Math Card Games and Gameboards (for my 5 year old)

A pack of Crazy Eight cards from the dollar store comes in handy for doing math fact games.

Addition Facts Game:
Each player started with five cards. There's a discard pile and a draw pile. Each player takes a turn drawing or picking up a card from the discard pile.
The first time we played, we used the numbers 0 through 6 and set the other numbers aside. We had to make pairs that added up to 6 (0-6, 1-5, 2-4, 3-3).

The second time through we made pairs whose sum equaled 7.

What Comes Before and After Game:
This last game was a bit different and requires fast hands and fast thinking!  I set this up so each player played on their own discard pile.

Each player started with five cards in their hand (or on the floor as the case may be!).  There's a discard pile and a draw pile.

When we said go, each player played off his/her own discard pile -- putting down the number that came before or after the upturned card.

So, if there was a 1 in the discard pile, I could put down a 0 or a 2.  Then I could continue until I could put no more cards down.  If I couldn't put down any more cards from my hand, I turned over a new card from the draw pile.  The first person to get rid of all the cards in his/her hand won.

Math Family Activities:

 We used these gameboards a lot when LD was learning his addition facts. We finally pulled them out for DD. She loves them!

Kathy Gursky at The School Bell has all kinds of math-fact activities.

To play the "7s" math facts game, we pulled out all the cards from 0 through 7 from our Crazy Eight pack. Each player takes a turn turning over a card and moving his/her game piece to the number so that the sum is 7.
So, first DD turned over a 4. She moved her green turtle to the 3.  Next I turned over a 7.  I moved my orange star to the 0. 

This is another worksheet from The School Bell.  DD will have to write in the appropriate partners so the sum is 8.  These sheets are called Partner Worksheets and are located down at the bottom of the page.  Be sure to look around, she has other great ideas too!

 Again, the math fact Gameboards are located here. Thank you, Kathy!

Hope You Had a Lovely Mother's Day

I was treated like a star on Mother's Day. The kids brought me breakfast in bed complete with homemade cards and crafts. I looked like a queen with the bright yellow crown DD made for me!

Later in the day, hubby rounded up all the nuts, bolts and parts and put together my favorite swing -- a Mother's Day Gift three years ago! (We disassembled it to bring it back from Australia and we never had the time to put together up til now.)

So here's the swing out on the deck, so that I can look out with my morning coffee at this pretty view of our backyard...

The day ended with some beautiful cuddle time reading some of our favorite children's books together.  A lovely day. Hope yours was as nice!

Listen to Frog and Toad Calls

I was so excited to find this website -- enature.com. It lets you listen to the sounds made by frogs and toads. Since we have a symphony of frog calls at night it's pretty neat knowing which one's which! Here are the frogs and toads we've come across (in the hundreds) here in our neck of the woods:

 
Pickerel Frog:

Fowler's Toad:

Northern Cricket Frog:

Cope's Gray Treefrog:

Our Backyard Classroom

The past week we had a wonderful time with our friends. We took them on a short hike through the woods and spent a lot of time looking for frogs and things.  LD couldn't get enough time down at the creek and spent a couple hours each afternoon hunting things down.

We found a bunch of new (to us) critters! How exciting!

I think this little guy is a Northern Cricket Frog.

We also came across this treefrog -- which we think is the Cope's Gray Treefrog.

LD caught a salamander and a couple of crayfish.

Crayfish breathe through gills, so we took this picture quick and put it back in the water.

 

This is the small creek that runs winds it way through our property. It is wider back near the bridge, but this area is nice because it clears out a bit like a little meadow.

We've seen these 5-lined skinks a lot, but I couldn't resist including yet another photo! They have such bright blue tails.

Arts and Crafts This Week

You can never go wrong with paper plates, paint and glitter, right?!!

The kids chose these paper bag puppet designs from DLTK's Paper Bag Puppet ideas page. They had fun making them and tossing them over the banister upstairs to watch them "fly" to see whose traveled farthest! LD chose to do the Phoenix because of the book series he's reading called Beast Quest. He's so into these books he often reads two books (over 200 pages). Now if only we could get him to write with as much confidence.

