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When we first began our homeschool journey, I made several folder games and regularly placed them in the kids’ workbox pockets. But it’s been awhile since we’ve had time and opportunity. I decided it was time to add a new game to our collection: Counting Coins File Folder Game.
My son has had a little trouble remembering his coins; nickels and quarters especially trip him up. And though “store” is a great game to play when you are teaching about money, I just can’t get it together on a regular basis. The Counting Coins Folder Game looked like the perfect solution. I had oldest help me with the cutting and pasting. We worked on it for a couple of days. Now that it is finally assembled, playing “store” is as easy as pulling out this handy folder.
The pockets will give him practice sorting the coins and learning the differences between nickels and quarters. Then, he gets to select an item from the store, decide which coins will total the amount he needs, take the item to “check out”, and count the coins out to me. I was so impressed by how quickly he caught on after just a few “purchases.”
I purchased the game for $3 at Currclick.com. It’s a simple game, but I loved all the time it saved me—no brainstorming store items and different price amounts. It’s all there for me: quick, easy, and educational. You just can’t beat that.
Especially now that Littlest is more alert and placing greater demands on Mommy these days.
We’re still taking our time through A Beka’s kindergarten math, rabbit trailing into other things when I feel the need to go more in depth with a concept. Place value was one of those concepts, and my rabbit trail took us to back to Math Mammoth (big surprise, right?) and our cuisenaire rods.
Because place value is such a foundational concept, I really wanted to ensure that my oldest knew this well, especially as we begin to head into more complicated addition, multiplication, etc. And Math Mammoth had some great game ideas. Though her plans call for household manipulatives (straws, beans, etc.), I couldn’t resist the opportunity to pull out our colored rods.
For our first game, I set out a handful of white “one” rods and had him group them by tens. Each set of ten he took to the “bank” and exchanged for an orange “ten” rod. Then, he would say the number of tens and the number of ones left: “1 ten and 5”; “2 tens and 3”; “3 tens and nine”; etc.
After we’d played this game for awhile, I had him count to 100 using the tens and ones method. Each time he got to the next “ten,” I’d hand him another orange rod, and he’d begin again: “1 ten and 8, 1 ten and 9, 2 tens…2 tens and 7, 2 tens and 8, 2 tens and 9, 3 tens…”
It was a great visual lesson, and I really think the c-rods were perfect for the games. Besides, it’s always so much fun to bring a little color to math. Next up, a few lessons with the abacus! I can’t wait.
While I was hanging out at a homeschool forum the other day, I read a post that mentioned Reflex Math and a free trial. I’m always interested in “free,” so I googled the site and signed up for my 14 day trial. I was so absolutely impressed that I had to post about it. No free products, no exchange for a review—just because I REALLY loved this website (and so did my son, but we’ll get to that). Why? Because we’ve ditched our math flashcards.
Both of us hate those dreaded flashcards and the endless drill. I want him to know his facts, and I understand the importance of math facts review, but please! There has got to be a better way. And truly, there is. Reflex Math has completely replaced all the drill and flashcards.
The idea of Reflex Math is to provide an engaging way for students to learn and review their math facts: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. But rather than traditional drill, the site is structured like an arcade. Each lesson begins with a “Speed Cube Challenge” where the student types in numbers (for the website to gage the child’s typing speed) and then answers to math problems (to gage the child’s skill level). Then, a rule is introduced or reviewed (a cute bear pops up and announces that a rule is a way to get a lot of facts “game ready” at the same time). Next, it’s game time!
Seven games are provided for the student to select from, and in each game, the student answers the math facts quickly and accurately to progress through the game. Answer quickly to move away from the bad guy, to build the alien’s ice cream cone before he gets upset and leaves, to make your ninja jump to the next level, to jump from lily pad to lily pad eating bugs, to fly your hot air balloon across the sky, etc. It’s math facts review that your kids will actually want to do!
Egyptian Conniption
Ninja to the Stars
Tokens are earned for the number of questions answered during play. At a certain point during the lesson, the “store” opens and the child can purchase items using the tokens he has earned. He can purchase clothes, shoes, sunglasses, and other items for his avatar or decorations, animals, and other items for his tree house.
