Sentence Game

I picked this little game up at a local consignment shop. Or was it the booksale? Not so sure, but it's a great little reading game from DK!

I7 enjoyed picking out the words that fill in the sentences. There are several ways you can play and it's fun to see how the sentences turn out.

This is the kind of activity that I would put in a workbox. Any workboxers out there? How are things going?

Very Silly Sentences

One of the items in I-6's Easter basket was the Very Silly Sentences game. I wasn't sure how this would be different from the other DK word games we have, but it looked like it had some more going on. It sure does!

You get to move around the board using a multi-faceted die and use the spinner to see what part of speech you get to pick from the piles. As you go around the board you build your sentence. I-6 did a great job reading all his words. This is a very nice game that we all enjoyed.

This is a sideways close up of the sentences we were building. This game will provide a lot of fun reading times!

This one will be showing up in the workboxes from time to time that is for sure.

Word Games

I know I've blogged about some of these games before, but in the interest of suggesting more ideas for the workboxes I am sharing them once again. You know...all together.

Anyone remember this one? I used to play this a lot with my mom when I was in elementary school. Oh yes...nothing like letter cubes for bunches of fun!

Have you played Bananagrams? This is a game where you and the other players begin with 21 tiles and you have to build your own crossword. If another player uses up all their tiles they will yell Peel! And everyone has to draw a new tile. The game ends when all the tiles are gone from the middle and the winner has used all of his tiles. This is a regular around here. E10 can win against Dan regularly. E10 is a wicked gamer. So...look out. I'm just sayin'.

Other word games we have:

• Scrabble
• Super Scrabble
• Scrabble, Jr.
• Boggle, Jr.
• Boggle

Boggle, Jr., Bananagrams, Spill and Spell can be played individually or you can always have two kids play together if you have the right age range at your house.

Magnets for Box Activities

In our learning room we have a large magnet wall. We had toyed with a smaller version we made with magnetic paint on some masonite we cut down, but it wouldn't hold our marble run. Magnetic paint sounds cool, but the truth is you need many, many layers before it starts to really work well. Then I wanted a large magnetic white board. White boards are cheap. Do you know what happens when you put a layer of steel in one? Let's just say the price goes up exponentially. Really. And in case you are wondering...no. The big or little "magnetic" white boards found at WalMart aren't strong enough either. I know because I took a track piece to test on many boards. Goldilocks was not impressed.

So, Dan, being the guy he is, proposed a piece of sheet metal. I already had the white board from Lowe's for $10 for the whole 4'x6' piece. He drove to a local fabricator's shop and showed them what he wanted to use the sheet metal for. They were all familiar with our local science center's board and knew exactly what we wanted to do. They hooked us up with a 25 gauge piece of sheet metal for a mere $40. And it's big enough for four kids to use and not fight. Awesome.

Simple phonics magnets from Leap Frog- these tell you the word you spell or the letter you put in the little computer part

Good ol' fashioned magnetic letters in upper and lower case. These are nice and big. I got them from Discount School Supply.

Magnet wands with chips and balls- these are also from Discount School Supply (these are used on the floor)

The magnetic wall. It's 4' x 8'. Yes. We are absolutely the kind of people that will nail a honkin' piece of sheet metal to their wall. We've been discussing an addition. The metal walls stays. Or gets put back. I'm just sayin'.

I'm putting these in a few box categories depending on the magnet set. Lots of good letter recognition and science here. Any of these would be a welcome break in the middle of doing seat work activities from the boxes.

Activities for the Boxes

I thought it would be fun to feature some of the items I'll be using in my boxes. We've been homeschooling for four years now. You know it seems a lot longer than that somehow! E10 is a little over half way through 5th grade and we brought him home half way through 1st grade back in 2005. Over the last four years we've accumulated some fun stuff what with three siblings following in his footsteps to be homeschooled. Since part of my purpose with the boxes is to make sure I'm using all my resources, I'll start featuring some of them and I'll add a link in my sidebar so we can have a running list. So, here we go!

The Silly Sentences Game inspired me to find a few more. This one is Silly Rhymes and I hope it will help I-6 with some word family practice. Plus, it's great practice to read the words without the reading cues found in Reading Made Easy. He's up to the part of the program where the visual cues begin dropping out of parts of the lesson. Emerging readers get better when they read and read some more!

