Save time and simplify
your homeschooling life...
Learn from experienced
homeschoolers how to write your own curriculum.
It really is that easy!
Use this website with Beverley Paine's Getting Started with Home Schooling - Practical Considerations to help you develop your own educational curriculum to suit your family situation, beliefs and lifestyle. The checklists can help you identify your children's current educational skill level in each subject area, as well as find any 'gaps' in their learning, plan what they need to cover or keep track of what has been learned. As you can appreciate this website is continuously under development... It's our aim to add pages on a regular basis in all curriculum areas: check back frequently. We hope you enjoy the articles and activities and find the links and recommended resources useful. Over the next year we will be working our way through each subject area and writing fresh, new content. |
|
"Thank you so much for your wonderful website! I was getting quiet frustrated with finding appropriate information on homeschooling - thanks to your website we are now on the right track... Using your checklists for reassurance helped me to have the confidence to come up with my own programme that suits our needs." Rachael "I'm a frequent visitor to your website... I gain valuable knowledge from your website, luckily recommended in the very early stages of our homeschooling journey." Geradine "I checked out your website today and was incredibly impressed by it. I can tell it will be a great resource for our family for many years. THANKS for all the hard work that has gone into making homeschooling easier and much less isolating for families like us." Cynthia |
Please note that Beverley Paine is unavailable to answer telephone and email inquiries, etc. Please join a support group in your state. |
||
Ways to use Cuisenaire Rods
© Beverley Paine, Nov 1999
Do you have a set of cuisenaire rods, or looked at them in the shop but wondered how you'd use them? We have two sets, plus the wooden M.A.B. blocks that we bought from Educational Aids at Wingfield twelve years ago.
I used to just let the children play with them mostly, using some creativity on my behalf at times. We would combine them with the M.A.B. set and they would add the Brio trainset or the matchbox cars and we would build landscapes. I'd set tasks like, 'build a building with 7,926 units'. This was great fun and the resulting layout would remain for a couple of days to be included in imaginative play. I found that this was a very easy way of introducing place value in number. I'd be the brick 'bank' and the kids would have to exchange cubes, flats and rods for units or whatever all the time, asking for exactly what they wanted. Thomas enjoyed this game from about three years of age!
Another thing we would do is build towers, but with imposed restrictions - like all the sides would have to be 8 units, using all the rods (the mab bases -100- would serve as floors), the kids would sit 2's and 6's on one corner, an 8 on another, a 5 and a 3 on another etc. Lots of fun when they fell down. And again it teaches basic number facts in addition and subtraction, only the children didn't know that!
We'd also make mosaics and patterns, stairs, you name it. The children all saw the mathematical value and emerging concepts were concreted into their brains....
We'd often just line them up - how many green rods to five orange rods, etc - the basis of multiplication and division. The children loved arranging them back into the boxes the rods came in - this was just as absorbing as the games we played.
Occasionally we'd use the Mortensen maths approach to solve some mathematical problem - but that was LONG ago when were were fixated on a paper based approach to learning math. But the Mortensen approach is firmly based on cuisanaire so it is well worth checking out. You don't need their hardware - the wooden equivalent locally available is just as good.
We focussed on having fun mostly. The kids liked it better that way. But I think the secret to success with these kinds of things is not leaving the child to play or manipulate them by himself - I would always sit and play with my children, sometimes directing, but more often just joining in with their ideas and having fun.
Links to more information about Cuisenaire Rods:
on this website is of a general
nature only and is not intended as
personal or professional advice.
Always Learnign Books
Beverley and Robin wish to thank everyone for their patience as they convert most of the Always Learning Book titles to e-book format. As each booklet becomes available it will be listed on this website.
If you wish to be informed about new listings as well as news regarding Always Learning Books please join our mailing list.
More questions?
JOIN a FORUM
Looking for Resources?
Home Education Directory
Join the HEA in 2008
and receive
2 FREE Booklets!
A percentage of sales
goes to Trees For Life
|
|
Thank you for visiting!
Text & Images on this site Copyright © 1999-2008 Beverley Paine. All rights reserved. Please note that the opinions and articles included in the suite of Homeschool Australia websites are not necessarily those of Beverley and Robin Paine, nor do we endorse or necessarily recommend products (other than our own) listed in contributed articles, links, pages, or advertisements.