Learning our Multiplications

 

When I first took my kids out of the public school system almost 3 years ago, my son was in grade 5 and was already a master at multiplications so I didn't have to teach him. Now my daughter who is 10 is having a lot of trouble getting it! My son naturally gets math, where my daughter finds it pretty tough.

So I went to google to help me find a fun and easy way to learn and memorize her times tables. I found this great site
http://www.livinglaughingandloving.com/2012/07/multiplication-memory-chart-free-printable.html She is a school teacher that made this great system for her students and shared! She loves trying to beat her own time, and waits for her dad to get home to recite to him the number family that she learned that day in 30 seconds! We are only at the three family, but she is picking it up so fast!

 

 

 

 

I took the sheet in the picture above and laminated it then cut it into strips with each number family on each strip (the front of the strips is number families 1-6, and the back of the strips has families 7-12), hole punched it and stuck it on a ring. Nice and easy to hang on our bulletin board and just grab and practice. She then has to practice the number family through out the day and at the end of the day try to recite the whole number family for that day with correct answers to her dad with a time of 30 seconds or less. (She is enjoying trying to beat her time).

I'm sure getting into the harder number families wont be as easy, but with lots of practice, we will do it! The best part is that our 7 year old is also getting into it too!

 

 

 

 



Bulletin board disguised as a beautiful work of art!

 

 

I was roaming around pinterest the other day and came across a really great DIY giant bulletin board. Here at short stop. After looking through her tutorial I was bound and determined to do this for my wall. I have the kids with all their school work, and their chore charts and calenders so I needed a really big one. I headed off to the home depot and found that their regular pink foam core was WAY to big and they didn't have any smaller options, but they did have this stuff called handi-pac insulation board. It came in a 6 pack of 14.5"x 48" and 1.5" thick. Perfect!

 Grabbed some duct tape on my way out the door and it was off to fabricland to pick amongst the thousands of different materials! It was really hard to find what exactly I wanted. I wanted it to not only be a bulletin board but also be like art work hanging.
An hour later I came into the section that is for curtains and came across this beautiful, colourful fabric.

Every time I walk past the room, I fall in love with it again!

So we (the kids loved helping out with this project) took the six pack of foam board and measured it. I couldn't use all 6 for the size of my wall, so I only used five. Then we duct taped them together.

The duct tape worked really well. Then we put the fabric on the table and wrapped it around the foam like a giant present and duct taped it on. It surprised me that it stuck so well. I really thought it would need a lot more, or something else, but it worked great.

We then excitedly turned it over and were fantastically surprised how AWESOME it looked and we then hung it on the wall. It is 4 feet by 5 feet and it looks like a giant piece of art work on my dining room wall. The kicker, Total cost was $30!
 The kids starting pinning papers to it right away and it almost made me sad to even cover it up at all!

Now I am off to make their chore centre courtesy of another great blog. I will share when we finish up with that and give it a test run!

 

 

 



 

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog!  I hope you find ideas, recipes and bargain hunting ideas that will inspire you or at the very least give you some new things to try.  Please visit my About Me page to find out a little  more about myself and my family.  So grab a tea or coffee and enjoy!