do you want an (awesome) ART calendar?!

i just happen to be giving one away. like i do every year. because i love this calendar.

this year, unlike other years, unlike ever before in my life come to think of it, i actually got to go to NYC and SEE the art! in the museum. where it lives. yep, we got to spend two whole days at the Metropolitan Museum of Art! it was definitely top o' the list of places we wanted to visit and it did not disappoint.

ahhh. so much fun.

now to be considered in this drawing, you don't have to be a regular reader of this blog, you don't even have to really do anything in return. you just have to want one. simply enter a comment on any post here at fisher academy's blog BEFORE midnight on 1/1/2015. that way, i'll know you're interested.

i'll do the drawing on new years' day.

oh, and if you're dying to get one of these and wanna increase your chances, new likes on our facebook page during december, will get an extra entry. because that just makes for more fun for some people. :)

OR if you just can't wait and want to be SURE to get one. buy yours now, by clicking HERE.




we love turning the pages of this art calendar every day. it's a page-a-day, so there's a unique piece of art or history for each day of the year. sometimes it's ancient weapons or armor, sometimes it's a painting. it's fun! it comes in handy for discussions about art study, for book of centuries illustrations, and even copywork (my young kids use it to copy the date!).

how might you use yours?

wanna check out past ART calendar giveaways? 

maybe just for old times sake... :)

2013

2012

2011

The girls with their handy-dandy audio devices at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Keeping a Math Notebook.

This link, via this blog post by my friend Mama Squirrel, has got me thinking about math notebooks. I hadn't even really thought about how what we have already been doing is so awesome! We already use a notebook for math! ...and it's all 'cause of MEP math.

Don't you love it when that happens?!


Now, when we used other math curriculums, we printed out pages or the kids filled in a workbook. I'm guessing that's probably the road most traveled when it comes to math.

But thanks to MEP, we use a workbook, called a 'practice book' AND a notebook, called an 'exercise book'. The practice book has all the problems printed out which are then to be worked out in the exercise book (we use a notebook w/ graph paper). But lots of times, there's stuff that needs to be remembered. That all goes in the exercise book too.

Take today for instance. In our math lesson today, we talked about the square root of numbers and calculated the surface areas of a cuboid, a square-based cuboid and a cube.

We looked at some in real life cuboids, looked at some diagrams (via the copy masters!), worked it all out, and summed up the ensuing formulas. The square roots and the formulas were then copied into their notebooks (exercise books).

Last week, my year 2 student, learned about the calendar, how many days are in each month, etc. After her lesson, she copied down the months of the year into her math exercise book! It's now there for reference. I love this.

Because the math lesson usually takes about 20-40min per student, they do their math 'copywork', if there is any, directly following the lesson, and then later return to do the math page in their practice books.  It works really well.



Other things to record in a math notebook:
Names and descriptions of shapes.
Formulas for calculating area & volume.
Days of the week.
Months of the year with number of days per month.
Multiplication facts.
Addition facts.
Conversion charts - Metric to Imperial
Meter -> centimeter -> millimeter.
etc.