Tagged with 'math'

Back to school is looking different for everyone, whether you are fully online, in-person, or a little bit of both. Learning Resources has you covered, we picked some of our favorite products that can help you elevate your student’s learning. This list contains five products that can be used together or separately in the classroom! As you use these products, you and your little ones will continually find new ways to use them.  

Translucent Geometric Shapes  

Using our Translucent Geometric Shapes, there are different exercises from sorting and classifying, identifying the shape, building, fractions, geometry, and more! The different angles of certain pieces allow for introduction an introduction to right, obtuse, and acute angles. This comprehensive geometry set includes fourteen different shapes in seven colors! Relational shapes are perfect for combining small shapes to form larger shapes in multiple ways. This set also features circles in whole, half and quarter increments, which open engaging avenues for fraction exploration. Encourage students to classify and sort the shapes by attribute, such as number of sides, number of angles, straight sides, curved sides, and so on. Have your students 

Shapes Don't Bug Me 

In conjunction with our Translucent Geometric Shapes, the Shapes Don't Bug Me set is bound to be a classroom favorite. Pieces are relational and translucent, so the creative opportunities are endless! Crawling in the garden or buzzing through the park, bold buggy shapes bring geometry out of the dark! Become an artist of geometry with Shapes Don’t Bug Me while learning that math can be as fun as a summer day. The best part about these shapes, is that they can be sanitized in between uses.  

Big Time Student Clock 

The Big Time Student Clock is a great way to help kids grasp time skills. Besides the fact that it is super fun to play with, hands-on, and will get them excited about telling time, it will also help them learn how a clock works, where the numbers are, and what order they go in. Teaching time can also be done in everyday conversations, have your student move the clock handles to 12:30 and explain that lunch is at that time. Telling time can be fun and the Big Time Student Clock is ready to play! 

Lights and Sounds Buzzers 

Kids will light up when they reach for the Lights and Sounds Buzzers. The lights and sounds answer buzzers get little ones giggling and imitating these silly sounds just press to listen add buzzers to any lesson for some extra fun. These buttons are great for teaching patience while waiting for their turn. The buttons include the following sounds: a siren, game-show buzzer, laser and voice saying, "Charge". 

Patterned Hand Pointers 

These engaging hand pointers are the perfect way to liven up any lesson plan-and encourage students to get excited about learning. These pointers draw student attention and interest and provides positive behavioral intervention. Patterned Hand Pointers show up sharply against light-colored surfaces, but works equally as well on pocket charts, word walls and more!  

Has your child ever pushed back when it comes to school or homework? My oldest daughter has always been a “workbook kid”. She absolutely loved worksheets and printables. We definitely do a ton of hands-on projects, but when it came to core subjects, like math and reading, she was completely content working in a book…until a few months ago. A daily battle began. She no longer wanted to sit at the table and breeze through concepts on paper. I gave her a few days off, but her resistance continued. I decided that I needed to reach her another way, so I decided to start Gameschooling.

Gameschooling is where you basically teach your child through playing games. What I love about homeschooling is that I can change our curriculum whenever necessary to meet the needs of my children! I sat down and made a list of topics that were age and skill-appropriate for my daughters, and then set out to find games that covered those subjects.

At their ages, a heavy focus is placed on numbers, counting, addition/subtraction, telling time, handling money, letter sounds, sight words and reading. Today I’m going to share a few of our favorite games that teach these concepts!

Sum Swamp™ Addition & Subtraction Game

Sum Swamp was one of the first math games I found that was appropriate and fun for both of my daughters (aged 4 & 6). Many games were either too advanced for my 4-year-old or too easy (and “boring”) for my 6-year-old. I was having a hard time finding something they could play together.

This game is fun, engaging, and competitive - even adults will enjoy it. It easily teaches addition and subtraction, which is something my 4-year-old had never been exposed to prior to this game. You can play a round in 10-15 minutes and there isn’t any complicated setup.

I Sea 10™ Math Game

I Sea 10! is another quick game we like to use to practice addition. The point of the game is to spot numbers that add up to 10. It can be 2 or more number groups and you race to make a number combination first. When you spot a combination, yell out I Sea 10! and the winner keeps the tiles. Watch out for sharks! If you flip one over, they will take your collected tiles along with them back into the box.

Money Bags™ Coin Value Game

We love Money Bags for practicing money concepts. It is a little more advanced because you have to add up the coins to make the correct money amount, so I will team up with my 4-year-old to play against my 6-year-old. I love how realistic the money is and it’s one of the only games I could find to teach this topic. It’s a really fun way to practice math and making change!

