Keeping It Simple

I love a new math resource. This one was posted on the FIAR forum a few days ago. I was pretty sure my boys would love the Hundreds Board Logic and Guess the Number - they tend to enjoy logic and reasoning type things. So, we spent a little time this week playing with those activities. Mathwire / Mathwire blog This video, with an All About Spelling demonstration, was also linked in a FIAR board post. I think it gives a nice idea of how the program will work. The review card component was not demonstrated which I think it too bad--- keeping that review in our day is a key to our progress. (it was not included, understandably, in the interest of time) I also should give a disclaimer to those of you with boys (especially more than one boy)- our lessons do not look at all like the ones in the demo. Same material, different kids! :) All About Spelling

This is just kind of fun. I knew we put together a binder for Family Math years ago when my adult daughters were homeschooling, but I thought is was long lost. Oddly enough, it appeared in the cabinet the other day. It made me smile to see the cover that my daughter made for me all those years ago--- her initials, JRD, are in the bottom corner. Copies of instructions for games we planned to use along with copies of graph paper and other pages that we would need to play some of the games were in page protectors in the binder. So, there is no real point to this post than it but a smile on my face to find this. **A note about page protectors-- they were much sturdier back then!!

Last spring, when we had hit a road block with math, I made the commitment to playing a math game every school day with my kids . It was a huge success. Within just a few short weeks, my then 8yo (Mark), who had been struggling with basic math concepts, was making remarkable progress. It was also helpful to my other two boys. As often happens, life has been crazy, and we have gotten back in the mode of just "getting it done". One day last week, Mark was not super into school -- not unusual for my gloomy Eeyore type 9yo. To change things up a bit (and possibly motivate him), I grabbed a math game off the shelf instead of moving on with his lesson. We finished to Mark saying "that was fun!" and asking his big brother to play with him. :) It was just the kick in the tushy that I needed to get back to playing math games. So, I challenged myself this week. One math game or activity every day for one school week. We just started using Family Math , so, in some cases, our...

I purchased Family Math almost 20 years ago for my oldest three girls. At the time, having freshly pulled the girls out of the school system, I did not completely understand that math did not have to come from a textbook. Fortunately, the textbooks we used were high quality and not too tedious!! (Open Court) Although I made photo copies and set up a "Family Math" binder, we never got much use out of this book. After salvaging it from my mountains of school things I am attempting to purge, I am going to try and get my money's worth out of this book. ;) The reason for this post--- if you are interested in this book, you can print out several activities from this series (it is a series now!) from here . There are just a few activities from each level, but it would be enough to give a good idea of whether you and your children will enjoy using the book (or others from the series). Just scroll down a bit to "preview this book" on each page. You can jump to the ...

We love games around here- the kids are always excited to see a new game sitting on the shelf and this one was no exception. They have been waiting over a week for me to find time to play this with them. (my poor neglected children!) Most of our most successful school games are the ones that I make using ideas from the Internet or Peggy Kaye's math games book. But, I am always holding out the hope of finding a premade, store bought variety that we will love. I am not sure that we all love this game, but I think it will be a standard around here for at least a few weeks. As the player moves around the board in the game, he may get to pick a "choose it" card that gives him a multiple choice question, a "show it" card that will have him use the Noodle-O manipulatives (colored, plastic cheerios), a "write it" card that will have him write the answer on scratch paper, or the "doodle it" card that directs the student to draw his answer. When a ...

A surefire hit for box activities around our schoolroom are math games. This Number Ladder is one of the very simple ones that we use from Peggy Kaye's Games for Math . The numbers on this ladder are strategically chosen so that no problem adds up to more than 10 (for James 1st grade). We have a more difficult version (for Mark 3rd grade). Both game pieces are placed at the bottom of the ladder. The first player rolls the cube and adds that number the first number on the ladder. If the player gives the correct answer he moves up a space and it is the next players turn. In our game, if one player (the student) catches another player (mom) in a "mistake", the player who made the mistake has to go back to the beginning. I remind James at the beginning of the game to watch out- I almost always make mistakes. ;) * our number cube is 0-5 -if you had regular dice, some of these would add up to more than 10