The website is also set up for a teacher to be able to track the progress of the student with several different reports. You can easily see how many facts your child has mastered, how much practice time he has completed, and more.
How effective were the games? My son not only answers his math facts more quickly, but he can now do them in his head! He was even introduced to subtraction for the first time, and he never missed a beat. All in only 2 weeks time! My son loved this so much that he told me he wanted to save his money to purchase the year subscription ($35 per student/year).
I absolutely recommend Reflex Math, particularly if your child is a hands-on (kinesthetic) learner. Skip the flashcards, seriously. This is the ticket!
**UPDATE 2/2017: We have purchased subscriptions for Reflex Math for both of our kids for nearly five years, and absolutely love the program. It has completely eliminated the need for flashcards in our homeschool, and my kids excel in timed math and speed drills.**
The other night, I listened to a Susan Evans workshop on “Making Literature Fun.” It was my first time listening to anything from Susan Evans, and I enjoyed it immensely. She was fun, casual, informative; it was like listening to a fellow homeschool mom from your co-op. Her ideas were fantastic! Everything from art projects, to science experiments, to dramatic historical productions were suggested as ways to make the classics an unforgettable experience for your toddler and your high schooler.
Susan taught for seven years in a variety of settings, working with several different age groups, before homeschooling her four children. She related so many fun memories of activities that she did with her own children, interwoven with some fantastic tips. For instance, she suggests that you do watch the movie BEFORE reading a book if that book has a complicated plot (what I had always considered a no-no in all circumstances). She offers several tips on how to get active young children to sit still during your read-aloud time and a myriad of ideas for unit studies to supplement the books you are reading. Her one hour workshop (available for only $5.50 on her website) mentions over 39 classics specifically and tons of hands-on ideas.
I was also able to listen to Susan’s recording of “Overcoming Math Frustration,” which provided a moving story of her own struggles with her children in this area and the lessons God taught her as she prayed through those struggles. She also reviews a few different math approaches during the talk and provides some “living math” ideas along with a few tips to diffuse the tension from math-battles in your home.
Susan’s website offers more information, articles, unit studies, and other workshops that she has done. Also, if you sign up on her website, you can get her newest items for free before she posts them for sale in her store. I signed up for her freebies and can’t wait to be getting the first installments in my inbox. I’ve also bookmarked her website to get more ideas when we begin our study of ancient history in the fall.
Browse around her website, check out her Youtube videos, and get totally inspired. It’s like a customized homeschool convention, and you never have to leave your home!
*Disclaimer: I received two free audio workshops in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
I saved our cuisenaire rods until the baby came. I wanted to save them so that I’d have a fun, novel new school lesson for them when school got to be a little more difficult for me. These have been the perfect “new baby” homeschool tool.
I was able to pick up my set from a homeschool consignment store, so I didn’t pay anywhere near what the set would have been brand new. And as I counted all the pieces in the store to be sure they were all there, I could hardly keep their hands out of it. When I pulled it out for the first time a few weeks ago, they were thrilled to finally get to touch and play in them.
Lesson 1
For the first few times, I just let them play. They made people and forts and a myriad of other things, playing in the rods much as they would in a pile of blocks or legos. My goal was to allow them to get familiar with them, to notice that there were 10 different ones, to notice that each was a different size, but all within the context of play.
Then, I had them build staircases, placing the rods side-by-side from smallest to largest. We have continued to do this each time I bring them out. It’s a visual reminder of how many there are and the size relationships. We say the colors up and down the staircase; we say the numbers up and down the staircase.
Last, we play “the magic game.” My oldest absolutely loves this game. I have them hide 3 or 4 different colors behind their backs. It has worked much better to allow them to place the rods on their chairs behind them, since sometimes it’s hard for them to hold them all. In the first round of our game, I ask for a color, and the magic is that they make that color “appear” without looking at the rods; they have to feel the rods and remember which colors are which. In the second round, I ask for the number, and they present the color that corresponds with that number. Each time we play, I add one more rod to our game, which means that we are only on the yellow #5 rod right now. It’s a gradual process, and we build on their success which is why the game is such a hit.
