooled children, especially those that are unschooled, have not been forced to fit into society's mold. For schools to function, children must be forced to conform, but homeschooled children excel simply because they are allowed to ask questions in the classroom and explore new ideas. That is one of our purposes as parents: to teach our kids to soar.

And yet, we do not want to raise kids who have no ability to understand someone else's needs. Children need boundaries and consequences

Discipline Tool #1: The Statement of Disatisfaction

There are four things a kid needs to know when they have done something wrong:

(1) specifically what they did
(2) how it made you feel
(3) why it was wrong
(4) what they should have done instead

For example, "I do not like it when you leave your toys in the living room. It frustrates me to have to pick up after you, and someone could trip over this and get hurt. I would prefer that your toys stay in your room."

This gives the child a clear picture of what and why. One thing that can frustrate a child is not knowing what they did wrong and how they can fix what they did. One day, R was twirling in a circle with her doll flung out, and several times she hit or almost hit M with the doll. R had no idea that she had hit her sister, and when she got in trouble for it, she was crushed.

"I do not think she knows what she did wrong," I told TJ, and so he took the doll and illustrated how it could hit someone. Suddenly she was so happy because now she knew why she was in trouble. Next time she paid more attention to where she was standing when she danced with her doll.

It also gives them a way to make amends. When a child is punished rather than disciplined, the message is that there is nothing the child can do to turn things around. The ability to make amends helps a child grow and mature, but it also helps them step out of the position of being the "bad" kid. Making amends is a means of healing, and it gives the child a sense that they are not always bad, that they can do good things too.

This also teaches them to see things from another's perspective. We want our children to think for themselves, but we also want them to realize how their actions can hurt someone else. Knowing that they violated your boundaries or hurt you in some way builds an awareness for the needs of others.

Discipline Tool #2: Choices

I have a hard time doing this one because this requires a lot of creativity and quick thinking. You use this as a means to declare the consequences for their actions as a warning before you take action.

So you give them two choices, like "Either clean your room or I will confiscate your toys. Your choice." Or when you are on a walk around the neighborhood, say "Either hold my hand when we cross the street or we can go home. Your choice." I like adding the "your choice" at the end because it reminds them that they determine their own path but they do not get to set the consequences for your behavior.

Discipline Tool #3: Consequences

Life consists of natural consequences. If you jump off a cliff, you will fall down and will probably get hurt. If you do not work when you are at your job, you will get fired and won't get paid. If you don't study for your test, you will get a bad grade. If you don't clean up the kitchen, you won't have room to cook dinner. If you eat too much candy, you will get a stomach ache. If you spend too much money using a credit card, you will have too many bills.

How many times do we protect our children from the natural consequences of their actions? They spend their money on candy and then don't have enough for to buy that toy they have been wanting. So we buy them the toy. We bail them out when they get in trouble at school, or we bring them their stuff that they forgot. Or we clean up after them when they should clean up after themselves.

Letting them face the consequences of their actions prepares them for the future. Imagine what it would be like to have someone always picking up after you, fixing your failures, intervening when you are in trouble, handling all your problems, and then suddenly you are on your own and you have to do it all yourself. As adults, our children will not have anyone to talk their boss out of firing them or their college professor out of failing them. If they don't clean up after themselves, there will no one to do it for them. If they waste their time, money, or resources, there will be no one to bail them out.

This is about taking action. Rather than being wishy washy parents, we move with a purpose. We set the boundaries. We hold the boundaries. We are not weaklings. You cannot walk all over us.

There are two ways where applying consequences can be hard: (1) for the soft-hearted and the guilt-ridden, it is easy to cave and (2) sometimes it is hard to know what the natural consequences should be. Thinking of discipline in terms of consequences may be a hard at first, knowing in any given situation what to apply. So let me give a few suggestions on ones that I had a hard time coming up with natural consequences for.

Acting out with backtalk, whining, or temper tantrums: If it was another adult acting out in this way, how would I respond? Generally I think I would avoid that person, thinking of them as annoying or unhelpful to my wellbeing. Therefore, the natural response would be to ignore the child who is acting out. However, sometimes I really don't want to hear it. The whining or the temper tantrum gets on my nerves, so I send them to their room.

Acting out is usually an attempt to get attention in a negative manner, and even a negative response fuels the behavior. Ignoring it rather than fixing it or punishing it works wonders, and they learn that they don't get what they want when they whine, backtalk or throw a tantrum.

Not cleaning up or taking care of personal items: There are two natural consequences, depending on the situation:

First, if you cannot take care of your stuff, then you should not have it, and it will be taken from you. Children need lots of chances to try again because that is how people learn, so if you take something away, I recommend a temporary basis. However, just how "temporary" is up to you. If your children have a pet that they are not taking care of and all of your efforts have not changed anything, then it may be time to get rid of the pet. However, maybe six months or a year down the road, you will get another pet.

