Mr M's Blog: Welcome to the Holidays

Kia Ora All,

I hope everyone had an excellent weekend. If you're doing homeschool activities throughout the holidays (which we are as the structure helps keep the days happy and fully occupied), then here are a couple of suggestions:

Times Tables

Often kids learn 5's, 2's and 3's by skip counting and find it hard to break the habit. Working on times tables at home is a good way of solving this problem, and what better time than now? I recommend working on them as a family of facts e.g., 7 x 5 = 35, 5 x 7 = 35, 35 ÷ 5 = 7 and 35 ÷ 5 = 7.

Short bursts is the way to go with this. If you're cooking tea and your child is in the room, fire a few questions at them. Do some they know and a couple they don't. Do this regularly throughout the day. Here's a good plan of action.

Start with 2's and 5's. Your child probably knows these but making sure they're secure with the family of facts is a good place to start.
Next, 3's.
4's come next as links in with 2's.
6's so long as your child knows 3's.
7's link with 2's and 5's.
8's link with 4's.
9's at any time, particularly if you show them the fingers trick.

Here is a link to some flashcards I made up and was planning on introducing term 2. If you make flashcards, they're only to remind you which ones your child needs to learn or for your child to practice with - you need to test your child while they're not looking at the cards. If you don't have a printer at home, you can just write them out by hand. When I was a kid I remember making flashcards from Weetbix boxes.

Maths Buddy has a time tables game. You need to monitor your child with this for it to be useful. They should stick with the table they're working on and try to master that before moving on. Short bursts of 5 - 10 minutes a day on this; I wouldn't recommend any more than that.

Maths Buddy

I've enjoyed working through tasks with Olive. I encourage students to have a pen and paper beside them to do their woking on. One task a day is plenty I reckon.

Island Activity Ctd...

Write a letter or make a postcard to send to a friend telling them about what you've been up to on your island paradise over the weekend. If you make a postcard, make sure you draw a picture of a major landmark from your island on the front. Look at a real postcard if you have one and copy the layout. Put a space for the address and draw a stamp as well.

Keep the pictures coming. Staying connected through this time is very important and I thoroughly enjoy seeing what everyone's up to.

Rock On,
Mr M

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