April 2014 Things we did part 1

April is a busy month. Here we go!

I was lucky to get to attend several exclusive concerts by these musicians:

Puzzles and games were played quite often. The game closet was a well used source of fun for the kids.

 Baby continued to grow cute and adorable. His baby hair became blond and invisible to pictures. Siblings continued to love to hold and cuddle him.

  Here's that castle Princess started coloring last month, now almost finished.

 Dinoguy practiced beautiful music on his violin.

We enjoyed our zip line. Little guy found out he loved it once he was willing to give it a try.

We watched LDS General conference and did lots of crafts.

 Baby was at the age to sit in a bumbo to be part of family fun. Here he is learning about his brother's silliness.

 Family breakfast for conference of chocolate waffles with strawberries.

 Examining the resemblance to mom in a selfie.

 Dinoguy was in a small orchestra accompanying a choir. It was a long concert.

 Wonderful spring weather meant lots of walks. On this one, the kids decided they needed pictures taken.

Learning update

I asked Dinoguy what he wanted to learn about, and he responded first with Vikings! We have done a lot of Vikings in the past few months and I thought we were done. Guess not. I asked if there was anything new, and he responded Greeks and Egyptians. Okay. Then he added Aztecs, Mayas and Incas (which we have also studies in the past few months, but sure, we'll look for more!) If you don't see the theme, it's war and fighting. He knows them from playing the game "Age of Empires" and loves to learn more about it. I am going to figure out some new ways to study these cultures with him, I am glad he loves history and learning about them. We had to return the coolest Viking News book to the library finally (ran out of renewals).

His handwriting is absolutely fabulous for an 8 yr old. I'm glad to be able to say that now. He was excited about a spelling book I got him. I think because it is something new that I did not get one for his brother. I'm not sure. It is an experiment to help him feel more confidence in his spelling abilities. Because he can spell more words than he thinks he can. I liked the look of the book and its games and activities. It's called "144 words your 2nd grader will learn to spell" or something like that by Barron's.

Trainboy found a pedometer today and spent the day running in circles to up the numbers on the pedometer. He also loves to hold the stop watch on our daily walks. He is jumping around topically in mathematics and loves it all. We talked about reading clocks today and referencing things like the face of a clock. We also talked about the fractions 1/2 and 1/3 and finding 1/2 and 1/3 of different numbers. He has so many arithmetic facts in his head - or he can calculate them quickly, I'm not sure. It's pretty fascinating though. He prefers doing mathematical topics to others but really he just loves to learn. It's wonderful to see that trait in my kids since it is what I want to nurture! We did some paper folding too and made cubes and boxes today and he enjoyed that. He likes to create things out of paper and I have been reading some books about teaching geometry concepts with origami to expand on this.

Princess is a serial crayon artist. If she finds a crayon she colors whatever is nearby. Neither of my boys were such enthusiastic artists. She has colored every page of a note pad, bills, trash, newspapers, coloring books, the table, the wall, the doors, the furniture... I know its typical of a toddler, but really the boys did not do it. I said "Paper only please" and they didn't ever try to draw on anything else. She also has me read at least 10 books to her a day, probably more. It's entertaining the variety. We go from Sesame Street to the Solar System to what causes reflexes in your body and then back to simple counting books. Benefit of older siblings I guess that she gets such variety. She also is really into figuring out floor puzzles currently. Basically she's a ball of 2 year old energy and our first child who takes her clothes off whenever she feels like it. Love getting to know her and her vibrant personality.

Baby is so laid back. He smiles and laughs with us when he's awake and not eating. He is doing well at growing big and is about 16 pounds already. Love big babies!

We are starting Spanish again and doing just 6 words of vocabulary a day adding. An idea from a Charlotte Mason book I was rereading recently.

I got lots of great games for Christmas and my big educational goal is to play a game every day with my kids. Quiddler is fabulous for spelling and phonics and its just fun. Fixitman doesn't like losing to Princess though. Set is a great math game I've always loved and I'm glad to have my own version now. We also have Sequence, Yahtzee and Uno now as well as a Harry Potter trivia game. Add in the big list of games we already had and we could play a different game every day for over a month. I really think they learn more from game play than workbooks. The workbooks just give them a feeling of making progress apparently because they like them.

