Don't you love to teach your kids when they don't realize they are being taught!?!

I do!

Using "A Place for Zero" and "Times Tales" are two great books that do just that!

Your kids will be too busy enjoying these books to realize how much they are learning.

Check them out for yourself and let me know what you think.

Do you have a child that has difficulty with counting and doing simple math?

Hand him a jar of pennies.  Tell him he can keep as many as he can count.

Change the problem to a money problem.  Kids love money!  Instead of: What's 2+3, say what if you have $2.00 and I give you 3 more?

Let me know how it works out for you!

Here are some ideas for learning to recognize numbers:

1. Play cards

2. Play with a telephone

3. Play number BINGO

4. Hop Scotch

5. Play with a calculator

6. Dot-to-Dot coloring sheets

7. Break out the tape measure!

8. Cook together

9. Make a number search instead of a word search

10. Write out numbers for copywork.  Dot it for younger students, or someone who is struggling!

How do you get a reluctant child learn how to count???

Give him a jump rope?

A jump rope?????

Oh, yeah!

I love to make learning fun for the kids and easy for the mom.

I would love to say that I am such a brillant teacher that this stuff just comes to me.  HA!

It justs happens naturally and I'm astonished to see how simple it really can be!

I have one son who just couldn't sit and learn how to count.

Then one day I heard him counting to ten while playing hide-and-seek!

No way!  How could it be that easy!

Okay, he could count to ten, but my goal was 100!

Well, he just happened to find a jump rope.  He loves it!

Pretty soon he was counting to 15, then 20.  He got up to 39, then 50!

Today he proudly sat down beside me and announced that he could count to 100.

"Well, let's hear it!"

He counted to 100 (and beyond!).

Today is our first day back to "school" after ten days off.  He certainly didn't learn it at "school".

Hey, what are you waiting for?

Go get a jump rope!

(Note: It doesn't have to be a jump rope.  Just look for fun and easy ways to learn!  Don't spend too much time trying to figure it out;  just watch your kids.  They have probably already been learning when you weren't looking!)

Why do we insist on making things so difficult?

We forget that the purpose of school is to learn.

We tend to think if we didn't spend a long time in

school, then we didn't really do it.

We need to break out of this mindset!

What makes more sense:

Sitting down with your child for five minutes

while she watches YOU complete a half a page

of math problems that she just hasn't seemed to

be able to get.

OR

Handing her a page of 20 problems that she spends

half the day working on only to discover that she

didn't get one right! 

(Not to mention branding the wrong way to do the problem into her brain making it even more confusing for her!)

So, I ask you again, which makes more sense?

School is about learning, not about wasting time!