Second, if you have not finished the previous activity by cleaning up, you do not get to participate in the next activity. It is a simple as that. One thing at a time. Finish what you started first.

Bad Manners: If someone does not say please and thank you, you are not going to want to do nice things for them. No one wants to serve without being appreciated.

Discipline Method #4: Problem Solving

Problem Solving could be its own blog entry all on its own, so I'll just describ what it is. I'll leave how to use it for another day.

This discipline method is often used for reoccurring problems. When you have done everything right and it is still a problem, then what? You sit down and have a brain storming session to figure out how to solve the problem.

We had an issue with M & R getting on the potty in time. We would say, "You are dancing around. I think you should get on the potty." They would say no, that they don't need to go. Then five minutes later, they'd have an accident.

We set consequences that they knew in advance. We would also make them help clean up the mess. And we would express how much it upset and frustrate us. And it was still an issue.

Finally I sat down with a pad of paper and a pen. Why do we have problems going potty? Well, M did not want to go because she did not want to wash her hands afterward and she did not want to stop what she was doing. And R wanted someone to take her and wanted help getting on the potty and washing her hands (she is still a little short to reach the sink).

So we brainstormed and came up with some ideas,

• a basket of books in the bathroom so that bathroom trips are not so boring
• an interesting picture on the wall to look at
• a container of wipes for washing hands
• a step stool for R to reach the sink
• someone (even M if mommy and daddy are busy) can take R to the bathroom

Does it work perfectly? Not always, but we are making progress.

However, the girls learn some important things with this. They learn that mommy and daddy are willing to sit down and listen to them and hear their perspective on discipline issues. That will be an important thing once they become teenagers. Rather than feeling like no one understands or that no one cares, they get the chance to come side by side with their parents and find ways to discipline themselves.

They learn how to work out their problems with others, how to handle confrontations, and how to brainstorm, all great skills that they will use for the rest of their lives.

Autonomy & Discipline

Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish are my favorite authors on parenting. They wrote several books that I love. One thing they said is that if you are frustrated, than you are doing too much and it is time to delegate. Boy, have I been frustrated!

I set up a morning and evening routine to teach the girls to pick up after themselves, which was rewarded with a quarter each time they complete one routine. This could add up to 14 quarters in one week, and I thought that if I pushed them to make these routines habits and they realized the reward they would eventually do it on their own.

Well, I spent more time walking them through their routine than I did taking care of my own responsibilities. After an hour and a half of putting them to bed (that includes helping them get on the potty, clean their rooms, get their pajamas on, put their dirty clothes in the hamper, brushing their teeth, and reading umpteen books), I had no energy to do my own chores.

So I finally realized that I should give them the autonomy to do their own routine. I sent them off to their rooms to clean while I did my own thing, and when I went to check on them, nothing was done. They were playing, and I honestly felt there was no reason that the chore could not be done within fifteen minutes.

So I started giving a timer with the consequences that I would confiscate anything that was not picked up within fifteen minutes. I warned them up front what the consequences would be. Wll, M & R both started cleaning up just their favorite toys and then telling me that I can take whatever is left.

"Okay, Mommy," they would say, "you can confiscate my toys now."

So I would confiscate whatever was left out. Although I warned them and they seemed fine with that, they got quite upset when we took some of their favorite toys that they had overlooked. For a few days, the rooms remained clean until they got their toys back from timeout.

M has a tendency to play with every toy she owns throughout the day, and when cleanup time comes, the task is excruciating. There have been days when she had hundreds of stickers, and I do mean hundreds. She got a sticker book for Christmas that contained 700 stickers, and she used every one in about two days time.

If I felt overwhelmed, I cannot imagine how she feels. No wonder she plays instead.

"This is overwhelming," I said. "Maybe you have too many toys. If it is not special to you, it is just clutter. That means you should let it go and only keep those toys that are really, really special."

So when it came time to confiscate again, she began to tell me which toys are no longer special to her and which she would like to give away. With less toys in her room, the mess became more reasonable. That is, until last night.

M & R played in M's room during nap time rather than being in separate rooms like they normally are. It was something we allow every now and then as a special treat. The end result was that they unzipped M's bears and pulled out all the stuffing, which they strew all over the room (they told me they needed it because it was the ice for the game). On top of that, they took out all of the paper doll dresses (there seemed like 100's of them). So there was paper and stuffing plus all of the other normal stuff all over the floor in her room.

Nighttime came and they wanted another sleepover, and I said, "Okay, if you can get everything cleaned up, I would be willing to let you have a sleepover. I will set the timer for fifteen minutes."

Fifteen minutes later, they had not picked up anything. Well, they would not have their sleepover, but I thought I would let them break this job into smaller tasks and give them a second chance. I said, "Pick up all of the paper dolls, and I will be right back."

When I got back, they still had done nothing. I picked up little R and put her in her bed in her own room, and I shut M in her room. Both girls cried and fussed, and I walked away. If I had stayed, they would have thought that they could make me change my mind, and the temper tantrums would have continued.

