Posts Tagged ‘educational math games’
Online Educational Thrift Store
Save a buck on a book, but there is more!
Customers of the Home Education Resource Emporium online educational thrift store have thousands of resources both new and used to browse and purchase. Customers can also sign up their children for the free book on their birthday program, at no extra cost. Special deals, new additions to inventory and other important announcements are sent to customers first! Customers have access to even more downloadable books and resources through the book stores affiliate ebook store. There is also access to the Usborne book catalogue for even more great books.
You may be surprised with the wide array of unique resources available. Take some time to have a look. Become a customer and reap even more benefits!
Home Education Online Educational Thrift Store – http://books.transplanted.ca
Some Sweet Lessons
So Halloween is over and the little trick or treaters have a huge bundle of candy. Believe it or not, this can be a good thing!
Instead of just rotting their teeth and giving them a sugar high, this pile of candy can be used in some sweet lessons.
Sorting – create piles of the candy according to a specific classification, colour of wrapper, type of candy, letter it starts with etc. and create a sorting lesson.
Adding, Subtracting, Multiplying and Dividing – use the candy as manipulatives to help reinforce math skills.
Graphing – create a graph to show how much of each type of candy was given out.
Fractions – use candy that can be sectioned – like chocolate bars, licorice sticks etc. to teach fractions. Divide the candy into parts first a half, then a half again to make a fourth and so on.
Crafts – some candy can be used to make crafts. Use lollipops to make finger puppets, lifesavers to make wheels on various types of vehicles, including trains (see picture) and use smaller candy like nerds to make sand art images. Obviously the candy can’t be eaten after turned into a craft but it is a good idea to finish up the candy once the kids have had their fill!
Weights and measures – how many smarties weighs the same as one chocolate bar? Questions like this can be studied using different sizes of candy.
Mad Libs – create a fun reading lesson by substituting the name of the candy for various words in a story. Or use a Mad Lib sheet and fill in candy words.
Games – play games using candy as counters or playing pieces. Smarties are M&Ms are great bingo counters!
Art – make a collage of candy wrappers – many wrappers have different colours and textures which can make an interesting piece of art! You can even use candy wrappers to make jewelry!
Take an online tour of the candy wrapper museum – discuss some favourite candy from your childhood and create a candy wrapper of the future!
Enjoy these sweet lessons!
Game night – bring it into your school day!
There is much talk about family game night, a chance to spend quality time with the family. But board games shouldn’t be restricted to game night, they can be part of your school lesson plans!
Most board games offer learning through counting, matching and cooperation. There are also board games made specifically for their educational value, like phonics bingo or money matching games. Classic games like Monopoly and Scrabble have obvious educational value but games like Operation or Jenga can be great to develop hand/eye coordination and patience skills. The key to having board games enhance learning is to play them and have the child do the work. Have them count the spots on the die, then move the appropriate space. Have them find the colour that matches their own or count out the money owed. As they get older give them more opportunity to learn by letting them be the banker, or having them help a younger sibling spell words. Board games allow children to learn by doing, and by talking and by seeing – perfect to fit all learning styles. As an added bonus, playing a game can help active learners learn to sit still for a specific amount of time.
Make board games part of your lessons and see how much fun your children have learning!
Homeschooling can get costly when you are buying all the books and materials needed for the lessons. But when it comes to math manipulatives, all you have to do is look around your house!
Manipulatives are defined as “any of various objects designed to be moved or arranged by hand as a means of developing motor skills or understanding abstractions, especially in mathematics.” Using manipulatives in math can help explain tough concepts. Also, manipulatives are a great teaching tool to use for kinesthetic (hands-on) learners. Geometry manipulatives are easy to find around the house, just look for specific shapes – tin can (cylinder), sugar cube, book (rectangle) and the like. Counting manipulatives are also easy to find as you can use anything that you have a bunch of – marshmallows, paperclips, toilet rolls and more. Sorting and graphing manipulatives can be anything that differs in colour or shape – different coloured paper clips, beads or buttons or even cereal.
Before you spend the money on fancy math manipulatives, look around the house and see what there is you can use for free!
Giving the gift of learning
For many homeschoolers, learning is an integral part of their life, their everyday routine. Every day there is learning whether it be in the classroom, on a field trip or running errands.
It is important to encourage learning. An easy way to do this is giving educational gifts. A book, a game, a science kit or even a craft kit all have the potential to inspire learning in children. Don’t forget educational video games too – fun and learning together! Inspire learning not only in your own children, but other children to whom you give gifts.
You’re probably aware by now that the public schools routinely make a mockery of our kids’ education. Underpaid teachers are expected to do the best job possible with inferior materials and ill-considered curricula. It’s an experiment that was destined to fail from the beginning, but nowhere is that more obvious than in the realm of mathematics. Math skills remain applicable for our whole lives; engineers, physicists and many other folks with noble vocations rely on them each and every day.
For that reason, it’s up to parents to take matters into their own hands. In order to guarantee that your child gets the best, most well-rounded education possible, you’ll need to teach him some educational math games. Kids are generally computer savvy, so they might be able to get the CD ROM games up and running easier than you can. Don’t feel embarrassed – it’s absolutely essential that children are well versed in computers as well as math. Their futures depend on it.