Collecting Eggs (Making Subtraction Sentences)

At my son’s first trimester parent-teacher conference, among the few things my son could use a little extra practice on were math sentences. Huh? When I was in school those were called word problems. Well, now that I’ve dated myself, I’ll get on with it.

Here’s a fun way to practice that I made for my son. This will likely be the only time my son does “farm chores!”

WARNING! If you or anyone in your family uses a 7-day pill box, PLEASE make an adaptation of this game using small bowls, a modified egg carton, etc. No one in my home uses these to dispense medication; if we did, I certainly would not encourage my child to “play” with them as we’ve done here.

To make the game, I printed hen (and one rooster) stickers on sticker paper. I cut them out and added them to the lids of two 7-day pill boxes. Make sure that neither of the “chicken coops” has any of the same hens repeated.

Now fill the boxes with beads (aka eggs) of assorted colors and sizes. The seven-slot coop that has the rooster sticker should have less than seven beads in each slot. (REMEMBER: The rooster does not lay eggs; his slot should be empty.) The other coop must have more than seven beads in each slot.

Then, peel the sticker paper and adhere the hens/rooster wheel to a piece of chipboard (think empty cereal box) for sturdiness and cut it out. Poke a small hole in the center, thread a small paperclip onto a brad, and thread the brad through the hole, separating its “legs” at the back of the wheel. Make sure the paperclip spins freely; it’s your arrow.

Finally, print the Collecting Eggs worksheet and sharpen a pencil.

Download a 2-page PDF of the stickers, wheel, and worksheet here.

It’s time for your son/daughter to sharpen their math skills.

To complete the worksheet, your child will spin the paperclip twice. The first time, he/she will count the eggs in the first coop (the one without the rooster) that are under the hen the paperclip lands on. Spin again, and count the eggs in the second coop for the hen that the paperclip points to. Now answer the question. How many more eggs did the first hen lay than the second?

Keep spinning, keep counting, and keep making subtraction sentences!

Want a great hen-and-egg-themed book to read with this activity? Check out Dora’s Eggs. We loved it!

Blood! (Making a Model)

It’s almost Halloween so a little gore is a good thing, right?! Plus, it’s been ages since my son and I have done any human body-related science activities.

Within the last week or two, my son and I have had conversations about both scabs and white blood cells. This activity is the perfect complement to those discussions.

We made a model of blood! 

Here’s what we used:

4 teaspoons of yellow jello powder

1/3 cup of boiling water

½ cup of cold water

½ cup plus 1 tbsp. of red Perler beads

50 tiny clear seed beads

1 white 9-millimeter pony bead

Liquid measuring cups

Clear glass bowl

This activity came from the amazing book Squirt! The Most Interesting Book You’ll Ever Read About Blood by Trudee Romanek.

It is chock full of astonishingly awesome facts about the blood in our bodies, explaining everything from scab science to blood types (O, A, B, or AB), bone marrow, leeches, how blood is pumped through the heart, and more. Comprehensive is an understatement!

While there was a lot that was too advanced for my son, there was a lot that wasn’t. I simply stuck to the things I knew he’d understand.

Romanek’s book taught us the “blood basics:”

Most of our blood is plasma, which contains nutrients from food, hormones, proteins, etc.

White blood cells fight germs and illness.

Platelets stop an injury from bleeding.

Red blood cells carry oxygen.

How to Make a Blood Model

Step 1: Mix 4 teaspoons of yellow jello powder with 1/3 c. boiling water. Stir until dissolved.

Step 2: Add ½ cup cold water. Stir. Then pour into a clear glass bowl and place in the refrigerator for 1 hour.

Step 3: Remove from the refrigerator. The jello will be thicker but not set. Stir in the red beads (aka red blood cells).

Step 4: Add the white bead (aka white blood cell) and clear beads (aka platelets). Stir.

Your model of blood will show you how much red and white blood cells and platelets are floating in your blood’s plasma!

Draw it!

To keep my son from forgetting the make-up of blood, he drew a picture of his model on a worksheet I made. 

Download a PDF of this worksheet here.

Inside his large drop of blood was 1 huge white blood cell, several large red blood cells, and a few small purple platelets, all floating in yellow plasma.

How Much Blood is in Your Body?

The average person has 70 milliliters (ml) of blood for every kilogram they weigh, according to Romanek’s book.