I came back later, once all the crying and screaming was over. By then R was already asleep, and M, although still awake, was no longer crying.

"I did not want you to give me advice," she said, referring to my suggestion to start with the paper dolls. "I wanted you to help me."

"It is not my job to pick up your toys," I said. "I already do many things. I do the dishes, cook dinner, etc. For example, I made you special pancakes for dinner tonight. But the cleaning up the toys is your job. I expect you to do it."

"But it is too much for me," she complained.

"If it is too much, then you need to consider how not to make such a big mess," I said. Then I confiscated all of the paper dolls, the stuffing, and whatever else was left.

This path to autonomy has been a major struggle. I could have cleaned their rooms myself in 5 minutes, but how does that prepare them for being an adult? It is not my job as a parent to make these 3 little girls into my clones, to turn them into perfect little replicas of myself that do not think or function on their own. It is my job to give them the tools to think and do for themselves, to prepare them to function in society.

We have had problems in the past with the girls wasting supplies, not cleaning up, and leaving everything for us to do. Art supplies were left out. Markers were put away without their lids. All the foam and felt were cut up into tiny unusable pieces. And the playdough was all dried out.

So the last three months or so, this has been my focus in my homeschooling program: autonomy and self-discipline. And I have been using natural consequences to reinforce these lessons.

• If you cannot clean up the art supplies, you do not get to use the art supplies
• If you cannot clean up your plate off the table, you do not get to participate in whatever activity comes after the meal.
• If you cannot perform your morning routine, then you do not get to participate in the morning activities.
• If you cannot perform your evening routine, then you will not get your allowance, and you will not get a bedtime book or sleepover.
• If you cannot clean up your toys, then your toys will be confiscated.

The key to this is consistency. If you are not consistent with implementing the consequences, then they will not believe that there are consequences for their actions and that you will forget or will be too soft to stick with what you have said.

Early Reading Skills

Before M learned to read, she would pretend to read by retelling the story from memory. TJ was impressed, but I was frustrated because I knew she was not really reading.

Now she can read, so I have moved on to teaching R how to read using the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. In conjunction with the reading lessons, I encourage her to tell me stories from books that we had just read. She is not comfortable with being put on the spot; she is so afraid to fail that she does not want to try. So I said, "Well, let's make up a story to go with these pictures." And that makes her feel more secure. She can make up the words rather than read it perfectly, and I get to see things from her perspective. I get to learn a little about her mind works, what parts of the story meant something to her, and how she sees the world around her.

R is a bit young, but she handles the reading lessons very well. She knows each of the individual sounds that have been covered so far, but anytime she is asked to string sounds together to sound out a word, she acts distracted or just plain refuses to cooperate, sticking her thumb in her mouth. I began to realize that this is purely because she wants to do it right the first time, and if she is not 100% confident that she does not know the answer, she does not want to try.

So I began to alter my approach just a little in order to remove all pressure from her. Whenever the reading lessons tell me to say, "Now you sound it out," I say, "Now we will sound it out." She can hear my voice as I blend the sounds, and she can blend her voice with mine. Suddenly her cooperation abounded, and when we are done with one lesson, she asks for another.

R sometimes feels shy and sometimes gets lost in the shuffle of a busy family. If TJ and I did not make the effort to single her out for special moments, she would never be heard. I do my lessons with her at bedtime as part of tucking her in, reading her stories, and giving her kisses. Since she has her own room now, there are no interruptions from her sisters, and I have the opportunity to talk to her and encourage her to open up.

Now I see that M's pretend reading was a great tool to build language skills, confidence, and self-esteem. Last night, I shuffled up R's nighttime routine a little, and all we did was read books together, encouraging her to talk as much as possible.

Classifying Animals

For science, we had a first grade science book that covered such topics as plants, animals, bugs, seasons, weather, simple machines, and space. Each topic came with a worksheet or two and a few ideas to expand the lessons. So each topic could possibly take about a week or two.

However, we are doing more of an unschooling approach, and I only used this curriculum as a jump board to dig more deeply into a topic. I liked the worksheets, and so did the girls. So, to supplement, I used a lot of ideas from the Janice VanCleave's Play and Find Out series, which contains activities for ages 4 to 7 (although my 3 year old enjoyed the activities too).

When we got to the part on animals, my 1st grade science curriculum taught how to identify mammals, and that was about it. So I found these wonderful science story books that describe each animal group. The books are easy for a young child to read and understand, pinpointing the specific physical characteristics that identify an animal as being part of a specific group. For example, the book on amphibians describes the cool, moist skin and the stages of life as well as several other aspects that all amphibians share.

We would read one of the books, and then I would follow that up with a poster board project. I bought a used school book from Half-Price Books that contains tons of real life pictures of animals. We would cut out the pictures from whichever animal group that we were working on and paste them on our poster board. Then I would write some comments like "baby amphibians breathe under water with gills" and "adult amphibians breathe air with their lungs" and "amphibians have cool, moist skin."