Math Activities for DD (age 5)

DD has enjoyed math so far this week. In addition to a bit of work in her math workbook each day -- here are some things we did together:

Place Value:

She is finding the numbers 500 90 and 7 and stacking them on top of each other (bottom left of pic) to make 597. These plastic place value cards are from our  Right Start Math curriculum, but can be purchased separately.

Now she's using these sets of hearts to find 597 hearts. First separating the numbers back out as you see in the picture and then stacking them together as one digit.

We also have the purple dots from Montessori Materials click here for 1s and 10s and here for hundreds.  I printed out stacks of 10 and put them together with a brad to show 1000 beads (but only did a few of them!!) Even though we have "real" Montessori beads, we have actually gotten WAY more use out of these purple bead paper sets that I laminated and put together when LD was 5.

We've worked with these before, but this week DD was really blown away by how many dots there were in the thousand piles.

Money:

We played a simplified version of Snap It Up -- Money (basically as the game "War") -- and then used Montessori beads to show how much money she'd have with each card.

Addition Game:

Everyone came running when I pulled out Zap!!  In this game you take turns flipping over a card and then adding the numbers together on paper. Each player can continue to flip over a card and add it to his/her score BUT if you turn over a ZAP card you lose your points for that round. And, if you turn over a DOUBLE ZAP card you lose all the points you've earned up to that point (even from earlier rounds).  We played five rounds.

Clocks:

DD is starting time to the hour and half hour. We use some basic flashcards and I spend about 2 minutes going through some cards.

I like these cards because they're a good size and have the answers on the back. DD wants no help from me as she goes through them.  I pulled out the ones to the hour and half hour, but this card set has cards that include the quarter to and quarter past cards.

I know I always post about this game, but DD and I play it all the time.  We use Who Loves Ya cards from Oceans of First Grade Fun.  You pick up a card, add the numbers and move that many spaces. If you land on a card with instructions (such as double move, triple move,  etc. you pick up a new addition card and continue on until you can't go any more-- such as  a blank space, stay put space, etc.) There are three "Start" spaces and three "win" spaces on the board. You can start anywhere (and win either by landing on one of the win spaces or by getting the "Who Loves Ya" card).

Included a few cards so you could see how cute they are!!

Terrible, washed out picture, but never got around to taking another.  We play money war with these cards at the moment. The cards have pennies, nickles, dimes, quarters, fifty cent pieces and even a dollar coin. (Snap it Up! Money)

Quick 3-yr old activities for ED

Here are a few things in ED's workboxes as we get back into the swing of things.

Using tweezers to sort colored pom-poms (I have a sticker with the appropriate color for each section.)

Placing erasers on the end of a pencil.  Since ED is past dropping things through a hole, this is a good skill for her -- both lining up the hole in the eraser and having to push/manipulate it quite hard to get it onto the end.  This is good for fine motor skills.

Cutting strips

Numbers and stickers

All of my kids have enjoyed using a skewer to punch holes around this age.  I put dot-patterns on colored construction paper -- make a minimum of twenty and let them go at it!!

These pattern block sheets are (free) from Prekinders.  I printed out both the colored and B&W versions and laminated them together front-to-back.  ED still chooses the colored side a lot, but DD likes doing them now and then and does the B&W side or makes her own elaborate patterns.

Garden Science Activities

One of our activities before our holiday had us thinking about the ingredients of a hamburger and where each ingredient originated (and how everything, even the hamburger itself, tied back to plants).  It was time to use some of our Montessori sorting cards again since they helped the kids contemplate where their food comes from.


Where Does Food Come From?

From Plant to Food (Montessori for Everyone): This set had them find the origins for syrup, corn bread, orange juice, ketchup, pasta and jam.

What's in a cookie?  Shows where cookie ingredients originate (egg-hen, vanilla-vanilla bean, baking soda-mineral, etc.) This came from an old Teacher's Book Bag pack I got a number of years ago.

Sorting Fruits and Vegetables into Two Piles:

Showing which part of the plant these fruits and vegetables come from.

This activity came from Kidssoup.

