Baby and School

I've decided I need to move my glider into our school room. Feeding or rocking the baby while reading a science/history chapter or calling out math problems would be so much easier while in our school room and with a comfy place for me and baby.

I decided for us it would be best to have a school room to remove distractions and focus on school while we are in there. Which I can tell we really need because today I was showing the boys a YouTube video about revolution and rotation while holding Linc in my room and Sterling got up and walked out. I called him back, but it is so much easier to focus on school work in out school space.

What do you think? Are there spaces for things in your house, too? Do things just not go right when you aren't in that designated space for the designated activity?

Memorizing Addition Facts

We are following The Well-Trained Mind version of the classical home school education as much as we can--it's intensive :) Memorization is an important piece of the classical education and memorizing addition and subtraction tables are suggested. I totally agree. Committing these tables to memory only helps with training your mind mentally and the speed in which you can do any math (lower or higher math). I've been doing my homework on tricks to teaching addition facts. It seems that there are a couple of ways to go about teaching these:

• Fact Families:  For instance, the fact family for "8" would be 8+0=8, 7+1=8, 6+2=8, you get the idea . . . 
• I like the Flocabulary CD/book that uses this method. I just have to wait to afford it because although it is not that expensive, I've pretty much maxed out my home school budget getting ready for this school year. So let me know if you get it before I do :) 
• The School Bell has a system of tubs and printables for fact families that looks interesting.
• or there is the way that I learned with mental tricks like these which you can find a couple of below and more on this link 

• Adding Zero: Model adding zero (with younger students) or review it with older students. If a child understands that when you add zero you add nothing, he/she should never get a basic fact with zero wrong. Make sure this understanding is in place.  
• Adding One (Count up): just say it and count up one.  
• Example: 6 + 1 = say 6 then 7. 
• 44 + 1 = say 44 then 45  
• Adding Two – Count up Two: Adding two means saying the larger number, then jumping up or counting up twice. Again this is always correct and never changes. 
  • Example: 9 + 2 = say 9 then 10 then 11
  • 45 + 2 say 45 then 46 then 47

What do you like? Do you agree these facts should be memorized? Did you have tricks to figuring out addition and subtraction problems easily?