Addition and Subtraction Booklets ~ Sunscreen

What's Cookin'?

Not much, lately! Right now, as I type, I'm browning 2 pounds of grass-fed ground beef and have a meatloaf and meat balls in the oven. From the ground beef I hope to get 4 meals: spaghetti, tacos, chili, and, uh, something else.

Otherwise it's just been the bare basics: yogurt, almond milk, bread (barely!), pancake crackers, and bone broth.

What's Schoolin'?

The olders are giving reports at a nature camp on ponds this week and leading a small group of youngsters in a lesson on wildlife next week.

They had a wonderful language and culture immersion experience when family came up to visit from Central America a few weekends ago. Not to mention the wonderful culture of food! :)

We've been getting a lot more out of the binomial cube now that I've presented it properly after watching the video I posted. Just for fun we did (a+b)squared (I don't know how to do the 2 superscript on the blog!) with bead bars and mathematically and it was cool how they matched and it worked!

Addition and Subtraction Booklets for the Montessori Strip Board:

I am so excited to have found a used Nienhuis addition/subtraction strip board. I was postponing presenting it to dd because, frankly, I didn't like my homemade one and it didn't appeal to me (so I didn't think it would appeal to her either). Now we're both ready and rearing to go but life has been busy every day since we got it. The good thing is that it gave me more time to get the booklets ready. I uploaded the addition and subtraction booklets to google docs. I redid the ones I had gotten online because I wanted the constant number first in the addition booklet and (it may be weird or not authentically Montessori) in the subtraction booklets as well. I also wanted to include all of them in the subtraction booklet.

Here is the addition booklet:
http://tinyurl.com/2cpnzfh

Here is the subtraction booklet:
http://tinyurl.com/24e95pd

The olders will be taking the SAT this week. We try to downplay it as much as possible. Apparently I didn't talk about it enough because one dd had some wrong ideas about it (that it meant passing or failing the grade, for example - I NEVER told them that!).

Sunscreen:

I am currently in a quandary about sunscreen. If titanium dioxide is bad, then why is it so prominent in natural sunscreens as well as conventional sunscreens? I've snatched a few moments here and there to search online for sunscreens with just the zinc oxide (but they may need to block both types of rays to be beneficially balanced - I would need to know which zinc oxide blocks if I get one with only that). On the other hand, the titanium dioxide is really bad when it is in nanoparticle form. I found one that actually says "non-nanoparticles." The search continues. Let me know of any favorite sunscreens. By the way, we use it sparingly but soccer is 2 hours and horse camp is 5 hours, so there are times that the dc need it.