Learning Activities for Kids

Halloween Addition Game: Pick-and-Solve Sticks

October 1, 2015 By Terri Thompson

Why are flashcards always the default method for learning math facts?

I get that flashcards are easy. The problem is that they are B-O-R-I-N-G.

My daughter has been working on brushing up on her math facts and brought home some flashcards from school. After a couple of days of dragging ourselves through them, she asked for more interesting way to practice.

Well, being the good blogger that I am, I told her I’d come up with something. That’s when this Halloween addition game was born.

Practice math facts with this fun Halloween addition game, Pumpkin Pick-and-Solve Sticks. It's a fun way to add some holiday fun to your math practice.

Awhile back, I found some fun ways to practice math facts and any of these ideas would have worked.

But this time I wanted something a little different. So, I got out some paint and some craft sticks and got to work on these Halloween Math Facts Pick-and-Solve Sticks.

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Supplies needed

Large craft sticks
Orange paint
Black Sharpie
Pumpkin Stickers
Can (or any sort of container to hold the sticks)

How to make this Halloween addition game

To create the pick-and-solve sticks, I painted 16 large crafts stick with orange paint.

I only needed 16 for our set of math facts. Just make what you need for the set of math facts you’re working on.

After the paint dried, I wrote a math fact at the bottom of each stick.

Finally, I put a small jack-o-lantern sticker at the opposite end of the sticks.

I placed all the sticks, math fact side down, in a can. (You can find the instructions for our jack-o-lantern can here.) Try not to use a see-through container to keep the math problems a mystery until someone pulls one out of the can. Your Halloween addition game is ready to go!

You can use these pick-and-solve sticks in a couple of different ways:

Have your child pull a stick out one-by-one and try to solve the problem.

Let two or more kids take turns pulling out sticks to work on math facts together.

Practice with a timer. How many addition problems can you solve in 30 seconds?

Let your child come up with their own game! The possibilities are endless.

The 2nd grade blogging squad has been hard at work this week with plenty of fun pumpkin ideas. Check out the rest of the posts:

Pumpkin Patch Arrays to Learn Multiplication by School Time Snippets
Free Pumpkin Shape Matching Game by Life Over C’s
Second Grade Noun and Predicate Pumpkin Activity by Sugar Aunts
How to Carve a Pumpkin Writing Prompts by Still Playing School
How to Set Up a Pumpkin Engineering Task Your Second Graders Will Love by Thriving STEM
Pumpkin Seed Place Value – Subtraction Math Fact by Rainy Day Mum

You may also enjoy one of these fun math activities:

Spider Skip Counting Puzzles

Math Fact Sticks

Math Fact Islands

Chemical Reactions with Pennies

September 24, 2015 By Terri Thompson

What is a chemical reaction?

It is the change of a substance into a new one that has a different chemical identity.

My kids were completely fascinated when we decided to explore this at home with these safe chemical reactions with pennies.

This fun science project for kids will help them explore chemical reactions with pennies.

I know this sounds very high school chem lab-ish and like something that should require a full range of safety equipment, but I’ve got a fun science project that’s completely safe to do at home with no special equipment required.

(Although, feel free to wear the safety goggles. They’re kind of cool!)

Grab some supplies and let’s explore chemical reactions with pennies.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

Supplies Needed

4 shiny pennies (make sure they are all as shiny as possible)
4 paper towels
White vinegar
Lemon juice
Water
4 saucers or bowls
My Science Experiment recording sheet(optional)

Prepare Your Experiment

To set up your experiment, fold and place a paper towel on top of each saucer (or bowl).

Next pour water on one paper towel, lemon juice on the next, and white vinegar on another. Leave one paper towel dry.

Place one penny in the middle of the wet area of each of your paper towels. Use a pen to label each paper towel.

To guide us through our experiment, we used our My Science Experiment sheet. (You can click the link to download and print your own copy.)

We started with our question: What will make a penny turn a different color? Then we made our predictions. We each chose the substance we thought would turn our penny green.

We recorded our different substances: water, white vinegar, and lemon juice, while also noting that we left one paper towel dry. It was to serve as our control – the one penny we didn’t make any changes to so that we could use it as comparison later.

The results of our chemical reactions with pennies experiment

It was hard, but we waited 24 hours for our experiment to work.

We checked on our pennies after about 12 hours and refreshed the liquid every so often.

Your paper towels will dry out, so be ready to add more liquid to keep them wet.

After 24 hours, we took a good look at our pennies. The results surprised even me!

I knew the vinegar would turn the penny green. Check it out in the collage above. But, I was a bit surprised to see the results of the other liquids.

Water did change the penny; it left it looking dull, worn, and caused a few black dots to form.

Lemon juice ate away at the penny making it look worn away (similar to a penny that has been run over by a car a few times).

The penny in vinegar turn green, both on the side exposed the liquid and the side exposed to the air.

And finally, the dry penny did not change at all. Interesting results!

Why did the penny turn green in vinegar?

The combination of the vinegar and air caused a blueish green substance called malachite to form on the penny. This is the same substance that has turned the Statue of Liberty green.

Have fun doing this fun (and safe) chemical reaction with pennies experiment with your kids!

10 Fun Ways to Practice Counting On

September 18, 2015 By Terri Thompson

One of the most basic math concepts your child will work on in kindergarten is counting on.

It’s one step beyond counting. Basically, counting on is counting beginning from any number other than one. It sets the stage for addition and subtraction. (You can find a more detailed explanation here at this Math Homework 101 post.)