My son weighs 46 pounds (he’s a skinny mini) or 20.865232 kilograms (kg).

70 ml x 20.865232 kg = 1,460.6 ml of blood (or almost 1 and a half liters)!!

Check out our other human body-themed activities:

Paint-Your-Organs Tee Shirt and Printable Body Book

Studying (and Making) Our Own Skeleton

How to Make a Thinking Cap

Sponge-stamped Lungs ArtavH

Fraction Match (in the Grass) Card Game

They’re working on fractions in my son’s second grade class. When he told me that he thought it was kind of hard, I asked him, “Should we practice a little extra at home?”

“Yeah!” he responded. “Maybe you can make me a fraction game, Mom.”

Here it is. And here's what you need to make it.

1. Fraction cards (download a PDF here)
2. Heavyweight card stock to print the cards on (six sheets)
3. Scrapbook paper imprinted with grass pattern (six sheets)
4. Glue to adhere the scrapbook paper to the back of the card stock (I used spray glue)

Assembly

Print the cards on card stock. Glue the scrapbook paper to the back. Cut the cards out.

How to Play

Fraction Match is a modified “Go Fish” game. Deal each player six cards. Spread the remaining cards face-down (i.e. grass up) in between the players.

Each player lays their six cards face up in front of them in a row. If any of the cards represent the same fraction, they should be put together in one pile. In order for any match to be complete, the player must have THREE cards that represent the same fraction.

Every match has THREE cards.

Player 1 can either trade a singular card from their “hand” with an opponent or draw from the grass (the pile in the center). Note: Cards cannot be traded if a pile of two cards has already been started by the opponent (for example: ¾ and a pie with three of the four pieces colored in). Only single cards can be traded.

When a player has all three cards that make a fraction match, the pile is turned over to reveal the grass on the back of the cards.

Play continues back and forth between players until all the cards in front of one player have been matched, the piles have been turned over, and are therefore, all grass side face-up. This player wins!

Looking for a great book to pair with this activity? Read Loreen Leedy's Fraction Action! My son loved this book and had fun answering the word problems scattered throughout.

DIY Balancing Scale

When my son came home from school with math homework that asked him to estimate the weight of objects, judging which was heavier, I knew it was time to make a DIY balancing scale. This idea is brainchild of Quirky Momma Deirdre Smith, aka JDaniel4’s Mom.

Construction is simple. I used a wire pants hanger from the dry cleaner, yarn, and two sturdy paper cups. At the two bottom ends of the hanger, I hung yarn, to which I tied a paper cup (I’d punched holes in the paper cup just below the rim).

The cardboard tube on the pants hanger kept the yarn from moving along the bottom of the hanger. Note: Make sure your cups hang equal distance.

Now hang over a door knob and get ready for some math fun!

My son grabbed lots of small objects. I grabbed a handful of quarters.

He put an object in one cup and balanced the scale with quarters in the other cup. We recorded the weights.

1 matchbox car = 4 quarters

1 calculator = 5 quarters

1 LEGO Ninjago spinner = 5 quarters

1 mini flashlight = 6 quarters

1 yoda writing pen = 3 quarters

2 rocks = 3 quarters

Now I asked him what object weighed the most. “Easy!” he said. “The flashlight!” I asked him how he knew that was the heaviest. “Because it took the most quarters to balance it.”

“Why not use rocks as a unit of measurement?” I asked. This required some thought. After a long pause, he said, “Because they’re not the same size?”

“YES! The quarters are a good unit of measurement because they all weigh the same. The rocks do not.”

I kept the questions coming. My son was up to the challenge. “If the yoda pen and the 2 rocks both took 3 quarters each to balance the scale, what conclusion can we form?”

“They weigh the same!” he said. We put them in the cups and, lo and behold, the scale was balanced. The hanger was level.

When I asked my son later what his favorite part of the day was, believe it or not, our DIY scale was it. I LOVE that my son loves learning!

Election Predictions (Count & Recount)

We’re getting hammered with phone calls playing automated messages, tired of door-knockin’ campaigners, and are DVRing our shows to fast forward through political commercials. Despite all this, I find the opportunity to vote to be absolutely exhilarating. My son has started to catch the fever too.

The first time he tagged along to a polling location, he told me that the barrier blocking fellow voters from seeing my ballot was "really there so people don’t cheat.” That still cracks me up.