This is the first in series of posts I want to write to feature how we have used the resources that I have listed down the right column of this blog-- they really are places that I have found useful and inspiring, and I did not choose them lightly! Sometimes it takes a bit of exploring to get started, so I thought I'd offer an introduction. :) Okay, so Let's Play Math is the coolest blog ever ( well , certainly the coolest math blog ever!). I have to admit to having a healthy fear of math, but reading this blog can actually make you believe that math is fun! One of the many ideas from this blog is "math concentration". You take a card deck- remove the face cards- and play concentration. Instead of matching numbers like you would in traditional concentration, you find two cards that equal 10. Pretty simple. Even though I set up to play with James (going in to 1st), his big brothers were happy to play too. There was more than enough competition to keep them interested ...

I have to admit that I was not sure how well this game would go over, but, surprisingly, James (K) really loves it. We have played one of the three versions- all players work together to build lilly pads (out of fraction pieces) before "Croak" eats all of his eight part lilly pad (you have to "feed" Croak when you land on red).  It is really only as educational as the mom (or other grown up) makes it by talking about the process. Using the right vocabulary-- three quarters, one half-- and asking questions like "how many more sixths do we need to make a whole lilly pad?" is what helps make it a learning experience. Even my 8 year old joined us in playing today and requested to play again! Go figure! So, we give this game a ***thumbs up*** .

I have been working on some math centers/activities from a book I purchased at Currclick called Shoe Box Math Learning Centers . We are not using shoe boxes to store the materials as suggested-- I don't have any more room for boxes around here! We are setting them up in manila envelopes, and the bulky items that some of the centers require are stored in plastic baggies in the crate that I keep the game envelopes in-- when I place an activity in a workbox, I just check the directions to see what is needed. This is the newest one that I have put together (in James' workbox for tomorrow): Name of center on the front. Directions on are the back. The dominos actually fit nicely in the envelope. The reason for the black out marker is that I am having James (K) use this for addition- not subtraction as the worksheet had it shown for the second problem. I just marked out their sample and replaced with an addition problem.

Peggy Kaye is my hero ;-) -- I don't know her and doubt that I will ever meet her, yet she has single handedly changed our school day. We started using some games from her books a few years ago as extras, but this spring our primary focus has changed to utilizing games outlined in these books as well as other hands on activities. The frustration that my boys felt toward their math (really, I think it was the math book, not the math) has all but disappeared. And, the added benefit is that what they learn really sticks!   We brought this game (below) from Games for Math out to dinner with us tonight. We had a rare dinner out with just our three boys, so we set up at a booth at a quiet diner nearby and played. We had a great time and my hubby was super impressed at the kid's quick fact recall. This game is played by drawing a card with a math problem on it-- the player then proceeds to move the number of spaces that his answer is. I made three sets of cards to match the lev...

I love it when an activity works!! I put together this math center for James (K) using Shoe Box Math Learning Centers . It took James a few minutes to run with it, but eventually he did. The activity consists of 4 storyboards, math facts written on index cards-- answers included, and various manipulatives. (picture below) All he has to do is choose any math fact card, a story board, and the manipulatives to go with it and make up a story using the chosen math fact. In the picture above James is using the log story card with the toy frogs that I purchased at the dollar store.

So, most of our math workboxes involve games-- I am finding that my boys really respond well to them. I try to include one math game a day for each of them. This game is in James' box (5yo), but all the boys will jump in and play. The basic premise is to combine any two number cubes (2 cubes 0-5, 2 cubes 5-10) to make ten. Each ten is worth a tally and the player that reaches the predetermined (we usually play to 10) number of tallies is the winner! A few things to remember: *if you roll a 10 you need a 0 to combine it with- two dice have to equal 10 *if a player misses that he rolled a combination of 10 (say the parent "accidentally" misses it) and another player catches the mistake, that player is awarded the tally Now, if you don't have the nifty (yes, I just said nifty) red number cubes shown here, you can make your own. I found the blank dice shown on the right at a local teacher supply store that will many other uses as well!