Since this such a super-important concept, it’s one you want to practice counting on at home. Luckily there are so many fun (and easy) ways to practice. Here are 10 of my favorite ideas that I’ve found.

It's so easy to practice counting on with your kids especially if you try one of these fun math games and activities that are perfect for school or home.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. Please see my disclosure for more details.

Pictured from left to right in the top photo.

1.Grab a deck of cards and play Snap +1. Lessons Learnt Journal has all the details.

2.Grab some dice and play this fun dice game from Danya Banya.

3.Before you put away the dice and cards, play a fun round of Counting On: The Card Game.

4.Play a game of hopscotch with a counting on twist. Find the instructions at Coffee Cups and Crayons.

5.Use dice and counters to play a simple hands on game from This Reading Mama.

Pictured left to right.

6. Go on a nature walk and practice counting on along the way. You can find some great examples here.

7. Practice using a hundred chart. Here’s a fun driveway hundred chart game that will get your kids moving and learning.

8. Play Chutes and Ladders. Yep, this classic game is such an easy way to practice. Get you kids to say the numbers out loud as they move their game piece for extra emphasis.

9. Use number pebbles from The Imagination Tree for an easy hands-on way to practice.

10. Play with number towers. The Activity Mom shows you how to make some. Just remember, start with a number other than one!

Have fun learning with all these fun ways to practice counting on!

Scarecrow Compound Word Match Game

September 17, 2015 By Terri Thompson

You know what’s fun about the word scarecrow?

It’s a compound word. A compound word is a word made up of two words joined together, like airplane, homemade, and football.

Do you know what else is cool about compound words? They’re really fun to learn about!

To add to the fun of learning compound words, I took 20 words related to farms and turned them into a fun compound word match game.

Play this printable match game to combine different fall words to make a compound word match game. It's a fun and easy reading game for your second grader.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

Make your compound word match game

To prep your game, you’ll need cardstock, a printer, and a download of the game.

Click this link above to download the game.

It’s best to print it on cardstock both for durability and to prevent players from being able to see through from the backside. The game prints on two sheets of paper and has 20 cards total.

Once you’ve printed the game, cut out all the cards.

Now it’s time to play!

How to Play

The rules are the same as any other memory game.

Place all the cards face down in a grid on the table. Player one turns over two cards.

Do they make a compound word? In the picture above they do.

If you’ve got a compound word, take both cards off the board and turn over two more. If you don’t have a compound word, flip the cards back over and it’s player two’s turn.

Keep playing until all the cards are removed from the board.

Play with different words

Do you want a different set of words? You can make your own compound word match game!

Use index cards and write your compound words. Since a compound word is made up or two words, write the word on two cards – one part of the word on each card.

You can use this comprehensive list of compound words for inspiration.

We had so much fun learning about compound words! Find more scarecrow-themed activities from the 2nd Grade Blogging Crew below:

Free Scarecrow Expanded Form Memory Game from Life Over C’s
Scarecrow Syllables for Second Grade from Look! We’re Learning!
Make a Scarecrow Literacy Game from Planet Smarty Pants
Scarecrow Measures from Crafty Kids at Home
Beautiful Scarecrow Silhouette Art Project from School Time Snippets
Scarecrow Place Value Math from Sugar Aunts
Scarecrow Craft with Landscape from Sallie Borrink Learning

Handprint Poems: Poetry Writing for Kids

September 10, 2015 By Terri Thompson

Poetry can be such a daunting subject.

There is verse, structure, rhyme, and meter. There are sonnets, haiku, limericks, and odes. Then there are the metaphors… oh, the metaphors.

Where do you begin?

These simple handprint poems are a great place to begin!

Handprint poems are a fun and simple poetry writing project for kids. Trace your hands and write a poem that is "All About Me".

Despite all the complicated terms, poetry is actually quite easy and fun to enjoy with kids.

We’ve read tons of great poetry for kids. (That’s always a good place to start.)

We’ve also gotten creative and written a few of our own.

For this project, our poems were quite simple and we used our hand prints as a guide.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

Make your handprints

We started our project by tracing our hands.

I cut a white sheet of paper in half so I wouldn’t overwhelm the girls with too big of a piece. I wanted their hand prints to fill the paper and not look lost in the background.

The girls then traced their hand print with a marker.

Write your handprint poems

Now it was time to write.

We wrote “All About Me” in the palm of the hands and used the fingers to describe ourselves.

Our poems aren’t very formal, and one could argue, not very poem-like. But, that wasn’t the point.

Luckily, poetry can be anything you want it to be. My daughter’s poem was short, and at 11 syllables, even shorter than haiku. No matter. It was hers and it was poetry.

My daughter’s poem was pretty awesome (and did you catch that she described herself as awesome!). It was simple and it was true. It was any easy way to get her writing and being creative. I loved it!

Check out the rest of the 2nd Grade Blogging Team for more posts about poetry for kids:

9 Poetry Books your child might enjoy – Planet Smarty Pants

Introducing Children to the poems of Rober Louis Stevenson – In the Playroom

Free Printable Poetry for Fall – Life Over C’s

Digraph Spelling Word Poems – Sugar Aunts

Autumn Fires Copywork – Sallie Borrink Learning

Cinquain Poetry for Kids – Still Playing School

Solar System Poetry – Rainy Day Mum

If you enjoyed these handprint poems, the above photo is perfect for sharing on Facebook or you can save the photo below on Pinterest.

You may also enjoy one of these poetry projects:

Beach Ball Poetry

Poetry Basket for Creative Writing Fun

Subway Acrostic Poetry

Learning Activities for Kids