POP for Sight Words™ Game

I

really love the “POP” game line and was excited to grab POP for Sight Words. Let’s be honest, sight word practice can be really boring. The problem is, you can’t just skip it if you don’t feel like doing it. Sight words are necessary for reading. I play this game with my 6-year-old and it has made this subject a lot more enjoyable.

You pull popcorn out of the box and race to read the sight word. Obviously, a parent would win, so I give her about 5 seconds to “beat me” otherwise I answer. You try to collect the most popcorn. If you pick a card with POP! on it, you have to put all your popcorn back in the box. We also let her try to race through the popcorn on her own, making a pile that she knows and a pile that she doesn’t.

Snap It Up!® Phonics & Reading Game

Another game that we love playing together is Snap It Up! To make it easier for my 4-year-old, I read out the ending sound for the word family and we race to see if we have a card that would make a real word. The winner takes the card and a new word family card is displayed. The racing element and competition turn another mundane subject into a really fun game. 

Even though we homeschool, Gameschooling can be used with any child or family! It’s a great way to practice subjects from school or work on areas your child might be struggling to grasp. This has been a wonderful teaching option for our family, and it’s so successful that we’ve completely ditched workbooks for the remainder of this year. I highly recommend trying out this method of learning with your little ones.

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Host a STEM-tastic Playdate to Celebrate November 8!

Invite the whole crew over for National STEM Day this November 8th with a science-, technology-, engineering-, and math-themed playdate!National STEM Day began in 2015, as our nation began to recognize that STEM-centered careers were growing 70 percent faster than other occupations. Research has shown the introduction of STEM concepts to children can improve their social and emotional development, as well as their rational thinking skills.

STEM really goes beyond conveying knowledge from teacher to student. Kids learn problem-solving, critical thinking skills, and collaboration with their peers. Connections are made between school, community, and home that seem to stick. The real-life implications of STEM pull together ideas that teach children that what they learn, as well as the ideas they share, benefit our world as a whole.

Let’s bring together all these concepts into a big, fun playdate. With the help of Learning Resources’ STEM-centered products, we engineered an engaging afternoon with our friends, completely screen-free.(And another beauty of STEM? It knows no age. If little brothers and sisters want to join in on the fun, the more the merrier!)We sent out invites, had our friends over, and made an afternoon of activities!

STEM Station #1: Botley

Spread out on the living room floor for our first STEM Station was Botley. This little coding robot lives up to its reputation for out-of-the-box fun. From the first moment Botley lit up and began chatting with our friends, it was love at first code.

With just a quick skim of the directions, the friends were coding in minutes. Before we knew it, Botley was pushing around blocks and racing toward the finish line.

A solid 45 minutes was spent at the Botley station, as the friends took turns sending Botley backwards and in circles. (It was hard to tear the kids away to move to the next station, but our playdate clock was ticking.)

STEM Station #2: Beaker Creatures

Our friends moved from the floor to the kitchen table to discover the fizzy, funny wonder of the Beaker Creatures Reactor Pods. Each mysterious pod is filled with an alien traveler. Who were they going to discover?Each individually wrapped pod comes with a classification card that will help our friends figure out who is who.Time to drop in our first discovery.

As they waited and watch the water foam, the friends tried to figure out which alien could be lurking in the inky waters.

All set! Who did we get?

Filling out the identification card made the friends feel like they were classifying new species from out of this world.

And soon one bowl was not enough. Let’s dissolve more! Who can we add to our collection?

STEM Station #3: Coding Critters

We set up an additional folding table in the family room to accommodate all our scientists, technicians, engineers, and mathematics for more STEM-tastic discoveries. Station #3 included the Rumble and Bumble, the adorable Coding Critters. Similar to Botley, Rumble and Bumble are screen-free, coding fun. The Coding Critters come with a storybook. First things first, the older friends read to the younger ones about with whom they were about to play.

Rumble and Bumble’s playset was fun to set up, but even more fun to knockdown. Once the friends figured out how to get Rumble moving, the crashing began!

The Coding Critters have a “code mode” and a “play mode”. In the play mode, our friends began to interact with Rumble like it was a real live pet! There were even challenges in the storybook…one was how to teach Rumble to have a snack with Bumble.

Like all awesome playdates, our time had to end. But the afternoon of STEM-centered fun will not soon be forgotten!Happy National STEM Day!

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