Learning Phonics with Games that Keep Building on the Basics

Learning phonics is more than the 26 letters of the alphabet. Within our complex language, there are vowel blends, vowel digraphs, vowel-consonant blends, special rules that change the normal sounds of the familiar sounds of the alphabet and so much more.

When choosing phonics games, you will want to consider products that will build on each other. Although learning the sounds of the basic alphabets is a great thing to be teaching, you need to look further than those individual sounds and broaden the learning to more complex part of reading.

Phonics Games that Encourages Fun while Learning Phonics

These Phonic Games are the perfect tool in having fun while learning phonics. They come in sets of All Phonics Games, 10 Beginning Phonics Games, 10 Intermediate Games, or choose individual game decks for specific phonemes (phonics sounds). When determining where you child needs to focus, consider using this download to identify the letters or combinations of letters that your child needs to master.

Adding the Fun Factor While Learning Phonics

You can use these Phonic Games to play the popular games of Go Fish, Memory, Old Maid and War to increase the fun factor while learning phonics.

A few other ideas of ways to use the Phonic Games are to place 10 or more cards, where the child can see each card. Ask the child to hand you the card that says… “The sound of the card you want”. The child can then look through the options and choose the card that they believe makes that sound. As the child grows in learning phonics, you can add more options to the pile.

Using the Phonics Games, use the concept of Path of Math in adding more fun factor to learning phonics.
The more you drill these parts of phonics, the more accomplished the non-reader will become, moving confidently into the world of a good reader.

To some children, math can seem daunting and tedious, especially if they suffer from learning disabilities, such as ADHD and/or dyscalculia. In cases where the child is showing difficulty grasping a math fact, fun math games can be the perfect activity in bridging the gaps that become obvious and creating the element of fun while learning the math facts.

Try this Path of Math Game to Have Fun with Math Facts

With this game, you will need to have some kind of materials to create a path, a floor game board, for the child to move along. Try using interlocking colorful foam pieces. Construct the path with turns, to create more of visual stimulation. Consider allow the child to put together the board on their own.

Here is how to play Path of Math Game

Mark the beginning and the end of the path. Have the child, as the game piece, stand at the start of the Path of Math game board (the first piece) and ask a math fact (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division). If the child gets it correct, he or she moves one place. However, the child does not move forward until one correct answer is given. Having fun while learning math facts is the goal, so if a child tries a few times and misses, allow them to repeat the correct answer and then move forward.

Adding Difficulty to Path of Math Game

Once a child is improving in the math drills, incorporate another rule to the game. For an example, remove the opportunity to miss a few times and replace it with for each incorrect answer, the child takes one step backwards. Also mix the math facts up to include a combination of addition, subtraction, multiplication and a division fact. (Fun math questions like two turtles plus two beavers make it ever more enjoyable for little kids)

Once the child has made it to the end of the Path of Math, they won the game. The game can be played with more than one player, each given their own question and moving at the pace of the correct answers.

Playing Path of Math Anywhere

Path of Math Game is a perfect game to be played anywhere that you find a potential for a floor game. Tile floors, brick pathways, stepping stones or even steps can be perfect ways to making learning math fun and on the go. If that’s the kind of fun you like, learn about our other math games for kids.

A struggling writer doesn’t necessarily mean that they are unable to write, but it can mean that with the right assistance they can become a happy writer. And not all struggling writers think like a dysgraphic mind will have you thinking. But struggling is no fun either way. So here are some strategies for dysgraphia or anyone who just doesn’t enjoy writing.

No matter where you begin, fun should be the main objective. The idea is to turn the assignment into a game by sparking the imagination. Some children will need more than a spark to get the writing juices going, but the important aspect is giving as many aids until it clicks.

Here are a few strategies for dysgraphia to help you in providing the sparks that will turn that struggling writer into a happy writer.

• A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words – Provide a picture that has a story to tell. The picture should have nouns in it (people, places or things), some kind of verbs (rolling, lying, jumping, sitting) and some items that can be described, adjectives, (colors, shapes, emotions). Give the child some time alone with the picture and ask them to see if they can tell you a story about the picture in a given amount of time. Once the child has orally told you the story, have them write it down. If they still need further assistance, write down the nouns, verbs and adjectives to help the child put it all on paper.
• Parts of Speech Lotto Game – Using the parts of speech lotto cards, have the child pick one noun, verb and other parts of speech from those available. Once one of each part of speech is chosen, have the child put them together and construct a complete sentence on paper. Once this becomes easier, assign more sentences using these lotto game cards.
• Interview a Person They Know – Have the child interview someone they know and have them ask this person questions about what they did when they were the same age of your struggling writer. You can help the child construct the list of questions and maybe even help write the answers to the questions during the interview. Once the interview is completed, have the child construct a story based on the answers of the interview. Have them share the story with the person they interviewed.

