Mmmm...Cereal: Or Teaching Fractions the Edible Way

Fractions, addition and subtraction are some math topics I am working on with my youngest (Kindergarten).  Fractions in kindergarten, ok, I am sure we did that when I was in Kindergarten.  What can I remember.

So, hmm, how to teach this and make it fun.

Chex style (Gluten free in this house) cereal to the rescue.  Those little guys are great.  Nice little squares to make 4x4 for Whole, 1/2, 1/4 fractions.  2x4 for Whole, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 fractions.

We worked on fractions and then moved into addition and subtraction.  Subtraction he felt was the best since we got to eat the cereal ;-)

So, that worked out well for me.  He was engaged, was a little slow on some of the subtraction and addition at first but he got into it and was answering problems with gusto by the time we finished.

We did homework later in the day when his older brother got home.  After our cereal math earlier in the day I was wondering if he would be up for more homework.  Was he up for it?  He did all and more.

I have found that my being super engaged with the boys, now that I am not thinking about work, is helping ramp up their enjoyment of learning.  I will try to continue to harness that and make learning fun enough they don't realize they are learning.

Tonight we rewarded the boys, since they concentrated on their homework and got it done so quickly, and well.  We had an hour before bedtime, something unheard of in this house before I went off.  Our oldest asked for a game, Ticket to Ride, which we all decided would be a good reward.

The youngest worked with his Mom as a team.  He was in charge of sorting the cards, counting out train car cards, counting out train cars to place on the board, and building stick figures with his train cars (he takes after me, there).  We played a game in just under an hour.

The boys came up with some fun rules.  The youngest player gets to add his age to his score (he did not need it though, his Mom and he beat us already).  They also enjoyed the idea of subtracting the oldest players age from their score.  That would be me.  They had a grand time decreasing my score so that I came in last ;-)

So, all in all, a Math filled day.

First Day Back to School for New Year or Loot Alternate Rules

Monday was the boys first day back to school.  I got to get in some guitar practice, some reading, and a stationary cycling workout.

On the tutoring of the boys front I front loaded the fun to follow, wrestling with Dad, with homework first.  The boys love to wrestle and so they quickly did their homework and we went wrestling.  They love to tag team me and pile on for the title of World Champion.

After some rough housing we took a break and played some Loot.

The problem with Loot though is that the rules were a bit complex for my 5 year old.  Hence we came up with some adjustments to target areas my youngest needs to work on (Math) and which were easier to understand (given our other favourite games, like Uno) and to play.  I did this by enlisting their input on which rules would be good and not mentioning my ulterior motive to work on Math ;-)

So, we quickly adopted our Scourge of the High Seas rules:

• Most gold coins on a card or pirate skulls on a card wins a round.
• If the gold coins and pirate skulls are tied the Pirate card wins.
• Losers have to pick up a card.
• Adopting an Uno rule, when a player gets down to 1 card they must call "Plunder" like a Pirate or they have to pick up two cards.
• If a Pirate captain is played they beat all other cards.
• If two or more Pirate captains are played then you must draw 3 new card face up.  The hand with the most gold wins the round.
• The first player with no cards wins.
• If the deck gets exhausted then the discard pile is reshuffled and used again until someone runs out of cards to be the Scourge of the High Seas.

We then switched the rules again.  This time we played Pirate Knock Downs:

• Line up the Gold cards against the wall.
• Each player takes 7 pirate ship cards.
• Each player takes turns throwing cards at the standing Gold cards.
• If a player knocks down 1 or more gold cards they take them.
• The knocked down cards are replaced.  Then the next player takes their turns.
• The player with the most gold at the end is the Pirate Winner.
• In case of a tie, a shootout is played (we did not need this rule).