 Food Groups:

DD is sorting foods into different categories: Breads & Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, Meat & Dairy, Fats & Oils (Montessori for Everyone, Free Download)

Plant Classification (Monocots, Dicots), From the Junior Master Gardener curriculum:

This activity talked about plant classification. In this activity, the kids had to collect six leaves.  First, they examined the leaves to see if they were monocots or dicots (helpful chart).  A monocot (like corn) has just one seed leaf inside the seed coat, while dicots (like beans) have two seed leaves.   Dicots have netted veins while monocots have veins that are parallel.  Finally, the flower parts of monocots are in multiples of 3 while the flower parts of dicots come in multiples of 4 or 5.  Once we looked carefully at the veins, the kids had to study the edges and draw pictures of the edge.

Leaf Rubbing: 

Taking those same leaves, they did leaf rubbings.  This really showed the veins well. It was very easy to tell that all the leaves the kids collected were dicots.

 

  Photosynthesis Song:



Over at Eclectic Homeschooling they have put together an amazing set of resources for their botany study. Be sure to check her post out!

Plans for the Next 5-7 Weeks

While on holiday it was time to think through our homeschooling plans for the next 5-7 weeks or so. I always have a running plan in my head, but sometimes it's useful to put it down on paper, so to speak.

As you will see, I am trying to include a lot more Newberry honor and medal winners now that DD is a bit older. I'll continue to read lots of children's books and Caldecott books to ED (and whoever else is around) as well. (I put books out on the dining room table and the kids beg for me to read while they eat.)

History and Geography: Before our holiday, we finished our study of the Ancient Mayans and finished our read aloud (The Corn is Ripe).  We'll move on to the Ancient Aztecs, Ancient Incas, and will study the geography of central and South America (continent song).
Read Aloud: Incan Newberry Honor Book--Secret of the Andes
I have a number of books on hold at the library, but am not quite sure how this unit will unfold! Any suggestions from what you've done?

Science: Gardening Science -- Junior Master Gardener curriculum. Chapters 1 and 2 (This will be quite ambitious as there are probably 30 activities per chapter!) We are all so excited about this! It is truly an amazing program.

Literature: To go along with this attention to plants, plant growth, plant identification and so forth I'm going to read a few Newberry books that show how people survive out in nature. 

Abel's Island - This book is about a mouse who is swept away from his beloved wife in a severe storm. He finds himself stranded on an island and survives for an entire year on his own. It talks about the plants he ate, the dangers he faced and what he did to entertain and keep his mind engaged.  It has illustrations almost every fourth page or so which will help keep DD engaged.

Hatchet -- In this book, a boy survives a plane crash and has to survive in the Canadian (?) wilderness. LD is anxious for this book, but I don't know if DD will like it.


After that I'm not sure what we'll tackle. Perhaps the Secret of NIMH, The Black Stallion or Island of the Blue Dolphins?

The Human Body Unit -- I plan to continue doing activities with ED and DD (and LD as interested) using Everybody Has a Body

Math: 
LD continues on with the times tables 2 through 6 and I'll be introducing division families. Continuing with addition and subtraction practice (thousands 4567+1789) and adding 3 problems together (23+44+16). I'm debating whether to start him on the 7s times tables or really cement in those others which he's been working on for 5 or 6 weeks now  (or longer?). I'll ask him how he feels and go from there. We also should start on fractions a bit... we'll see.
DD -- She'll continue on with her 1st grade curriculum but I also want to go include a lot more Montessori work (place value activities and so forth). Also, I'd like to work on money with her a bit more.
ED -- continuing to work one to one correspondence, number recognition, Montessori activities

Music:
LD 3 new pieces:
DD 3 new glockenspiel pieces,  sit down to teach her teach her two pieces on the piano
ED we haven't had music class for a long time because of illness and other conflicts. I hope to get in another 4-6 weeks with our friends before summer if they're up for it. We love, love getting together with them so hopefully we can get our schedules to work.  ED is always asking if her friends are coming over. Too cute!

Independent Reading: 
LD chapter books; introduce the 3rd Grade reading list, have him make selections and borrow from library. Check them off as he goes.

DD -- Henry and Mudge. Perhaps move on to Horrible Harry soon.  Grade 2 Little Critter reading book (read aloud to Mom)

Spelling - All About Spelling
Writing -- Write Source
Handwriting -- Handwriting without Tears