Watercraft of the world, week four

Funny how every time I type that title, I think of the video game, World of Warcraft.  We're definitely NOT playing World of Warcraft around here, but we ARE loving Watercraft of the World!

One more month to go!  I cannot believe that this school year is drawing to a close!  Four more weeks and I will be able to say that I survived our first year of homeschooling!

This week we focused on division and Native Americans.  We looked at two different tribes, the Haida, who live off the coast of British Columbia and Alaska, and the Inuit, who live above the Arctic Circle.  The materials I had suggested doing the Chinook, but I chose the Haida because I found a better story to feature.  And, it turns out, the Haida were supposedly the best of the best when it came to canoe-building, and all the other tribes envied their canoes.

Our first story of the week was Raven and the Man Who Sits on the Tides, found here.  I also used the graphic from that site for our art project of the week, which I will feature below.  It is a very funny trickster story, featuring Raven who was a major figure in the mythology of many of the Pacific Northwest tribes.

Here is the elaborately-decorated canoe that I drew.

Rather than having Dallin simply copy my drawing, we used the canoe theme for a little exercise to re-introduce division.   This idea came from Marsha Johnson's files upon which this entire block was based.   I had him draw five canoes on his paper.   Then I told him there were five people who needed to get into the canoes, and he had to figure out how many would be in each canoe.  So, 5 people divided by 5 canoes equals 1.  Then I told him that five more people wanted to get into the canoes, which made a total of ten.  10 divided by 5 equals 2.  And so on, until we had four people per canoe.  I had him make a table on the left-hand side using the four equations we had created.  The facing page in his book we used throughout the week to figure out and write a few complete division tables as well as to write down examples of some of the problems we solved.

 Teaching math this month has been so gratifying!  I think this has been my favorite block of the entire year!  I finally feel like he is starting to "get" each of the four processes.  He has struggled with division this year, confusing it with multiplication.  If I would give him a simple problem like 12 divided by 4, he would tell me the answer was 48.  Even for the first 1-2 days this week, he was doing this, and also trying to "cheat" by looking at his multiplication clocks to figure out the answer.  The materials I had suggested introducing the concept of remainders, and I hesitated to do that because I thought it would confuse him more.  But the opposite was true--when we brought in the idea of remainders, he suddenly figured out what this whole division thing was all about!  It was like a lightbulb went off in his head as he realized that we were splitting up the whole, and sometimes it couldn't be split up into equal parts.  Every week this month has brought some new kernal of understanding, some new breakthrough.  (Though we will be continuing to review periodically throughout the summer to just make sure we don't lose this!)

For the second half of this week, we turned our attention to the Inuit.  Dallin's first reaction was, "What?  Another boat?"  But I reassured him that this was the last one.  And as I started telling him about the kayaks and the people who rowed in them, he seemed to be really into it.  We told the story of Raven and the Whale, found here.

And here is our project:  making Raven.  Mine is on top, and Dallin's is below.  As soon as he saw my Raven hanging on  the wall, he immediately exclaimed, "Mom, do I get to copy your picture!?"  I knew it would be a long project (it took me a good 1.5 hours to do mine), so I planned it to last over three days.  I knew if we tried to do too much at once, Dallin would get frustrated.  You know you have a successful project when you finish and he says, "Can I hang this on the wall in my room!?"

We ended the week by reading this enchanting Chinook legend.  Dallin thought the story was strange, I thought it was pretty cool.  It's about a boy who gets lost in the woods and "adopted" by the seals.  His human family eventually finds him, but he is never truly happy until he can go back to his seal family.  He honors his human parents every year by leaving a beautifully carved canoe for them.

And now, we're off to spend a month in the garden, learning about insects and vegetables!