I am still seeing success in using the Making Math More Fun games. The kids that have been very receptive and with the quantity of games that came with the ebook I have a lot for us to play. I have found that even if there isn’t an exact game for the topic that I am trying to cover that I can usually adapt one of the games that I have to make it work for me. Many of the games are geared toward younger children with more basic mathematical concepts, but I have been able to use the outline of the games and bring them to the middle school level.

My favorite toys for toddlers are basic blocks and lacing beads. I remember when my children were toddlers and they would play and play and play with their blocks. Besides being fun for a toddler they are an important developmental tool. They develop their fine motor skills and learn cause and effect. You can also use them for leaning to count, learning their colors and making patterns. I don’t think that their is any more important toy than these basics.

The answer to yesterday’s Thursday Thinker is:

When you put the seven different piles of leaves together you have one big pile of leaves!

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This weekend we raked the leaves in our yard. We had 3 piles of leaves in the back years and four piles in the front. When the kids and I put all of the piles together, how many piles of leaves did we have?

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Here is another video of the Story Time Felts products being used. This is the boy weather bear that she is using, but there is also a girl weather bear available. This is something that is often used in the preschool in morning circle time when the children talk about the weather for that day. It is also wonderful to use at home to talk to you little one about the weather and you will see that they will make up stories on their own with the bear as they change the weather and the bear’s clothes.

Last week I mentioned that I was going to use some games from the Making Math More Fun ebook collection with the students I am tutoring. My seventh graders are working on finding multiples and factors of numbers which leads to work on Greatest Common Multiples and Least Common Factors which then leads to fraction work.

Working on finding multiples and factors is not all that exciting for the kids, but there are some board games within this collection that works on these skills. I have to say that using the games worked amazingly well! The kids were calculating and working on their multiples with excitement. When they finish a game they asked if they could play again, which was perfectly fine with me because they were working hard on the skills that they needed to master.

I am excited to see this work and will definitely be working more games into the tutoring process. So far it has been an easy way to get the kids motivated and working. In this format they are so willing to participate and therefor learn.

I am very excited about this offer from Vista Print and I wanted to share it with you. Every year we give photo calendars to the grandparents and right now you can get one photo wall calendar for free. Vista Print has even improved their calendars where you can now customize the dates, adding your special days such as birthdays and anniversaries to the calendar. This makes it even more of a special gift.

What is even nicer is that they have even more freebies. I think that I am going to make photo calendar magnets to put into the cards of aunts and uncles since you can get 10 of those for free too. They also have a desk calendar, rubber stamp, return address labels (which I often make into personalized stickers), note pad, holiday cards and a t-shirt. Many of these items make nice gifts for teachers. I am going to look around the site more because you can often find other items for free or at a very reduced price. For example, I just found 100 free post cards in the “Specials” section. If I add envelopes to these I can create some very nice personalized note cards.

These gifts are a little bit of work and take me some time to complete because of the customization, but they are well worth the time and effort, especially with the great deals they have going on right now!

This month is Native American Heritage Month, and for this month I asked my friend Tsoniki Crazy Bull to share some activities with all of you. Tsoniki grew up in South Dakota on the Rosebud Reservation and was happy to share some of her heritage with us.

She shares with us her memories of chokecherry picking, storytelling and setting up a tipi for ceremonies. Thank you Tsoniki for sharing some of your Native American Heritage with us this month.

Here is the answer to yesterday’s Thursday Thinker:

Janet is a visitor and Jane and June are natives. The statement made by June can not be true because if they were all natives none of them would say they were. Therefore, we know that June is a native.

Janet can not be a native since if she was that makes Jane the only visitor. That would make Janet’s statement true, which she could not make if she were a native.

Phew!

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You go on vacation to Wonderville where there are two types of people, natives and visitors. In Wonderville the natives always lie and the visitors always tell the truth. As you are walking along you meet three women Jane, Janet and June. June says to you, “all of us are natives.” Then, Janet tells you, “Only one of us is a visitor.”

From this information, who is a visitor and who is a native?

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