Kahoot!

Never be afraid to listen to your teenagers and learn from them! For a recent Family Home Evening, one of my teens introduced us to Kahoot! We. LOVED. It. We played game after game, all of them centered on things relating to the LDS Church. He explained that they play Kahoot! in Seminary on occasion, and he's played it in some of his public high school classes as well, on those subjects. I was intrigued, then hooked, and stayed up that night creating a Kahoot! of my own to use in our homeschool the next day.

Kahoot! says it is "making learning awesome." I would agree. There are so many possibilities! You can look up and play any Kahoot! already created, and they exist for pretty much any topic, including the inane and absurd. (Because anyone can create a Kahoot!, some of them are... less than worthy. These can range from being ridiculous, to wrong, to basically illiterate.) There are some seriously good ones out there, though, and it really is a great tool for motivating, challenging, and engaging students (or families, groups of friends, co-workers, etc.).

Because my kids love these, and because they are easy to create and I can do anything I want with them to use them in our studies, I am all over this. Here are two that I created in the past week. 

Reproduction in a Flowering Plant

Human Anatomy Pre-Quiz

In addition to using Kahoot! in our homeschool, I want to create some for future Family Home Evenings, family reunions with family history, and in other settings.

Try it!

Left-Right Christmas Story

We played this game for Family Home Evening tonight. It's a fun little Christmas activity.

To prepare, have some small item for each person participating. I had candy bars, packages of gum, etc. and put each item in a separate brown paper lunch sack and stapled them shut. 

Have everyone who is playing sit in a circle and randomly hand out the bags/packages. Instruct everyone that when they hear the word "right" they must all pass their bags to the person on their right, and when they hear the word "left" they must pass their bags to the person on their left. This must be done each and every time they hear these words.

Read the following story aloud as everyone listens and follows directions. When the story is over, open up the bags and see the surprises.

     Something was wrong this Christmas. Mrs. Claus could tell RIGHT away that Santa was not his usual jolly self. Things just were not quite RIGHT. Why, just before Santa LEFT for the workshop, he put his LEFT foot in his RIGHT boot and his RIGHT foot in his LEFT boot. He stood RIGHT up and LEFT for work without even noticing what he had done.

     Now being the good wife that she was, Mrs. Claus decided she had better find out if all of Santa's good sense had LEFT him. Mrs. Claus LEFT all her Christmas baking until later. RIGHT now Santa needed her help.

     As she glanced out the window, she saw the line of elves marching like tin soldiers on their way to the workshop. She fell RIGHT in behind as the elves counted cadence, to the LEFT, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT. To the LEFT, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT. Turning the corner to the RIGHT, they marched RIGHT into their places and started RIGHT to work.

     On the shelves to the LEFT she saw Barbie dolls, baby dolls, porcelain dolls, Cabbage Patch dolls, and on her RIGHT she saw Ninja Turtles RIGHT between Batman cars and train sets. Never had she seen so many toys LEFT to finish. Never had she known Santa to wait RIGHT up to the last minute to finish just the RIGHT toy for each girl and boy. Even if the elves worked RIGHT around the clock and never LEFT for a break, she did not see how they could RIGHT this terrible wrong.

     Mrs. Claus LEFT the workshop and headed RIGHT back home. LEFT to herself to think, she LEFT the baking awhile longer when the time would be RIGHT.

     When Santa returned he found Mrs. Claus full of questions. Why had he LEFT things until the last minute? Even if they worked RIGHT around the clock and RIGHT until Christmas Eve, did he think they could make it without some child being LEFT out? Santa LEFT Mrs. Claus still talking and sat RIGHT down next to her. RIGHT she was! Things were a terrible mess all RIGHT! He could agree with almost everything she had said. But she was LEFT speechless as she listened to Santa's sad but RIGHTful tale.

     Why, children were not being taught RIGHT by their parents anymore. RIGHT after Thanksgiving, Santa would start RIGHT in receiving hug long lists of things kids wanted. He was sure they started on the RIGHT side of Toys R Us and wrote and inventory of the whole store, clear to the LEFT side. Why, kids were asking for so many things he did not see how he could possibly keep his RIGHT mind. LEFT too much to themselves, these little folks never even knew what was RIGHT. Getting RIGHT to the point he said, "These children have become very selfish, never thinking that I am an old man with only so much energy LEFT. Why RIGHT now? I'm so tired. I don't think I can do another thing even if all the toys are LEFT unfinished.

     Mrs. Claus's RIGHT eye twinkled. She knew what had to be done RIGHT away. Immediately she called Mr. WRIGHT, the assessor, who knew RIGHT what to do. Early the next morning, RIGHT after feeding their families a wonderful breakfast, all the workers of the North Pole Stake LEFT their homes and headed RIGHT to Santa's workshop to help RIGHT the wrong (of having selfish children) and help Santa finish the toys that were LEFT.

