After School Linky Party (2-10)

Welcome to the After School Linky Party!

It is my great pleasure to co-host another week of this great link up.

If you missed last week's party, here are a few of the highlights.

Playing with Rocks at An Idea on Tuesday.

Kid-Made Origami Olympic Bracelets at Crayon Box Chronicles.

Skiing at Home with Homemade Skis at Playtivities.

 Dot Sticker Spelling Scramble {Fine Motor Friday} at School Time Snippets.

Reading Game with LEGOs at The Pleasantest Thing.

Sticky Math at Mess for Less.

FREE PRINTABLES

3 Boys and a Dog: FREE Printable Bible Verses: John 13:34, Dolch Sight Words Worksheets: Week Five, and Valentine Preschool Cutting Practice

Bible Fun for Kids: David the Shepherd & Saul is Made King

Enchanted Homeschooling Mom: 50+ Dinosaur Activities Fit for Dino Dan and His Little Brother Trek and Free Valentine's Day Words Pack

Gift of Curiosity: Valentine Do-a-Dot Printables

Growing in God's Grace: Series: Bible in a Year with your Kids Week #18 FREE Activity Packet

Happy and Blessed Home: FREE Sesame Street Birthday Party Decorations and FREE Valentine's Day Cards Kids can Make

JDaniel4's Mom: Kids Activities- Olympic Themed Graphs and Charts and Despicable Me Minion Valentine's Day Cards

Kids Activities Blog: 3 {Non-Mushy} Valentines Day Coloring Pages

Kitchen Counter Chronicles: Valentines Jokes for Kids

Moms and Munchkins: Games to Play at the Airport

Mothers Madness: Train anagrams

Teach Beside Me: First Grade Sight Words Handwriting Pages and Free Printable Valentine Riddle Cards

The Measured Mom: Free Valentine's Day Spelling Game, Free Presidents Day Emergent Readers, and Free Valentine's Day Sight Word Activity: Roll & Stamp

The Pleasantest Thing: Olympic Flag Festival

This Reading Mama: FREE Printable Resource Pack for Choosing Just Right Books

This Reading Mama: Math for Multiple Ages {with m & m candy}

The After School Linky is cohosted by
The Educators' Spin On It 
Afterschool for Smarty Pants 
Boy Mama Teacher Mama
Coffee Cups and Crayons 
Little Wonders' Days 
Mama Smiles 
Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational
The Measured Mom 
This Reading Mama
What Do We Do All Day

We would love to have you link up your School-Age Post (Ages 5 and up) about your learning week after school including Crafts, Activities, Playtime and Adventures that you are doing to enrich your children's lives after their day at school, homeschool, or on the weekend! When linking up, please take a moment to comment on at least one post linked up before yours and grab our after school button to include a link on your post or site! By linking up you're giving permission for us to share on our After School Pinterest Board or Feature on our After School Party next week! Don't forget to follow along and join our After School Enrichment Community.

Snowboarding Math Slalom

The Winter Olympics have inspired me (perhaps you've noticed). This game sends kids on a downhill snowboarding race (i.e. the giant parallel slalom) as they compete to cross the finish first, solving division problems as they go.

DIY Mini Snowboard Game Pieces

The night before we played our game, we made some game pieces - miniature snowboards! Before our art project, I Googled snowboards to show my oldest son images of how diverse their designs were. Amazing artistry for sure!

Using Shrink Film, I traced several large snowboard shapes with permanent marker.

Download a 1-page PDF of the snowboard template from Google Drive here.

Once cut out, the boys and I decorated our boards with permanent Sharpie markers. Into the oven they went, and three minutes later, they'd shrunk to half their size.

While they were still warm, I carefully bent the ends of each board up slightly (while wearing oven mits) before the plastic hardened completely. The boys and I both loved watching our snowboards miniaturize through the window in the oven door.

TIPS: Space your boards about 2-3 inches apart on the baking sheet. When they shrink they can curl up and if they're too close, they might touch and fuse together. Be careful about adding words too; they might end up backwards.

Playing the Game

With the slalom course and division problem fact cards made, I printed just six pages of division facts (pgs 8-13). You don't need all of the facts to play this game, so feel free to pick and choose which will challenge your child. 

Download the free 3-page game board PDF from Google Drive here.

Download the free 14-page division math cards PDF (including one page of Uh Oh cards) here.

You'll need to print multiple copies of the "Uh-Oh" cards. I printed three pages of cards to go with six pages of problems. Once they were cut out and shuffled and the game board was printed and taped together, we were ready to race.

We placed our snowboards at the start. And then he turned over the first card in the deck. He solved the problem and moved his snowboard to the first snowflake on the mountain (keeping to his side of the course). Now it was my turn, I drew the "Uh Oh" card and had to stay put. Go figure.

Play alternates between players and so long as they draw a division problem and solve it correctly, they can proceed down the slalom course, moving their mini snowboard.

The first player's board to cross the finish wins. (In our case, that would be my son's.) What fun!

After School Linky (2-3)

Welcome to the After School Linky Party!

Happy Year of the Horse! Many shared great books, ideas, and activities

to celebrate Chinese New Year last week. Some other blogs caught my attention too. Here are just a few.

 Chinese New Year Yoga at Kids Yoga Stories.

 Colonial Games for Children at EducationPossible.

