More games and fun

Today we decided to focus again on some fun games for learning.

Math:  The older boys played Zap It! multiplication today.  Using two 12 sided dice they took turns rolling the dice and multiplying to find the answers.  If they got it right they got a chip and if not it was the next players turn.  However, when/if they rolled doubles they were Zapped and had to put all their chips back in the pile.

The boys playing Zap It!

Evan begged to play Add A Bug again.  He loves this game so much that he even played with Alec last night while I was cooking dinner.  I agreed but asked if we could use regular dice instead of the ones that came with the game since they only go up to 3 and I really wanted him to practice harder addition skills than that.  He agreed and we decided we'd go around the board three times before declaring a winner.  He got creative and decided to put wasps on various spaces around the board; if you land on a wasp you have to go back.

I love the creative thinking!

We ended the game and Evan had 15 bugs and I had 17.  He told me I won by just two bugs... hey he did a little subtraction in there too and he didn't even know it!  We finished up math with a minute test for the boys.

Evan playing Add a Bug

Language Arts: Evan and I played sight word memory.

 I found some free printable sight words and printed off two sets of the list onto oak tag paper.  Using just two of the five lists we had that gave us 40 cards (20 words) to work with.  

Evan loves memory games and I don't know why I didn't think of playing with sight words sooner.  He certainly remembered the words while we were playing the game.  He was even able to read all of his matches back to me at the end of the game.  Once again he won; 12 to 9 and he was able to tell me that he won by 3-- more subtraction! 

Evan playing sight word memory

While Evan and I were playing memory I had the older boys taking turns playing spelling games on Spelling City; rather than make up my own word list I just searched for third grade words and pulled up a random list.

They can choose from memory, unscramble, hangman, word search, etc.  I set the timer for 15 minutes and while they were waiting for their turn they were silently reading anything of their choosing.  We finished up language arts with Evan reading another mini book to me.

Ian reading a few books

Evan watched Alec playing Hang Mouse on Spelling City

Alec reading while Evan plays Word Monkey on the Kindle

Ian decides to play a word search game on Spelling city

Geography:  Alec and Ian begged me to play Stack the States this morning while I was getting dressed and working in my craft room.

While I don't typically allow anything with screens during our school day I agreed today and they took turns playing Stack the States and Stack the Countries.  I think they played for 30 minutes or so!  I decided that was enough geography for today. 

More spelling practice:  Evan argued that the boys got to play so many screens today and he didn't so he asked if he could play Word Monkey on the Kindle while I was making lunch.  He was spelling words to me and talking all about the stuff he was learning while playing the video game.

 It made me think of how little I really utilize media in our schooling day.  While I would not want to get to the point where my kids are just starting at computer games all day they do have value and I should utilize them a bit more often. 

After all, learning is so much fun when games are involved!