     Santa now had renewed faith in parents and he knew RIGHT down deep in his heart that next year parents would help their kids learn what was RIGHT.

     Santa sprang to his sleigh and to his team gave a whistle. Merry Christmas to all and everything is all RIGHT.

A Shout Out for Shout Out!

I just found out about Etsy shop Rise and Shout and the fun games there. If you've ever played Spot It, then you already know what to do with these LDS- and educationally-themed Shout Out versions. 

Among the purchases I made were the Symbols of Christ Shout Out to use this week before Easter (it makes a good FHE and Sunday game, too) and the Singing Time Shout Out to use in Primary. Can't wait! I'm also thinking I'll print off extras to use as gifts. There are versions to help youngsters with basic reading and/or speech as well as holiday versions and more.

In addition to the normal matching play, there are instructions and ideas for using the cards in other ways and adapting for large groups (like playing Bingo).

So glad to have found this resource!

Presidential Adaptation

You may recall my review of The Presidential game from about a month ago. Today we adaptated it for more players. Grabbing chips, coinage, etc. from other games, we made it a six-player (thus six-candidate) game by including the Green Party, the Constitution Party, the Libertarians, and an Independent candidate. We learned about the ideologies and goals of those parties as we played.

As I looked up information on those other "major" parties, I discovered that there are 31 nationally ranked "minor" parties, as well as regional parties, the majority of whom I'd never heard of. Even though we disagreed with most of the platforms and philosophies, it was fascinating to read about such parties as the Transhumanist Party, the Black Riders Liberation Party, and the United States Pirate Party.

In real life, of course, this country is still dominated by a two-party system, regardless of how many other political parties there are. That's unfortunate in many ways. Though our adaptation isn't likely to be a reality any time soon, it did ignite learning and discussion in addition to changing the dynamic of our game play.

Praise Aplenty for The Presidential

I've said it before, and I'll say it again (and again and again)--you can learn a lot from a game. 

We're learning a lot about Unites States Government this year. Right now we're focusing on the Presidential election, watching debates and discussing candidates, ideas, laws, campaigns, etc. I came across a game that I got really excited about. It arrived today and we've already plaid it twice! 

The Presidential is a contest between Republicans and Democrats for the Electoral College votes of the States. This game quickly teaches so much! The visual board makes it so obvious why even if one party wins the majority of states, certain states matter more than others and win an election. (Thus explaining why a candidate will campaign hard in Florida or New York and might not even give the time of day to North Dakota.) 

The Politics Cards can wreak havoc with votes, and they also prompt a LOT of interesting discussion about why certain people might vote the way they do, and whether or not those reasons are good ones. They also provide a lot of laughs.

Strategy is huge in this game. That doesn't mean that younger kids can't play it. Even if they don't fully understand, they can play. But it provides a great strategy challenge for those who do understand.

An educational bonus is that this game involves CONSTANT math. Votes change parties every turn and it's a race to get those 270 Electoral votes by then end of the campaign. 

No two rounds will be the same. Even if the same players use the same strategy every time, the dice keep things uncertain as well as the cards. 

One final bonus is that the game comes with blank Politics Cards that you can fill in with political choices and consequences yourself, helping players understand politics even better.

Middle of the game.

Republicans won!

Fun with U.S. Geography

In between our larger units of Early American History (Pre-Columbus through Constitution) and United States History (Constitution through Present Day) we are doing a unit on United States Geography. 

We began by memorizing the names of the states in alphabetical order with the song "Fifty Nifty" until everyone could just sit down and quickly write out all the states alphabetically. 

Then we watched this beautiful video. I thought the narration a bit hokey and lacking, and I wish they'd have done their map segments better, but the real value of this video is the breathtaking views of vastly different parts of the nation. Of course, it doesn't show everything, but there is a good variety and it really was beautiful.

After watching the video I gave everyone two blank maps of the United States (with state lines drawn) and we did a little pretest to see how many states they could label. The goal is obviously to be able to correctly and entirely fill in a map at the end of the unit. The other map was for them to color in every state they have visited. We've been blessed to be able to travel to quite a bit of the country, so it was fun for them to see just how many of the states they have been to.

I have a few different wooden and jigsaw puzzles of the United States, so those have been pulled out and done and referenced often throughout the unit.

The games were and are a big hit. Sequence is a fun game with a strategic component to it and the States & Capitals version lends itself to helping kids learn their state capitals at the same time. I made a rule that when playing a card, the state and capital must be said aloud for reinforcement.

