A Fun Math Game

With all the moving we've been doing this year, we haven't been able to be as consistent as I like with homeschool.  Usually we just school right through summer, but this year we've had a lot of odd breaks.  So we have had a little slipping on some of the basics.  Most recently I've noticed that the multiplication tables could use some refreshing.  

So when I stumbled across this idea on Kids Activities Blog I knew this would be a lot more fun way to review than flashcards or worksheets.

Basically, it's just a pile of popsicle sticks with an equation on one end and an answer (to a different equation) on the other end.  The challenge is to make a line - like a train - putting the sticks in order so that the answer matches the question.  This is much more difficult than it looks because, for instance, there are several combinations that multiply up to 36.  And if you don't get exactly the right 36, you won't be able to connect them all.  So there's logic involved to.  We played with this all morning.  I think I'll have him do it every day for awhile and see if we can improve his speed.

 Meanwhile we had our distractions.  Do you like the fireman's gloves?

And the two year old managed to open the toy cabinet.  I found him laying on the cover in the sunshine nearly asleep.

And then I had to share this cool picture of my daughter (on the right) with two of her friends.  This was taken before the Messiah concert the other night.

It sounds like much of the country is dealing with nasty weather.  We've had our share.  It was down to -24 degrees yesterday (of course I missed getting a picture of that).

And to make matters more interesting, our heat isn't working properly.  We have the thermostats (on all three levels) set to 90 degrees and the warmest we can get it is 61.  Brr.  Not so bad in the daytime because the play room has a bunch of south-facing windows that really warm it up (I imagine we'll be complaining about those next summer). But at night we're struggling to keep it 58 degrees.  At least we have a propane stove on the bottom level - which is technically a walk-out basement.  It helps.  And we have an infrared heater we use in our bedroom on the top floor.  So we aren't in danger of freezing, but we're not warm.  We had repairmen out today but there is apparently a code they have to put in to be able to fix it and the only guy that knows the code wouldn't answer the phone.  So they'll be back ... Monday :(  At least the problem is easily fixed - they just need to turn up the heat on the water (we have hydronic hot water baseboard heat, which is set 50 degrees too low).

I'm hoping it will warm up this weekend.  We need to go find a Christmas tree and get some decorations up before we miss Christmas entirely.