Graphing With Goldfish

Jem had fun the other day graphing with goldfish.  I handed her a handful of fish and she placed them on her graph by color.  She counted how many of each color she had and we talked about "more than" and "less than."  Her favorite part was eating them all up!

You can find a variety of goldfish graphs by googling it by name.

Shamrock Math Game

 

We had a good time playing this Shamrock Math Game.  Olive would grad a hand full of pennies and drop them on the table.  She then separates the heads from the tails and starts her math problem.  This picture is showing 10+10....we would also switch it up with subtraction.  Olive thought that this was a fun way to work on her math.  I like that "heads and tails" can be adapted for just about any holiday.
Linking To:
No Time For Flashcards

It's in the Box

We had a really great school day. Here are some activities that were placed in Jem and Olive's workbox this week.

 This was are first time using Geo Boards, Jem really enjoyed this activity.

 Kumon cut and paste workbook.

 Linking cubes for Math.

 Egg carton counting with beans.

 100 easy lesson in reading for Olive.

 Chopsticks and pom-poms.

 Color matching with buttons and pom-poms.

 Word color matching.

 Olive's pipe cleaner and bead party mask.

A little blue paint goes a long way....have a great week.

Fun Christmas Games

We spent an hour this morning playing these counting and matching Christmas games. Our favorite game was "Fill the stable" found over at Musing of Me. You need two dice to play or if you can't find the dice, like me,  just write the numbers on slips of paper. Jem was so excited when she got to add baby Jesus to the stable.

We found this cute Christmas tree matching game over at Kidssoup. Jem really enjoyed this game!

We also built and drew a Christmas tree by playing this dice game from Homeschool Creations. The girls want me to create a gingerbread house game next time.

Buzzing Bee Color Match

 This cute color match-up game is easy to create. I quickly grabbed a paper plate and added colors that match the bee's flowers. Jem clipped the cute clothespins onto the matching color. I explained that the bee needs to visit the right flower color. When she clipped her bee to the correct color we made the buzzing bee sound...she loved it.

I found these clothespins, bees, and flowers a few months ago at Michael's.

Grocery Store Bingo

If you want to save a lot of money in the grocery store print out this Bingo game. Your kiddos will stay busy while you look for the good coupon deals...I saved $63 thanks to the game and a little coupon savvy. You can print Grocery Store Bingo over at Let's Explore.

We played this a few times during our shopping trip, for example.
1. Cross off all the items you see.
2. Find "the color" and then cross it off.
3. First to cross off four in a row.
4. Count the number of grocery carts you see.
5. Cross off something that begins with the "the letter".
I laminated each Bingo card and gave the girls washable markers to use. This worked fine until one rolled away and became lost in the cereal section. Note to self: next time, connect the marker to the game with a piece of string.

My girls are pretty helpful during our shopping trips, but this Bingo game will always remain in my purse!

Roadtrip Car Ideas

We are getting ready to take off on a roadtrip to the land of the Amish, cow pastures, and shoe-fly pie. It's a girls roadtrip with Olive, Jem, and my Mom...Lancaster County, PA here we come. We are excited to see family, it should take us about 12 hours. The girls love a good roadtrip, and so do I if I pack correctly.

Each girl has their own small bag packed with their clothes, it just works out easier for me. I have some good snacks prepared in little snack bags, like raisins, cheerios,  m&m's, pretzels, and carrot sticks. Now that the girls are older I take one sippy cup per child, as we've had too many cups lost somewhere in the car only to be discovered weeks later- you get the idea!

Each girl has a little bag with 2 dolls, a few books, color wonder markers and paper, we also have books on tape, and a DVD player for a last resort. I made these fun activity packets for our trip. I printed off mazes, dot to dot pages, telling time, and anything else I found from various free sites. I laminated the pages back to back, attached an O ring, and included a washable marker to complete the activities. Wish us luck and I'll be back blogging next week.

What's in the mail game?

The girls love getting packages in the mail so I thought this would be a fun game to play. I added rocks, coins, a book, a blanket, marbles, and pencils to separate boxes and envelopes. Jem had to squeeze and shake the mail to figure out what was inside. Both girls gave good guesses and enjoyed this easy activity. I think we'll also do this on our next road trip in the car.

Little Nino's Pizzeria- FIAR

Our Five in a Row Co-op had a fun time today reading Little Nino's Pizzeria, by Karen Barbour. We talked about having a servant's heart, how bigger isn't always better, and how we can help others. Instead of making lapbooks, we made folder menus for our pizzeria story.

We made homemade pizza, along with some pizza topping math, learned words in Italian, and made a Matisse type drawing for the back of our menu. I printed some cards on what you can add to a pizza to play a memory match game and we learned about homonyms- words that sound alike, but are different.

You can find a variety of ideas for Five In a Row books at homeschool share - this site is really a great resource.

Wikki Stix Fun

My girls really love Wikki Sticks, which are bendable wax covered yarn. They make all sorts of shapes, faces, even numbers, and letters with them. I think they are a great creative learning tool. Most recently we started playing tick-tac-toe with our Wikki Stix...the possibilities are endless.

I think these are a great tool to add to any Montessori tray or Work Box. For example, show a picture of an animal and have the child form the animal out of Wikki Stix, or make their name. You get the idea!
We bought ours from Amazon,  here is the link.

Draw a Bunny Dice Game

Olive and her Daisy Troop enjoyed earning a petal by learning how to be honest and fair. They played a variety of games to help teach these concepts, but this fun rabbit dice game took the "carrot!"

Check out Homeschool Creations here for a download.  I laminated the game so they can play over and over.  Each girl took a turn rolling the die, but number 6 was their favorite as they got to do the bunny hop!

Circle Ideas

Olive's art class read the book Round Is A Pancake, by Joan Baranski at Co-op last week. The class did all sorts of fun things with items shaped like circles.

The group used coffee cans, toilet paper rolls, lids, cups, foam, and different colored paint to make circle collages. Everyone was different, here is what Olive's looked like.

This book is a good one to add to your collection. We also went around the house and counted everything shaped like a circle, For more cirlce and shape hunting ideas check out
Chasing Cheerios here.

Heart Games

We are having fun with these foam hearts numbered 1-10 this week. Here are a bunch of easy games we have played.
1. Jump on the number you call out.
2. Memory heart game.
3. Pick a heart and say what number comes before and after.
4. Roll the die and find the number heart you rolled.
5. Hide the hearts around the house and mommy gets a kiss for the number they find.
    That's my favorite.

Find more ideas from these cute bloggers here and  here

File Folder Games

I organized a pre-school file folder game swap with my homeschool co-op last month. Each person made 10 of the same file folder game and received nine different games in return, plus the one you made. I use these games for Gem when I am working with Olive on harder school work.

Here are two great ideas that Gem has enjoyed playing with:
                                                       Color sorting

 

Counting Cookies 1 to 10

I find that these games are easy to travel with when laminated and are a nice change from regular work book pages.