The biggest hit and most favorite activity of all is the game Scrambled States of America. I cannot say enough good things about this game. My kids are playing it all the time and can't get enough of it. Not only does this game help with geography, it also reinforces things like directions, vowels, syllables, attention to detail, and requires quick thinking all while being crazy fun.

An indispensable resource, I think, is Audio Memory's States & Capitals Songs CD. Music really sticks with you and makes it so much easier to memorize things. I have some very musical kids and they love challenging themselves with the quiz songs to see if they can get their geography right. Because they'd played the games and gotten familiar with states and capitals, this reinforced those while giving them a place to put them geographically on a map and a way to memorize locations. 

One more tool for reinforcement and matching was Penguin Hop at Arcademics.

The kids are each also creating a notebook of U.S. geography. 

Book 5 of Draw. Write. Now. works on handwriting and drawing skills while teaching the order in which the continent was settled and states formed, while giving a little history, too.

I like Evan Moor's "Maps of the USA" for focusing on each individual state's geography and basic state information as well as giving regional maps of climates, time zones, etc. The kids color the maps, look up how the flags, state birds and flowers should be colored, and also look up current populations since this was published in 2004.

Then, because my family just loves hidden pictures, we also have a page of them for every state. The items to find are all things that are important to or culturally significant to each state.

Also for each state, every child reads the pages in some compilation books we have (Scholastic's Atlas of the United States, Wish You Were Here - Emily's Guide to the 50 States, and National Geographic Picture Atlas of the Fifty States) and makes a list of 10 facts unique to that state that they learned in the reading.

As you can see, I've used several resources, some of which seem to overlap. I've done that on purpose. Encountering the same information in multiple places in a variety of formats is great reinforcement, yet it keeps it from getting too boring, and helps kids make connections. It also caters to different learning styles. Except for playing games together, this unit is largely an independent one that the kids have enjoyed working through systematically.

War Games in Math

This is not what you think... this is math!  Today my daughter was bored as we waited for her brothers' baseball game to get started.  Luckily I happened to have a deck of cards with me and so we worked on math facts  played several rousing rounds of War variations to happily pass the time.

War.  You know, the old game where each player flips a card and whoever has the card with the highest number value wins the hand.  This is a great game for teaching young ones numbers and higher and lower values.  But you can also put several twists on this game to help children practice basic functions and/or memorize math facts.  My daughter was having so much fun she didn't even think of it as math.

A big thanks to Joslyn Postma for sharing all these War variations at an LDSHE Enrichment Seminar last year in Virginia:

Addition War - Players turn up two cards for each skirmish.  The highest sum wins.

Advanced Addition War - Turn up three (or four) cards for each skirmish and add them together.

Subtraction War - Players turn up two cards and subtract the smaller number form the larger.  This time, the greatest difference wins the skirmish.

Product War - Turn up two cards and multiply.

Advanced Product War - Turn up three (or four) cards and multiply.

Fraction War - Players turn up two cards and make a fraction, using the smaller card as the numerator.  Greatest fraction wins.

Improper Fraction War - Turn up two cards and make a fraction, using the larger card as the numerator.  Greatest fraction wins.

Integer Addition War - Black cards are positive numbers; red cards are negative.  The greatest sum wins.  Remember that -2 is greater than -7.

Integer Product War - Black cards are positive numbers; red cards are negative.  The greatest product wins.  Remember that two negative numbers make a positive product.

Wild War - Players turn up three cards and may do whatever math manipulation they wish with the numbers.  The greatest answer wins the skirmish.

Advanced Wild War - Black cards are positive numbers; red cards are negative numbers.  Players turn up four cards and may do whatever math manipulation they wish with the numbers.  The greatest answer wins the skirmish.

Reverse Wild War - Players turn up three cards (or four, or five) and may do whatever math manipulation they wish with the numbers.  The answer with the lowest absolute value (closest to zero) wins the skirmish.

Multi-Digit War - Turn up two or three cards and create a 2-digit or 3-digit number.

Multi-Digit Subtraction War - Turn up three cards.  Make two of them into a 2-digit number, then subtract the third.  Example:  Suppose you turn up 3,4, and 5.  Should you arrange them as 54-3 or 45-3 or 35-4 or ... ?

Multi-Digit Product War - Turn up three cards.  Make two of them into a 2-digit number, then multiply by the third.  Example:  Suppose you turn up 3,4, and 5.  Should you arrange them as 5x43 or 4x53 or 3x54 or ... ?

NOTE:  These games work best if there is a full deck of playing cards per player (minus the face cards which don't come into play in these games).  Since a deck of cards is small, it fits easily into a purse or bag or glove compartment to have on hand for whenever you "need" them.

P.S.  The LDSHE Conference is my fa-fa-favorite.  If you get (or can make) the opportunity to go--DO!


And now a little math humor: