I am considering pulling back from Social Media platforms and sharing adventures here on the blog. I’ve enjoyed a morning reading Blog Comments and reviewing where we’ve been.

My teaching journey moved from an outdoor nature-based school in the woods by a creek, into town with a delightful Chrisitan school within walking distance to the ocean and two lakes. After teaching 3rd – 7th grade, and 4th and 5th Grade in Neskowin, I am now starting my third year as a Kindergarten teacher at a Seventh Day Adventist school in Lincoln City. I filled in as a 4th and 5th-grade math teacher last year as well.

The boys are both working and living in the great outdoors. My oldest is at Washington Family Ranch in Central Oregon where he can help the ranch hands with 800 calves in the spring and then switch to 600 high schoolers at Young Life Camp in the summer. He loves living on the John Day River in the High Desert. My youngest is battling health issues with seizures, living on the Oregon Coast, and learning his limitations while still hiking, surfing, and landscaping each day. Both boys have grown in their wisdom and knowledge of the Lord and His Word. They have also gone through typical late teen early 20s struggles to find their identity and balance of personal, social, and physical boundaries. Watching their journeys is not for the faint of heart, as I hear all of us parents of young 20s are experiencing.

So – moving forward, I’d love to share my Kindergarten adventures, and also our outdoor life adventures. Thanks for your time!

There is an advantage to being an educator for almost 20 years that wasn’t bound by government reporting as I have experienced how hard it would be to stop a child from integrating subjects out of their own curiosity.

Here is a typical morning as a Voyager –
(4th and 5th grade at Neskowin Valley School)

The above is photo of my whiteboard at school from this past Thursday. We started the day with lined paper and a ruler to measure out four sections of 4.25” squares. We were using these to practice our letters to mom that would be copied with sharpie onto a Shrinky Dink sheet. The class organically talked of making four sections and asking how many they needed to use to practice. One of the four sections? Half of the sections? I smiled as they chatted.

We took a break for recess, and on the way back in I had each student pick up to 10 tiny daisies that grow abundantly in our field. I asked the students to use any strategy we have learned to count the petals of their flower. Several counted one by one, one counted by 2’s and one counted by 5’s. (This took quite a bit of time!)

The previous Thursday we were at a park figuring out how many bricks were in a walkway. They were in sections of 4 for about 50 feet. I asked the students to talk me through how we ended up counting them quickly, and they remembered that we looked at the parts, and then grouped them together, finding an amount by multiplying the parts by the groups. (Four parts by 9 groups of ten). I could see the aha looks from over half of the class, and the “I don’t ever want to count a brick looks” from rest .

I had drawn the daisy  earlier, and left the paper example on the board. One student recognized that the flower could be sectioned into 90 degree angles, so we could count one right angle, then multiply by four. The students agreed and set to work. (This time they finished in less than a minute.)

We made a list of results and found a range between 9 and 14 petals. (One student used ⅓’s and had too many to make the list.) We found the average of the right angle, and multiplied it by four. One student suggested rounding it up to 15 to make it easier to skip count in his head.

We took out the watercolors and painted daisies until lunch recess.

It only 11:30 in the morning.

Through art and nature projects my students  demonstrated knowledge of concepts for our end of year math exam.

• • • Decimals of the 4.25
    • Measure with a ruler
    • Fractions ¼,
    • Strategies
    • Groups
    • Skip Counting
    • Angles (Right/90)
    • Fractions again, ⅓
    • Average
    • Addition and Subtraction
    • Dividing (Averages)
    • Rounding
    • And Mental Math

Would you like to see how the Math, I mean Art, turned out? I didn’t even ask them about the ratios of beginning size to end size . . . .

I am thankful to work at a school where my School Board and Administrators realize how much learning is happening in a room that may look like Art Chaos.

Create – Explore – Discover.

If you would like to learn about teaching 4th grade math outdoors, I invite you to check out Wild Math Curriculum. She has a new book for fourth grade. I am not an affiliate/reviewer, I am just thankful to have inspiration to use nature to teach/review math concepts.

With a goal of wanting them to use their hand outside, we made hand prints in the morning before our writing lesson to allow them to dry before math.

