K5 Learning Blog

By Sheila Welch

For elementary students who are writing essays and fiction, these books might prove helpful as well as interesting for both children and parents.

Officer Buckle and Gloria

OFFICER BUCKLE AND GLORIA by Peggy Rathmann is the irresistible tale of a sweet-natured cop who writes safety tips that he reads to the indifferent students at Napville School. When he gets a police dog, he’s thrilled to have his assemblies and his tips suddenly become popular. This classic picture book will introduce children in first through third grades to the concept of writing notes as reminders. But it will be best remembered for its wonderful characters, humor, and clever plot.

Why is it important to learn to round numbers? This is a practical skill that your kids will take with them into their everyday lives, because rounding numbers help us calculate sums easier in our heads.

For example, you and your friends are buying pizza and you want to make sure you have enough money to buy four large pizzas with various toppings. Rounding the cost of each pizza to the nearest dollar and adding the amounts is a quick and easy way to make sure you have enough money to pay for them.

So, we round numbers because:

It makes it easier to describe and understand numbers.
It makes it easier to estimate answers to numeracy questions.

We have just added some more geometry pages to our grade math 2 section of our free worksheet center.

Let’s take a look at one of the topics we cover in the grade 2 geometry worksheets: faces, edges and vertices of shapes. Exactly what are these and how do you count them for different shapes?

Vertex

A vertex is a corner. In 2-D shapes, that’s pretty easy to work out – a triangle has 3 vertices, a square 4 vertices and a pentagon 5 vertices.

In 3-D shapes it gets a little more complicated. Let’s look at a cube, for example. A cube looks like this:

As well-meaning parents we buy workbooks for our kids and have our kids sit quietly and trace letters over and over. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this and, in fact, we provide these worksheets for free in our kindergarten section.

Sometimes, though, you’ll want to make this activity more fun. Here are some new ways in which you can help your kids learning to write the letters of the alphabet more fun.

Shaving foam and finger paints

Spray shaving cream on a tray or table and help your kids write their name or a letter in the foam. Or use finger paints to dip a finger in and learn to write letters on a sheet of paper.