Additionally to our weekly park day, I am thinking we are going to go somewhere more "wild" like a nature preserve once a week or several times a month. Still trying to work out how to add that in to our life without feeling too busy or stressed. While we get a lot of outdoors time, its mostly city/suburban. So thinking and working that one out.

Chess & Hnefatafl

Few things make me happier than my family happily playing games and eating pie together. Pear pie and chess fun made for a happy Monday evening this week.

Tuesday morning found Dinoguy reading some of the Viking books we checked out of the library and asking to play hnefatafl, (King's table) an ancient Scandinavian board game that was a favorite of the Vikings.

He and his dad decided that a spare piece of insulation board would make a great board and then we picked out some legos for the soldiers and king.

So we're happily playing hnefatafl here as well as chess. You can try it out online here if you don't feel like making your own board. :D

Playing games with Grandpas

Dinoguy decided he wanted to teach DinoGrandpa how to play backgammon while he was visiting. (This involved me sitting there and explaining the rules to both, since Dinoguy only vaguely remembered the rules from the last time we had played.) Then I played backgammon with Trainboy.

DinoGrandpa & Dinoguy then played Battleship while Trainboy & I played Blokus Trigon and then switched to Trainboy playing battleship with DinoGrandpa and Dinoguy & I making designs with Blokus. Playing Blokus with the boys involves a lot of free play and design making. Trainboy's game of Battleship quickly became him playing individually with the ships, since he liked to sail them around his board, making guessing where the ships were doubly hard. Here is a photo Dinoguy took of his picture he made on the blokus board.Of course the boys played Hide & Seek with Grandpa Actuary while he was here - they love to use their new best hiding places in games with him. The boys loved having their Grandpas visit, even for a short weekend.

Construction! (and a fun game link!)

We were introduced to a creative way to let the kids practice their construction skills this weekend - styrofoam! While at a friends' house, the boys were given screwdrivers, hammers, nails and screws and big pieces of styrofoam to create whatever they wanted. Both went to town and had a great time making creations. The fun continued when we brought home some styrofoam! Here are some photos I snapped of Dinoguy working hard today on a new creation.

I was also sent a link to a fun Christmas tree puzzle where you have to connect the paths to light up all the lights on the tree. We have had a lot of fun playing it today. Trainboy loves it, Fixitman loves it... it is just a entertaining puzzle! So check it out! :) Link Hope you had a lovely weekend too!

Saturday

Lots of morning cuddles and watching the movie Ratatouille. Dinoguy asks if we can open our own restaurant and feed rats. Make sweet potato waffles.

Hang Christmas lights on the outside of the house. Boys sing impromptu songs and help joyfully.Trainboy in front of the lights this evening

Lunch and then we drive to drop Dinoguy & Fixitman off at the super secret location of Dinoguy's (late) birthday surprise with dad.Fixitman doesn't want to deal with a camera. So here they are when we dropped them off.

Trainboy & I go and find a letterbox then come home and make saxophone cookies (and other instruments and Christmas ones too!) Watch videos of Thomas' Christmas and Toy trains at Christmas.
I also got a saxophone, drum & piano concert. He is asking for a flute and guitar now too!
Prepping and freezing produce from cheap sales earlier in the week. Snacking on leftover pie, salad, cheesecake...

Took Sarge for a walk/looked at the Christmas lights in our neighborhood.

Checked out Bembo's Zoo and Classics for Kids games with Trainboy. He likes Vivaldi's Four Seasons: Spring better than Handel's Water Music. Though he did say it sounded like Water. He wrote his own Spring songs in their compose your own music area afterward.

Time to go pick up Dinoguy & Fixitman. (They were at Six Flags with the free tickets Dinoguy won this summer.) Lovely day.