I find my son’s love of our country’s presidential legacy endearing. So when he began asking questions about the voting process, I wanted to find a way for us to hold a mock election.

I made a political party die and explained to him that the donkey is a sign of the Democratic Party and the elephant is a symbol of the Republican Party.

Download this PDF here.

Then we read a great piece of children’s literature by Eileen Christelow. Vote! Is a wonderful account of two candidates running for mayor and the voting process. My son was surprised to read that not everyone was allowed to vote until the constitution was amended. (We especially loved the commentary by the book’s two dogs.)

When we were done with the book. I told my son to roll the die and fill in a box, representing one vote, for each roll. When one column was full, the polls closed.

My son loved this neck-and-neck political race. When done, he counted the votes for each party. I told him that the losing party questioned the accuracy of his math; a recount was in order!

It was one tight race and a seriously fun beginner’s lesson in the election process.

I am a deceptive mom and I approved this message. 

Rounding (Single Digits) Board Game

Make practicing rounding numbers up and down fun - THAT was my goal.

While a simple sorting exercise or a worksheet would have been effective, neither idea excited me. And let’s face it; if it doesn’t sound fun to me, a 7-year-old isn’t likely to think so either.

Board games are a favorite with my son, so I whipped this one up.

Download a PDF of the game board, playing cards, and die here.

  

You need two players to play.

Objective

Use rounding to move your game piece. Try to get to the finish before your opponent.

Prep

Cut the cards apart. Shuffle and lie them face down in a pile between the two players.

Find two game pieces (e.g. two different buttons, coins, or glass decorator gems). We used some race car-shaped erasers.

Cut, fold, and glue the “go back/move forward” die.

How to Play

Game pieces are placed on the words “start.”

The first player rolls the “go back/move forward” die. If the die reads “go back,” the game piece cannot be moved and play moves on to the second player. He/she rolls.

If the second player rolls and the die reads “go forward,” they turn a card over on the deck and round it up or down. If the number is four or less and rounds down to zero, the player must stay at the start. Now it is the first player’s turn again.

If the number on the card is five or higher, the player will round up and move their game piece 10 spaces on the board.

Play alternates between both players.

If a player rolls “move forward,” they will always round the number on the card they draw. If it rounds down to zero, they do not move their game piece.

He/she can only move their game piece if the number on the card is a 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9, which all round up to 10.

If a player rolls “go back,” the number on the card drawn is the precise number of space they retreat. In some cases, this may put the player back at the first square on the game board.

The deck of cards may need to be reshuffled for continuous play.

How to Win

A player must round a number and advance beyond the final square on the board and pass the opponent’s game piece to win.

Although there are just over 20 spaces on the game board, it took us awhile to get through one game. And at one point, both my son and I were on the last space, rolling to see who would roll a “move forward” and draw a card with 5 or higher first; we were both sent back enough times to make predictions of who would win, anyone’s guess.

My son asked to play several more times, and even added LEGO minifigures to the board as “obstacles.” This was a GREAT way to practice rounding single-digit numbers.  Round Around is going in our regular rotation of home-made board games!

Note: If you child has trouble remembering which numbers round down and which round up, consider teaching him/her a rhyme. Several can be found here.

Alphabetical Adjectives Connect the Dots

I’m a writer. My son is not. But that hasn’t stopped me from trying to sharpen his language arts skills.

This word nerd came up with a sneaky way to do it, too: connect the dots!

To jog my son’s memory that adjectives are describing words, we read a Brian P. Cleary book. Hairy, Scary, Ordinary: What is an Adjective? is fun and engaging language arts literature at its best.

The illustrations are clever and whimsical and the text is chock full of adjectives which are set off with color (the rest of the words are black). So far, every book from Cleary’s Words Are CATegorical series has been a hit with my son and me.

For a little adjective practice, I made a great puzzle.

Download a PDF of this connect-the-dots puzzle here.

The instructions were simple – start at the red star and connect the lowercase adjectives alphabetically. When you get to “z,” start over with uppercase adjectives until you’re back where you started. Lastly, connect the square dots drawing a line from number to number starting at one black star and ending at the other.

My son did quite well. He only had to use the eraser a few times and, when finished, he was so proud of his songbird connect-the-dots picture! (This mama writer was mighty proud too.)

Stairway Subtraction

My son was bouncing a ball off of the stairs the other day when I had a little epiphany. I whipped up some labels with numbers, printed them on sticker paper, and this little activity was born.

