Math – Page 3 – Butterbees and Bumbleflies

The DoSeum – A Mom’s Look Inside

This is not an affiliate post – it’s just the honest opinions of a mom who is an annual member of the DoSeum and has visited on MULTIPLE occasions.

This post has been a long time coming… I believe we’ve been to the DoSeum now about ten times. I consider myself to be well educated on the ins and outs… so here goes!

We’ll get the negatives out of the way real quick – auto flush toilets in a children’s museum are just a crazily stupid idea. LOTS, maybe even MOST kids are freaked out by auto flush toilets. Bad choice. And then there’s the workability of the exhibits. They’ve been open only since June 1st and in two months time there are already multiple issues with exhibits not functioning properly (for example one of the computer touch screen check-out booths in the Little Town HEB wasn’t working this morning, causing lots of frustration). But that’s it. That’s all I’ve got for you in the way of negatives.

So now – for all the things I love love love about the DoSeum! Let me just start with walking in. The funhouse mirrors are just that – super fun. Giggles always start our visit off on the right foot. I love that there are so many different areas for us to explore – I plan our visit each day so that we explore one specific area, but we always enjoy the front – the mirrors, the pulleys, the big interactive video screen, the wind tunnel (Becca LOVES putting on the butterfly wings and “flying”!!), and the Kaleidoscope.

I love that there are lots of tables both inside and out to eat – and that while we have the option of purchasing food, we can bring our own food. (Have I mentioned what a picky eater I’m raising… she thinks that going to the DoSeum MEANS eating peanut butter crackers she’s made herself and fruit packed in her lil lunch box.) Hand washing stations at various heights are readily available as well.

There are two huge outside play stations. We have not yet played in the sand (my kids honestly don’t know that area exists b/c I have a thing about sand + water + my car…), but they have really enjoyed the water fountain and little river. They are anxiously awaiting the opening of the giant treehouse (which I think is totally amazing – it’s constructed for handicapped children to be able to join in the play, too with fabulous wide ramps all the way up!!!), and I know they’ll love playing in there as well.

The other outside play station has a giant spider web, log pile, obstacle course that ends in a giant slide, and… a huge water play area. With water wheels and plenty of places to experiment with the various ways that water moves, it’s just a simply amazing out door play space, perfect for any explorer – from just a few months old to the oldest visitors.

Which is where I’ll pause – Cody and I LOVED our date night – #ReDoRecess, they called it, or #NightAtTheDoSeum – a night just for kids ages 21+ – where we got to have the run of the place! We had a blast playing all over the place for a couple hours, and are looking forward to the next adults only event!
11811572_1667181053497185_5065488900645456456_n Here we are sitting in one of the incredible outdoor chairs, made from a huge old gnarly tree! There was plenty of room for both of us!

Taking a step back inside, we explored the spy academy on our date night, and determined that for older kiddos with an extreme interest in spy stuff, and the attention span to go with it, this is an absolutely incredible area! Perfect for your upper elementary and middle school students, or even older, there are so many activities to do, you could easily spend a couple of hours just inside the spy academy!

Becca’s got a couple of favorite areas, but one of them is definitely the little town. When we go with our babysitter, we split up – she follows Becca, and I go with Grayson to the baby area. Then we switch. Because following Becca around is dizzying! I love the fact that there is a DoSeum employee at the entrance to this area, so that if she does happen to get away, she’s not going to go far – she can’t leave that area without an adult. I’ve also been impressed that every time we’ve gone in, the attendant has made an effort to really match us up in his/her mind and also stands next to the strollers and sees which one is ours. Just that little added sense of security that I really appreciate. Inside the little town, everything is on a little kid scale – a fabulous grocery store, a trolley, a bank, a restaurant, vet office, construction site, car wash, post office, and airport complete with a boardable/”flyable” airplane that even has luggage and a “TSA” security station! As a mom, I appreciate all that she learns about the various occupations, and I also appreciate the fact that there are employees and volunteers constantly walking the floor and putting things back in place (esp in the grocery store and restaurant) so that new kids coming to that area can find what they need. I also love love love the garden in the center for babies. It’s gated, and has lots of fun sensory activities on the wall, balls and soft toys to play with, etc. All in all, the little town is fabulous!!