Family Golf

Family golf is a special time set aside on Saturdays for families to play on one of the courses. Because of the recent flooding, only 5 of the 9 holes were available, which was perfect for us. Just enough golfing to have a great time. Plus, we were the only family on the course, so there was no pressure at all. We had a blast.

Moon sand

Or Move Sand, as Dinoguy calls it, is an interesting toy where you get perfectly moldable sand that never dries out and a cute little floaty to "contain" it. Yeah. Right. There was sand everywhere, especially when we tried to "share" it when playing. Really this is a 1 person toy, but it was fascinating to play with and a great present Trainboy got for his b-day a while back and then I hid since we were about to move, and I didn't want to deal with it.

It does present a storage problem to some extent, the floaty container is currently just sitting on a high closet shelf, b/c the containers it came in were not reusable and I had no idea what to do with it.

This was our first activity in a lovely long Sunday afternoon of game playing. Last Sunday of course, b/c I procrastinated scanning in the Chuck E Cheese pictures for a week and a half so I have a back log of things I want to blog about and not enough time to do it all at once, so the back long continues.

Note the difference in the background between the two photos. The first one is framed so you can't see the messy cart or the disarray on the shelves, but sadly, I like the second photo better for the kids faces, even though it shows that my kitchen is not clean. Oh well. Life happens right? :)

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun we have had with the moon sand - building a castle and then destroying it and then repeating. The boys really enjoyed it, at least, they did once we started taking turns, alternating between that and making patterns with the connect 4 board. (Which we have yet to actually play according to the actual "rules". There are just too many other fun ways to play with it!)

Lastly, another picture of Sarge, who wasn't sure what I was doing with the camera and tried to shake paws with me when I took his picture too, when he barked at me for taking the kids picture. It's a pretty good picture though he looks worried in it, I guess the flash freaked him out?

Another weekend of fun

Truthfully this post is 2 weeks late, and I'm a slacker in posting, but whatever. I took the photos, so here's the post.

More yard work. The back yard came with a icky Dish network pole in the middle of it, definitely had to go. And yes, we asked a Dish network installer about coming to remove it and he laughed and told us to throw it out. So it was up to us to get this sucker out of the ground. First photo is the above ground part, which Fixitman got off relatively easily.

Second photo is the evil part that was below ground, connected by a rope to the poles we used as leverage to get it out finally after digging a huge hole about 2 feet deep and trying to turn it and shake it and still not getting it loose still. Yep, it was a stupid screw piece in clay soil. Yay for fun! "Definitely not a standard installation" says Fixitman. This took 4 hours out of our day to figure out how to get it out. So much fun!!!


Finally is Dinoguy filling the hole back up, the "fun" part, before using the mower to mulch more leaves for us. Gotta love playing with dirt. Sarge is in the back eating the dirt. Did you know dogs like to eat dirt? What is up with that? Mmm...tasty dirt! Woohoo!

Lest you think we just do yardwork every weekend and nothing else, here is a photo of a game we played, as directed by Dinoguy. I think the goal was to have a really long spoon and try to move marshmallows to a cup, but hey, its easier to hold the spoon closer to get more marshmallows, so whatever. The boys had fun eating a whole bag of marshmallows with their long spoons and couldn't tell me the point of the game besides eating a lot of marshmallows (which they so generously shared with Mom & Dad (ick!)) though I think it originated from a veggietales movie and all their games have morals, but again, whatever.

Playing Games

We love to play games. All sorts of games. As I sat down to write this, Trainboy ran up and asked: "Mommy, can we play another game?" Of course. This time it was Candyland. Before that, the game of Life, Blokus & also Scrabble. No, Trainboy isn't quite able to understand and follow all the rules to some of the games, but he enjoys participating as much as he can. Sometimes that is just holding pieces and playing pretend while the rest of us play. Sometimes that's how we play the games - making up our own rules or by playing pretend.

Dinoguy is interested in knowing how to play by the rules so he can "win". The first time he didn't win Monopoly was a bit traumatic for him, I'm sad to say. But he consoled himself by deciding he would learn to play better and not lose anymore. Often, when the random rolls of the die aren't going in his favor, he just declares the game over and quits, instead of dealing with losing. Other times, I tell him we can put it on pause and come back to it in a little bit.

