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Learning games and Manipulatives

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One thing that I have found to be so important in our learning environment is to fill our house with learning games and manipulatives that the kids enjoy working with.  It has been a huge help to make our learning more hands-on and interactive.  I truly believe that is the way learning should happen- especially with young children. As soon as I started teaching my children at home, I changed the focus of the toys and games that I buy.  I like to buy things that have a purpose- that teach something. It’s been really great because we play & learn at the same time.  My kids love this so much and so do I! Today I am going to share some games & toys with you that we love and use regularly.
 
learning Games
 
  • Letter Tiles-Great for teaching the alphabet, spelling
  • Dominoes-You can play lots of math games with these
  • Playing Cards-play Math War & other math games
  • Bean Bags
  • Pattern Blocks-There are tons of free printable pattern pages you can find online
  • Animal Counters-great for patterns, counting, weaighing, measuring…
  • Maps and map Puzzles-geography, obviously! 
  • Puzzles- there are so many kinds
  • Dice- number & letter ones—games!!
  • Boggle-Great for beginning spellers!
  • What’s Gnu-Great for teaching & practicing spelling!
  • Magic Math Machines- They have them for addition, subtraction, Multiplication & Division.  I was lucky to find them at a thrift store.
  • Flash Cards-We have tons of flash card sets.  At Target and the dollar store they always have a bunch of different kinds of these in the fall that we like to pick up & use for all kinds of purposes.  I usually hole punch them & put them on rings to keep in order.
  • The Learning Journey has some great games & puzzles that you can find at lots of stores (Our Ross & T.J. Maxx stores carry them often)  We have a few & my kids really like them.
  • Leap Frog has some amazing educational toys and games.  We have a few: The fridge Magnetic word builder is fun to practice 3 letter words.
What toys and games do you have that you and your family love to use in your school?   
 
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3 Comments

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Comments

  1. Enchanted Homeschooling Mom says

    May 25, 2012 at 9:13 pm

    Puzzles, puzzles and more puzzles, LOL! We also use most of the same items that you listed above. When our math animal counters temporarily relocate I tend to use our daughter’s colored hair bands as counters. Both of the kids have also recently taken to our abacus.

    Reply
  2. Kat says

    May 30, 2012 at 1:26 pm

    Great post! 🙂 Learning games are a big part of our homeschool. We like board-type games like Boggle, Scrabble, Bananagrams, Monopoly, Yahtzee, puzzles, etc. Since we are all computer junkies, lol, we also like online learning games. We have a few sites that we like. SpellingCity and LearningGamesforKids (LGfK is totally FREE!) are at the top of our favorites list! 😀

    Again, great post. Thanks so much for sharing!
    Katie

    Reply
  3. Deb Chitwood says

    June 2, 2012 at 2:31 am

    Great ideas, Karyn! My kids always loved to use learning games when we homeschooled. I featured your post at the Living Montessori Now Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/LivingMontessoriNow

    Reply

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Hi! I'm Karyn.
I am a former teacher turned homeschool mom of four kids. I LOVE teaching! I believe learning should be enjoyable and engaging. My goal is to ease the burdens of educators by offering memorable learning activities.
Questions? Contact me here: karyn@teachbesideme.com
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