A Mom's Quest to Teach is a regular column covering elements of teaching and learning (with an eye towards homeschooling), parenting, crafting, and all of the discoveries, joys, and daily roller coaster rides that occur while being a mom.
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Our children love playing board games and board games that are cooperative are a big hit with my husband and me because they teach great team-building skills to our children. One game that our children enjoy playing is Mermaid Island from Peaceable Kingdom. It is a great game for any time of the year but especially for summertime!
What Is the Goal of the Game?
Children, ages five and up, work together to help the mermaids swim across the waves to reach Mermaid Island before the Sea Witch can get to the island. The game is perfect for 2 to 6 players and is very easy to set up and play.
How Do You Play the Game?
All three mermaids begin at the start area while the Sea Witch starts in Seaweed Triangle on the game board. The four wand tokens are placed on the appropriate spaces on the game board. Children take turns spinning to see if they move a mermaid one or two spaces or if the Sea Witch gets to move ahead one space. If the mermaid lands on a space with a wand, all players get the opportunity to use the wand to move the Sea Witch back one space. If the Sea Witch lands on the space, the wand is removed from the game. There is also the chance for a mermaid to skip spaces if she lands at a space leading to a bridge. The mermaid can immediately cross the bridge to skip spaces while the Sea Witch does not get to use the bridges at all.
Children work together to move all three of the mermaid tokens to Mermaid Island. If all three make it, everyone wins! If the Sea Witch gets to the Mermaid Island, the game is over and the mermaids lose.
Beyond the Game
What can you do after you are done playing the Mermaid Island game?
Visit the beach
Build a sandcastle
Research manatees which have been compared to mermaids
Go for a swim
Mermaid shows at Weeki Wachee Springs State Park in Florida
Mermaid Island is great for children who cannot read and beginning readers because there is no reading required. Even with reading being unnecessary, learning still takes place! Your children will practice strategy practices, learn to make decisions together, develop social and emotional skills, and cooperate.
Do Your Children Enjoy Games?
We have shared a number of board games, dice games, and card games at A Mom's Quest to Teach including:
Tenzi Game – a fun fast-paced game of rolling dice – there are many ways to play using the Tenzi Card Deck
Koala Capers – an easy card game for young children that reviewing colors and patterns
Cauldron Quest – a cooperative game where everyone works together to beat the wizard
Our family is reviewing MESSYLEARNING FOR PRESCHOOLERS AND KINDERGARTNERS from PandaParents. We decided to primarily use the program with our daughter who turned three in mid-April. There is one course per month where children will read, watch, and create as they "discover the world with M.E.S.S.Y. Learning." We are reviewing an electronic version of their program so we have printed the necessary materials.
Each course has the same components
Read the story
Watch the story
Activity-time – using the workbook to create and learn
The activities included are meant to "build complex brain functions and fine motor skills" through the following:
Story recall and thinking activities
Reading, writing, and tracing
Sequence and matching games
Counting, math, and writing numbers
Completing patterns, sorting colors, and shapes
How We Are Using MESSYLEARNING FOR PRESCHOOLERS AND KINDERGARTNERS
Our daughter has been eagerly asking each day to work on her 'school work' for her "bear program" as she calls it, like her older brother. We started out using the Christmas-themed book, videos, and workbook. This set focused upon the letter "J" - A Jolly Jingling Journey.
The book, which we read on our tablet, A Jolly Jingling Journey actually contains two stories: A Jubilant Surprise and An Epic Journey both featuring Davy, his pets, and Santa. In the first story, A Jubilant Surprise, Davy dreams of going to the North Pole and following signs to reach Santa's cabin. On the journey, children are introduced to a variety of words that start with the letter J such as jingle, jolly, Jet, jubilant, joyfully, and jump. In An Epic Journey, Davy and Santa travel to find the missing reindeer.
You can see a preview of the book here:
After reading the story, we watched the two videos that accompanied this lesson. In the first video, children are introduced to a Juggler who juggles candy canes that look like the letter "J." The second video is a retelling of the book – A Jolly Jingling Journey – and includes some of the activities that children will complete in the workbook such as the counting the reindeer.
Between reading the book and watching the videos, our daughter and I worked on the pages in the workbook. We did not work through it in order. Instead, I skipped around to try to do activities I felt she could do more easily at first and then we tried completing some of the worksheets that would be more difficult for a young three-year-old.
In the accompanying video, I flip through some of her completed worksheets for A Jolly Jingling Journey workbook.
We have also started working our way through a second month's lessons that focus upon Scotty the Skunk and the letter "S." In this story, our daughter followed the journey of Scotty as he searches for a quiet home during the four seasons.
Some of the "S" words in addition to skunk that are used include scare, snow, smile, spring, splendid, and storm. The story enabled us to have a conversation about summer storms and lightning as poor Scotty is sleeping under a tree when it is struck by lightning and thunder wakes him with a loud boom.
Included in the Scotty Hears a Sound a Scary Sound workbook are similar activities to those in the A Jolly Jingling Journey workbook such as pages that address recall of the story and practicing tracing the letter. Another focus is the idea of home or habitat as Scotty spends the story looking for a safe place to live.
Another fun activity included in the Scotty Hears a Sound a Scary Sound workbook is a sailboat craft. Our daughter had a lot of fun using the various materials I gathered for her to build her own sailboat out of 2 triangles and a trapezoid.
In this video, I flip through some of the pages our three-year-old and four-year-old completed in the Scotty Hears a Sound a Scary Sound workbook.
What We Like
Our daughter enjoys the videos immensely. In fact, as I was downloading and playing them for the first time, she came running over to see what was on my laptop. The sound really caught her attention. She loves talking about the different characters in them.
She also loves completing the worksheets from the workbook that accompany the book and video. We are using the two pages in the front of the book (the stickers) for some of the worksheets. She loves cutting and pasting the pictures and numbers. I think this is actually a bonus over the fact that we do not have the printed workbooks.
Everyday she asks me when she can work on her "bear program" or PandaParents. (She calls it both names interchangeably.) She loves that she can use our tablet to watch the videos and read the books.
We all like the:
Colorful videos
Variety of activities through the workbook
Theme for each month's lesson
Inclusion of a variety of subjects - math, reading, writing, art, and science
The flexibility that allows me to continue the lesson ideas beyond the worksheets provided
Continuing a lesson on patterns from A Jolly Jingling Journey
Our Reservations
The downside to not have the printed workbooks or storybooks is that we need to print everything or read it on the computer or tablet. The workbook and storybook are very colorful so if we were to print them in full color, we would use a lot of ink.
One of the pages from A Jolly Jingling Journey workbook
Even though the art style is not something I would gravitate to myself, our three-year-old daughter and four-year-old son are enjoying the videos, storybooks, and workbooks. I have to remind myself that my children and I will like different things and that is okay. So that is one lesson as a parent that I am taking away from reviewing PandaParents for myself.
Need to print items ourselves – we lack a color printer so everything is black and white
Artwork is not necessarily my preferred style
Our daughter seemed to complete the workbook very quickly
No explicit directions to the parents – and I am someone who loves directions!
Portrayal of snakes as sneaky and scary – we love all reptiles in our house and I do not like perpetuating the myth that snakes are bad animals
Our daughter is looking forward to completing Scotty Skunk Hears a Scary Sound and starting on Mommy's Baby lessons.