At date night we explored the light and sound area. We haven’t taken Becca there yet because of her sensory issues with auditory defensiveness and also her extreme overexcitabilities regarding low lighting. We both had a blast in there, and think she’ll really enjoy the shadow play and light table activities. We’re looking forward to bringing her to one of the sensory evenings that they have for kids with ASD, SPD, and other sensory issues. Get this, parents – they have sensory evenings where they provide headphones/earplugs, sunglasses, and have special signage to warn adults about sensory issues that might be found in certain areas. Lighting is different for these nights (not as dark), and everything caters to our kiddos who have special sensory needs!!! Isn’t that just amazing? It’s finally a museum that truly caters to ALL of our kids!

We briefly visited the “Imagine It!” area with Becca, but she wasn’t fond of the sounds there – again, this would be a great place for her on sensory night – but she did go nuts when she saw the room FILLED with books. Pretty sure she would live in that room if she could! She’s also enjoyed using the story starter prompts to tell stories, etc. Definitely so much there for aspiring writers to enjoy!!

And ya’ll, that’s just the downstairs!!! Seriously – there’s a whole second story! The engineering section upstairs is just amazing. Places to build with all kinds of different materials, to test out different materials to see how to make them fly, etc. And then there’s what Becca calls the “Ball Room” – where balls shoot through tunnels of air directed by different knobs and levers that the kids can adjust. It can be a super high action, rockin’ place. I chose to stand by the door (it’s a small enclosed space, which is FABULOUS!) so that she can run and explore and always knows exactly where I am. She can’t leave without me, and has a tiny tad of freedom to play til her heart’s content.

Also upstairs is a huge social studies area where kids can build mini cities, practice putting a giant foam US puzzle together, learn about energy usage in homes, and explore various info about the continents of our world and view different globes.

Did I mention there’s a set of stairs that make noises when you step on them? Oh – and a separate glassed in baby play room that’s just for babies? Impressed doesn’t even begin to cover it. Glad to be annual members? Oh yeah.

I’m just not sure what I’m gonna do once school starts and my 12 yr old set of wonderful, helpful hands is back in school and can’t come with us every week to help me wrangle my two lil Explorers!! (Oh – and get this – I was able to add her to our family annual pass for just $15… and it’s only $11 for a one day admission… talk about a fabulous deal! We’ve been pretty much every week this summer!)

Ready to plan your visit? Check out their website here: http://www.thedoseum.org You won’t regret it!

Math – Made Fun with Food Pouch Lids!

Welcome to another STEAM Thursday! Not sure what STEAM is? Check out my STEAM page here, and peruse through all of my previous STEAM posts! Today’s topic is Math – specifically adding, subtracting, counting by 2s and 10s, geometry, and patterning. But, as usual, we have also squeezed some engineering in too… we seem to find a way to do that with everything these days!

Last fall, I shared some ideas for what to do with all those extra food pouch lids you might have sitting around your house… and today I wanted to expound on those ideas a bit. I briefly mentioned making patterns in my previous post, but Becca has been interested in making more complex patterns, so today we tried a really hard one – peach, pink, pink, pink, peach, peach, pink, pink, pink, peach. She continued the pattern correctly – pink, pink, pink, peach, peach, pink, pink, pink, pink, peach. (I didn’t get a picture).

In the process of stacking them up to make the pattern, we ended up building pyramids and cubes as well. Then we discovered that simply stacking them on top of each other makes a cylinder!

Our main focus, however, was adding and subtracting. Just like you might use a ten grid to add and subtract with counters, I simply took some scrap paper from our recycle pile and drew ten rectangles on it that we used for our pouch lids. We started out with basic equations to remind her how the ten grid works (it’s been a while since she’s seen one), but then we got more complex by adding her ten grid to mine to see how many pouch lids we both had combined, or subtracting hers from mine to see how many more I had, or reverse.

I was able to show her the physical ability of the pouch lids to cancel each other out to subtract and find the difference more quickly.

We practiced counting by twos to put the lids into groups of tens, and then counted by tens to see how many lids we have. We compared the groups to see which color we had more of, and which color had less. Then we subtracted by canceling out the groups of ten to find out how many more pinks we had than the peaches.