I found out about this one from the FIAR forums. I find out about a lot of fun things on there. This little $5 game is for practicing mental math. You toss the 12 sided dice and multiply them together. That is your target number. Then you roll the regular dice and use any combination of them to get the answer closest to the target number. You are supposed to do this in your head, but you can make the game easier with lots of variations like adding the 12- sided dice together so your target number is between 2 and 24. That way kids with the basic addition and subtraction under their belts have a chance to do well. You can also allow them to use scrap paper. What a great little game for a box activity. Don't you think?

Phonics Game

We've had this phonics game from Discount School Supply for a few years now- since R8 was first in school. I pulled it off the shelf for J3 to fiddle with while we did our work on Native Americans. He loves putting the foam letters in and out of the grid and he likes to match the letters with the one next to it. So, he'll repeat the letter to the left or right of the box. Very cute letter matching for him.

This is actually a great practice game for I-6. He's really getting good at his reading.

The cards are a nice and sturdy plastic which is really nice.

Reading Games

I know I have mentioned the book Math Games by Peggy Kaye, but I finally got around to making a game from another of her books, Games for Reading. Again, if you have not seen these titles try your library and make a few. They are totally worth the approximately $12 I spent at Rainbow Resource. Trust me they are easy to make and don't take much time at all. One word of caution. After you have made a game, try not to leave it around for your resident toddler/preschooler to cut clear through when you are napping. R8 did her best to repair it. She was there when I made it and felt badly that it had been cut.

This one is called Word Ladder and so far I've made two sets of 15 cards. You put a marker on the bottom and you have 15 tries to make it 12 rungs up the ladder. If you make it before the pile is empty (which means you have to get 12 out of 15 words correct the first time), then you win!

I-6 played at least half a dozen times yesterday, eagerly seeking others to play with him or at least watch him play. Notice that I have used the Reading Made Easy visual cues on his cards. He's doing very well with his reading, but he's not quite ready to drop all the cues yet. The one above is a new sound this week. My next step is to make more word sets.

Aahhh Much Better

I'm happy to report that the new Scrabble game arrived today. Box intact. Box not bent. Box is beautiful. Box was so worth the wait. Box got me $11.50 off of my subsequent order from RR- (snagged that number chart and another forgotten item for less than the amount of the other number board).

Isn't the box amazing? I love my new box.

Check it out. Listen...I'm still waiting to do a word in the upper left hand corner and I have a K to after that C. Shhh...that is so gonna be a QUADRUPLE word score.

Hey this game is fun. When little kids bump the table- and they will- the letters stay in place. I always thought the deluxe turntable version was on a lazy susan. No indeed...what we have here is a large plastic board with ball bearings on the bottom- lots of them. So, look out if you have a nice table.

Bananagrams

We love games at our house and based on a recommendation from Melinda at Eager Eyes of Blue I sought this one out at ACMoore. It plays pretty simply. Just dump out all the tiles and turn them over in the middle. Take 21 per person (for a small group) and try to make your own crosswords at the same time. Other rules allow you to dump letters, pick up new letters, make others pick up letters and you can change your words around any time. Eventually, there will be no more to pick up and the winner is the one who gets rid of all his tiles first.

My puzzle

E9's puzzle

When I first pulled it out with J3, he said hold on I want to get the dump truck. Can you guess what we played? We played identify letters and their sounds and scoop and dump them. He scooped and dumped while I asked questions. J3 is a letter sound king and can identify most uppercase letters by sight as well. Just ask him. "J says Ja!" He's got a million of 'em.

Boggle Mania!

E9 found Boggle in his Easter basket. I just knew he was going to love it. At first he wasn't sure he was good at it, but a few rounds later and he was tearing up the Boggle board. Any King of the Hill fans out there? Maybe he could compete with Peggy in Arlin, TX for Boggle champion!

R7 and I-5 have played and have actually done pretty well. R7 is super frustrated that she can't come up with enough unique words to get a good score, but rest assured it will happen.

Yup...once again at our house it's game ON! Tuesday night I hosted a local homeschool support meeting all about games and fun so stay tuned for that fun post coming soon. I was on a blogging break for too many days and have posted two already yesterday and have easily three more to catch up on. Look out blog fans!