Always offer a struggling writer the help to get to the next step if they can’t figure it out themselves. Once they understand the process of what it takes to actually write, the happy writer will take the place of the struggling writer.

Dyslexia is a learning disability that impairs a person’s ability to read, and which can manifest itself with such symptoms as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, and/or rapid naming.
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When looking for dyslexia treatment or a dyslexia test, a good place to start can be to get down to the root causes of Dyslexia. Dyslexia symptoms can be varied, and a dyslexia definition can be a good starting point.

Math Fact Games are perfect for having fun while learning.

Most children love card games, such as: Go Fish, Memory, Old Maid and War. We’ve created four decks of math fact cards (examples: 6+7 =; 8-2 =; 3X4 =; 20/5 =) are the perfect way to have fun while learning math. The players will follow the rules of the popular named card games, but will need to figure out what ‘card value’ each card is to accurately play the games.

For an example, when playing Memory, if a child flips over a 6+7 and a 4+9, they have a match because the ‘math value’ of each card is 13, resulting in a match. This same example is how the other card games can be played, as well.

These Arithmetic Games cards are geared toward grades K-4th, however a perfect tool to a struggling learning, regardless of the age. When you can disguise what you are doing with having fun while learning the math facts, all ages and skills will be interested in participating.

Other ways to use Arithmetic Games cards for having fun while learning the math facts.

Using the free printable Beat the Clock time sheet, have your child time themselves while going through the Arithmetic Games cards. There are 10 slots for the child to keep working to better their time, which means they are bettering their math facts knowledge.

These Math Fact Games cards can also be used in the Path to Math Game.

With these examples, your child will be having fun while learning the math facts. You may even be surprised with request to play with the Arithmetic Game cards during their own time.

The worst part is. . . that’s why you homeschooled in the first place. You wanted to provide a relevant, superior and “fun” experience for your kids. But reading book after book, writing report after report just isn’t that.

One of the ways we really work with our students (including those learning to operate with dyslexia) is by injecting levity in the lessons. For instance, as you may have read earlier, some of our students play darts and games like it to improve their math skills. That might seem odd, but have you ever seen someone frowning while playing darts?

Reading can be the same way. In fact we created some home school curriculum reading programs that are based on games like GoFish that we all know to be fun and entertaining. For instance if you’re working on consonant clusters, why not play a game where the student has to read them as part of the game? We’ve created several games like that.

Feel free to check out the Reading Section of our Store and see.

So when you’re choosing a home school curriculum check out the fun factor. Don’t get us wrong the quality of the content and learning material is very important. That’s why we spend so much time putting our resources together. But if it’s not fun, if the child isn’t enjoying the learning. . . how much of the good content do you really get?

Whether you use Abeka, Sunrise or our home school reading programs ask yourself what it is that truly makes your child smile. And how often can they bring up strange facts and lessons they learned on field trips, watching movies and when you’ve done crazy science experiments? Homeschooling should be filled with joyous moments, joyous learning, joyful times.

We hope we can be there to serve you in your needs, but most importantly hope we can help you serve your “customers”.

Does it have to be perfect the first time? Definitely not. And why would it? Just like neighbors, co-workers and friends there are some people we just totally connect with right away. So make sure when you’re getting a math tutor for your child you get comfortable with the company because your child may want to meet one or two tutors to make a perfect match. 

So how do you know if it’s working?

Fun. If the child is having fun with the tutor -then it’s working. The tutor will do their job and will teach. In this case math.  That tutor has the best of both worlds when the students actually enjoys the tutoring process.

And for you as a parent, isn’t it much better on your stress level when you don’t have to fight? Think about the difference between taking the children shopping with you or taking them to a friend’s house? When the air is free of stress and anger the learning environment is so wonderful.

What about benchmarks?

Once you find a tutor who works great with your child, then meet with them separately and talk about benchmarks. Ask the tutor what they think the goals should be for the child. And tell them your goals. The education side of the tutor should be the easiest part.

Once that relationship is in place and your child actually looks forward to the session, then the tutor can work to accomplish whatever goals you need. That sense of trust between the tutor and child is important because it opens up the child to whatever kind of learning the tutor suggests.

Do learning styles matter?

Most definitely. That’s what individualized learning is. Did you know that your child likely learns many different ways?  You’ll hear people say “I’m a visual learner” or “I need to be able to touch it”. . . And typically those are very true statements.

But the visual learner has probably memorized lyrics from songs on the radio, and the “touch learner” has probably enjoyed an audio book or two.  But our mind is able to process information from a variety of sources. What you need to think about when getting a math tutor is making sure the tutor understands that and presents information in different ways regularly.

