Making Math Fun - Our Candy Shop

One of my big goals this year is to make math FUN. A few weeks ago I was looking for ideas online, and came across the site, Making Learning Fun. They had a great idea for setting up a candy shop, and had some printable cards with pictures, prices, and even circles to put down the appropriate amount of money. You can download them here - click on Candy Money Counting Cards and you will get to the link. I laminated the cards because I hope to make this a Friday event (if everything has gone well during the week).

Yesterday we set up the candy shop! We had lots of fun - but just so you know, I did limit the candy they could eat to 2 pieces, but they could save up the candy they bought for later times. We used play money and I gave each child $4 to spend.

Here is what some of the cards in our store looked like:

Each child got a turn to be the "cashier" - learning to key in $.03 for a Tootsie Roll and $.13 for a piece of gum was a good lesson for both of my children - their first instinct was to just punch "3" and "13". I know this is old-fashioned because today it's all barcodes! We had ten different candies to choose from.

 My son loved the activity because he was acting quite official, and my daughter delighted in teaching him how to make change, which in turn reinforced her ability to make change. Clever.

Daddy even visited the store - he was taking a day off from work to pressure wash the house, so he was stopping in on breaks to visit the candy store. We also invited a four year old friend from across the street to come to our candy store. I think next time we do this I'll let the kids invite a few more people. Our friend paid for the candy, but then we gave him his money back. :-)


I bet you could even do this same thing with trinkets from the dollar store and link it to a reward system during your homeschool week. All in all, it was a great way to learn some real world math and have FUN!

Do your kids like to play store? Do they have a cash register? It's one of our favorite homeschool math tools! 

Weekly Wrap-Up - Where Did This Week Go?

I don't honestly know where the week went. We had a GOOD week here.... today we took it a bit easy because I had a friend visit this morning and I was fighting a huge headache. Other than that, however, we spent 8-2 each day doing school. I was proud.

My son's Five In A Row selection this week was The Story About Ping. You can read about our row here. We went to the library and got all kinds of books about ducks and China. My daughter who is nine will also be tagging along on this adventure. I love this about Five in a Row. It is fitting for so many ages.

My daughter's big endeavors this week surrounded our current read-aloud, Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. She is working on a notebook to go along with our reading, and we are enjoying mapping Nathaniel Bowditch's voyages on the high seas. I never knew about him, and it has been so much fun to learn.

In science we have been studying the human body. We read the Magic School Bus book about the human body and also watched the video. The kids have LOVED a CD Rom we have by DK Interactive Software: My Amazing Human Body.

The animated character Seymour Skeleton has been a HUGE hit in our house and the kids have spent lots of time at the computer learning with him.

I also feel like we have refined our daily routine. Miss B is doing well with a morning ritual of piano practice, Daily Grams, Bible Study, math lesson, history, Sequential Spelling, and reading. I also added in some dictation/copywork which we are adding to her big notebook.

GMan loves his math and Five in a Row, and also is making his way through the Kindergarten Handwriting Without Tears. He loves to read and is pretty much always reading a book about baseball.

To end the week we had a candy store this afternoon. I am going to try to get in a post about it tomorrow because it was a HIT. We set up an actual candy store with price tags, real money, etc... and the kids "shopped", each of them taking turns as the cashier (which involved courtesy, making change, etc...). It was very fun, but a lot of candy consumption was involved and I did have some hyper kids.

Two highlights for me this week were having lunch with a good friend at a lovely tea room one day this week. My father-in-law took the kids to lunch on this day and they had a great time. I also had a two hour visit with a mentor homeschooling mom today - I am blessed to call her my friend.

This post is linked to the Weekly Wrap-Up over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. Check out some other homeschoolers' weeks as well!

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