3 Ways to Shake Up Your School Day

We all get into ruts don't you think?  It happens when your groove gets a little too deep and instead of rocking this homeschool thing... you end up enduring it.

 Here are 3 things I've done recently to shake up our school days:

1. Change Locations

Grab a sketch pad or even your math books and get out of the house.  On Monday we headed out to The Art We Are... a local coffee shop with the most interesting arts and crafts for sale.  I took the time to do some writing exercises with a friend and my big kids did some sketching, browsed the shop and snacked on a vegan gluten free brownie.  *note: I would not recommend preschool at the local artsy cafe... just sayin'

2. Dreambox

The Scott kids are seriously gaga over Dreambox.  It's a math adventure game that is a great way to break up the monotony of workbooks.  *note: I have no affiliation with Dreambox  just sharing what works for us.

3. Play

The same writing friend that I met up with on Monday introduced me to Story Cubes.  I had so much fun playing it I left the coffee shop and headed to the toy store to buy it.  My kids don't exactly love to write, but I am hoping that having fun telling a story will be a step in the direction of writing one.  Plus I am going to enjoy the possibility that this game is forging new creative pathways in their heads (how's that for sounding like I know what I'm talking about?).

How about you?  Leave me a comment with your favorite way to shake up a school day and chase away boredom.

Delaney School... Counting Bears and the Letter A

Yay for Delaney school!  I finally feel slightly organized in this department... I am thrilled to be starting letter of the week themes... beginning with letter A of course.

I busted out the tangrams... and they were a big hit with little and big kids alike.

I discovered the blog The Measured Mom this week... There are some fantastic printables there to download and use.  Here Delaney is creating apples on her "baby a" with a red Do-A-Dot and a green marker.

Another The Measured Mom printable is this counting bears sorter... we added a dice and played a game of put "this many" red bears in the red bear circle...etc.

How lucky was I to come across these build a letter sheets from Confessions of A Homeschooler?  They are the perfect accompaniment for our current tangram obsession  interest.

What went on in your homeschool week? What are your kiddos current passions?

If You give A Boy a Puzzle...

He just might sit at the table and and piece it together while fighting off the grabby hands of his 2 year old sister...
And once he's finished he will read the box and discover that it was 100 pieces...
Then he will wonder... "If this puzzle is 100 pieces, is it the same size as my 100 chart?"
So he will get his 100 chart and compare...

Upon seeing that they are not the same size he will examine the situation more closely...
And realize that there are 12 puzzle pieces along the top and 9 along the side... but the hundred chart is 10 along the top and 10 along the side...

He will come to the conclusion that his puzzle was not 100 pieces but in fact 108.
 

A Sophisticated Sense of Humor

One of the assignments in our Life of Fred math book today was to draw a comic... I seriously thought about skipping over it... I mean really we understand knock knock jokes around here... sometimes... but Ichose not to skip that part... and look at what I as pleasantly surprised with!

Super Simple Counting Game

I have a secret... I often plan things on the fly... as in wake up in the morning and figure out what activities we are going to do for learning. Today was a successful on the fly planning day for Meadow. I thought up a super simple game. To play you need a dice with numbers and some math cubes.

Roll the dice

Count out the number of cubes rolled

Stack into a tower

Place with your other towers and repeat...

 

I saw it on Pinterest- Zap!

Here is a fun and quite simple math game that I found on Pinterest.

Materials:

• Scissors
• Liquid glue (I used Elmers clear school glue)
• Popsicle sticks
• Pencil
• Paper
• A non see through cup or container

Prep:

• write several math equations for your child's level on to paper.
• cut each equation and glue it on to the end of a stick.
• On a few of the sticks write ZAP!
• Place all of the stick in the cup pointed down.

How to play:

1 player at a time chooses a stick.  If they answer the equation correctly they keep the stick. If they answer incorrectly the stick goes back into the cup.  If you pull a ZAP! stick all of your sticks go back into the cup.  The first player to 10 sticks wins.

What great ideas have you followed through with from Pinterest this week?  It doesn't have to be a learning activity it could be a recipe... or a refashion... Link up!

What can you do for a minute?

Our Kindergarten unit study this week is based on the book Hurry Up Franklin! By Paulette Bourgeois.
One of the activities for this is to experience a minute with a sand timer.  How long is a minute???
So I asked Hudson can you stand on one foot for a minute?

This was a struggle, as was holding his arms out to the sides for 1 minute.

Keeping one finger on his nose was much easier.

The highlight for sure though was being able to say AHHHHH! for one whole minute.

Such a fun experiment :)

Dinosaur Game

I found the idea for this game board at Danielle's Place.

Materials:
Thick core board (I got mine at the dollar store)
Sharpie markers
Dinosaur foot template.

Get creative!  Trace out your foot prints in an interesting path.  Draw a "home cave" at the end of the foot prints.
Write obsticles or instruction on random foot prints. (Such as "Chased by a bigger dinosaur go back 2 spaces" or "Stomp and roar like a dinosaur".)

Roll the dice and move your game pieces (I used my Silhouette  to cut T-rex shapes out of card stock).
The first dinosaur to the home cave wins.

Color Fish!

Meadow has been progressing in leaps and bounds in the puzzle department. I especially love that this puzzle has all the same shape pieces but need to be matched to the colors.

How Long and Tall and Wide?

Here is another great thrifty find. It's called "How to Measure". This box contains several different cards with various pictures on them, as well as a whole bunch of 2cm plastic cubes.

The object is to place the cubes along side the picture on the card and see how long, tall or wide each object is.

On the other side of the card you can compare other household items to see if they are the same size as the picture on the front.

Quite the interesting measuring lesson.

Geoboard Genius

Hudson LOVES his geoboard. Recently at the preschool activity bag exchange we received a second geoboard for our geometry and math pleasure.

The first thing you can do with a geoboard is make elastic shapes. 


But if you break out some duplo you can also practice estimating. How many blocks do you think will fit in this square? A great intro to area.

 You can create rows and columns.

(Do ignore the small child with her sagging big girl panties off to the right :})

What unique additions have you made to your geoboard play?

Number Wheel

This is the activity I made for the Preschool Activity Swap we went to.

A number wheel.

I found this idea over at Walking by The Way.

It's quite simple really.  I used my Silhouette cutter to cut out the circles.  Then had hubby divide them into 10 (he is the more spacial of the 2 of us :)). I stuck stickers in each section and wrote the numbers on the clothes pegs.  The ones we gave to others were laminated over the stickers.  We ran out of plastic for ours though.

Linking this up with Preschool Corner :)

Bead Patterns

This is one of the activities we got from the Preschool Activity Swap we went to.
Materials:
8-10 pipe cleaners (2 different colors)
Beads
Preparation: Create patterns of beads on one color of pipe cleaners.

 Instructions:
Have your child copy the bead pattern onto the empty pipe cleaners.

Simple yet effective:)



Linking this up with Preschool Corner

Adam and Eve Unit Study Day 2

As I said previously this was a quite short study.

Activity #1 (math)

Hudson used an apple (or shall we call it forbidden fruit?) to stamp the corresponding amount under each number on a poster sized paper.

Activity #2 (art)

Hudson used play doh to sculpt like 15 snakes.  We counted them after so this might be considered a math lesson as well :)