In light of recent frustration over multiplication facts, I have realized that updated versions of the girls' mini offices may be a fantastic idea! They made some a few years ago and used them briefly, but at the time, they consisted of things like colors, numbers, and the printed alphabet for H and addition, coins, and days of the week for K.
For H, I wanted to include things that she was currently working on, in addition to the things that I hope to include in her studies later in the year. As a minimum, I wanted to have an addition table, Roman numerals, a chart of the colors of Math-U-See blocks, place value, coins, capitalization rules, books of the Bible, and months of the year.
I still had the saved files that contained the days of the week, months of the year, and books of the Bible that were done in Word format, so I printed those up first. Then I began a search for mini offices on Google, where I found tons of great JPG files and PDFs to download and print. I found some great, ready to use files on abcteach.com, and squidoo.com provided links to many more. For math, I was lucky enough to come across this wonderful blog post, where the author had already done all the work of putting together a PDF that coincides with Math-U-See.
Then, it came down to how exactly did I want to do the mini office. I had originally planned on doing one that had the folder flaps folded and then glued together like how we normally do a lapbook, but then I ran across a nice accordion-shaped one. I ultimately decided to go with what I knew, and I think it turned out well.
Armed with the printed materials, I set to work. The result was one folder of MUS references, one folder with additional math references (and the books of the Bible), and one folder with grammar references. I plan on getting these laminated individually before I attach them to one another, but first I want to get a copy of our cursive alphabet small enough to put in the empty space on the grammar folder.
Labels: 3rd grade, H, language arts, math, Math-U-See, mini office
