Got numeracy?

When people think of math, what do they think about? Worksheets? Tests? Times tables and thick text books? When I think of math, I think of making my life easier and better: How to do more with less, make good financial decisions, and understand the world around me. Which is more compelling? More important, what do we want for our kids?

Okay, enough rhetorical questions. This post is all about developing NUMBER SENSE aka NUMERACY (math + literacy) through living and playing.

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Math through playing

Kids' play is kids' work. There are a lot of great games out there to help kids practice teamwork, logic, and problem solving, but here are some that our family has found great for math skills. Did I miss something you love? Please drop a comment!

Dominoes
Skills: Quantity recognition, matching


The Ladybug Game
Skills: Counting, quantity, early numeral recognition

Your lady bug will advance or retreat according to the game cards. Be sure to collect enough aphids to appease the ants so you can get to the finish line.



War (card game)
Skills: Numeral recognition, counting, quantity/value comparison

This is an oldie but goodie! Start out with just the number cards and let your child count out the number of symbols to make the concrete comparison to see who wins (8 hearts beats 4 clubs!). Later on you can switch to a deck that doesn't show the symbols to see if they remember their numerals and can make abstract comparisons.



Math War

Skills: Addition and subtraction

Played just like war, but the comparison is made between the sum or difference of the expression on the card.



Cow Dice

Skills: Odd versus even, addition, doubling

This is a fun a simple game! Each die has the numbers 2-6 and the picture of a cow. Players take turns rolling the dice trying to score points. Only even numbers are worth points, and the trick is that you get to double your sum once for each cow you roll. Dice can be re-rolled two times. Play until you meet a certain goal and practice 2- and 3-digit addition as well!

Yahtzee
Skills: Addition, simple multiplication

Let your child add and multiply to figure out how many points they have rolled in a classic game of Yahtzee! Then let them practice writing numbers as they keep score.




Challenge 24 Game

Skills: Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division

This game can be played solo or competitively. For each card, try to be the first to add, subtract, multiply, and divide to get the result of 24. But be aware you have to use each number exactly once!



Monopoly
Skills: Percents, 2- and 3-digit addition and subtraction

I have to admit that I don't love this game. But my kid does! And figuring out how much tax he owes is a great motivator to learn about percents. Not to mention all of the math needed to make change when paying rent or buying properties.





Battleship (Star Wars version or traditional) [ETA 2/20/17]
Skills: Coordinate systems

If your child knows the alphabet and numerals, battleship can introduce them to the idea of coordinates on a grid.


Dragon Box Apps (basic and advanced algebra, numbers)

If you want to go digital, I cannot recommend Dragon Box highly enough! Not only is the art and music chic, these apps really take advantage of the digital medium. The algebra apps let a child use algebraic thinking even if they cannot write read, write numerals, or add/subtract. Kids as young as 4 or 5 can do it! For a non-reader, a parent will need to explain some of the basic rules, but the child can mostly play on their own. Just drag and drop picture tiles to try to get the box alone to finish each problem. Later on, these will turn into letter variables, numbers, and x. As you progress through each level, you will get to watch your dragon egg hatch and grow to full-size! Dragon Box numbers is oriented to teach number sense. It lets kids drag unit squares onto each other to add them into bigger and bigger numbers, or break them apart again. Or kids can collect coins by pressing the number that corresponds to the height where the coin is floating. Simple










Math through living

Beyond games, kids are surrounded by opportunities to practice math skills if we tune into them. Grocery stores and kitchens are two of the best places for this. Let your kids help you read prices and weigh produce when they are younger, then determine prices after coupons and calculate and compare unit prices when they are older. When they have a handle on those skills, let them help plan a menu and budget how much different meals cost.

Although cooking with young kids usually takes more time than cooking alone, there are a lot of math opportunities to be had! (Not to mention life skills.) I try to start early and block off the meal prep time as activity time, part of our weekly Kid Chef theme. Little kids can learn to recognize different measuring spoons and cups and start to understand fractions. It's easier to see the difference between 1/4 and 1/2 when you can pour 1/4 tsp of salt into the 1/2 tsp spoon two times! Practice doubling or halving recipes, reading serving sizes (e.g., how many cups are in a can), and reading nutrition labels to evaluate macronutrient ratios. These activities are all building numeracy while learning important life skills that are often overlooked in school.

Kid Chef: Pumpkin Bread

What do you do with leftover pepitas? We bought some for snacking, but sadly they weren't as addictive as the last batch. To use them up, one of my Kid Chefs helped make this delicious pumpkin bread. I used less water (quarter cup) and mixed twice the pepitas into the batter. Yum!

