Memories questions and history lessons

Recently, we have been putting information into our family tree on www.ancestry.com.au.

It's been interesting not just for us to collate all the various information we've been sent by relatives but also for our girls to see this information - rather than just have it sit in old envelopes tucked away in drawers.

The girls were interested to see things like - for example, the same first name being given to several generations of their ancestors. (They did think this was rather boring and unimaginative!! )

We also need to find a way to add the information we are slowly gathering from living relatives in the form of 

'Memories Questions'. 

 We live in the Far North of Australia, and our family and relatives are scattered across the globe, so our girls don't get to spend time with other family members very often.

So, every now and then, we email a question to various relatives on both sides of our families. We've asked things like, "What do you remember about your first bike?", "Did you ever have a pet?"  "What do you remember about going to school?"; "What toys to you remember playing with as a child?"  

We have tried to ask questions that relate to what our kids are doing, so that when the answers come back, it provides more interest for our girls to read what their great aunts, uncles, grandparents and of course us - their parents, remember of being their age, going to school etc.

Now that the girls are getting older, and have their own computers and emails, we will encourage them to email their own questions to the relatives.

Our eldest daughter just now at school (Grade 5) is looking at in history, whether life is better now or in the past.  I'm sure her grandparents would have an opinion on this and it would be a great way for her to research the subject for her school work.

Our younger daughter (Grade 3) is also studying history - with an upcoming visit to the local museum.  When we last visited the local museum a few years ago, I was amazed to see an old dial telephone there.  Our family had a telephone like that growing up - and to see it in a museum now reminds me quite how far technology has come along in the last few years (not to mention it makes me feel old seeing something from my childhood in a museum!)

When I was taking a look at our younger daughter's school curriculum for this year (Grade 3), I saw one of the Key Inquiry Questions written there is, "How and why do people choose to remember significant events of the past?" .

In asking our Memories questions to family members, we have noticed that some questions get very long interesting responses from some people, but others remember little or nothing.  It is interesting to see what things people do and don't remember  - what is important and relevant to them!   Hopefully asking and reading responses to these Memories questions, will help our daughter consider this question.

Do your kids get to spend time with older relatives?  Do these family members ever share memories or experiences from their past with you kids?  Are their questions you wish you had asked your older relatives - who perhaps are no longer here?

How are you preserving your family history and memories and are you kids interested in it?

Lemon Cookies - and more Naplan practice!

Recipes 

Our youngest daughter is a budding cook and loves making cookies and cakes.  She has a page-a-day calendar with recipes for cookies on. Here's one batch she made last week:

Ingredients:

For the Cookies:

1 cup butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

grated zest of 3 lemons

1 1/2 cups plain flour

3tbsp cornflour

For the Filling:

4 tbsp butter

1 cup sugar

grated zest of 2 lemons

juice of 1/2 lemon

Preheat oven to 350F (175C). Beat the butter, sugar, vanilla extract and lemon zest together until light and fluffy. Sift the flour and cornflour together and stir into the creamed mixture. Roll into balls and press flat on a baking sheet. Bake for 12 minutes. Allow to cool.

To make the filling, beat the butter and sugar together with the lemon zest and juice until light and fluffy. Spread the filling onto the flat side of one cookie, then put another cookie on top and sandwich together.

Baking as a way to practice numeracy skills

Baking is a great way for kids to practice a number of skills - not just the skill of baking!

Measurements are well practised as ingredients are weighed etc. Depending on the unit of measurement, sometimes fractions are sometimes practiced - as they are here, when things are measured in cups, and half cups etc.  This is something that can come up on the Naplan test in Grade 3 too. For example - here is a question I found on one of the past papers:

Thomas needs 3 cups of flour to make a cake.

He only measures 1/2 cup at a time.

How many 1/2 cups of flour will he need?

1   2   3   or 6 ?

When a student is faced with a question like this, of course they are being tested on their knowledge of basic fractions, but if they have had the real life experience of measuring flour using half cups for a recipe, then the question becomes so much more familiar and so, easier.

We have a large and varied selection of recipes that the girls can bake from - with measurements in cups, grams and ounces, depending on where the recipes come from !  It is great for the kids to be exposed to all these different measurements and to also be able to understand how they relate to each other. Many recipes have 2 different measurements shown, so the kids get used to seeing for example 100g (4 oz), and so gradually learn to convert between different units of measurement.

Estimation

The more kids bake and weigh ingredients, the better they become at estimating weights. It is not only important that kids can read and use units of measurements, but also that they have a rough idea of what, for example 1 kg might feel like.

