K12 offers Free Online Summer Camps. Last summer Luna did the Duct Tape camp and made several cool projects.
To log in you use the format FirstName_Grade_School. Luna is an Independent Study student and there is no proof required to show you are taking paid classes at K12 so for school put Independent Study.
It is available at http://www.walmart.com/ip/4300800 for $2.82 with free shipping for site-to-store. (It ended up being $2.99 after tax for me.)
I believe that an adult without any piano experience could figure this out and teach it to their children if they invest some time too.
With Luna, age 6, I am teaching correct form and giving her the whole piano lesson experience. With Katie, age 3, I am just demonstrating the song and letting her pick it out with one finger. I think Katie will learn the tempo by ear and she will be happy she is playing the same songs her sister can play.
I hope to post some videos of the girls playing soon.
If you decide to try this with your children and have any questions please ask.
It will solve problems for you and explain how it is done step-by-step.
(I wanted to do at least one mastery challenge at Khan Academy so I can get the 100 days in a row but I was too tired to do the problem in my head or dig out some scratch paper.)
bookadventure.com is a website where you and your kids can sign up for free. There are quizzes for Accelerated Reader Books. Kids get points for answering the quizzes correctly. They can redeem their points for things like Highlights Magazine, and ebooks.
I have been going on Khan Academy and doing at least one Mastery Challenge every day since April 4th. (Which according to a reverse calculator is probably the day I ovulated with implantation happening 2 days later.) A Mastery Challenge consists of as many as 6 math questions.
This morning I had to do two similar relatively simple 4 step problem.
Lucy made 4000 g of candy for a party, and she served the candy divided equally on 16 plates. Her guests ate 11 plates of candy.
How much candy did Lucy have left over?
Write the answer in kilograms.
Molly made 3600 mL of tea for a party, and she served the tea divided equally in 12 glasses. Her guests drank 7 glasses of tea.
How much tea did Molly have left over?
Write the answer in liters.
So for the first problem you take 4000g/16 to get your per plate number 250g
Then find how many plates were left over 16-11 = ___ and take that and multiply by 250 then divide by 1000 to get kg.
In my head I got 16-11 = 4 So my answer was 1kg instead of 1.25 kg So my final answer was wrong.
For the second problem in the same step I got 12-7 = 4
I had to go through the hints where it shows you how to do the problem step by step to figure out where I went wrong because I was sure I was right.
I know from past experience I can’t do math in my head when I am pregnant. I thought since I am using Khan Academy every day and practicing everyday maybe this pregnancy I could avoid that problem. I thought it was just the cloudiness they call baby brain with a little uncertainty for my answer and fear of getting it wrong and being embarrassed that causes me to freeze sometimes when put on the spot to answer questions.
I realized that math answers feel right to me. The only way I can explain this is like when you look at a word that is spelled wrong and it just looks wrong. You might not know how to fix it but you know it is wrong. Or if someone asks you how to spell something and you write it down to see if it looks right. It is a feeling like that.
So this morning I found out that 4 feels like the right answer and 5 feels wrong.
Luna gets her genius from me. Luna is much better off because she has me to teach her and I understand how to teach her specifically and how she thinks.
Sorry I am tired. I was going to add to this. I will post more thoughts on this another day. I had saved the draft to add to this but if I don’t finish today then I the “today” part won’t be correct anymore and I don’t want to change it to yesterday or last week.
I am sharing this on behalf of my daughters school.
Dear Galileo Community:
I am writing to ask you to speak out on behalf of equitable funding for charter schools by making a few phone calls tomorrow (Thursday). As the email below states, “The Senate has cut charter schools facilities funding by 44%, while “traditional ” public schools are getting the largest increase in the last 4-5 years.” Our Senators need to hear from all of us about how important it is for PUBLIC charter schools to receive equitable funding. It will only take a few minutes–details are below. I thank you in advance for your support!
Michele Gill,
Chair, Galileo School Board
TODAY – STOP the Senate from cutting our facilities funding by 44%. You are needed to call Senators TODAY!!!
Hello Advocacy Team,
“CALL 6 for our Students and our Schools”
The time has come to activate our “Call to Action”. The Senate has cut charter schools facilities funding by 44%, while “traditional ” public schools are getting the largest increase in the last 4-5 years. We need to let key Senators know this will hurt our students greatly!
We need you to call each Senator’s district office and share our concerns. These calls need to be made TODAY!!!!! It will take you less than 5 minutes to call the entire list. This is a VERY important task, we CAN NOT do this without YOU!!!
Call 3 Senators for our students & our schools, then call 3 friends and have them make calls as well. The more calls we can make the better – Strength in numbers.
Attached you will find talking points for Parents, Principals and Volunteer Non-Profit Governing Board members, these are points for reference, not a script, use your own style and story, you are unique.
ALWAYS be polite and respectful when speaking to their office.
ALWAYS thank them for the funding we have received in the past and thank them for their time when you call.
Key Points to make:
– Charter Schools are PUBLIC schools.
– 44% cut in facilities funding will hurt students.
– Money will be taken out of classrooms and put in facilities.
– “Traditional” public school is getting largest increase in years.
I recently read that bloggers feel a loyalty to their readers and they will make a post if they think they will be unable to post as much in the future and give the reason. This is usually followed by a flurry of posts. I read that in “Who Let The Blogs Out?” by Biz Stone. I am about halfway through the book.
When I say I am going to do something I fully intend to do it and I try very hard to keep my word even if it is to myself, something I just said I would do in my head.
I thought when I do get pregnant. I will post it to my blog before telling anybody as a test to see who reads my blog. My current due date is 12/26/14. I am sure it will be before Christmas though.
So I may not be posting as much and my focus may change.
I first discovered Khan Academy almost 2 years ago. I wanted to learn about Linear Algebra. I found KA and they had videos. I watched a few.
I want to go back to school and get an advanced degree. I have an AAS Associates of Applied Science in Automotive Technology from Ivy Tech. That second “A” means I had to do a lot more lab hours. I have an AS and a BS in Organizational Leadership and Supervision from Purdue University. So I have two 2-year degrees and one 4-year degree. I got all three of those degrees in a period of 3 years.
I love school. I miss school. I will go back eventually and get some more degrees but for now I have a money pit of a house and 2 little girls to raise.
When I went to parent night, I found out that the third graders and up were using Khan Academy and it had changed since I was there last. They now have an interactive math adaptive assessment environment and they have programming tutorials and challenges.
The math program is great from basic up to calculus. In the practice, if you get 5 questions correct in a row you move on to the next topic.
Luna and I learned the equation of a circle.
I took AP Calculus in High School and I tested out of my first semester of Calculus at Purdue in Engineering. (I dropped out, had Adrian when I was 19 then went back to school when he went to school) If I had taken 3 more math classes I could have had a math minor.
I learned a lot that I don’t remember, much of calculus. I can read the notation but I don’t remember much of how to do anything.
I do specifically remember not learning the equation of a circle. I had a TI graphing calculator. I knew how to program it. Someone else in one of my classes had a program that made Mickey Mouse on the screen. Which is basically 3 circles and I remember thinking I don’t know how to write the equation to graph a circle. So that is one hole in my math skills that I was aware of.
Thanks to KA I have filled in that hole.
The equation of a circle is (x-h)^2 + (y-k)^2 = r^2 where (h, k) is the center and r is the radius. This is one of those things like the Pythagorean Theorem a^2 + b^2 = c^2, where you can learn the formula and know what to do with it. (The circle formula is actually derived from that.)
I won’t try to explain it here when Khan has such great videos.
MomToAGenius 