What I Do With Holiday Candy

After a holiday where loads of candy is dumped on my children....this is often what we do with it.

Day 1:  It's yours.  Binge away.

Day 2:  Dump all candy into a bucket.  Pick out 5 for the day.

Day 3:  Pick out 4.

Day 4:  Pick out 3.

Day 5:  Pick out 2.

Day 6:  Pick out 1.

Day 7:  The bucket is stored away for "emergency purse treats" and/or "future incentives"

If they have a special treat they got, say a larger item from the Easter Bunny, they can keep that one to eat when they want.  This year they got Pez and Peeps on a stick.

Often I am still left with TONS of candy.

So, I find it a perfect time for school incentives.

One of my favorite games is Take a Step.

They line up against one wall and I ask them questions one by one ("How do you spell 'elephant'?", or "Which word is the adverb in this sentence?" or "Name three things that describe a mammal.").  If they get the question correct, they get to take a step forward.  Once they reach me, they get a treat.  Then back to the beginning they go.

Today I decided to  try something different, mostly because Paige needed more distractions, so we went to the basement with a bunch of our play toys and my creative juices started to seep out.

First game, I took my 1-100 number flashcards and threw them inside our cube box (picture below).  As I called the girl's name they had to crawl through the tunnel and I had two number flashcards inside that they needed to add together.  If they got the answer right, they put their hop scotch marker on the number 1 until they had gone through the tunnel to end of the hop scotch and got a reward treat.

Second game, I had a spelling bee where they took a step forward every time they spelled it correctly.  If they got the word incorrect, they would have to jump on our little trampoline 15 times and come back and try again.  Once they reached me at the end, they got a treat.

Third game, was similar to the first, except instead of throwing number cards in the end, I threw stuffed animals inside.  I also threw a bunch of stuffed animals on the trampoline.  Leila and Bella (a neighbor girl who is also homeschooled that we were watching) had to take the number of animals in the cube and add them to the number of stuffed animals on the trampoline.  Eden had to subtract the numbers.

It was a fun day.

Eden even made up her own game where she would do hop scotch, adding as she hopped.

  

1 + 2 = 3

3 + 3 = 6

6 + 4 = 10

10 + 5 = 15

15 + 6 = 21

21 + 7 = 28

28 + 8 = 36

Of course Leila had make up a game too after that.  On the single row numbers she would say two numbers that would equal that number she hopped on (1 + 0 = 1 for the first one).  On the one with two numbers she would add those two numbers together as she hopped on those numbers (2 + 3 = 5).

I don't do fun stuff like this often.  Perhaps I should though.

My new discovery the other day was my new version of a "timed test" that Eden actually enjoyed.  I figured I should write this down in case I need to remember to do this again.

Eden doesn't like timed tests.  I don't blame her.

So, I took number cards, laid them out in columns, two by two (I hope this makes sense).  I set the timer.  She would step in front of two cards, add them, step over them to the next two, add them, step over, etc.  She stepped her way over an entire room full of number cards and completed it in under a minute.  It took her three tries to get under a minute, but she was happy as a clam to try to beat the old score.  Even when I increased the difficulty and did subtracting, she did so without complaint.  That alone was worth it.