What We're Loving Lately!

I must admit that when I finished off my post yesterday with 'I'll be back tomorrow...' it was kind of an idle threat.  I mean, Sunday nights are usually jam packed with planning and prepping and organising for the coming week.  But since I'm all done, sitting on the couch with a cup of tea and a movie on the TV there must be only one reason why: I've forgotten half the things I was supposed to have done. :) Either way, it gives me time to share with you a few things that my kidlets have been LOVING in the past week or so. 

First up is a game that is so simple, but super effective... and my kids are mad for it! In Flip Five/Flip Ten, children aim to find pairs of cards that equal 5 or 10.  At the beginning of the year, we played Flip Five - using only the cards from 0-5.  Now we are playing Flip Ten with all of the cards (0-10).  The rules are easy - turn over two cards.  If they add up to the total of 5 or 10 the kidlet gets to keep them.  Way back, we all used counters to check the total of our pairs (and some of my Preppies still do), but this game has been amazing for helping them remember facts to 5 and 10 (and everything in between, because they have to figure out the total regardless of whether they get to keep the pair or not!).  Grab this game from Growing Kinders on TpT.

Our second favourite Maths game is one that I came up with when we were just starting to learn about teen numbers.  I call it 'Chook Champs'. :)  Each child needs 2 ten frames made from egg cartons, and to play all you need is a die and some counters (we use unifix).  On their turn, children roll the die and add that many counters to their ten frames.  They tell the group how many they have altogether (without counting, just using their ten frame knowledge) before the next player rolls.  When a kidlet has 20 cubes, they swap them for a chook card (which is just a cute picture of a chicken).  Whoever has the most cards at the end of the game is the 'Chook Champ'!  My kids literally cheer every time I tell them they'll be playing this game - it is a great way for them to practise recognising teen numbers as a group of ten and some more and also develops addition concepts (although I'm not sure that's why they cheer!).

A precious few of my kidlets are still working on recognising number words to 10, so last week they used Mel From the Pond's Match Me!  There's 3 cards for each number: the numeral, number word and dot pattern.  Go and grab it immediately - it's a freebie! :)

We gave our new letter beads a try to spell out sight words - and they were more of a challenge for some little fingers than I thought they would be.  Lacing the letters on so that they were the right way around was also tricky.  At the end of this group, all of my kidlets were super proud of their little line of words. :)

We're at that lovely stage of the year where reading is becoming more natural.  My kidlets have blitzed their sight words and know just when to use their Eagle Eyes, Stretchy Snake, Lips the Fish or Chunky Monkey strategies.  They could happily while away as much time as I let them reading with a friend or a Reading Buddy.  

Well, that's one week all wrapped up.  Let's start all over again tomorrow! :)

Lauren