Next, I wanted them to practice the previous lesson of creating a vertex on their palm, then drawing out points at the end of each finger. They drew line segments or rays using a ruler and then measured the angles. Depending on how their fingers naturally laid flat, changed the angle, no two hands were the same.

We worked indoors observing the protractor. I asked the students share what the could see. One student said it was kind of like a number line – and then asked if this was why we have been spending so much time learning how to read number lines. Another noticed that a protractor is round, and we are measuring lines of angles. This led to noticing that it was a half circle, and a child saying it was ‘like a 180’, which got them to look at the numbers. One noticed that the numbers jumped by 10’s and we skip counted the line to 180.

I asked a volunteer to choose a point on the number line that would create an acute angle. 44 was chosen and created. Another student noticed that if we had gone the other way her angle would be obtuse and be 136. What made me smile is their surprise when we added 44 and 136 and the answer was and exclaimed, “It would be 180!!”

We brought out our hand paintings and compared them to the protractor on the board.

Our next lesson was to be able to name angles, and see the letters. After working on our book lesson fora moment we labeled our hands – Palm V for vertex, then Thumb, Index, Middle, Ring and Pinky.

In just 45 minutes, the entire class was talking in vocabulary that let me know that they really understood the protractor and how to use it to measure angles. We were able to take that knowledge outside. Stay tuned for the next post!

Thank you Wild Math Curriculum for inspiring our outdoor geometry lessons!

Disclaimer – I am writing these post as a volunteer to share with teachers. I purchased this 4th grade curriculum. If you want to be inspired, check out Wild Math, Wild Schooling, Forest Schooling, Nature Schooling, or Outdoor Learning tags on Instagram – or me, Pebblekeeper!

I have felt blessed that in 2002 we were introduced to MIquon Math. Both of my boys would spend their morning sorting cuisinairre rods to create and solve number puzzles. Math was always a puzzle to be solved.

We chose a spiral math program for a few years, and had the same hiccup in January – the boys would not remember what they practiced for a day or two, on paper, in September.

We switched back to a more singapore mastery style in Jr. High and High School. All of a sudden Algebra was fun again, and Jon was learning place value in an in depth way that helped him with decimals, fractions, and higher concepts. The program we switched to was Math-U-See. I wish we had switched in the 3rd grade, however, I am thankful for what I learned during the years in between.

Now I work at a private outdoor nature based school. I have taught 3rd – 7th grades since being there, the last two years being a combined class of 4th and 5th. We get to go to training for Greg Tang Math – Math in Focus / Primary Mathematics – and learn how to bring games, puzzles, manipulatives, conversations, and spark curiosity back into math. It is easy to get focused on a curriculum, on the end of year testing, on the expectations of other schools – and lose the spark of fun that I remember back when the boys were young.

All of this lead up to say – I am going to start sharing more on here what we are doing with math in a school setting, with 14 children in the 4th and 5th grade range. I have wanted to get outside more with our math, but I don’t have the energy to create the lesson plans and come up with fun ideas that would work with a group. I am setting a goal to do math outside at least 4 days a week through the end of the school year.

How is that suddenly going to happen with the crazy of the end of year?

I found Wild Math Curriculum!!!! I think I was browsing the Forest School / Nature School / Outdoor School tags on Instagram, and then found Wild School. If you’ve been to my class this last month, you know that Wild School seems more appropriate. (Ha) I can’t even express how much I wa-hoo’d and screamed when I saw that someone was making a 4th grade outdoor math curriculum! If you’ve been within a texting or ear distance from me – you’re already tired of hearing about it. – Well, if you are still getting notifications for this blog – then you are going to hear it too.

Wild Math Curriculum

I’ll work on a few posts to walk through last week integrating her curriculum into our schedule. If you have Prek – 4th (or 5th) graders – check her out!

Disclaimer: I am only a volunteer blogger willing to promote this amazing curriculum. I was offered a free 4th grade link, and purchased it ahead of time. Our school purchased the levels and received Kinder for free. I have volunteered to offer to share her curriculum, especially after reading it – because I feel that MANY (ALL – EVEN IF YOU DON’T HOMESCHOOL) families and schools need a copy.