Friday, April 16, 2010

The outside is my farm.....

There was a time when children lacked educations and learned everything from home. The amish are quite familiar of these lessons of life for their children. My mother learned on the farm with her family of 9. I find every opportunity for my children to grow and learn no matter where I am: The grocery store, the post office, the drs. office, etc.

Here is a great idea I came up with today. M-F My kids and I wake up to take my daughter to school in the mornings. This has been the routine for years but today.. yes finally today it dawned on me the possiblities of learning. On our less than 5 minute drive we pass a college where many cars are parked on the st. So starting tomorrow my kids will have to pay attention to the cars and count the "color" of the day car.

Counting Cartons...$2

I recently found a 10 pack of dice at the $ store. I thought I would replace my Yahtzee dice that the kids have lost but then had a bright idea. My son came home yesterday and was so excited to share that he learned subtraction. So I gave him 2 dice and had him roll. I then arranged the dice to show a subtraction problem that he could count and answer. He LOVED it.
The following morning I used a foam egg carton and placed the dice where the eggs go. Bella and James gave a light shake and opened the cartons to reveal the dice with their numbers (not hard or dice will combine...good lesson for addition) Using a bag of beans the first thing they had to do was match the number on the dice with the beans on the table. So for 3 on the dice the placement of bean would be the same. My 4yo did this successfully but my 3yo had a little hard time so I drew some dots on cardstock to represent each face of the dice and he had to match the dice with the paper then place the beans on the correct dice. The last part of this lesson was the counting. Once they had the beans arranged they needed to count the beans and place them in the carton with the dice. They played for hours. I used pinto beans which were everywhere because of their size so I would recommend maybe a fava or lima bean for lil hands. Will post more pix later.

Have tried updating since but...you know the cyber lost and found

I have had a few crafts but have had them all go to the cyberland and was to lazy to retrype everything again. Been MIA lately because of some medical issues but will be back posting some more thrifty ideas for learning...