 Monday {fine} Motor Madness (fine motor gloves) at Mama Von Teacher.

Two Ways to Build a Lego Catapult at Frugal Fun for Boys. 

 Chinese Paper Cutting {With Tutorial & Template} at Marie's Pastiche.

 Poppin's Book Nook #10 - Mythology and Pegasus (Pegasus Marionette) at Life with Moore Babies.

FREE PRINTABLES

3 Boys and a Dog: Free Valentine Coloring Pages and Dolch Sight Words Worksheets: Week Four

3 Dinosaurs: Early Reading Printables BOB Books Set 5 Books 5 & 6, Free Winter Olympics Pack Part 1, and Exploring Greek Mythology - Poppins Book Nook

Bible Fun for Kids: Love in 1 Corinthians 13 and Samuel

Crystal & Co.: Preschool Do a Dot Printables: Valentine Hearts

Enchanted Homeschooling Mom: Hibernation Toss and Sort Game

Fifi's Closet: Dinosaur Valentine

Gift of Curiosity: Literacy Printables {Weekly Kids' Co-op} and Valentine Sudoku Printable

Growing in God's Grace: Series: Bible in a Year with Your Kids Week #17 FREE Activity Packet

Learning Parade: Thing 1 Pop-Up Craft

Living Montessori Now: 100th Day Activities - Free Printable Extensions for the Hundred Board

MollyMoo: Free Printable Class Valentines, Adorable Free Printable Class Valentines, and Don't Wake the Shark - Matching Pairs

Pinay Homeschooler: FREE Valentines Day Unit and Chinese New Year Unit (with FREE Printables)

Sweet Silly Sara: Hug Me Coloring Page

This Reading Mama: FREE Valentine Spelling Game {Valentine Word Bump!}, FREE February Writing Prompts, and Hugs and Kisses from Dad and Mom

This Reading Mama: FREE Valentine Spelling Game {Valentine Word Bump!}

The After School Linky is cohosted by
The Educators' Spin On It 
Afterschool for Smarty Pants 
Boy Mama Teacher Mama
Coffee Cups and Crayons 
Little Wonders' Days 
Mama Smiles 
Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational
The Measured Mom 
This Reading Mama
What Do We Do All Day

We would love to have you link up your School-Age Post (Ages 5 and up) about your learning week after school including Crafts, Activities, Playtime and Adventures that you are doing to enrich your children's lives after their day at school, homeschool, or on the weekend! When linking up, please take a moment to comment on at least one post linked up before yours and grab our after school button to include a link on your post or site! By linking up you're giving permission for us to share on our After School Pinterest Board or Feature on our After School Party next week! Don't forget to follow along and join our After School Enrichment Community.

Olympic Winter Games BINGO

My son loves BINGO. If you've been following my site for awhile, this is not exactly news to you. Truth be told, I like it too. It's a game we can play together and because it's based entirely on luck, any player can win.

Since our family is counting down the days until the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, I thought it would be fun to make a BINGO game with that as my inspiration. Having made graphics of four sports already (for our Olympic-inspired Sudoku game), all I needed to do was make three more graphics and then use them in game cards and call cards.

I made six game cards and laminated them. Then I cut the five pages of call cards apart and shuffled them. With a bowl full of circular cereal (doesn't it kind of remind you of the Olympic rings?), we were ready to play.

A free 11-page PDF of this game is available on Google Drive here. Note: this is a pretty colorful game. To keep from draining all the ink in your personal printer, take the downloaded file on a thumb drive to your local office supply store to have them print it for you.

I had my son select one of the six Winter Olympic Games bingo game cards I'd made; I picked another one. Then, I placed the stack of call cards facedown between us.

One by one we flipped them, placing cereal game pieces on the lettered sport pictured on the card we turned over (and the FREE space, too).

When I was the first player to get five in a row and win, my son eagerly suggested we play black-out. And when we were done, he asked to play again.

As we played, we talked about some of the sports pictured. He's especially excited to watch the biathlon now. (He's not the only one.)

How to Weave a Basket out of the Newspaper

Long before everything was made out of plastic, people used baskets to carry things. Weaving reeds is a age-old craft and one I knew would capture my eight-year-old son's interest.

Our reeds were made out of Saturday's newspaper. With our hands, several pieces of newsprint, and a glue stick, we successfully made a small basket.

Here's how we did it.

1. Open the newspaper and cut along  the center fold. You'll need 11-12 pieces of cut newsprint. Tightly roll it the long way.
2. When completely rolled, flatten.
3. Add glue to secure. Repeat until you have made 11-12 newspaper reeds. Try to make them approximately the same width. (Our newspaper reeds ends up being about 1 inch wide.)
4. Now lay four reeds vertically on the table in front of you. Weave four other reeds through them, centering the woven part in the middle.
5. It will now look like a cross made out of newspaper.
6. Fold the ends of the reeds up and begin weaving another newsprint reed through the spokes, moving around the basket to make the first layer of the basket's sides. (It helps to have another set of hands for this step!)
7. Glue the reed's ends together by overlapping. Continue with two to three more layers of reeds, building up the basket's sides.
8. Now fold over the reeds that are still sticking up either into or out of the basket. Trim if necessary and tuck the ends down into or up and under existing weaving.

Voila! You're done. Paint it if you'd like.

This idea came from a wonderful book of craft ideas I checked out from our local library.