If you saw my post on Monday, you know that Becca considers math “kind of schoolish” and not really “summer fun…” however, she stayed so engaged with this activity that when I said, “So, did you enjoy doing math today?” She said, “If all math was like that, I’d love it every day!” HA! So, now I’m on a mission to make math much more hands on and fun for her! And you can bet that we’ll be doing a lot more with these food pouch lids in the future!!!

If you have kids who like applesauce (or anything else) in a pouch, SAVE THE LIDS!!! There are just so many fabulous things you can do with them. The possibilities are endless! Please share – what are some ways you reuse your food pouch lids?

Mystery Messages

A super fun way to spread the word… about anything… is to make it a mystery! Whether your child makes the message, or you do, there’s nothing quite so exciting as taking what appears to be a blank white sheet of paper and turn it into a special message! Becca simply loves doing these crayon resist water color paintings, and with this activity your options are truly limitless!Just take your white crayon and write a message on white cardstock, then paint over it with water colors to reveal the mystery message!

Your mystery message could be a simple Bible verse, an I love you note, a reminder of your home address/phone number, or a sign for your child’s door! You could easily make math fact cards or illustrate the life cycle of a butterfly. The awesome part is the science lesson behind it all – water won’t stick to wax! The colored water just beads and rolls right off. Becca has decided that next we need to try mystery messages on other colors of paper. So we’ve been trying to pair up the right shades of crayons to our paper stash to see if we can make mystery messages in more than just white!

Have you already tried crayon resist paintings with your kids? Well, what about glue resist? It’s a little more complicated – make your glue design and then allow it to dry thoroughly before painting. You’ll have to also try different kinds of glue – what sort of results do you think you’ll get trying Elmer’s vs hot glue?

It’s so fun to get your kids to predict and then check their hypothesis!! Introduce the scientific method early and often to your kiddos and they will learn to love science… as well as see how much it relates to everything in our world!

Nature Photography Art

Today’s Theme: Science, Tech, Art, Math
(yup, 4 for the price of 1… and technically, you could say it’s Engineering too if you use your items collected to build something…!)

With my life as crazy busy as it has been lately, I’m going to be perfectly honest with you that we’ve been doing a lot of super free, unplanned play. Like watching a lot of Sesame Street. And Creative Galaxy. And Super Why. And building train sets. And marble runs. And working puzzles. And coloring in coloring books and on plain paper. Ya know, the ordinary, unexciting activities that make up MOST of our normal lives. Not a whole lot worth blogging about and saying “wow, isn’t this fantastic? Don’t you want to do this with YOUR kids?” HA! But, I know that one of the things my readers comment on the most is how they feel inspired by what I share. And honestly, that is humbling. And it helps hold me to a higher standard for my own kids. And I appreciate that. Maybe it’s something about turning 31 today (really? 31? I remember when 30 seemed ancient… and now 50 doesn’t sound that old…), or maybe it’s just because my life has been so crazy that I’ve had to think about hitting the “reset” button on our school time… but for whatever reason, I came up with a super fun, EASY activity to do with Becca this past week that she absolutely loved. And hopefully your kids will too! (And hopefully I can come up with some more fun ideas very soon! Might be time to pull out my Raising Creative Kids book again and snag some more ideas from Colleen!! Have you gotten her book yet? OMG. You need it. You really do. The link is on the right hand side of this page… or at the bottom if you’re on a mobile device. And yes, it’s an affiliate link, so I make some dough from your purchase – THANK YOU!)

Wow. That might well have been the longest run-on paragraph I’ve ever written here on my blog. Thank ya’ll for sticking with me through that! HA!

And now to the nitty gritty – Nature Photography Art!

Becca LOVES to get out in our yard and explore. We are so blessed to have some amazing land for her to roam around on, and even more blessed that we’re on the edge of Texas Hill Country, so our wildflowers each Spring are just simply incredible. With zero work on our part. God just paints our land every single year for us, and we are so blessed! Cody and I both love to take nature photos – it’s one of the things that we first found that we had in common when we met. So our kids see us take pictures of flowers and trees and butterflies and random rock formations ALL. THE. TIME. And Becca often asks me if she can take the picture. But I hesitate to let her hold my phone outside – especially on a day like the one when we did this activity – because the ground was moist and there are random rocks… ya know, my luck I’d hand her my iPhone 6 Plus and she’d drop it face down into a mud puddle with rocks at the bottom (I know Apple Care is great, but…)! So I came up with this idea to get her involved, let her take nature photos, and yet do it in a structured environment.

