Have you ever thought about how arbitrary measurements are? I find it kind of interesting that we use systems of measurement every day but they’re really just standardized systems we made up! Of course, it makes sense to have a standardized system. I still remember the first time I realized that humans made up our…
When learning to read, it’s all about the tricks. They’re not really tricks, of course, more like little chunks of information to build upon. Digraphs are a chunk of their own, and quite an important chunk! After all, if you don’t learn that ‘sh’ doesn’t say sss-ha, you’ll never be able to figured out that…
What do you do with a child who thinks reading is amazing, pretends to read constantly, yet isn’t quite ready for sounding out words? You teach them sight words! I’m pretty much on board with teaching phonics and that’s how we taught both Royal and Baloo, primarily. We limit sight words and push through with…
Sometimes I feel so stuck with learning math facts – or the boys learning math facts that is. They’re not highly motivated so the idea just falls flat on them. So I’m continually trying to find new, fun, and novel ways to get them to practice! I knew I wanted a train doubles plus 1…
I love puzzles and I was always one of those people who loved having a puzzle on the table to work on little by little. Somehow over the years, we’ve gotten out of the habit of puzzle solving. We don’t even really do many puzzles with the kids, which makes me sad. I think there…
What do you do when you want to get your young kids excited about math? You find a theme that resonates with them and find a way to incorporate math into that theme! Last week we did dinosaurs, which was wildly popular at my house. Transportation themes come in a close second. And I just…
We are color coding our LEGO bricks. Not even kidding! We have about a million sharp and pointy LEGO bricks all over the place. Even the cats hate stepping on the…but they are getting organized and it is so awesome. As a kid, we had a small box of LEGO bricks. Each kid got to…
Getting kids excited about reading by themselves can be tricky. We spend years and years reading to them and they don’t want that to stop (and rightfully so) but sometimes that also means they resist reading by themselves. My kids are not really motivated readers. They take some prodding. But with easy reader books that…
I have the harder time finding fun work for my older kids (especially Baloo, at 10). Sometimes he just wants something fun like his brothers! But if I make something just for him, I have two younger kids begging to join in. So when I can put something together that they can all use, it’s…
What do you do for kids that are having trouble memorizing their math facts? All of my boys are working on memorizing some facts and without motivation, it just seems like slow going. We play games, watch math shows, and even do bedtime math. Sometimes though, I need something that I can just hand over…
I’ve never been very good at Scrabble even though my mom is a whiz. I’m happy to get a 3 letter word down and she isn’t happy if she doesn’t get at least one BINGO in a game. We’re just on different Scrabble levels. So activities like making a word out of a bigger word…
How do you get your kids interested and invested in reading? I’ve mentioned it a million times now, but again, Logi-Bear is so close to reading. He wants to read and happily works with me, but I feel like he still needs a bit more work with letter sounds before he’s truly ready. But I…