Wordless Wednesday: Vases

Focusing on Addition Skills Through a Fun Game

I received a COMPLIMENTARY copy of this game from the Timberdoodle in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not required to write a positive review, nor was I compensated in any other way. This post contains tracking links. For more information, please see my Terms of Use and Disclosure Policy page. Thank you.

Learning addition math facts will help our children in all their future mathematics courses. One of the areas where I would like our six-year-old daughter to get practice in is in addition. We recently had the opportunity to add the game Clumsy Thief Junior, which is part of the 2021 Kindergarten Curriculum Timberdoodle Kits, into our homeschooling lessons. What a fun game to help our daughter practice adding numbers that make ten!

About the Game - Clumsy Thief Junior 

The deck, consisting of 76 cards total, and instructions come in a cute box featuring a raccoon eating an apple on the cover of it. The seventy food cards are labeled with colorful fruit and vegetables and the numbers one through nine. The four thief cards feature a raccoon eating a pear, holding lettuce, and two holding an ear of corn. The two trap cards show the same picture of a basket over top of the raccoon. 

The object of Clumsy Thief Junior is for the players to make ten to collect food cards. Each player starts with seven cards and then the game follows these steps: 

1. Everyone makes stacks of ten with the cards in their hand. They will use two cards with the same food to add to exactly ten.
2. After everyone has made all their stacks of ten, players will begin collecting stacks. This is done by looking at everyone's stacks in front of them and seeing if you can add any cards from your hand to the top card to add to ten. For example, someone's stack is showing a four lettuce card, and you have a six lettuce card. You can put the six lettuce card on their stack and take the stack for yourself. This can be done until everyone is done making stacks using the cards in their hands. 
3. The next step is to replenish your stack up to five cards. 
4. Repeat the steps until the entire card deck is gone. 

The game moves rather quickly – especially the second step when everyone is trying to make their own stacks of cards. Using the cards in your own hand and the stacks on the table in front of you really does help you learn how to add quickly to ten.

How Do You Win? 

Once the entire card deck is gone, you discard any cards that are not a part of stacks adding to ten. Then each person counts the number of fruit cards from their remaining stacks. The player with the most fruit cards wins the game.

Using the Game – Clumsy Thief Junior in our Homeschool 

When I requested to review the game Clumsy Thief Junior, I had our daughter in mind. She was just finishing kindergarten, and I thought it would be perfect to help her practice her addition skills. One problem – she does not like to play competitive games. She doesn't like losing or winning. She prefers cooperative games, but knowing that learning addition math facts is important, I pushed her to join us in our second game of Clumsy Thief Junior. And she was very glad she did. She had a lot of fun. She told me it was fun to win against her brothers and her dad.

We played the game several times with everyone in our family. From our six-year-old to our 18-year-old, we all had fun. Our eight-year-old son was really into the game. He enjoyed 'stealing' stacks from his siblings and his parents but he also loved cheering everyone else on as we played the game. I liked how fast the game was which makes it perfect to fit into our homeschool day or just to play when we have some free time after dinner. 

Extending the Learning Beyond the Game 

We love homeschool materials – like games – which we can use in a variety of ways beyond the normal game mechanics or rules. There are several different ways in which we can use the cards that accompany Clumsy Thief Junior in our homeschool lessons. And with the box being such a convenient size, it is very easy to store with all our homeschooling supplies. 

After removing the four thief cards and the two trap cards, children can pick from the deck and do a number of things: 

• They can write the word for the number card they have chosen. 
• They can think of one or more ways in which you can add to get the number on the card. For example, if they choose the number nine, they could tell you that 1 +8 = 9 or 2 + 7 = 9. 
• Ask your child to tell you what number gets added to that card to equal ten. 
• If you are studying a foreign language, ask your child what that number is in Spanish, Latin, French, etc. 

How do you use games in your homeschool? From games that focus upon addition skills like Clumsy Thief Junior to those that allow our children to work on social skills, games bring lessons to life in many settings, including the homeschool. They can be a quick, fun addition to your homeschool day. Which one will you add to your homeschool lessons today? 

Homeschooling Plans for Our Third Grader

I received many of the products mentioned in this post courtesy of my association with the Homeschool Review Crew. Affiliate links are included in this post. 

As our son will be an official third grader this coming school year, I thought I would share our plans for his homeschooling studies. We will be finishing up some of our materials from his second grade year, introducing some new materials, and starting new levels from some of our favorite homeschool curriculum and companies. 

Mathematics

We will be using several resources to help us in our mathematical journey, including CTCMath, worksheets from My Teaching Library, and materials from Page A Day. When possible, I like our youngest son to complete at least one lesson a day on CTCMath. I will sometimes supplement his homeschool math lessons with worksheets or online lessons from Mathseeds. 

Language Arts

While we are reading the books that accompany Our Star-Spangled Story Notgrass History curriculum, I have also been including grammar worksheets from Homeschool Easy and My Teaching Library. Our son also enjoys working online with Reading Eggs and Reading Eggspress. He enjoys collecting eggs so he can decorate his house on Reading Eggs or purchase virtual trading cards on Eggspress. 