Added to this activity, we raised tadpoles last summer, and we got to watch as one slowly lost his tail and eventually jumped out of the water. R used to carry around imaginary baby puppies, and she would say that her imaginary puppies were so little that they did not have their legs yet.

We also raised some crawdads, and it was cool to see when one of them shed his skin. Before shedding his skin, Houdini (he kept trying to escape) had only one claw as the other was broken, and one of his antennae was also broken. After molting, both the claw and the antennae were restored but were just a little smaller.

We also captured a caterpillar, watched it grow and make its cocoon, and we kept a bug house for crickets . With all of these hands on activities to supplement the science curriculum, the girls really learned a lot about different types of animals.

One day, M made the comment that turtles are reptiles, and my husband TJ (a science major in college, by the way) was not so sure, thinking that they might be amphibians. Nope, they are reptiles as they lay their eggs in the sand and the babies hatch fully formed, and they have scaly skin rather than cool, moist skin.

Chapter Books

We just got Mary Poppins in the Kitchen and several other children's cookbooks to get the girls interested in cooking. The Mary Poppins Cookery Book was a story and a Cookbook, and M sat entranced as I read the story. Each chapter was only about three pages, but there was only one picture per chapter. Even R sat for most of the story before she ran off to go play with K.

After reading the Mary Poppins Cookery Book, M wanted to use her special night to make cupcakes, which we decorated with smiley faces. She ate one and then set two aside, one for herself and one for R, and the next day, she spent all morning telling R about the "special surprise" that she made for her.

Curious to know what she would do with chapter books, I got Little House in the Big Woods, which I discovered to be a splendid book for social studies as well as reading. We sat down to read the first chapter, which described many of the fall times preparations that the family had to perform in order to survive for the winter.

M said, "Well, if they run out of food, they will just have to go to the store." Daddy said, "Remember what the story said earlier? There was nothing around for a whole week's or even a month's journey." She sat quietly contemplating that. When I was done with chapter one, M ran off with the book and started trying to read it to herself.

Last night I read chapter two to both M & R, and even R sat through several pages. Finally R asked, "Where are the pictures?" And I said, "You are supposed to make pictures in your mind." So I started talking a bit about the story, comparing Pa to Daddy. "Pa would pretend to be a wild dog, and sometimes Daddy pretends to be a bear and growls and chases them. Pa has blue eyes, but what color eyes does your daddy have?" I asked.

"Brown!"

R commented, "Our house does not have a gun." And we talked about why they needed a gun and why we do not have one.

The story describes wilderness life in such detail, that I am learning so much: from making cheese & butter to storing vegetables and meat. And two little girls are mesmerized. We only read half of Chapter 2 last night because they jumped up and started running around the room, pretending to be mad dogs.

Nothing Teaches Math Like Cookies

About six months ago, the only number that R could recognize was the number 3 because that was how old she was. We found this out when we bought some preschool math workbooks, and R really struggled with the simplest exercises. So I began my campaign for toys and activities that would familiarize her with the numbers. This was before I found the Count on Math book that I use now.

One game was something like hopscotch. I took the cushions off our kitchen chairs and used masking tape to make the numbers 1 to 5. Then the girls jumped from one cushion to the next, saying the numbers as they go. It was a great way to combine exercise and math.

Then I found some cookie cutters shaped like numbers, and we made sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies in the shape of numbers. I tried to say the numbers as many times as possible while we cut out the cookies, and I had her arrange the cookie cutters in order before she started cutting them. Then she was exposed to the shapes of the numbers when we decorated the cookies and again when she ate them.

Lauri Toys has several puzzles that help teach numbers. The Number Play puzzle and the Number Puzzle Board and Pegs help the child to associate the number shape with the same number of items, but I think I like the Number Express the most. The girls love trains.

Language Game

On the drive home yesterday, M & R learned how to play "I Spy." It is a great game to help build descriptive language skills. Believe it or not, it is not easy for 3 year olds and 5 year olds to describe something. So what skills can this game build?

• language
• observation
• problem solving
• spatial awareness
• pre-reading skills

R's descriptions went something like this: "I spy a hat." or "I spy a white car!" or "I spy a big house!" However, by the end of the car ride, her descriptions became a little more complex (she dropped the noun so that she did not give the answer away and started using a few more adjectives), and she actually started guessing some of the answers. As our car ride took forty five miutes, she had a good amount of time to get the hang of it.

M, being a little older, described things by color, shape, texture, position, and even by the letter with which the item started. A box was no longer just a box; it was something that was brown, made of cardboard, and you can play inside it. K's boots were no longer just boots; they were brown with little fuzzy balls on them.

Suddenly, the world had developed a whole new dimension of possibilities for two little girls. The most mundane objects were now something interesting to describe.