What You Need

A small ball

Number labels for the stairway

Paper and pencil for scorekeeping

How to Play

Stand at the bottom of the stairs and toss a small ball (ours was a hacky sack) up the steps. Pay attention to the step it lands on first.

Keep Score

Each round, write the number of the step that the player’s ball lands off first (e.g. stair No. 20). Then, from that number subtract the number of the step (e.g. stair No. 17) where the ball stops. The answer to the subtraction problem (e.g. 20 - 17 =) is the player’s score (3) for that round. 

If the player tosses a ball and it stays on one step, the answer is zero (e.g. 18 - 18 = 0). Play five to 10 rounds. Add the rounds together for the player’s final score.

How to Win

The player with the smallest score wins.

We played twice. I wish this blog had audio so you could have heard the hoots and hollers we both made as we had good (and especially bad) tosses.

Math can be fun. My son has taught me that.

Neighborhood Counting Walk

Who goes for a walk outside when it’s 97 degrees? Well … we do. Apparently, my son and I are both crazy.

Creative Family Fun posted such a great idea in June, I knew I had to give it a try. It seemed like just the kind of thing my son would love; I was right.

Stop and read the original post from Terri about the adventuresome Counting Walks she takes with her five year old daughter.

I love that this activity is just as much about exercising our observation and math skills as our bodies … AND it’s outside. Isn’t that what summer is all about: getting outdoors?

To work on tally marks and skip counting, I created a recording sheet for my son. Truth be told, I made two so we can do this again (hopefully when it's cooler).

Download a PDF of these cards here.

A ballpoint pen, clipboard, and bottle of water and we were off. My son made tally marks every time he saw one of the objects on the recording sheet. When we got home, he skip counted the tallies and wrote the number of each item down. Then on the back of the card, he put the items in order from least to greatest.

What did we see the least?

Dogs. (Apparently it was even too hot for them.)

The greatest?

Mailboxes.

Did we have fun?

Most definitely.

Sweat?

Boy, did we ever.

Driveway Dice Roll Board Game

It’s summer. What are we doing inside, right?!? This little activity takes our math lesson outdoors. Put on the sunscreen and get ready for some subtraction and addition fun!

Prep

Take an empty cube-shaped tissue box and cover it with posterboard. Attach dot label stickers to the sides to mimic a die (I had some left over from our Noun Clown activity). Don't have dot stickers? Color some dots with a magic marker! Now cover the box with clear household contact paper for added durability and to keep the die somewhat clean.

Draw a game board on your driveway with sidewalk chalk. Mark the start and finish clearly. For older kids, make lots of spaces (ours had 47); for younger kids with shorter attention spans or early addition/subtraction skills, keep the board shorter.

Add small numbers in one corner of each space. Then, at random, add “-3, +4, -6, +2,” etc. in some of the board's spaces.

Now you’re ready to play.

How to Play

Players stand at the start and roll the die. Whatever number is on top when the die lands, is the number of spaces the player moves. In the player lands on a space with a plus or minus, they must move the number of spaces noted (i.e. if a player rolls a six, moves six space, and the sixth space says “-2,” they must move back two spaces).

The player can only move forward or backward once per roll. In other words, in the example above, if the player moved back two and that space read “+4,” they would not move again.

As the player moves they should speak the problem created out loud before or as they’re moving. So if a player is on space 14 and they roll a six, they should say, “14 + 6 = 20.”

Players take turns rolling the die and moving forward and backwards on the driveway game board (it helps if you have a person willing to fetch the die for players; little brother LOVED doing this!).

The first player to the finish wins!

Moving Decimal (A Money Exercise)

In the process of brainstorming a place value activity, this little exercise was born. It’s simple and fun and takes next to no prep.

Just find the following:

A small black button, pom-pom, or a magnet (what we used)

Funny money (download some here if you don’t have any)

A bunch of coins

A deck of cards with only the face cards (just two through nine)

(I made some zero cards, although they’re not necessary.)

How to play

The child draws two cards.

Put the ‘decimal’ in front of him/her. How much money is that? Have the child use the coins to count it out.

The child draws another card. It is placed behind the other two and the decimal is moved behind the first card. Now how much money is that? Let the child use coins and funny money bills to show you.

The activity continues until five cards are on the table. Then you’re done or you’re starting over. You choose!