Cooperative Board Game teaches about Natural Backyard Habitat

Max the Cat cooperative Board Game

Max the Cat is Hungry! Scurry, Climb or Fly for your Lives!

Max the Cat: A Cooperative Board Game

While blue jays sing in the trees, chipmunks scavenge for nuts and seeds, and mice do what mice do, a fat old cat named Max finds his way out the door of his house.

His owners have only so many treats to get him back inside, and Max is a quick treat-eater. Can you distract Max long enough for the woodland creatures to get safely home?

Watch out– Max is hungry!

This fun cooperative board game will help children understand about the natural relationships between cats and the small woodland creatures living in your backyard.

How do you measure a snail?

Measuring a Snail

Math is fun, artistic, musical, historical, scientific, active, something to write home about.

Mathematics can be taught using fun, interactive learning materials as part of unit studies and as an everyday part of life.

All children can learn and enjoy math when given the right materials and opportunities. The best games for learning math involve children working together to discover the mathematical principles behind the activity.

Children should be expected to make up their own math games and play those games with others often.

Math can be enhanced by explaining what you have learned to others and by writing down those explanations in math journals.

Exciting ideas for teaching math can be found at I Love Teaching Math.

Photo Credit: He’s too tiny to measure up.
on Flickr, Creative Commons.

Feed the Frog Word Games

Feed the Frog

Photo Credit: Frog Scrubbie Holder
from Storybook Ceramics

Lively Lime Frog Scrubbie or Sponge Holder

Each frog scrubbie holder is individually hand painted and glazed inside and out for complete washability and durability. This frog holder measures approximately 4 inches tall.

Feed the Frog

Teaching Sight Words from Creative Teaching

Jo made a Feed the Frog game for her homeschooled children to help them learn sight words.

The first child picks a bug out of a bag, says the word, and feeds the word to the frog If the child did not know the word, the other child or an adult could help.

If you pair up: one child who is struggling with the words, and another who knows all of the words then the one who is struggling can get hints from the other.

If the struggler is also asked to provide hints to the one who knows the words it will help him or her to focus on the words and practice using clues to remember the words.

Jo’s children children made “ribbit” sounds as the frog ate, or made the frog burp after it ate all the bugs. SheI was okay with that because she knew if the frog was full, the children’s minds were growing and filling up also (burp!).

Arcademic Skill Builders – Word Frog

Word Frog is an online game that provides practice in matching antonyms, synonyms, and homonyms.

The target word appears on the frog, with the word category underneath defining the relationship to be matched.

The words to be eaten by the frog appear on flies.

For more fun froggy learning games check out my Frog Unit Study: Hopping to Learn…

Big Bad Pig: An Emergent Reader

Big Bad Pig by Allan Ahlberg

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Big Bad Pig is one of the funniest books written for emergent readers. With very limited vocabulary Allan Ahlberg reverses the story of the Big Bad Wolf and turns it into a tale that is not only easily read by beginning readers but is fun to read for both the child and the adult.

When my children began to read, I looked for Beginning Readers that would capture their attention in order to help them develop a love of reading that would last a lifetime. I found that in Red Nose Readers. These funny little books are a pleasure for both adults and children. Showing children how much pleasure that you derive from reading is essential to developing a lifetime love of reading.

Red Nose Readers will help your emergent reader take off to a lifetime of reading pleasure.

View all my reviews >>

ThinkFun Hoppers: Fun, Educational Game – Stocking Stuffer Idea

ThinkFun Hoppers Frog Game

When I was looking for stocking stuffers for my frog loving children the other day I ran across ThinkFun Hoppers.

ThinkFun Hoppers is a fun, educational game that my kids love to play anytime, anywhere and the case is so compact that it can be slipped into a Christmas Stocking. My kids love this game.

I include in my Frog Unit Study. The kids love to play with these little frogs as they hop over eachother from lilypad to lilypad.

