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math, literacy, and creative summer learning: tabletop surprises

home / family life / family fun / indoor activities / math, literacy, and creative summer learning: tabletop surprises
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math, literacy, and creative summer learning: tabletop surprises

Weโ€™re week three into our tabletop surprises, and this week, we rocked some sneaky math, literacy, and creative thinking.

The kids woke up to some easy activities and ones that required more thinkingโ€”and two that required more movement. Sign language was one of the weekโ€™s activities.

The basis for tabletop surprises is just to let Maddy, Owen, and Cora find their own time to do these little activities that sneak in a little bit oโ€™ learning and fun into their days.

They take all of five seconds to set up and prepare, and itโ€™s a whole lot of pulling from resources that are around the houseโ€”from our own focused learning at home, or from my previous classroom teaching experience.

Fun stuff.

Hereโ€™s the skinny . . .

  • Math, Literacy, And Creative Summer Learning– Tabletop Surprises: ย ย Set up and then go. Thatโ€™s it.

Weโ€™re three weeks in. Here we go!

tabletop surprises sudoku

  • Sudoku: Thatโ€™s right. Sudoku is hard. Number sense and critical thinking and logic all wrapped up into one pretty, griddy package.

Sudoku puzzles are logic-based number puzzles.

I found mine on KrazyDad, where I found the mazes a few weeks back.ย  Free. Tons of them. So worth checking out. I totally heart KrazyDad.

sudoku  tabletop surprises

sudoku  tabletop surprises

I printed some Easy ones for Monday’s tabletop surprises. ย  Even some ofย  Easy level ones were tough for the kids.

Iโ€™ll definitely throw Sudoku ย in the mix again before the end of the summer because the puzzles were that hard for the kids. Iโ€™m not sure how we hadnโ€™t tried them before, but Sudoku was on my mind from the cool outdoor Sudoku on this yearโ€™s we teach: summertime learning eBook.

Maddy, Owen, and Cora solved the Kid ones quicklyโ€”and they should have. They were super easy. But the Easy ones really challenged them. I think I need to learn more about how to solve them, some of the tricks and logic strategies myself, and then Iโ€™ll give them the skinny before trying this activity again.

My plan? To read up on the Sudoku Space site which has a pretty detailed explanation behind the puzzles.

tabletop surprises sign language cover

  • Learning With Sign language: I got these great sign language cards from a friend who moved a few years ago, and every so often I pull them out for the kids.

For our tabletop surprise on Tuesday, I simply gave them the following challenge:

1. Put the cards in ABC order.

2. Learn your name in sign language.

3. Learn two more words of your choice in sign language.

4. Show me what youโ€™ve learned!

sign language cards  tabletop surprises

sign language cards  tabletop surprises

Owen ran with it and impressed Maddy, Cora, and I while we ate breakfast. Heโ€™s my early bird and usually gets his tabletop challenges finished before the girls finish breakfast.

Maddy and Cora move a little later, usually tackling the challenge after lunch or late afternoon.

Consensus was they liked this one.

Want to give it a go? Download and print one of the free sign language cards from the ASL site or these little sign language alphabet printables from abcteach.

tabletop surprises day money

  • Money counting and wrapping: Big fail on this activity.ย  We skip counted with coins and wrapped coins a while back, and they loved it. But this time?ย  Notsomuch.

I think the problem was that I didnโ€™t have a lot of money out for them to play withโ€”we didnโ€™t have a ton of coins to actually play with or fill the coin wrappers. I get it. Itโ€™d be hard to spend time counting coins and then not actually have $2 in nickels to fill a wrapper completely.

Anyway, it was out on Wednesday, and they enjoyed sorting the coins from the non-coins (Chuck-E-Cheese tokens, foreign coins, random small, coin-like objects). ย I think you can grab coin wrappers at any bank (at least you could a while back), or you can find them very inexpensive on Amazon.

tabletop surprises letter writing

  • Letter Writing: The other day, Cora received a little โ€˜helloโ€™ note from one of her classmates, and it reminded me of how much kidsโ€”mine, especiallyโ€”enjoy getting mail.

So on Thursday, I put out some note paper, pens, and envelopes and a little note that said:

Send a little โ€˜helloโ€™ to

-Nana! -Cousins! -Grandparents!ย  -Friends!

tabletop surprises letter writing

tabletop surprises letter writing

letter writing tabletop surprises - 4

What got them stuck was the envelope and how to address it properly.ย  I made a little sample, and it helped a bit.ย  Spelling their cousinsโ€™ names? Also tough.

Clearly we need to do more practice here or at least I should update our Family Playing cards.ย  Iโ€™ll add it to my list.

I just liked how this got Maddy, Owen, and Cora thinking, writing, and sending a little love.ย  We need to do it more often, for sure.

tabletop surprises descriptive writing

  • Descriptive Writing: Inspired by our Stop, Observe, and Write activity from last summerโ€™s Everyday Journals, I threw a card from the Everyday Journals on a clipboard along with some journals and notebooks.

We had breakfast out on the back porch, and then the kids took some time to find a quiet spot and write.

descriptive writing tabletop surprises -

descriptive writing tabletop surprises -

It was quick, it was easy, and my hope was that they would be able to tune into what they saw, heard, smelled, felt, and maybe even tasted as they sat, listened, and wrote.

The key? Modeling. You sit and write with them, sharing what you wrote so that they hear what descriptive writing sounds like.

And thatโ€™s it. Just an average, thoughtful, summer week.ย  And along with some trips to the pool and nearby parks, some errands and chores, it was a pretty sweet week.ย  Though it’s crazy, and I’m behind on all of my work, emails, and cleaning, I am thankful and blessed.

Stay on top of the Tabletop Surprises by checking out the past few weeks if youโ€™ve missed them:

  • Tabletop Surprises Week One
  • Tabletop Surprises Week Two

Or check out some fun ideas from a our Smart Summer Challenge a few summers back.

You May Also Like...

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About amy mascott

teacher, mother, dreamer. lover of literacy, fun learning, good food, and three crazy-cool kids. finder of four-leaf clovers | dc metro ยท http://about.me/amymascott
tweet with me: @teachmama

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