Today Logi-Bear (5) referred to a candle as a “smelling good” and I realized that I won’t have these moments much longer. By ‘these moments’ I mean the ones where they use the best descriptions of objects when they don’t know the real name. They come few and far between now. That was one of…
My kids hate math and sometimes that makes me feel like a failure. Okay that was a bit dramatic, but not far from the truth. Baloo really hates math and I often feel like I have failed him in that area. He’s not bad at math (although it’s also not his strength) but he does…
Multiplication is one of those topics that we come back to again and again. For some reason, memorizing his times tables is the bane of Baloo’s existence. We don’t necessarily push it too hard, but I do think it is important. Having your multiplication tables memorized makes higher math so so so much easier. I…
I am a bibliophile to the core (that’s ‘book lover’ for those of us who like to appear fancy) and always expected that my kids would automatically be book lovers, too. I thought that would just be genetic. And while my kids do love books, it took time and effort to get us to that…
Anyone remember the episode of Friends where Joey buys the letter V encyclopedia? That’s all I can think of when I think of the letter V 😀 Anyway, we are on to the letter Vv! And of course, V is for Volcano – because volcanos are really awesome and interesting…from a distance. Check out this…
Logi-Bear is just starting to get into addition so we’ve explored many different ways of demonstrating addition visually. Math is such an abstract concept. I believe to truly grasp math you have to understand what is happening first. So we started with combining groups of objects (if I have 2 cars and you have 1…
Practicing our math facts, addition and multiplication, has been a big priority over here lately. We have been using every technique I could possibly think of! Mostly games, of course. But I wanted something that was a bit more portable, fun, engaging, and that they could really own. So I had to make interactive booklets….
I have two kids memorizing multiplication facts now and they have both improved by leaps and bounds since we started introducing fun and engaging ways for multiplication practice! The code breaker multiplication was probably the favorite, but the scratch off multiplication wasn’t far behind. I’ve been worked on games, activities, printables, and much more for multiplication….
My kids hate writing. I hear this from parents and teachers over and over and over. My kids hate writing. Typically people mean the physical act of writing, not the process of thinking of words to put on a paper. And this activity handles the physical act without the process part. My kids will dictate…
LEGO is the key to all learning. Okay, not literally, but my kids flip out when I grab the LEGO Bricks during school time. They get so excited. So of course we had to do LEGO Place Value when that topic came up! Let me back up a bit. I took a challenge to minimalize…
Royal (7) hit multiplication in our math curriculum and shut down immediately. He thought it was too hard, too early, and he would never get it. I didn’t know someone could have such strong emotions over something they have never tried to do before! He’s even seen Times Tales and picked up some multiplication facts….
For the longest time, 10 Apples Up On Top has been one of Logi-Bear’s favorite books. I have it memorized (and then some. I could have memorized it in another language at this point). All in all, it’s not a bad story. Just very repetitive. I do believe in the importance of repetition in books…