Child-led, Unschoolers, Unit Studies, or Unschool like Homeschoolers - What are your favorite...

[eastkygal]

I'm giving a more relaxed approach a try for a couple of weeks.  My weak point is math.  DD1 has chosen to learn about dogs this week.  I've got phonics, reading, science down pat for this.  But, wondering what sort of 1st grade math activities to do.  Any good online resources or suggestions for a math lesson that fits, or that can be tailored to what we are doing?

[moominmamma]

I'm not really sure what level she's at, or whether any of this would be appropriate, but ...

She could practice doubling and quadrupling by working out how many eyes and legs on __ number of dogs. Three german shepherds makes for six eyes and twelve legs. Five collies have ten eyes and twenty legs. That sort of thing.

She could survey dogs she sees for various traits: long hair vs. short-hair, ears sticking up vs. lying down, large vs. medium vs. small ... and then make picture graphs or bar graphs to represent the relative frequency of the various traits in her survey sample.

Miranda

[Daffodil]

My DS, who is first-gradish, loves doing what we call "squirrel math," which consists of me orally giving him silly math problems about squirrels.  (For example: Ten squirrels are walking along through the forest, when suddenly 3 of them fall into a bottomless pit!  How many are left?  Seven squirrels are jumping on a trampoline, and 3 of them jump so high they go up into space and are never seen again.  How many are left?  The four squirrels that are left all suddenly split into 2 and each half grows into a new squirrel.  Now how many are there?)  He likes it when I have the squirrels come up with stupid wrong answers.  Like I'll say there are 6 squirrels and they get the idea that it would be nice if there were 10 of them, because it's such a nice even number, and they start giving totally wrong opinions about how many more squirrels they need to make 10.  And then I'll say that DS comes along and overhears them and tells them how dumb they are and tells them that the answer is really . . . and then DS gets to shout out what it is.

You could do the same thing with dogs, making the stories to go with the questions either silly or serious, depending on what your kid likes.