I took this photo in our front yard while we were working on collecting our flowers for this project. The butterflies were fluttering EVERYWHERE, and the Indian Blankets are just gorgeous!

Here’s what you’ll need to do this activity:
A bucket or basket of some sort
A source of wildflowers, leaves, grass, or rocks
A sheet of white butcher paper
A good lamp
A magnifying glass
A digital camera of some sort that you are willing to let your child use
Optional extension: A computer with internet for photo editing (I use PicMonkey.com)

So just take your bucket to your source of nature, and collect objects. It can be ANYTHING. Any small piece of nature can be a fabulous source for photography. Keep in mind that live objects such as caterpillars are harder to photograph – especially for kids – because they are a moving target. So encourage your child to select STILL LIFE objects. You can explain that still life is a type of art that depicts objects that are alive, but not moving. Flowers don’t get up and walk away. Nor do rocks or grass. So they work great for this project. Try to pull an entire wildflower plant up – root and all – to examine with your child. If that’s not possible, no worries, but it certainly extended our conversation GREATLY to have a couple full plants. We talked about the parts of the plant while out there in the yard, and also again once we got into the house – a fabulous science lesson. You can totally do this with rocks as well, and get into discussing and sorting the features of the rocks, and create a rock collection box.

Once your basket or bucket is full, head inside and lay out your white butcher paper. Set up your lamp and grab your magnifying glass and camera – the fun is about to begin! Start laying out your objects on the paper. You can talk about their shadows, their colors, examine them close up, and watch the paper closely with your magnifying glass as lots of teeny tiny little bugs will crawl off of the flowers and begin to explore your paper. This is a fabulous time to talk about the features of the camera with your child – especially how to make it focus. If your little one has shaky hands and you’re using a phone for your photos, work as a team – you hold the phone, let your little one select where on the screen to focus, and push the shutter button to snap the picture (that’s what we did).

Try laying your objects out in all different ways – you can get as creative as your child wants. You could spell nature words with your objects, you could spell your child’s name, you could build something with your rocks, or you could just do random grouping nature shots. Encourage your child to try holding the camera closer to an object and farther away to see the difference in the two shots. How does the shadow look on the screen? Can you move your camera to a different location to make the shadow longer or shorter? Etc. The possibilities with this activity are ENDLESS. And totally repeatable!! Just collect different objects each time, and you can do this activity over and over and over.

If you want to extend the activity further in the tech area and your child is really into it, you can easily upload your photos to your computer and check out www.picmonkey.com (totally not an affiliate link, I just love them so much and use their site for everything!). Try making a collage of your photos together, or even play around with their favorite photo to make a sign for their bedroom door, an inspirational saying for their bathroom mirror, or add text to several of the photos to create a book that you can print out and stick in a 3 ring binder for them. You could also do this activity throughout the seasons and use these photos instead of paintings for your 2016 calendar! You could also add some math to this activity by measuring each flower and sorting them by length! The possibilities of where you can go with this activity are truly limitless, and think of the OWNERSHIP your child will have in this project – and the fabulous opportunity to do something one on one with your child. (I know I’m frequently looking for something special I can do with JUST Becca so that she feels special and grown up. We did this while Grayson was napping. If your younger child doesn’t nap anymore, you can easily have them go on the hunt with you and collect their own items in a separate basket, then give them white paper as well and let them play with the objects. They could draw ovals around them with crayons, count their objects, and sort by color, just to give you a few ideas.)

Here are some of the beautiful pieces we came up with together:

I am truly so excited about this activity, and I can’t wait to do it with her again with other objects and different flowers!! I especially loved her root picture (she wasn’t that fond of it, but she loved examining the roots and playing with the shadows!)

I hope that you will try this activity with your kids, and that you’ll SHARE your results on my Facebook page!!! I would love to see what you are doing!!! Check back next week – I’m hoping to get more posts up before then for the start of our next new month!!

Flower Addition

$marvelous math header$

Whew. What a crazy busy month it has been! I’m not really sure how it’s already the end of the month! When I was a kid, April was the longest month of the year after December… since my birthday is the 30th! But as an adult, it seems that the month gets shorter and shorter every year!

