Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Peter Rabbit learns Math

Here is the Queen's birthday present.
It is also her math manipulatives for Kindergarten (shhh, I won't tell if you won't :)
Take a look at who will be joining us for math lessons this year!
As I have mentioned before, I am planning to teach the Queen her math lessons this year through Waldorf storytelling. I have been studying several resources, including Serendipity's wonderful Gnomes and Gnumbers lessons and the Christopherus math lessons. After reading these and getting a feel for the stories, I decided the Queen simply had to learn math with her favorite friends: Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, Old Brown the Owl, Chippy Hackee, Mr, Jeremy Fisher and of course, Mrs. Tiddlemouse. I purchased the animals over the summer (these would make great stocking stuffers!). Now, our little animals needed a home for the year, and I have been in love with this fairy house for years, but could not bring myself to spend that much money. Then my mother said she would get it for the Queen's birthday. We ordered it, and it was enchanting, but a piece was broken, and it was rather large for the spot where I had envisioned keeping it in our schoolroom. As I prepared to send it back for an exchange, I just kept thinking, surely I can make something similar for a whole lot less. The next day I happened to see these pieces at H*bby Lobby - so, I sent the lovely but very expensive fairy home back, and decided to make one myself. It was not too hard - other than the hour my husband spent cutting the tree limbs (and the small argument it caused over trying to cut even lines on a curved tree branch :), I spent an hour drilling the holes and pegs to put the whole thing together - all in all - 2 hours of work, one fight and $15 - I think it was worth it :)

I added a silk we already had, glued two of the crocodile hunters tree blocks together to create a table, and spent $10 on fall leaves, flowers, a nest and a fall garland to decorate (the M*gic Cabin decorations are $40 per season :). Our fall counters are acorns from the back yard and those little seed pods that look like pumpkins. She will be getting the winter and spring decorations as a Christmas present this year.
So, now we are well supplied with those all important math manipulatives
(and I must say I rather prefer our set to these , given my great love for Sax*n).

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is really awesome. I think I'm coming over to learn math, too!!.
Where did you get the little animals?
Gail

Anna said...

gail - the link to the puppets is in the post if you click on the word animals. They are all folkmanis brand and cost between $3-6 each depending on which site you order from (there are a number of sites that sell them, I linked to the one I ordered from which seemed to have some of the best prices and the largest selection of the animals I needed)

Rachael said...

Wow.That's all I got to say, other than I hope the Queen has so much fun with her math lessons!