Day 4

We're closing in on one week!  It's gone fairly well, but again, Emily is giving me grief over math.  Today, I tried to get creative with it.  We made a game out of school today.  A toy was being argued over, and I took it away.  I told them that in order to find the toy, they had to get 4 plastic animals.  The plastic animals each got assigned tasks by the kids (school goals, determined by me).  Once they finished their task, the kids would ask, "Did he find it?" Oh, so hopefully.  Nope.  Didn't find it.  One by one, they had to accomplish the task, and one by one the animals would disappear!  Finally, all the schoolwork was done, and all the animals were gone.  I produced a new crew who were assigned the task of finding the animals that had gone missing.  When they found those, the toy would be found!  They had a great time hunting the living room for where I had planted the various critters.  At the end, they got the final clue:  The toy was somewhere very cold.  The freezer!  They ran and found it.  Not bad.

In the past, to do math drills, we've done our own version of a game show, with multiple contestants (plastic animals), flashcards and a sheet to keep score.  The caveat is that if one of the contestants gets an answer wrong, the owner of the contestant has to tell them the right answer.  They love the game, but the best part is at the end when the loser gets placed in a freezer-proof cup or container in water, and placed in the freezer overnight!  I don't know why they like it, but they do, and we often have contestants that don't know 1+1, but at least I know the kids do! 

So, on to tomorrow.  Maybe I'll try to get them to do the hundred-fact math sheet by freezing them.  I don't know if I mean the sheets or the kids.