Math Pop!! (or making flashcards fun)

There are some things in life that are not much fun but must be done.  That's what I tell my kids.  One of those non-fun necessities in the life of a child is memorizing the multiplication table.  Yes, you can skip count, but future math problems will be so much easier if the answers to multiplication problems are readily available.  While I was dragging my son through his latest set of flashcards and wondering if we would ever get through them, I had a bit of inspiration on how to make them more fun.

I had seen an idea on Pinterest from giverslog.com where they had made a bubble wrap hopscotch gift to send in the mail.  I thought, "How fun! What kid doesn't like jumping on bubble wrap?"  This came to mind as I was puzzling over how to make our drill work more fun, and I thought "I should put the answers under bubble wrap and have him jump on the right one!"  It was a hit.

I cut squares of bubble wrap (I used the large bubbled kind because it makes a louder "pop") and wrote the answers to some of the multiplication problems we were practicing on pieces of paper.  I scattered the answers around the room and taped down a piece of bubble wrap on top of them.  After I explained the game to him, we practiced the flash cards one time so they would be fresh in his mind.  I called out multiplication problems, he called out the answer, found it on the floor, and jumped on it.  The next time through we used a timer to see how fast he could do it.  Then we did it again to see if he could beat his time - much more fun than sitting still and drilling.  He thought we should call the game "math pop", so we did.  We made up our own rules.  After he yelled out the answer, I was supposed to yell "pop it!" and he would go jump on it.  I was not supposed to say the next problem until I heard a good 'pop'.  Games you make up together are always more fun.

Joshua getting the playing field ready

With the toddler, I put colored pieces of construction paper under the bubble wrap and told him jump on the color I yelled out. He said "No mommy.  I stomp!"  Okay.  That works too.  After he stomped for a while, he decided it would be more fun to run and jump.  He did slip a few times when he started that, because the bubble wrap can slip even when taped down, but he would just stand up and laugh and say "I okay, mommy. I okay."  The older kids didn't have a problem though.  

For the 5 year old who is learning to read, I wrote letters on paper to put under the bubble wrap.  I would say something like "what letter does the word 'ball' start with?" and he would say "B!", find the letter, and pop it.  

This idea can be modified for so many different subjects.  What about writing out the continents, saying a country, and having the child jump on the continent where you would find that country? You could play this game to practice letter recognition, sight words, number recognition, math computation, states and capitals, musical terms, and any other thing your child needs to work on.

We had scattered the answers all around the room so there would be lots of moving (kids just need to move, don't they?), but you could also play with the answers all in a row or in a square to make it easier for the kids to find the answers at first.  When they were more familiar with the answers you could spread them out a bit more.

If you have more than one child working on the same things, you can always make it competitive and see who can pop the answer first.  Or you can split into teams and have one child from each team be racing to pop the answer first.  Just some thoughts.

My kids really enjoy playing this game during school time.  When we're done, we just stack the bubble wrap in a pile to use another day.

So, there you go.  Next time you have some flashcards to do with your child, think about adding a little fun to it.

Phew. That was a long post.  I need a nap. 

Video Game Day

Sometimes I get worn out with homeschooling.  I get tired of fighting with the kids (mainly 1) to do all their (his) work and sometimes I'm not feeling excited about homeschooling by the end of the day.

That's when I know it's time for a theme day.

I throw theme days in every now and then just to keep things enjoyable for me.  I usually go a website called holiday insights.  On this site, they have every strange holiday for the month listed. For example, did you know that today (September 17th) is constitution day, citizenship day, and National Apple Dumpling Day?  I try to find some fun looking days for us to take a break from the normal routine.

Last Wednesday, the website told me it was National Video Game Day.  I thought the boys would like that one, so we had a fun theme day.

Joshua woke up very excited to start his school work, because he knew somewhere during the day we would play video games.  We started with journaling. He wrote in his journal about his favorite video game and drew a picture.

For Joshua's math, I made up some video game word problems.

For Christopher, I made an easy to read story about Mario.

We also made a video game snack.  We spread frosting on a graham cracker and then added junior mint and mini m&m buttons and a starburst arrow pad that I cut with scissors to make our own edible wii remotes.

Joshua tried using his to play the wii.  Silly Boy.  

After snack we went outside for some physical education.  We played "Don't wake Bowser" in the backyard, a game we invented together.  The person who was Bowser stood by a tree with his back turned, holding a red bouncy ball.  The others went and tapped him on the shoulder, waking him up, at which point Bowser would give chase and try to tag someone with the red ball, aka "fireball".  Whoever was tagged with the fireball was Bowser next.

And of course, we played lots of video games together.  All in all, a very fun day.

Nathan especially loved playing "Just Dance Kids"

Of course, the kids don't really know whether or not it is the kind of day you say it is, so you could pretty much do any theme day any day that you like.

And just so you know, officially this coming wednesday (sept. 19th) is National Talk Like a Pirate Day.  Now that is one you do not want to miss.

Chicken Birthday Party

Happy Birthday Nathan!

Many weeks back I was sitting around the table during lunch with my kids and the topic of birthday parties came up.  Nathan's birthday was the next in line so the kids were asking him what kind of party he wanted.  Did he want a pirate party?  A train party? Muppets? Cars?  He listened quietly and then sat up and said "I know!  I know!  A chicken party!!"  Seriously, is it any wonder this child is my favorite? That is, of course, if parents had favorite children, which they don't, but he might be high on the list if there was such a list,  but of course I don't have a favorite.

For the next month Nathan told people that he was going to have a chicken party and he's been very excited about it.  I started looking around on the internet to get some ideas.

Turns out that not many people have chicken themed parties.  Weird.

Here are some of the things we came up with for our chicken baby's chicken party.

We started with a rousing game of "Duck, Duck, Chicken", but it was hard for the new 3 year old to remember to say "chicken" instead of "goose".

We followed that with a round of "Musical Nests".  Turns out this isn't a great game to play with a 3 year old.  He didn't see why he had to sit out and why someone else was sitting on his "nest", so we abandoned it and instead just danced the chicken dance.  The kids liked that a lot.

Next we did an "egg and spoon" race with some plastic eggs.  The kids got in 2 lines and we did it relay style.  Funnily, my 3 year old dropped the egg fewer times than my 9 year old.  He's got skills.

The last game we did was "hatch the egg".  I had put some little erasers inside some white balloons and the kids had to sit on them and pop the balloons to get them out.

We then had chicken cake and ice cream.

I had found a really cute chicken cake I tried to copy from here, and as you can see, I didn't make it nearly as cute.  It looked like she had used coconut to make her chicken look fluffy.  I do not like coconut, so I tried using grated white chocolate.  It's okay.  I also made a chocolate chicken cake, just because.

As our cousins left, Nathan passed out the chicken party bags.  The party bags had a cookie, some chicken feed (candy corn), some farm foam stickers, and an egg shaker which I had originally planned to have the kids shake to music during the party.

Some other chicken games we had thought of but didn't end up playing include:

hiding easter eggs and having kids find them and put them in the nest

doing scratch art

tossing (candy) corn into a chicken cutout mouth

playing "fox and chickens"