Friday, December 16, 2011

Last Snowman Standing!

Photo by Fungalhorde

Always on the look out for new and interesting things to do with my homeschooler, I found a cute little game over on Math Wire called Last Snowman Standing. We did not have the cute little snowman beads that they used, so I pulled out a bag of jingle bells. Had I thought of it before, we could have made marshmallow snowmen to play with and then eaten them at the end. We also changed the rules and played it so the person with the most bells at the end won. I enlisted the help of my husband to play with us and for 30 blissful minutes, my little girl who has developed a distaste for addition added numbers on the dice. I won the game against my daughter, but lost to my husband. Oh well... We also learned to make tally marks! Tomorrow, we are going to play the same game only subtracting the smaller number from the larger. She had a great time! I love teaching when they don't even know that they are learning!

Sunday, December 4, 2011

My new Kindle Fire

My husband told me to get myself a Kindle Fire for Christmas, because he knows that I have been eyeing them since Amazon sent my an email announcing them several months ago. I have long said that eBooks were the way to go, but something inside of me loves the feel of a new book or finding hidden treasures in an old book. I love picking up a used book to find something highlighted or a note written in the margin, something that says someone else was here and was touched by this. Bibles are the best. I love looking in people's Bibles. They are filled with wisdom of the ages and when God speaks to the reader they highlight, underline and notate! My other issue with eBooks is the inability to share them with friends and family. I personally love using Paperback Swap, but eBooks don't offer. My other issue is that many eBooks cost as much as print books which doesn't make sense to me. Granted eBooks require computers and software and hard drives to store them on, they don't have to be printed and shipped. They can't be shared like a print books either, so it seems to me that they should cost a little less. But all too often, they don't. In fact, some cost more than the paperback version. It doesn't make sense to me. So, maybe, I have been on the fence about eBooks. When I was in college, I would have loved to have eBooks instead of regular print books. Lugging all those textbooks back and forth to class was a pain. Even for kids, I think a durable eReader issued at the start of school with all their textbooks on it would be great! Sure, some kids are going to lose them, break them or damage them, but they will do the same thing to a textbook. That is where personal responsibility comes in. You break it, you buy a new one. You lose it, you buy a new one. If your parents can't afford to buy a new one, we will find you a job around the school that you will do until the debt is repaid.

Anyway, off my soap box! I love my new Kindle even though every time I try to play with it I have a 5 year old in my lap taking it over. We downloaded a new game called Where's My Water? by Disney. I must say it is really cool! As my little princess put it, "It is a game that makes you use your brain." It requires you to figure out how to to get water to Swampy the alligator's bathtub by digging and passing up various barriers. 

I love the battery life on the Kindle Fire. My child, husband and I have been playing it for hours without plugging it in. Since I have never had a Kindle, I don't know how long the battery normally, but compared to my cell phone the Kindle Fire has excellent battery life.

So, what do you think about eReaders?