Fun School

I was feeling creative today & it showed in what we did for school. The kids enjoyed it immensely.

I kept Miss L busy with this simply toddler toy....a slab of Styrofoam and golf tees. The toy hammer didn't work all that great & by the end she was just pushing them in with her hands. She loved playing with this (as did the boys).

warning: do not allow toddler to play with this unsupervised. The golf tees can be sharp.

We got in our phonics practice today by playing Clifford ABC Bingo. The boys really love playing this. I use Spell to Write & Read as my basis for our spelling & phonics instruction. It teaches the 70 different phonogram sounds. We are working on the basic sounds (especially with J playing). I call on a different boy to give me the sounds for each letter drawn & then they try to find it on their game boards. They each play two game boards & they have to cover all the letters on both boards to win.

After Bingo we moved on to Sum Swamp. I bought this game a few years ago from Hands & Hearts and we absolutely love playing it. 

There are three dice in this game - two green six sided dice & a "plus/minus" dice. Each player rolls all three dice and then does the corresponding equation to figure out how many spaces to move. If they land on a number on the board, they only roll the "plus/minus" dice. If it comes up with a plus, they  move ahead the same number of spaces as the number on the board. If they roll a minus, they go backwards. There are also "even/odd" spaces on the board. If you land here, you have to roll a single green number dice to find out if you can move. For instance, if you land on an even spot, you have to roll an even number to move ahead. If you roll an odd one, you loose your turn. My kids love the "endless loop" as well. You have to get the exact number to get out of the loop. It's a great way to practice basic addition.

Continuing with our math practice, N asked to play "Rat-a-tat-Cat." This is really a fun card game for children five and up. 

We play the simpler version which means each player gets a hand dealt like the above. The goal of the game is to get the least amount of points as possible. Each card has a point value. At the beginning of the game you know what the two end cards are but you don't know what your middle ones are. The harder version has all cards facing down.

For each turn you either take a card for the draw pile or the discard pile & make a move. If you draw from the draw pile & don't like the card, you simply discard it & play continues on. There are three "special" cards as well. There is a "peek" card which is handy in finding out what your middle cards are. There is a "swap" card which allows you to swap out one card with any player. Then there is a "draw 2" card which allows you to draw a card & use it if you like or discard it & draw again.

I think N just got a good card. He won both hands I think....must be the "card shark visor." 

My last burst of creativity....I had each of the boys stamp their spelling words. They have both been stuck on the same lists now for a couple months. I'm trying to use some more creative ways to help them learn their words. They loved doing this & have asked to do it every day. Even little J had fun stamping letters all over a sheet of paper.

It was a good day today - fun & creative.