Another way of practising this is by helping at the shops when buying say - a bag of sugar, and feel the weight of it when they put it in the basket. Or perhaps they know their own weight and so then have a reference point to compare other things to.

Estimating real weights and lengths etc is something else that may appear on the Naplan test, where the students may have to choose the most sensible or likely option from the answers as to what something might weigh or measure.

Here is another example of a question from a past paper:

Which of these is the closest to the length of a real shoe?

5cm

25cm

75cm

100cm

To answer this question, students need to understand what 1cm is actually like and be able to relate this to real life objects. I remember always using my 'big' 30cm ruler at school to compare things to when estimating lengths. It's helpful for kids to have a point of reference like this to refer to - something that they can think, "Is this object longer or shorter than my 30cm ruler?"; thus making it easier to estimate the length of something they don't know.

Real life is often the best practice

I hope these examples show that written tests not only test the student's knowledge of facts - but can be a measure of their understanding of some basic things they encounter in real life.

Sometimes the best practice for basic numeracy and literacy skills for young kids is doing something 'real' - like baking!

So - take a look in your recipe books, and see what tasty delights your kids could bake with you, for some 'homework'  today!

Naplan year 3 and 5 Numeracy - Fun Money practice

Both Year 3 and Year 5 Naplan numeracy tests may contain questions related to money and working out costs and change.  To practice these skills in a fun way I got out some cash and the junk mail from the letterbox!

First of all for our Year 3 daughter, I would grab a handful of random coins, pass them to her and she would add up the total value of the coins.

This is one type of question that we have found on several year 3 Naplan tests.

The next step was to grab a catalogue for one shop from the junk mail pile. We started out with supermarkets.  I told both girls they had $10 each to spend. They had to choose what they would buy from the catalogue, work out how much they choices cost and how much change they would then have from their original $10. This is to practice working out total costs and change which can come up in questions in both year 3 and 5 Naplan tests.

It was interesting to see the different ways both girls did this task. Our youngest chose her items and one by one subtracted their cost from her $10 so she saw exactly how much money she had left after each choice.  This meant she got lots of practice at subtraction!

Our elder daughter wrote down each item and it's cost on a separate piece of paper, then added up the total which she then subtracted from the original $10. So she only had to do one addition and one subtraction calculation - but it also meant she had to be able to estimate how much she was spending as she was choosing!

Both girls really enjoyed this task - they went through most of the junk mail catalogues - shopping for all sorts of things - sports gear, toiletries and lots of chocolate! They bought things for themselves and gifts for others too!  For the supermarkets I allowed them $10 each, but for bigger shops I allowed $100 each!   You could also use $1000 or larger values for furniture shops for example.

This gives them practice with money, addition, subtraction, decimal points and estimation.  Both grade 3 and 5 need these skills - grade 5 kids just need to be able to do all of this with larger numbers than grade 3 kids. From information I found on a Naplan website - for year 3 kids need to be able to perform money calculations up to $10, and year 5 kids up to $1000.

This is a great activity that you can do with your kids any time with no preparation other than having some junk mail in the house!  Our kids really enjoyed it and kept on shopping after I'd left them to it by themselves!

A Science Experiment - Melting Ice

Last week I found this great book in a second hand book shop. It has heaps of fun ideas for activities to do with kids at home with easy to find materials.

Today I picked a random experiment from the book for the girls to try - a nice simple one called 'Melting Ice'

The experiments are printed out very clearly with an aim, materials and steps for each one. The book is also divided into six different sections on Astronomy, Chemistry, Geology and Geography, Weather, Biology and Physics.  The experiment we chose today was from the Chemistry section.

Basically we put 2 ice cubes each in 5 small plastic cups and placed them in various spots around the house and garden.  The girls then predicted for each cup how long it would take the ice to melt.

They wrote down where they'd put the cups and the time they'd predicted for the melting, then started the stopwatch.  The ice took much longer than expected to melt - the first one - out in the full sun, took 28 minutes (a lot longer than the expected 6 minutes!).  The last one to melt was kept in a dark cupboard and the ice lasted a full hour longer than the one outside!

The girls found the experiment interesting  - particularly since the results   were different to what they had expected. It was a nice simple one to set up and do too!

I think this book is going to have some great ideas for us to do some fun experiments this year.

On the curriculum for both girls school year is conducting science experiments - planning, predicting and discussing how the experiment is conducted and the results. The year 3 curriculum (for our younger daughter) also deals with the change of heat between solid and liquid as a result of heat, so this experiment in particular is relevant there.  It also sparked a second experiment to discover what difference placing the cup of ice under the ceiling fan makes!

Do you have any simple science experiments you've done with your kids at home?