ThinkFun Hoppers comes with a lilypad covered pond, a pond full of green frogs and a single red frog. There are cards that can be used to set up scenarios for jumping to eliminate all the green frogs. The cards go from easy to hard. My kids love challenging themselves to try to do all the cards in as short a time as possible.

ThinkFun Hoppers can help children who are beginning to understand addition and subtraction as they add frogs to the pond and subtract them while playing the game.

ThinkFun Hoppers and Multiple Intelligences

Kinesthetic: The movement of the frogs and the action of placing the frogs on the board helps to reinforce their sense of the mathematical concepts of addition and subtraction.

Visual: Cute frogs and appealing lilypads attracts visual learners to the ThinkFun Hoppers game while seeing the actual number of frogs change as they are added or removed helps visual learners.

Auditory: I ask my auditory learners to work with a partner to talk about the number of frogs on the board as they are added or subtracted. Hearing the information aloud reinforces the mathematical concepts for them.

Write the Room

Each morning I gather my little tadpoles around me and start our day by reading a poem or singing a song. One of our favorite frog songs th classic, 5 Green and Speckled Frogs .

Five Green and Speckled Frogs
sat on a speckled log
Eating some most delicious bugs.
Yum, yum!

One jumped into the pool,
where it was nice and cool.
Then there were four green speckled frogs,
Glub glub.

Four green and speckled frogs…
Three green and speckled frogs…
Two green and speckled frogs…
One green and speckled frog…
…Then there were no green speckled frogs!
Glub glub, glub, glub

I have written the words out on large chart paper and had them laminated for durability.

Beside the chart I have an umbrella stand of pointers for the Froglet of the Day to use for pointing to the words while everyone follows along. I used to use a yardstick but recently discovered that there are many more exciting possibilities.

Counting Pumpkins

Too Many Pumpkins by Linda White

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
In the story Too Many Pumpkins by Linda White Rebecca grew up eating so much pumpkin that she never wanted to even see pumpkins again in her life.

One year by accident a pumpkin drops off a truck, the seeds plant themselves and a whole pumpkin patch grows in her yard. Being frugal she must use all the pumpkins so she makes breads, pies, soups and Jack O’Lanterns for all the neighbors.

Not only is this a fun story to read but a wonderful accompaniment to a class learning place value while counting pumpkin seeds.

We used page protectors to cover some of the pages in the book and then used dry erase markers to circle groups of 10 pumpkins to find out how many pumpkins were on each page.

View all my reviews >>

Letters for Learning

Is your child ready to learn to spell, learn letter sounds or make their own crossword puzzles? There are dozens of activities you can do to encourage your child to learn letters and words while playing with letters.

One of our favorite games is to take a handful of Alpha-bits Cereal and see how many words we can make by rearranging the letters. Sometimes we work together and other times we turn it into a competition.

One day we spread peanut butter on graham crackers and wrote messages using letter cereal. If you have a child allergic to peanut butter you could use hummus, cream cheese or some other favorite spread.

How do you use letters for teaching?

Beginning Chapter books about Animals

The Adventures of Old Man Coyote by Thornton W. Burgess

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is the first book by Thornton Burgess that we read.  I discovered it in my dad’s bedroom where he kept his treasures from his childhood. All of my children have since loved it.

View all my reviews >>

You can find unit studies to accompany many of Thornton Burgess’ books at Creatures of the Woodlands as well as specific ones such as White Foot the Woodmouse Unit Study, and Raccoon Unit Study which includes activities related to The Adventures of Bobby Coon.

Books for Beginning Readers

Big Bad Pig by Allan Ahlberg

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Big Bad Pig by Allan Ahlberg is one of the funniest Beginning Readers also known as Emergent Readers, that I have ever read.

Children already know the story of the Big, Bad Wolf but this reversal of characters is not only hilarious but also educational. Allan Ahlberg used very few words to convey the story by rearranging the order of the words and matching them carefully to the picture.

Most first graders will be able to read this book during the first few months of school.

View all my reviews >>