Scrabble today was entertaining. I learned that he knows several words I didn't know he knew. Last night he got interested in keeping score for a scrabble game I was playing, leading to him practicing writing numbers and his interest in playing with me today. Trainboy also enjoyed making words, showing he is more capable than I may give him credit sometimes.

Which is part of my thoughts on this. Don't sell your kids short by following the age recommendations for games. Candyland, Chutes & Ladders, Hi-ho cherry-o - they are all fun...but that doesn't mean that is all your kid can play. Let them join in on some "adult" games, maybe just in free play, maybe with modified rules, or using all the rules. You might be in for a surprise at what they can do, and how much fun you can have together.

The math geek in me gets really excited at all the math ideas being learned in some of the games...I don't know if people realize how much can be learned from game playing.

Anyway - here are some of our games, and some of the mathematical ideas contained in them.

Battleship: Graphing! All that A2, B4 stuff... I love it!

Connect 4 - again, there are graphing concepts there. And patterns.

The game of Life, Monopoly - money skills! arithmetic! I am irritated with the new versions coming out that have "debit" cards so that people don't have to do the math themselves. Are you kidding?

Rummikub - patterns, sets, numbers

Backgammon, Chess - logic, patterns, arithmetic, geometry...

Scrabble - arithmetic, logic & spelling! What more can you ask for? :) (My current fave.)

Blokus, Blokus trigon, Rumis - these are all awesome geometric & logic thinking games that I love. Kids can easily learn the rules or freeplay with the fun pieces.

Izzi, Set 10 - simple card games full of patterns & logic!

Candyland, Chutes & Ladders, other "preschool" games - there's great stuff in these too...I just get so bored with them so fast! It's way more fun to teach my kids how to play games I like. :)

For fun: Here's a pic of Dinoguy eating his current favorite green food - cilantro. Who would've guessed?

SpongeBob Monopoly

Kids learn from play. Tons. It is really cool to occasionally really see them learning, and I've got to write it down so I remember it later.

For L's birthday recently, I found a brand new copy of Spongebob Monopoly at a thrift store for $5 and quickly bought it and managed to keep it hidden until present time. It was a big hit and we have played a lot of monopoly since then.

What is cool about it is how much he has learned from it, as evidenced by how much he can do himself now, compared to needing help at the beginning. We play by all of the rules. All of them. This includes mortgages and rent and improvements...of course it is in a fun, spongebob theme. :) When he plays with his dad, I think there are slightly different rules, but isn't that the joy of monopoly?

What has he gotten, besides having a lot of fun and quality time with family? Tons of practice counting the dice, learning the values of different monies and how to count them. (Can you say TONS of arithmetic practice?) He recognizes the symbols for all the different cards (reading skills), and knows where the rent information is on the titles. He's learning to deal with not always winning. He's learning about random chance. He's learning to make deals to buy and trade properties.

During today's game, I had to run help H on the computer and when I came back, I asked him what had happened, and he said he'd landed on my property and had to pay me $26 but he didn't have any $20's, and was making change at the bank! :)

To hear him counting the money, see him reaching for the right denominations...be still my math teacher geek heart! :) I restrain myself from giddiness on seeing new understanding. :)

I realized that he learned the names of most of the dinosaurs he knows from last summer when we played Dinosauropoly at Grandma's house. There are many fun variations on monopoly and they are all awesome for learning. (Except maybe the new debit card version. Shun it!)

My favorite game as a kid was "Life". I loved to play it over and over. I'm sure I learned many things from it. I loved it, b/c we would pretend to be having the pretend life that you lived on the board. Sometimes we had tons of kids, other times we "chose" careers over kids. Sometimes we went to college to get a better job, sometimes we stayed single. The end result of the game wasn't the most important part, the imaginative play was much more satisfying and fun.

My current favorite game now is Blokus Trigon. I love the strategy and fitting in the shapes best I can. It's simple and challenging. It's a great game. :)

What was your favorite game as a kid? Why?

What is it now? Why?