We will also be using New American Cursive Penmanship Workbook 1 from Memoria Press. I would like to improve our son's handwriting, so I looked into several cursive penmanship programs and workbooks. I really like how straight-forward and simple this workbook looks to implement, and I am looking forward to using it this upcoming homeschool year with our son. 

Science 

We have spent time using Exploring Creation with Astronomy and I wanted to make a change to something different. We do have Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day from Apologia on hand but when asking our son which he preferred, he wanted to study Mammals using the materials from Memoria Press. Perhaps we will save the other curriculum for a future year or his sister. 

I ordered the set, which includes:

• Mammals Teacher Guide 
• Mammals Student Workbook 
• The World of Mammals Reader 
• What is the Animal Kingdom? book 
• What is a Mammal? book 

There are 30 lessons in Mammals that cover monotremes, marsupials, carnivores, primates, and more for the homeschool student. In addition to the lessons, there are also quizzes and tests to track the progress of our children. 

History 

We will be finishing up the Our Star-Spangled Story from Notgrass History this year and then diving into Our 50 States. As I am a history major and former history teacher, we have been taking our time studying history and adding in additional resources to spend more time on areas that our son finds interesting. So while our Star-Spangled Story sets up a very easy schedule to follow, we have moved more slowly through the lessons. 

Some of the other resources we included are: 

• Home School in the Woods Time Traveler Civil War 
• Liberty's Kids DVD  
• Carole P. Roman books 
• Library and Educational Services LLC

Latin 

We will be continuing with the lessons from Memoria Press for our son's Latin this year. We have had to take a step back from the material over the past year but we are slowly reviewing the first lessons and then moving forward. I love the fact that the curriculum – Prima Latina – has notecards, a CD, and a DVD to accompany the student worktext and teacher's manual. It makes my job as a homeschool mom so much easier. 

In addition to the above specific resources, we also have a variety of books that our third grader will be reading, along with other materials made available through my relationship with the Homeschool Review Crew. I anticipate this being a very fun year! 

Wordless Wednesday: Graduation

 

Blogging Through the Alphabet: M is for Music

Music plays an important role in history and how we study the past. We can learn much from listening to the music of different time periods, examining the music that was considered popular, and studying the instruments that were popular. The time period of the American Civil War is no different. There were songs that were primarily sung by Union soldiers and ones sung by Confederate soldiers. There were songs that helped inspire the population as well as those that provided comfort for those back home.

To meet the needs and desires of the soldiers and civilians during the American Civil War, songwriters and composers produced a variety of materials, including: 

• Patriotic songs 
• Comic songs
• Satires
• Protest songs
• Marching songs
• Parlor songs
• Drinking songs 
• Abolitionist songs
• Spirituals
• Minstrels 
• Sentimental songs 

To help bring these songs to life, some famous singers toured, and important publishing houses made sure the music found its way to families and soldiers alike. The songs helped the nation during the American Civil War and bring history to life today.

Music in the United States before the American Civil War was still mostly from overseas. With the Civil War, America began to find its own voice. This musical voice produced around 10,000 songs. Of these thousands of songs, there are a few that are widely known as well as others that really set the mood of the Civil War. 

Some of the most popular songs were copied, plagiarized, or bootlegged. Others used the same music and merely changed the lyrics. One example is The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Words were written by Julia War Howe, which you may know: 

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;

His truth is marching on"

These were set to the same tune also used by the following songs: John Brown's Body, The President's Proclamation by Edna Dean Proctor, and The Marching Song of the First Arkansas Regiment with words ascribed to Captain Lindley Miller. 

Another song – one from the Confederacy – Dixie's Land with words and music by Daniel D. Emmett, which is well known for the lyrics: 

"I wish I was in the land of cotton,

Old times dar am not forgotten" 

This song has also had different versions written both in the South and the North. There were several Northern parodies, but there is little evidence they were as popular as the Southern song. 

Sampling of Songs

In closing, I want to share several of my favorite songs of the American Civil War period: 

• The Homespun Dress – words ascribed to Carrie Bell Sinclair – music "Bonnie Blue Flag" 
• Weeping, Sad and Lonely (When This Cruel War is Over) – words by Charles C. Sawyer – music by Henry Tucker 
• Charles Carroll Sawyer was one of the most successful Civil War song writers. This song was popular in both the North and the South.
• Goober Peas 
• This anonymous song was referencing peanuts. There is no evidence that the song was actually published during the American Civil War, but it shed light on the shortness of rations of the Confederate soldiers. 
• Grafted into the Army – words and music by Henry C. Work
• With the Conscription Act signed into law on March 3, 1863, all able-bodied males between the ages of twenty and forty-five would be subject to the draft. There was also a way to avoid the draft by finding a substitute draftee or paying $300 to the government. 

Other good songs to listen to: 

• Hard Times Come Again No More 
• Annie Laurie
• Just Before the Battle, Mother
• Richmond is a Hard Road to Travel 
• The Vacant Chair