For more of my favorite recipes, friend me on Plan to Eat!

Kids' Writing Contest [Ends January 8]

Kids needing some motivation to practice writing over the break? Have them enter the Kid O'Clock writing contest!

Entries should be a review of a favorite holiday activity, tradition, or toy. Entries must be written by the child and can be typed up by an adult or be a picture of the original. Please post each child's entry to the Kid O'Clock wall and like the Facebook page to enter. I will randomly select 1 winner out of every 15 entries on Monday, January 9.

There must be at least 10 entries for the contest to go live. The winner will receive a journal/diary of my choice.

Winter Break Boredom Busters: Paper Snowflakes

Have some down time with the kids coming up in December? Making paper snowflakes is a fun activity that doubles as a decoration and triples as fine motor practice! We started with the book Paper Snowflakes Made Easy (which seems to be out of print but looks eerily similar to this one [affiliate link]).

I didn't want to cut up the book, but quickly discovered that construction paper is way too thick to cut through nicely after folding (even for me). Thankfully, tissue paper worked great, and I suspect most leftover wrapping papers would as well! I did the tracing for my 6- and 4-year-olds to minimize frustration, they did the cutting. The 4-year-old found it a bit too tricky, but here is one my 6-year-old completed:

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Plan to Eat Meal Planning Review

Every year, my New Year's resolutions look just about the same: get more sleep, get more exercise, be a better person (don't judge me), and eat healthier. I've taken a solid first step by having good intentions, but when it's Kid O'Clock it can be hard to turn those intentions into results! Setting goals with concrete, measureable actions is crucial for any kind of progress. My concrete action? Meal planning.

So am I eating healthier? Yes and no. Like most people, my eating patterns get better and worse according to the stresses, supports, and celebrations in my life. But beyond those external changes, I've noticed that I do sometimes do better than usual for a stretch. What makes the difference for me is planning my meals, shopping with a list, and cleaning out my fridge regularly.

(I think this last item, as unglamorous as it is, gets a lot less attention than it deserves. If you really aren't going to eat something in the next couple days, freeze it or toss it now. Don't wait until your fridge is a end-stage Tetris puzzle of potential filth containers that you are afraid to open for fear of inhaling spores of some new Superbug. If you can't see what is in your fridge, chaos will take over. Not that I'm speaking from personal experience. *cough*)

So, with great intentions, in 2015 I decided to make a Meal Planning Binder. This is a great idea for someone who is not me. It's great because it doesn't really cost anything! You get all your favorite recipes in one place! At first my enthusiasm gave me the drive to take the time to print out recipes and inventory my fridge, freezer, and pantry. So far so good. Then I had to pick 4-5 meals every week and cross reference the ingredient lists with my inventory lists. I think I made it through a full month doing this, wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles! And then Life happened (no really--first trimester icks were a real meal planning roadblock), and I stopped, started again, and then stopped for good other than a rally to make freezer meals in the three days before my due date. Meal planning that way was just more time and brain power than I could muster on a weekly basis.

So what did I do when resolutions rolled around again? Hope springs eternal, so in January of 2016, I decided to try something else, even if it meant it would cost a little bit. First I ruled out apps that do the menu planning for you. My family, it turns out, does not fancy a typical American diet, so we need to put together our own menu. In looking for recommendations, I kept hearing stellar commentary about Plan to Eat. And 10 months later, I agree that it is an AMAZING, well-designed tool worth spending a few bucks on.

It is in many ways like a gym membership, because you only get value out of it if you actually use it, but here are the main reasons I love it:

1. It paid for itself in decreased grocery spending within just TWO WEEKS of using it.

2. You can get a trial month for FREE (and WITHOUT giving them your credit card number). Plus they are about to have a sale! (Read on.)

3. It is easy enough to use that I actually use it.

4. You can upload your own recipes or grab them from the web.

5. You can drag and drop your recipes onto a calendar!

6. It makes your shopping list for you. Let me repeat: IT MAKES YOUR SHOPPING LIST FOR YOU.

7. You can trade recipes with friends.

8. It's on the cloud, so I can access my recipes anywhere, and I don't have to worry about carrying a binder with me.

9. I'm throwing out less food.

Now, I won't claim I plan my meals every week, but I've used it off and on all year. Here's my workflow:

First I drag my recipes onto my calendar to make a plan for the week. I can search among my recipes by ingredient or course or just scroll through alphabetically. If we have a lot going on, I can plan out breakfasts and lunches and even snacks ahead of time (hello, Thanksgiving!). If we have a lighter week, I may just plan out dinners. Once done, I generate the shopping list by selecting the date range I want to shop for. This is the magical part: Plan to Eat will add up the totals you need for each ingredient and group them automatically by department. These functions aren't perfect: When items are worded differently they show up as separate items, and sometimes it can't guess the department. But you know what? I don't care because it SAVES SO MUCH TIME. I open the automatically generated list on my phone and stand in front of my pantry and quickly check off all the staples we have on hand, then do the same for the refrigerated items. When you click on an item, it disappears, so it is easy to go through it fast and focus on what remains without re-writing the list.