Playing the "magic" game; Middle-est is calling the colors
Lesson 2
We are just starting to go a little deeper, beyond just getting familiar. I’m starting to introduce some of the relationship concepts with Oldest, while middle-est is still grasping numbers and colors and sizes. I printed off some 1 cm graph paper specifically for c-rods. Middle-est measured each rod against the paper and colored in that many squares with the matching color. For instance, the black rod equals 7 squares, so she colored those seven squares with her black crayon.
Oldest was assigned the brown rod corresponding to 8, the addition family we are learning right now. He colored 8 squares brown, to match his rod. Then, he found two different rods that equaled 8 and colored in those rods. It illustrated the math facts that he has been learning and was just another fun way to reiterate and reinforce the information. Plus, who wouldn’t like to color their math facts!
light green+yellow=brown, or 3+5=8
I would say that this is not a wonder product. There has been no “a-hah” moment for us, but I do love the variety that it gives us, and I anticipate them being very helpful as we enter more complicated math. Besides, my kinesthetic middle-est is absolutely made for this kind of thing.
I’m sitting on the couch, feeding the baby, and listening to the sounds of the kids learning. It’s a fun sound with lots of silliness and laughing. Before sitting down, I’d sent my son to the school room with his sister; his assignment was to get the numbers chart and help her count to 100 (a sneaky way to give him a little practice as well).
Loudly, with their silliest voices, I hear them count off “41, 42, 43, 44…” They pause only long enough to laugh hilariously at themselves. “98, 99, 100!” And then I hear my son holler out, “Mom, can we count the short way? 10, 20, 30?” Of course, I give permission and then listen to their gleeful voices once more. They finish, but they are not done. Now they are counting again from the beginning, only this time they’ve decided to hop as they count. One—and they jump once. Two—and they jump two times. They keep going until they reach 14, and my son announces that he is getting tired; they hop while they count now, sometimes with both feet and sometimes on one foot, and no longer in the school room.
“28, 29, 30, 31…Let’s spin now!” And they whirl around in the living room like little tops, “69, 70, 71…” until they stumble to 100 for the last time, dizzy, exhausted, and beaming ridiculously. I finish with the baby and give them both high-fives, thrilled to have ended our homeschooling morning with such a bang.
“By allowing my child to fail, I was teaching him about success.”
I actually confronted the issue of failure recently with my kindergartener. In our second year of homeschooling, he hadn’t really had to face any degree of failure before.
Then, we started to struggle with addition, and my default-plan of letting my son choose his best papers to show his father wasn’t giving my husband a complete picture of how we were really doing. As I talked over our struggles with my husband, he was a little confused; after all, he saw only success and mastery. I decided I’d better make some changes to my default-plan. And that’s what led to my discovery that I was failing to truly teach about failure.
The next day, my son worked a math sheet and missed several addition problems. Together we talked through the right answers to the problems that I had checked. He reworked the problems with me and then I broke the news to him: “We’re going to show Daddy this page, because he needs to know what we have trouble with as well as what we’re doing well in.” Immediately my son burst into tears. Suddenly, I understood the unintentional lesson I was teaching my son.
Inadvertently, I was teaching him that only success brought reward, that only perfection brought the attention that he wanted. I wasn’t giving my husband the opportunity to praise my son for determination or perseverance; my son was only receiving his daddy’s praise for perfect papers. It wasn’t a lesson either my husband or I had planned to teach, and it definitely wasn’t our view of success. But regardless, my son had already shaped the idea in his head that approval was gained through perfection.
Daddy came home that day, and my son sheepishly showed him the marked-up paper. And the most beautiful lesson unfolded: a lesson of love despite imperfection, a lesson of approval for a best effort, and a lesson of praise for character rather than performance. As I watched my husband and my son interact, I couldn’t help but wonder at how close I came to missing out on this moment.
What if I had chosen to show the paper to my husband without my son’s knowledge? What if I had caved to my son’s tears and decided not to show that paper at all? What if I had continued with our trend of only showing off the best?
My son would probably not have been scarred for life had we not addressed the issue of failure in this way; but then again, he might very well have developed an attitude of success vs. failure that would begin to shape his future.
By allowing my child to fail, I was teaching him about success.(<Tweet This)
It was a valuable lesson for all of us, and not one I would have ever thought to pencil into the curriculum or schedule into my lesson planner.