Power of Empathy

As human beings, we have no right to own another’s emotions. Offering advice is bragging that you know the perfect way for them to solve their problem, and offering sympathy is selfishly putting the focus on yourself (i.e. “Yeah, I know how you feel. Let me tell how that same thing happened to me...”)

On the other hand, empathy is acknowledging someone else’s emotion, giving the emotion a name and a valid place in that person’s situation. Empathy says that your emotions are your own and I will not change them. This is grace and respect that all people need, including little people.

One day R was throwing a fit because she had stated that she wanted Daddy but it was Mommy who came to get her. I could have argued with her, reasoned with her, or spanked her, and from past experience, I know what that would have gotten me. So instead, I said, “It is really frustrating when you are not heard.” The temper tantrum stopped immediately. She slowly nodded her head. I continued, “How about I get you out of your seat and give you to Daddy?” She nodded again.

Now, empathy does not mean that all actions are acceptable, but it acknowledges that I do not have the right to control you through emotion or twist your emotions by my own desires. Someone once told me that the best way to deal with a temper tantrum is to ignore it, and empathy goes hand in hand with that idea. Empathy gives a person room to work out their feelings in their own time.

When M met her first bully, she acted out a lot, and in some ways, she exhibited the same behavior that had been dealt to her. For about a month, I tried to "fix" the problem. I tried to reason with her. I tried to coerce her. I tried to punish her. And finally I said, "It really hurt to be treated like that." And I walked away. Within a week, she had forgiven, she had made friends with the bully, and she was praying that God would let the "bad girl" know that she loved her. She worked all this out, and she did it without any help from me.

Sometimes we as parents just want our kids to be cooperative, which means we do not want to deal with their negative feelings. Sometimes as parents, we feel guilty when our children are unhappy. Sometimes we think we need to create a bubble to protect them from any negative feeling. Sometimes we just want things to go our way. So we either try to force them or coerce them to feeling what we want them to feel.

But when we do this, we prevent them from learning some very valuable lessons. Emotions are the very make up of our being. Made in the image of God, we are emotional beings. Throughout the Bible, God got angry, jealous, hurt, upset, sad, etc. And so do we. We can either bottle up those emotions and push them away (harden our hearts) or we can learn to deal with them. And in the same way, we can force our children to have the emotions we want them to have or we can teach them how to deal with their emotions.

It is an important thing for a child to know "this makes me uncomfortable and I need to get out of here and run for safety." The book Liberated Parents, Liberated Children: Your Guide to a Happier Family gives a story of a teenage boy who suggested to a young girl that they play a toe licking game behind a tree. The girl, feeling uncomfortable, ran home. Her mom, the author of the book, was thankful that she had taken the time to respect her daughter's feelings.

However, just because any emotion is permissable, not actions are. Children should be taught that certain behaviors (throwing things, hitting, disobeying, etc.) are not acceptable ways of expressing how they feel, and they should also be taught that just because they want to have something or do something they will not always get it.

There was a young girl at our family Thanksgiving gathering who did not want to go home at the end of the day. Her mom had her hands full with the baby brother, and the dad was begging the girl to come over and get her coat on. The grandma tried to help by suggesting that it would be scary to be left behind with Uncle Tom, and Uncle Tom pretended to be a scary bear. None of this worked.

Finally I got up and asked for the girl's coat. I went to the girl and said, "You really don't want to go. You are having so much fun with your new friends, and you don't want to stop playing. I think your friends are going to miss you too." While I said all this, I got her dressed and ready to go. Without any more fuss, she left with her parents after saying goodbye to her friends.

There were two things I did: (1) empathy and (2) action. I acknowledged what she was most likely feeling, something that I am sure I would feel if I was having fun, but I moved her in the direction she should be going. Just because she did not want to go did not make it acceptable to ignore her parents.

Now does this always work? No. It has to come from the right attitude. If I use empathy as another means of coersion, they are going to sense it. First, we have to truly let go of any way in which their emotions affect our emotions. There can be no guilt, no frustration, and no pride on our part that can be attached to any emotion that they may have.

For example, there have been times when I feel guilty when they are sad or upset, or I feel frustrated when they want something that they cannot have or I cannot give them. Just as their emotions are their own, our emotions must be our own too.

Then we have to watch what we say:

• "It is just a paper cut. It doesn't hurt. Don't be such a baby."
• "See, there are no monsters in here. There is nothing to be scared of."
• "Don't be bothered by what your brother says. He is just pushing your buttons."
• "Don't whine. I can't help it we don't have any waffles right now."

Then we have to learn to replace those statements with simple statements that observe the child's emotion:

• "Paper cuts can really hurt."
• "You are really concerned that there might be monsters in your closet."
• "It really hurts you when he says those things about you."
• "You really love to eat waffles for breakfast! I wish I had some for you today."

The child walks away from this feeling (1) I have been heard and (2) my feelings are okay, but you will be shocked on how much easier these situations are to handle. From personal experience, I am familiar with what would happen if I said "that doesn't hurt" when the child had a boo-boo. They would have thrown a fit to illustrate just how much it hurt. And if I say, "You can't have waffles because we don't have any," my toddler would scream for them. No amount of reasoning would make her understand. And dismissing the pain caused by insults would only get me some sulking or yelling.

