Children not only need enough space to play and run around, but they also need a place to retreat. To meet these requirements, the furnishings of the children's room should also be adapted accordingly. You will find the proper utensils and the right accessories for them.

Paul Klee was a Swiss painter who spent most of his life living in Germany. He was a talented musician as well, and often tried to capture the feeling of musical rhythm and movement in his paintings, especially his abstract color studies. Klee explored balance, geometry and color, and the warm red, yellow and orange colors he experienced on a trip to Tunisia show up in much of his work.

The first work we'll explore is Cat and Bird. This is a great example of balance versus symmetry in art. The cat's face is not symmetrical (exactly the same on either side), but it is balanced. If you divide the composition into thirds, either horizontally or vertically, you can see that there is a point, counter point or weight to balance the planes. This could definitely lead to some math work in symmetry or fractions, homeschool moms!

Long division is not fun. At least according to my 11 year old.  However, there is an approach to make  it more accessible, especially for kids who look at the problem and have no idea where to start. Division is often taught to young kids as the process of partitioning an amount into smaller groups. We give them ten Lego guys and ask them how many groups of two they can make. As kids get a little older, we point out that division is the inverse of multiplication, which usually works well with facts. But if multiplication is just repeated addition, wouldn't the inverse of that be repeated subtraction? Yes! Viewing division as repeated subtraction can remove the deer in the headlights stare we often see when a child faces a long division problem. Let's start with a simple example:

 If we start with 10÷5, we can subtract 5 once from 10, leaving us with 5, then subtract 5 once again and we have 0. We subtracted 2 fives, so the answer is 2. Follow?

Now for bigger problems. Kids are usually comfortable with doubling a number or multiplying it by 10. Multiplying by 5 is just halving ten, so that's not usually a problem, either. We will work with multiplying the divisor by 1, 2, 5, or 10, using repeated subtraction, to solve the problem. That's it. Let's look at my super high tech example:


 The numbers on the right side indicate whether I multiplied the divisor by 1, 2, 5 or 10.  Once I get to 0 (or less than the divisor), I add the numbers on the right to get my answer. Note that you are always subtracting from the whole dividend, not portions of it as in the standard algorithm. Here's another example:

When kids get comfortable with this method, they start seeing that doubling the double is times 4, or if times ten is slightly too big, they will subtract one divisor to get times 9, and that's exactly the reasoning we are looking for! Conversely, some kids are only able to start with doubling and multiplying by ten, and that's okay, too. The problem may take awhile to finish, but the calculations are easy, which reduces anxiety.

I did show my kids the standard approach later, after they had mastered this one, and allowed them to choose what made the most sense to them. They both thought this way was easier, and allowed them to tackle the problem right away with confidence. Once your kids understand the concept of long division and can accurately solve problems, do them a favor and move on. Calculation is a small portion of mathematics, and in reality, nobody does long division by hand. Of course you and I will grab a calculator, but even people who use math in their careers every day use a computer or calculator to do computations. Math is reasoning, patterns, problem solving, spatial thinking; get to the good stuff once they have basic competency and stop beating a dead horse with pages of long division. Here's a link to my periscope about this strategy.

A Pinterest posting led me down a blog path that ended with the mention of the book the No Excuses Art Journaling book by Gina Rossi Armfield. The method looked interesting and I could borrow it for free on our Kindle Unlimited, so I thought I'd give it a try. Basically, it gives structure to your art journaling - things to record/draw each month, as well as a few quick daily and weekly projects. It's still pretty loose, but I think that little bit of structure has given me more incentive to practice more regular journaling (so far, but I've just started so we'll see how this goes). She recommends using a weekly planner as your art journal, but since I'm just starting this in September, I chose a partially used Moleskine sketchbook.