Because it’s been so crazy around here, my posts this month have been sporadic at best… so I’ve decided to continue my Marvelous Math mini series through the month of May, because I really do have a lot of wonderful ideas to share with you. I’m not a huge fan of math myself, but Becca certainly is, so I’m learning new ways to make it fun and exciting for her using materials and games that she loves. Today’s flower addition activity is no exception. She loved it, and I’m already thinking I need to make her another set of these.

This idea was born on a rainy day when we were stuck inside, but looking out at the beautiful colors of the wildflowers around our house as they soaked in the moisture… Becca loves adding and subtracting – we do it all day long with food, toys, couch pillows, etc… but it’s usually with smaller numbers, and because it’s verbal, she doesn’t see it written out on paper. So this activity combines what she is used to (adding the “flower” pompoms) with the visual aid of seeing the addition process as well as the vertical math problem in written form.

All you need is THIS FREE PRINTABLE (looks best printed in color/works best on card stock- but not required), a bunch of pompoms and glue, and you are set! I wrote the vertical problems on paper with a marker as we went through and did the activity, and then just cut out around them and taped to the wall next to the sheets. You wouldn’t have to do that, but I feel like the visual of the vertical math problem is helpful to start making those connections that addition can take on many different formats.

If teaching math isn’t something you’re super familiar with, here’s how I talked Becca through this sheet:

First, we only looked at one page at a time (my original idea was to do these on four different days, but she got so excited about it that we ended up doing them all at one sitting!)
We would look at the number at the end, and I reminded her the equal sign means total – our total number of flowers will be 10. SO, let’s figure out how we’re going to make 10.
Then we would count the first addend (the first set of flower stems). Ok, so we need 5 pompoms. She would pick a color and count them out. You could mix your colors, but I liked Becca to use all the same color for the set so that she had the visual of them being alike – this will help when we get further down the road in math and start identifying the type of units we are adding. (If your kids are ready for this topic, you’d of course want both sets to have the same color so that you are adding LIKE objects.)
Then we would count the second added and add them, counting up as we went (so the second set of 5, we started counting at 6, 7, 8, 9, 10). I did glue dots above each flower stem as she counted them and then she would add the pompom to the glue. Obviously, a good practice of fine motor skills would be to have the child handle the glue, but Becca was frustrated with the glue bottle, and our focus wasn’t on fine motor, but on math, so I did the glue so that she wouldn’t loose her focus in her frustration.
Then I would write the vertical math problem – Ok, so 5 flowers + 6 flowers equals 11 flowers. Note that as I did it, I was already identifying the units verbally – so that she’ll start to get that idea. She’s just not ready yet for me to explain the concept and make sure that we are adding like units. Remember that you’re never too early to start planting an idea, they just might not grasp the full concept for a while, and that’s ok!!
For example, she said the word strawberry sort of slowly yesterday, so I asked her how many parts she hears in that word, and did a teensy lesson on syllables right there while I was fixing her dinner. Doesn’t mean she’s fully ready to grasp the concept, but it’s been mentioned and is working in her brain. I’ll bring it up several more times over the course of the next few weeks, and judge when she’s ready for a more in-depth lesson based on her response. As for the units, I’m waiting to hear her verbally adding something and adding unit names to it. Yesterday she was adding Duplos and started to get there – she said, “I have three blocks and two and that’s five!” So she started by naming her units, but isn’t fully there yet. I encouraged her by repeating and saying, “That’s right, you have three blocks and two blocks, which makes five blocks! Good adding!” I’ll know she’s ready to start adding like units when she is regularly verbalizing her units… then we’ll talk about well, ok, so these are red blocks and these are blue blocks. So you have three red blocks plus two blue blocks equals five blocks total. Then, we’ll take the next step forward to discuss the concept of comparing apples to oranges. Remember that it’s easy in our adult minds to make leaps forward that our kids aren’t ready for yet. The term “baby steps” has been coined for a reason. Take it slow and be patient… which is the pot calling the kettle black over here… I struggle with patience regularly!!

Need more tips on teaching your kids math, or more fun math activities? Check out my math page here, and be sure to visit my Facebook page regularly for more tips that I share from other bloggers as well!