Family Math Nights

Math nights can be a great fun way to interactive and apply math concepts to help solidify usage. We have done them at home, done them at the library, had co-op nights around them and the families have always had a fantastic time! This site - Math Night - was featured in the Clickschooling Newsletter this week and reminded me that we haven't had one in a really long time!
Some of my favorite modules are -

   

and some of my favorite resources include - 

From a reader -  

Kate Nonesuch said...

You may be interested in my free family math resource, funded by the Office of Literacy and Essential Skills, HRSDC.
Family Math Fun!
A manual for educators and parents who want to promote math thinking in kids of all ages.
• Things to do in the kitchen and on a walk, rhymes, games, and things to make, all to promote math thinking and learning.
• Math for the whole person: spirit, heart, body and mind are all connected in the activities in this book. When these are in balance, math becomes part of our whole lives, not a beast or a barrier.
• Patterns, recipes, and hand-outs all included (109 pages). •

Download it free at http://www.nald.ca/library/learning/familymath/cover.htm

Weekly Update - Week of Game Play

DN has become very motivated and is finishing his entire weeks worth of work in just about a day, so he was only here Monday and Tuesday this week and I sent him home with a copy of Lord of the Flies to read and a calendar to keep track of any basketball he plays or other "phys. ed-ish" type activities he is doing as this is something that we feel is really important. He also responsible to do Khan Academy and watch CNN Student News each day while he is home. My hope is that in the free time that he has he will discover something that will spark his interest and he might start to see that learning goes beyond worksheets, report writing, and textbooks.


KM moved along smoothly with her lessons per usual. She has been working on a story that is in journal format and decided to turn it into a fictitious blog, pop on over if you feel like checking it out - HERE. She is planning on adding to it with some of her manga drawings, so it should be pretty interesting! She has two more weeks left in her poetry class she is taking via Skype and is getting a bit anxious about the final assignment which is to write a critical analysis of a poem. Formal writing has never been her strong suit, but it is more about her lack of confidence than her actual writing skills. I am fairly certain that she will do just fine and she is excited that she will be continuing with this group and doing a literature study of Bronte's Wuthering Heights.

Click here to get the answer!

Learning this week centered around a lot of game play. They played a round of Math Jeopardy from What's Your Angle Scholastic Math Games Resource. For health this week we played the Professor Noggin's Human Body game.  I am always shocked by the ones that we get right, as well as the ones that we get wrong.

As part of our U.S. History we have be doing activities from Colonial Days: Discover the Past with Fun Projects, Games, Activities, and Recipes (American Kids in History Series) and this week we played a Native American Stick Toss Game. It had a lot to do with luck, more than anything, as you simply toss the sticks in the air and add up your score based on how the sticks land. The kids seem to enjoy it and the scores went back and forth quite a few times!

KM started practicing for the World Education Games this week! She has participated in some Math events previously but this will be the first time she will be doing the spelling and science competitions so she wants to get as much practice in as possible. There is still plenty of time to register HERE!

KM also had fun with music and dance on the Wii this week! We all LOVE the Wii! It is such a great way to incorporate fun into learning while getting everyone up and moving!

World Education Games - Full Registration & Practice is open!!!

Here are the dates -
World Spelling Day - 6 March 2012
World Maths Day - 7 March 2012
World Science Day - 8 March 2012


Be sure to register early so that your kids can get in as much practice time as possible!!!
Practice begins today!

Pre-registration is open for The World Education Games

Pre-registration is now open!!! Get ready to challenge yourself and others around the world!

Here are the dates -
World Spelling Day - 6 March 2012
World Maths Day - 7 March 2012
World Science Day - 8 March 2012

Practice begins Feb 1 so be sure to register to get as much warm up time in as possible!

What do you do when...

a hurricane / tropical storm hits on a birthday and you loose electricity for 9 hours?

Play monopoly for 4.5 hours!!! 

Then have the cake after dark so that it glows brighter! 

Longest power outage we have ever had to deal with, but we made the best of it! We finally broke down and hooked the generator up after 7 hours because we were worried about the fridge and we let the kids plug in the t.v. and dvd player so they could watch Eclipse! I don't think this is a birthday that he will forget.

Summer Curriculum Picks - Starting 8th Grade

I believe I have most of KM's 8th grade curriculum choices laid out. I have decided however to list them each session, as I had done a while back, because we do change our minds quite frequently and I want to be sure to leave lots of space for changes and new interests that are developed along the way.

We school year round in 10 week sessions so we begin our "grade" year in the summer. KM will be an 8th grader started July 5th and will be studying the following topics -

English Language Arts - there will be a very strong focus on writing over the summer utilizing our free Mondays to boast ELA up to two days a week.

Math - KM will be finishing up Algebra, utilizing the free Ko's Journey subscription we received and working on word problems -

Science is always a huge area of study for KM so we are not slowing down, but charging ahead into the time line approach -

History will also be continuing on a steady pace and we hope to have Volume 2 completed by the end of the summer -

Music will be continuing with piano, voice and some extras -

We will also be doing some electives in Financial Literacy using Brain Pop and finishing up our Ocean Study using lots of movies on Netflix. Our physical education will center around swimming and bowling - Kids Bowl Free. We will be using some free resources for Art from the National Gallery of Art.

Since I had posted about thinking outside the box KM thought it would be fun to post some of her top Wii and DS game picks that she finds very educational...

Doodle Dice - Review

KM loves any kind of game! Card games, board games, Wii Games, etc.... whatever it is wants to play! So I saw Doodle Dice when I was randomly browsing through Rainbow Resource before the Holidays and thought - "Hey that looks kinda cool!" BOY WAS I RIGHT!

SEE WHAT YOUR DICE CAN DOODLE!™

Create a ‘doodle’ with a few rolls of the DOODLE DICE™. There's a different doodle pictured on each card in the deck. When you build a doodle that matches one of the cards , you take that card. Block an opponent's turn or take one of their cards away. Collect one card of each color and you win! It's the fun challenging way for everyone in your family to a be a ‘doodle artist’!

This game is so much fun. We spent hours playing it the day we opened it and then on New Year's Eve the adults and the kids were arguing over who was going to get to play it first!

The coolest thing about this game is the different chance factors that go along with the strategy! The rules are fairly easy to remember and it is just FUN. It is fast paced, so that no one loses interest and you never know what is going to happen next.

Here are some pics -

KM liked that as a bonus she got to practice her Spanish!