It took me and my six year old an hour just to dictate/write ten spelling words, review phonagram cards/spelling rule cards, and to read two “early readers” together. We may have overdone it as I had to bring her down from the verge of tears twice. Her attention tends to wander, she thinks by guessing she’ll save herself time, etc.

My toddler was watching “Miss Pattycake” the whole time we worked, and my oldest was outside playing with her puppies.
I did snag her eventually and we got her school work mostly done, and finished with six year old’s other subjects by lunchtime (including laps around the house on foot and on bike–does that redeem me?). 

Six year old is SO close to reading fluently, I’ve just gotta stay on top of it. Her tears totally demotivate me. She would have been reading last year (kindergarten) if I’d been consistent with sitting down and plodding through the early readers. Sigh.

My biggest confession: I’ve discovered how motivating watermelon licorice is.

Bad mommy, slapping my hand as I hit publish…

Mary

Gina asked a while back if I’d give more details on how to play the floor game.

The floor game is a board game played all over the house, or even outdoors. You and your kids design the game, the board and your kids are the playing pieces.

Using poster board for durability, make “spaces” to be hopped on by the players. You can make your game all about a certain subject (history for instance), or like I’ve done…questions about everything for review purposes. Make up your rules (decide if you’ll have a penalty for wrong answers or an extra turn for correct ones), make a few bonus spaces (“hop 3 spaces forward”, or have one space be a “mystery question” that mom thinks up on the spur of the moment), and construct a large cardboard/posterboard dice.

Here are some questions I put on our spaces for my girls aged 6 and 8:

• How many planets are there? Name as many as you can.
• Spell the name of the month in which you celebrate your birthday.
• How many digits in 1,002,200,333? Hop to the next space if you can read this number correctly to me.
• Say a Bible verse and reference. (Or put the reference there and have them quote the verse)
• Name 5 internal organs.
• What’s the world’s largest desert?
• Name the 4 oceans
• Do 5 jumping jacks

You get the idea. The fun part is when you take these spaces all over the place…up and back down the stairs, in and out of the bathtub, around hazards like dirty laundry (gasp, yes, it exists!!), up onto step stools, etc.

This game is so flexible. If your children need to work on their multiplication tables, your younger ones can still play by adding the numbers instead of multiplying.

Store all the spaces in a labeled gallon sized ziplock in your game cupboard! Incidentally, this is a good way to store all your puzzles…just cut the flat picture part out of the box top and store in bag with pieces. Saves a lot of space!