St. Patrick's Day Fun

I love St. Patrick's Day. It is my favorite holiday, next to Christmas. Weird? I know. But I love it. Maybe because it isn't as hyped as others. I can decide how we celebrate. We eat green and Irish, we read books about Ireland and St. Patrick, we listen to Irish Music, and we play St. Patrick's Day games.

This year, I made the games. I thought they were great, would be so much fun to play, and we could spend the day playing them. The kids, however, wanted to do other things. Ah, well. Maybe the games will be fun another day!

I did manage to get them to play each of the following games, and they enjoyed them, they just didn't want to play them for an extended period of time.

Shamrock Matching:

Played like memory. Kutey and I played this one together. It is a little trickier than most memory games, because many of the shamrocks are similar, but not the same. Kutey did very well, better than I did!

Shamrock number match:

I made two mats, one numbered one to ten twice, the other one to twenty. I thought the kids could play these together, but I ended up playing with Kutey. We used dice numbered 0 to 9, using 0 as a 10. The idea was, roll the die, cover the number. For 1 to 20, roll 2 dice, cover the number. Great for the first bit, but slows way down as you get into it. I eventually started letting Kutey roll 3 dice. Then she was more likely to get a number she needed!

Shamrock Counting

These cards were made to play two games, but we only played one. Roll a die numbered one to six and cover that many shamrocks. I happen to have enough green counters to use, which made it more festive, but anything would work. This one was quick and works number recognition and counting.


Shamrock Showdown

This is a place value game. I have seen various versions of it around the Internet. I made my own, because I wanted to be able to put it on the back of the above cards, so it needed to be a certain size. I also wanted to be able to have a place for writing the number after the coins were drawn. Kiddo and I played this one a few times. He loved it when he drew good numbers, but not so much when he drew two zeros in a row. He still got the biggest number, but he wasn't as interested in the game anymore. We'll work on that.

Parts of Speech Rainbows

This one is similar to other ideas I have seen on the web, too. I made my own version because I needed it to fit on the back of the shamrock counting cards. I made nouns and verbs, but later realized I should have made adjectives, too. Kiddo loved this game. It is a nice gentle way to talk about nouns and verbs. We have talked about this before, but we don't cover it regularly. I put the cards on an old cookie sheet and pulled out some word magnets. Kiddo sorted them in no time. Then he got out the other set of magnetic words we have and sorted them. It was funny, though, because he sorted them by whether it was a "bounce," "mermaid," or "beautiful" word.

I planned to post these for anyone to print if they wanted to, but I haven't gotten that far. And now that St. Patrick's Day is past, I would guess the interest is much lower. I might still post them, we'll see.

Quidditch/dodge ball

My kids are playing some sort of quidditch/dodge ball combination game in my family room. I think it needs to be spring. SOON!

Capture My Heart Bingo

When I had extra kids here for Valentine's day, I wanted to do some extra fun games and things. A few years ago, I made "Capture My Heart" bingo cards at a MOMS Club function. I made the cards, but we never played the game. In the time since then the pieces used to call the game have gotten lost, though I still have the cards. The game, however, seemed like fun! So I made my own set of cards for the kids on Monday.

The game is played a lot like bingo, but instead of trying to fill in a whole row, you are trying to fill all the spaces that touch a heart that has been placed on a square on your card. The heart can either be placed by an opponent or by the player. We did the latter. You can use a foam heart (you know, the ones that you stick on things for crafts. My kids love those!) or, for added fun, use a candy or marshmallow that can be eaten when the game is won! We used heart shaped marshmallows, which the kids adored.



It wasn't a fast game. I had to call nearly all 36 items to get a winner. Then I called more to get everyone to "win," at their request. We basically filled the whole card every time. But they loved it. Next time, I might just let them use the heart as a "free" space, and try to get a regular bingo. The game might go faster that way!

I have uploaded the cards here, if you care to play the game yourself. The last page is the pieces to cut up to call the game. Each card has the same 36 pictures, just in different orders. It was easier for me if they all had the same things--the kids knew they would find the item on their card. You could also play by passing the call cards around in a bowl and letting each person draw one, call it, and everyone cover it. Lots of options!

Pokemon??????

I am trying to understand. Kiddo has been introduced to Pokemon. His cousin is into it, has been for over a year. We spent a lot of time with his family over the weekend (for our annual fall camping trip), and Pokemon was present. Kiddo has no cards. Up until this weekend I don't think he knew much about them at all, except for the little bit cousin C explain in previous short encounters. But now. Well, now he knows. He hasn't asked for any cards of his own (Thank goodness!), but he is creating his own characters, drawing them, talking about damage points, powers, etc. I don't understand any of it (admittedly I have not tried). Here is my question: is there any thing redeeming about Pokemon? Will it help him with, say, math? Logical reasoning? Is there a reason I should stop ignoring it?

A great new game!

We received an unexpected package in the mail last week. We have a relative who occasionally sends us fun packages and we never know they are coming. We opened it and found this inside:



I had never heard of Shut the Box, but it is such a great game! It says for ages 8 and up, but Kiddo loves it. Basically you roll the dice and then flip down shutters to total the total of the dice. The objective is to flip down all the shutters. There is a bit more to it than that, but that is the general idea. We play a little bit modified for Kiddo, we only add two numbers together to get the total..more than that is just too confusing for him right now.

I have been adding this into our school day as fun math practice. Kiddo will play several rounds of it without tiring of it. I am anticipating a travel version with cards (lay down cards 9 to 1, then lay cards 1 to 9 on top of them). It would also work really well for a workbox, I would bet!