Armed with my list on my phone, my grocery trips go faster since I don't have to meal plan in the aisles (talk about existential malaise) and my list is already grouped by department. No wifi or data coverage at the store? No problem, it still works offline. I save money by avoiding buying things I already have, buying fewer convenience foods, and eating out less often. If there is a sale at the store, or if I can't get something I need, I can access my recipes, plan, and shopping list on the go and make changes quickly. When I get home, I can click on the calendar and pull up recipes on my phone or on my computer and get cooking knowing that I have everything I need.

There are so many other little features that make Plan to Eat great. You can add prep notes to help avoid those "Oh crap!" moments when you forgot to thaw the meat or set up a marinade in advance. After a meal, I can add notes or adjust and save changes to the recipe (less butter, more salt, double quantity, etc.). If you do need to halve or double a recipe (or apply any multiplier), the program will do the math for you! You can even give it a star rating and share it with friends.

Over time it is taking less and less time to meal plan and to cook. How? I am slowly, finally learning how much cooking we actually need to do. Before, I couldn't seem to find our "sweet spot" between staring listlessly at a fridge full of unused ingredients and staring hungrily at the fridge after realizing I am missing a key ingredient for that night's dinner. Usually I over-plan, and therefore overspend and overeat. This fall, I attempted to make a 5-week plan for the first month of school to make sure I didn't fall off the wagon at a busy time. Of course, who can definitively plan that far out? (I don't want to know.) It turned out to be more cooking than I had time or fridge space for, so I quickly dragged recipes to the next open days. That 5-week plan ended up being dragged out over 7 weeks with minimal effort. I was glad to have a rough plan and the flexibility to change when I realized the mileage we were getting from leftovers. Saving time planning and cooking, and cutting down on our food waste, were the perfect accompaniments to achieving my eating goals.

Intrigued? Go get your free trial! Convinced? It is only $39 for a whole year (starting after your free trial ends)! The people who run this site have clearly got it together. At that price, it only takes avoiding a couple fast food runs to get your money back. Plus, if you like good vegetarian fare, you can grab some of my recipes on there!

The Cat in the Hat Learning Library + GIVEAWAY!

This post contains affiliate links.

Want to win a free book? Read on!

The best books are read many times over the course of years, worthy of their shelf space. The Cat in the Hat Learning Library is a nonfiction series that has its own shelf at our house.




In each book, the Cat in the Hat lead Sally and Nick on a tour of a different topic. There are TONS of choices, especially books about the natural world. Does your kid have an interest in sharks, reptiles, mammals, puppies, bugs, birds, or dinosaurs? Places like deserts, rain forests, or outer space? The human body? This series has got you covered. There are also several books about human activity, like inventions, maps, the history of money, and how elections work.

What I love about these books is how informative they are. Many children's nonfiction books are too superficial, but this series provides a good starting point for inquiry without being overwhelming. When my kids are little, they make great read-alouds, and now my son loves reading them to himself.



Want to try this series out? Enter to win Hark! A Shark! Just comment here or on the Facebook page with the name of one of the Cat In the Hat Learning Library books (not shown above) that piques your interest!

Entries will close on Friday evening! The winner will be selected at random and announced Saturday!

Book Review: My Little Sister Ate One Hare

This post contains affiliate links.

My Little Sister Ate One Hare became a fast favorite for my middle child. The little sister in the story eats the strangest things, starting small:

"My little sister ate 1 hare. We thought she'd throw up then and there."





The little sister goes on to eat more and more disgustingly delicious critters, building from that one hare to nine lizards. Gross! Each verse includes a rhyme and repeats previous verses to build the suspense and silliness. It is great for toddlers and preschoolers who are starting to count and rhyme, especially those who have a little sister of their own at home.

But what about number 10? Spoiler: It turns out the one thing Little Sister can't stomach is peas, and she upchucks all the critters she has swallowed! Kevin Hawkes created delightfully silly artwork to show just what that might look like.