Today, when I am able to do empathy the way that I should (and admittedly I am not 100%), things move more smoothly in our home. I just got to remember: it is not about control.

My husband overheard this conversation between M & R:

R: It hurt when you stepped on my hand. I want you to say you're sorry.

M: I am sorry.

R: I forgive you.

Little Einsteins

Of all the children's videos out there, I am most impressed with the Little Einsteins. The stories illustrate great pieces of classical music. My favorite (as well as the girls' favorite) is the Rocket's Firebird Rescue, based on Stravinsky's The Firebird. It is a ballet that tells the story of Kastchei who seeks to destroy the Firebird, and the Little Einsteins seek to rescue the Firebird from the cage where Kastchei holds the Firebird captive.

The videos build knowledge of music terminology like crescendo and allegro. They learn about instruments, tempo, art, conducting, singing, and ballet, but the most significant thing they gained was appreciation and awareness for music. After the girls watched Rocket's Firebird Rescue, we got the music. We put the CD in without telling M & R what it was, and when they recognized the music, they started jumping with excitement, in time to the music.

In Little Einsteins - Our Big Huge Adventure, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony tells the story of the life cycle of a Monarch butterfly, which gives them some science as well. The 4 kids help a caterpillar get to the musical tree where it forms its chrysalis, and once it emerged, they helped the new butterfly migrate south.

M & R beg to watch these movies over and over, but even little K who is not even two yet loves to sit and watch them too.

Parenting Tip: Date Night

In a household with three young children, ages 1 to 5, it is so easy to overlook the needs of one child. Or actually, it is easy to overlook the needs of all the children. Diapers, potty accidents, refilling milk cups, library and doctor visits, grocery shopping, preparing three meals a day, breaking up fights, and finally getting them all down for naps or bedtime can consume hours of activity without actually giving that personal moment of attention that a child needs to feel special, unique, loved, and wanted. And oh yeah, did I mention your own bathroom breaks, food needs, and downtime? You gotta take care of yourself too, or you will not be fit to parent.

We took a tip from some friends of ours who have more kids than we do. They establish a weekly date night, and the kids take turns on who gets special time with Mommy and Daddy. The nice thing about this schedule is that after each girl gets her Tuesday night date, Mommy and Daddy get there night together to put girls to bed a little early and have some time for just the two of us.

Our Date Night is on Tuesdays, and last night was R’s night. Sometimes R gets overshadowed by an older sister who has more advanced language skills, and sometimes she gets overlooked with a younger sister who gets into everything. Date night is the perfect opportunity for us to single her out for special activities, and we have noticed how much more confident and secure she seems when she gets this attention.

The night started with M & R working on their wooden model kits with Daddy, and when they were done, M went to bed and R started drawing. She is not able to write yet, but she created stories to go with all of her pictures. This was an opportunity for us to encourage our timid, tender-hearted girl to talk more freely, so I listened attentively to her stories about being captured in a net and Mommy coming to save her. She described all the items on the pictures and explained to me what each thing was.

We stapled her pages together to make a book, which she then added “words” and then read the words to me.

Then we had a reading lesson from the book Teach Your Child How to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We are on lesson 12, and she is learning to string sounds together to make words. When her sisters are awake, it is hard to get her undivided attention because she wants to play, but she got really excited when she learned that lesson 13 starts to have pictures with stories that she gets to read.

She drank hot chocolate with marshmallows and reread her picture book to me, and when she finally went to bed with some story books, there was a big smile on her face, and her little eyes were shining with joy, knowing that she is truly special to us.

Lessons using Stories of Big Sister Dog

M does two things on a near non-stop basis: (1) tell stories and (2) talk about Big Sister Dog. Big Sister Dog has been her imaginary friend for well nigh a year now. Big Sister Dog is blue with rainbow eyes. She has a long neck so that she can eat the clouds, and she is a super hero dog that rescues baby dogs and children.

So after learning how to read using the book Teach Your Child How to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, M started writing stories, sounding out the words and writing the sounds she heard. I wanted to coach her to write evenly across the page, and I wanted to improve her spelling without getting her bogged down with spelling lessons. She is only 5, and I think that can wait until 1st grade.

So using special writing paper designed for preschoolers, I wrote several stories using the imaginary character Big Sister Dog. I put a title on the first page so that it would seem like a real book, and I wrote every other line so that she could have space to copy my words. Then, I left the backs of every page blank so that she could add pictures.

This accomplishes several things without me hovering because that seems to squelch her desire to write:

(1) drawing letters legibly
(2) learning word order, spacing, sizing, and keeping everything on a straight line
(3) writing the words of the story with proper spelling
(4) developing language skills with a fresh story that interests her
(5) using creativity by illustrating the stories herself

Here are two of my stories. You can replace Big Sister Dog with a character of your own.

Big Sister Dog and the Tornado
One day there was a tornado. The fire chief called Big Sister Dog to rescue some baby dogs from the tornado. When Big Sister Dog arrived, the tornado was coming close. Big Sister Dog was not scared. She just opened her mouth and swallowed it. The tornado did not hurt her. It just made her grow taller and stronger. The End.


Big Sister Dog and the Missing Bone
One day, Big Sister Dog lost her bone in the forest. She sniffed all over until she caught its scent. The trail led up the mountain to a dragon lair. The dragon was chewing the bone. Oh no! Big Sister Dog tried to back up, but she tripped and made a loud noise. The Dragon said, "Please share my bone with me." So Big Sister Dog and the Dragon were friends forever. The End.

Math Skills for All Ages

The first chapter in Count on Math: Activities for Small Hands and Lively Minds contains many activities for exploration. I went into this first chapter thinking I had failed my children in giving them the most opportunities to develop their minds, so I started filling our time with these activities as if we were on a race against time.

I planned all these things and got very frustrated when things did not go as I wanted. "My kids need to explore!" I thought. Or what? Something bad will happen? For one of the activities, I collected jar lids, but nobody was interested in the lids except K (1 1/2 yrs old). I gathered rocks and spread them out on the table, but M & R said to me, "We want to play with beans." Beans was another activity recommended in the book, but we had done that one already.

Then one afternoon, I gave K a paper cup to carry around the backyard with her. She filled it with 2 rocks, a stick, and some flowers, and then brought it back to me to show me what she had found. She was exploring, on her own, without any intervention from me. As long as I did not plop her in front of the TV, she would be exploring, and thinking back to the games M & R used to play, they were always exploring too. In the spring when I planted my flowers, M & R spent hours filling buckets with dirt and transferring the dirt from one bucket to another.

So if exploration happens, what do we need the book Count on Math: Activities for Small Hands and Lively Minds for? Many of the activities are so simple that they do not need any extra planning, and we normally have the tools and supplies needed already on hand. So I built a loose framework by putting notes in a text document in a table format. If we needed something to do, I would scan my notes, grab an activity that we could do easily, and mark it off my list.

What I found was that with this easy framework, I could get all three girls involved in learning the same skills using many of the same activities.

Exploration
While M & R wanted to explore beans, K played in the dirt, and they all loved to play with the water toys and explore water.

Spatial Awareness
M & R had their obstacle course and colored pictures that were taped to the bottom of the coffee table while K played hide and go seek in the closets. Then they all had fun together with building forts and playing pirate with the coffee table turned upside down as their boat.

Classification
M & R had already talked much about eye color and classifying the different members of our family by eye color. M has hazel eyes like Mommy and Grammy while R has brown eyes like Daddy and Memaw, and K's eyes are blue like Papa's. So it was very easy to expand this classifying, especially as we were learning to classify animals for our science lessons.

Patterns
We are currently studying patterns. M likes making up her own patterns. She uses blocks, people, and words. "Is that a pattern?" she will ask. And I take every opportunity to point out patterns to R, who at 3 1/2 is still just grasping the idea. And I started an action game with K, "Clap, Clap, Roll [your hands], Put your fingers up high, Reach down and touch your toes."

So the book Count on Math: Activities for Small Hands and Lively Minds has a lot of fun activities that can be applied to ages 1 to 5 and helps you develop a lot of fresh ideas in keep children busy and active.

More Lessons on Sharing

There is another reason, a deeper reason why sharing should not be forced. Children are miniature adults. They are people with their own feelings, their own personalities, and their own preferences. So the question begs to be asked: How would you feel if the governing bodies of our nation forced you to share?

You just got a new car. It's a brand new Hummer, and all of your neighbors want to take a spin in your car. If this were a socialistic society, you would be told that you do not have a right to something so wonderful and that you must share with your neighbors. And oh yeah, now that you have a new car, you do not need that old one anymore. You will have to give that one away for free to the neighbor who does not have one.

Well, this is not a socialistic society, and if our government tried to play that game with us, we would be up in arms. We would be protesting on the streets, yelling, "What about my rights?"

Does a child feel any differently about their personal possessions? And who are we as adults to rob them of the rights of their own personal space and property? Just because they are smaller does not give us the right to decide when they will share.

R got a new set of toy pans for Christmas. They were shiny and just the right size for her. She loved these pans as she has played with them every day since. Within an hour after opening them, her baby cousin discovered that they make a lot of great noise when you bang them together and that they feel very good on sore gums.

R was not happy about her cousin playing with them even though she was playing with other toys at that time. She was worried that she would lose them forever or that they would get broken. Panicking, she tried to get them back, but the adults who were cooing over the baby told her, "Oh, just let her play with them." They did not even bother to look at R when they dismissed her concerns and feelings.

