Math

First of all, I kind of like math. I like that it makes sense; you have 2 apples and your friend gives you 2 more apples then you have 4 apples. I'm not saying I'm fabulous with math, but I do like it. However, my children have started to think that math is something evil. Some sort of spawn trying to make their lives miserable.

So what to do...I feel like they need to learn the basics and grasp the concepts of math, but I also want them to ENJOY school and foster a passion of learning. Easier said then done. I have tried a couple of things this year that I feel like have helped.

First, we play games!! Flash cards are boring, games are fun. I bought a bunch of math games from here. We have lots of adding, subtracting, multiplication and division games. I also have addition/subtraction bingo that we play.  When we play bingo everybody wins a prize, but the winner gets a big prize. We play bingo all together, but I play the other math games individually.

This is one of multiplication games, very fun!

Second, a great home school mom told about a book called Life of Fred. It is the story of Fred who is five and happens to be a math teacher at KITTENS university. You read a very short chapter and then answer questions at the end. It is SO fun!! I bought this only a few weeks ago hoping it would last us a while, but we finished today. My kids kept begging to read more and more chapters. We read this together and then they write their answers down and show me individually. Today, they thought it would be funny to make anyone who didn't get the correct answer do 5 push-ups. And if someone shouted out the answer they did 10 push-ups. So at least if their not math geniuses they will be super buff :).

**I forgot to say that my kids still do regular math, the games are just a supplement. We use Math-U-See, and I am very happy with it.