If you see the tutor doing something a bit crazy, like playing a card game or something, get excited. When you get all those neurons firing kids can really learn. Just think about how much math is involved with darts? Adding up the dart values, multiplying the ones that land in double and triple spots, subtracting from 301. That can be much more valuable than flash cards.

Getting a math tutor should be a fun experience. If you’re in NY, call us and let us help you get your child excited about math.

http://www.stronglearning.com/tutoring-k-12/

One of our favorite games is darts, as we mentioned in our discussion on how to use darts to teach math. But you can’t rely on one game to get them up to speed with their math skills. It’s best to have a small arsenal of math games for 4th graders on hand. (Especially in the summer).

So I’d like to introduce you to our math card games. The secret here is the cards themselves. You probably already know how to play Old Maid, or War. It’s the cards that make the difference.

Let’s look at War. There’s not a lot of skill involved, but there is a whole lotta fun. Each player lays a card down, the high card wins. The person to get all the cards in the deck wins. But instead of cards that say 4, Ace, King and 10 on them, we made cards that say “6 x 7″, “8 x 5″ and “4 x 3″. I guarantee they learn quick AND memorize the answers without even trying.

If you are looking for something to do right now, you could even download and print them off if you wanted. Just CLICK HERE to get these math games for 4th graders.

Otherwise, teach them how to play darts and they’ll love to use math.

In Europe they call it Super Roulette but here in the states it doesn’t really have a “common name” understood by everyone. I’d almost call it spinning top roulette.  Here’s how it works and why it is a great math game for kids.

Super Roulette is a wooden “bowl” shaped board that comes with a top and 6 small marbles.  Inside the bowl are little indentations where the balls can get “stuck” while they’re rolling around. And like billiards, there are 4 “pockets” the marbles can be shot into.

To play you put the marbles in the bowl (to which they all roll to the middle) then you find a spot and spin the top. The spinning top also moves down to the middle where the “spinning action” shoots the marbles around at lightning speed. Some of them bounce back to the middle and get shot again. Others land in the “pockets” and others roll into the indentations. Once the top stops, the turn is over.

So here’s where the math comes in. The indentations and pockets have numbers associated with them. So where ever the marbles stop is how many points you get. But you don’t just add up  your points. . . nope. . . that’d be too easy. Two of the marbles are black – they’re negative in value. Two of the marbles are red, they’re double the points and two are plain – they’re regular points.

So multiply the red points by 2, add the plain ones and subtract the black ones. 1st to 1000 is the winner!  Since there’s absolutely no skill involved all ages can play together.

Change the rules for the marbles and you can work on other parts of math. Don’t stop there, learn about more fun math games.

I’m excited to tell you about some  simple games for kids who don’t like math. Not only are they simple but they’re super fun.

I hate to say it but I empathize with kids who don’t like math. It’s not always easy and some of it is so far removed from their lives, I can see why they don’t understand what it’s for.

But it’s important and makes life a whole lot easier later on.  Sure there’s calculators, but you’d be surprised how many times you do instant adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing on a daily basis. Let’s at least learn those parts well.

We can leave calculus for another day.

So I’d like to introduce you first to Darts. You’ve probably played darts in your life at a bar, a party or in someone’s basement. It’s fun – and who doesn’t love throwing things at the wall?

The best dart game for kids who don’t like math is 301.  The object of the game is to throw the darts until you’ve hit 301 points exactly. The “exactly” part means they have to practice a little hand-eye coordination at the very end.

So everyone starts with 301 points and subtracts their way to 0. Have the child throw their 3 darts at the board, and then have them write down the scores for each dart.

1. A dart that lands on black or white gets the points listed for that wedge. In the photo above the Single score arrows would be worth 12 points. Had they landed in the lower adjacent white wedge, it would have been 9 points.

2. The inner bull’s eye is 50 points, and the outer bull is 25 points.

3. The red and green rings are double and triple. The double ring arrow is pointed at the 20 wedge, which means a dart landing there is worth 20 x 2 = 40 points. The triple ring arrow is pointed at the 14 wedge, which means it is worth 14 x 3 = 42 points.

Once they add their points, they have to then subtract from 301 to see their score for that round. If they got a triple 14, a double 20 and a single 9 their total points would have been 91.

Subtract that from 301 and that person has 210 going into the second round.That means their next throw of three darts must be added up and then subtracted from 210.

See how kids who don’t like math would love this game? It’s almost as if they’re not doing math – just playing the game.

If you want to teach negatives, make the black wedges negative numbers.  And if you want to teach division, make the rings divided by two and divided by 3. Or if you want to work on higher numbers, make the rings x4 and x6 and start from 1000 instead of 301.

Any way you cut it, darts is a great game for kids who don’t like math. No question about it.