Because they did not even look at her, they did not notice how R was devastated. She felt completely helpless to the all powerful adults who treated her like she did not matter. The message she received that day is that her baby cousin is more important and more loved and valued.

Between siblings, this could become a source of resentment. In fact, it had been a source of contention in our house. R had a major problem with her little sister K for the longest time. She would scream every time K even came in the room, for fear that K would run off with her toys or knock over her building blocks. I would always say, "K is a baby; she does not understand."

Now, I say, "K, that is your sister's doll. Let's go find your doll." The changes have been slow as R needed to learn that she really was secure, that Mommy and Daddy really would defend her. It used to be that M & R could play well together, M & K could play well together, but R & K would fight. However, it's a real joy to see R & K play together now.

The other day, R was upset to find K in her room. Upset to be kicked out of R's room, K came running to me, and I said, "That is R's room." Very shortly, R came up to K with one of R's favorite toys and said, "Here, you can play with this." This act of sharing was completely on R's own volition. That is what makes the act so special, that she willingly chose to share.

Math Skill: Spatial Relationships

The girls had to go
around the chair,
over the couch,
under the coffee table.

Then they crawled
through the kitchen,
over the gate,
under another gate.

Then they jumped
down the hall,
into a basket,
out of a basket.

Finally they came to the playroom where they found cookies on a plate.

Sounds like a lot of fun, but what does this have to do with school?

When we started home schooling, I thought I would teach M & R the same level at the same time. One girl had just turned 5; the other was 3 1/2. Kindergarten for both would work out just fine. M & R both knew the alphabet, could both count to ten, and both recognized their shapes and colors. R likes to be just like her big sister, and sometimes we forget that she really is almost 2 years younger.

Our first attempt at math was to get kindergarten workbooks, and M flew through the book. However, R could not recognize her numbers, let alone draw them. Plus, she struggled with following directions because she did not understand what was expected of her. I realized then that R was her own person with her own educational needs. I could not lump her into M's lessons. So I went looking for a "non-paper oriented" math curriculum.

Knowledge is valuable, but it does not mean anything unless you understand what to do with the knowledge. You can recite the numbers 1 to 10, but that does not mean that you can count a group of toys. So I wanted games and activities that build the understanding before they build the knowledge.

I found Count on Math: Activities for Small Hands and Lively Minds, a book that builds many pre-math skills, and hundreds of simple, easy activities fill its pages. M & R could both do the projects and benefit, not even knowing that they were learning.

Each chapter covers a different skill and contains more than 30 activities for each skill. These skills include (but not limited to) the following:

• Exploration
• Spatial Relationships
• Classification
• Patterns
• One-to-One Correspondence (prepares for division)
• Ordering
• Numbers
• Shapes
• Adding
• Subtracting
• Telling Time

Order Count on Math: Activities for Small Hands and Lively Minds online now!

A Lesson in Problem Solving

Ever had to mediate between two children who are arguing over the same toy, and you find that there is no way to solve the problem without more fussing?

This happened to us recently over two angel shirts. One was blue with rhinestones and had no size label, and the other was white with flowers and was a size 5. The rule is that size 5's go to M and size 4's go to R, so I put the size 5 in M's closet and the other in R's closet.

But M wanted the blue angel shirt with the rhinestones, and I was called upon to intervene. However, my attempts to solve the problem did not work. I stated the rule that applied, "It is R's shirt and she does not have to share."

Why don't we make them share? Two reasons:

(1) There is a more important lesson I want them to learn, and that is respect. By supporting the child who does not want to share, she learns what it feels like to be respected, that her personal space and personal belongings will not be violated, and she grows in confidence and feels safe in her environment. At the same time, the other girl learns an important lesson in giving respect to someone else.

(2) Being forced to share robs you of the opportunity to do so of your own free will. Sharing is not really a generous offer unless you do it because you want to, and forcing them does not help them learn to share. It only steals away the joy of giving. I find that the girls are more willing to share freely when they feel secure.

So I applied the rules to the situation, but M was still throwing a royal fit. I really wanted to just give her the shirt to make her stop whining and crying. Finally, I used a tool that I learned from Siblings Without Rivalry, which I had never bothered to use because I really did not think it would work.

This is what I said, "M wants the blue angel shirt, and R also wants the same angel shirt. The shirt belongs to R, and she does not want to share. But you two could talk it out and make an agreement. Maybe R could wear it on Mondays and Wednesdays, and M could wear it on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I am leaving the room, so let me know what you decide."

I was frustrated enough that I thought it would be better to not even be in the room. I went to the kitchen where I could hear a lot of screaming from them, and I thought, "This isn't going to work." I was tempted to go back in there and just confiscate the shirt, but instead I started making lunch. A few minutes later, M came out and said, "We decided that R will wear the white angel shirt and I will wear the blue one."

I think my jaw dropped to the floor; I had not even thought of that solution. I don't know who learned more: me or them! I learned that I don't have to be the mediator every time, and they learned how to problem solve for themselves.

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