I will admit that the experience has helped me to be a better mom.  After all, isn’t teaching one of our top responsibilities as a parent?  Teaching young children isn’t easy.  You have to figure out a way to be informative and more entertaining that Spongebob or iCarly.  In the same way that I hide allergy medicine in chocolate pudding, I find that my children learn best when I trick them into it. 

My daughter loves to play cards.  This is something fun we do together that is also a great learning game.  When we play we have a chalkboard to tally our scores.  As scorekeeper, she practices counting by fives and tens and is already doing 2^nd and 3^rd math adding and subtracting in the fifties and hundreds.  Not to mention the valuable lessons in bluffing, odds, and the power of Aces.  I’m going to make her a fake ID and start being her partner at the blackjack table soon.  In all seriousness… if you want to spend some fun, quality time with your kids and incorporate some stealth math lessons teach them how to play Hearts or Rummy.  Check out these links for info on how to play: Hearts or Rummy.

While preparing reading activities for my daughter’s kindergarten class I found this website that I must pimp out.  I don’t know this teacher personally, but her website is great.  I’ve started printing a new game every week.   All of the kids in class love them and they love coming to my reading group – FINALLY, I’m popular in school!  Kelly’s Kindergarten

At home, my son is learning how to wipe his own butt.  I haven’t yet figured out a fun/sanitary game to help him grasp it.  If anyone has any advice other than stock up on toilet paper, plungers and Spray and Wash, I’m all ears!

This post was contributed by a dear friend of mine.  I have known Noelle, literally, all my life.  My admiration for her, her faith and her family has only grown over the years.  She has an amazing story of motherhood.  I hope this will be one of many contributions of hers to Your Crazy Mom!  Bookmark her blog: http://www.triplesmiles.blogspot.com/

Before I became a full time Mommy I was a full time teacher. Over 9 years I had the great joy of teaching 4th grade, 2nd grade, and then my last year of teaching I took my 2nd graders  for another THRILL  ride and we tackled 3rd grade together:)

The first 6 weeks of school, a teacher always has the daunting task of figuring out her students one by one. What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? What makes them tick? What is their learning style? Usually by the end of the 3rd week a school, a teacher has grouped her students by ability and learning style. Although I could write a book on this topic, I will keep it short and simple. The bottom line is I know and understand how very important it is to teach on a child’s individual learning level and individually as much as possible! Over 9 years of teaching, I saw many students soar when given just a few minutes of one on one instruction! 

And today, I was given that JOY again. Any teacher will tell you, there is nothing more joyful than experiencing that “light bulb moment” in a child.

My children are almost 4, 3 and 2. I will admit most of my instruction to them is “group instruction” Most everything we do, we do together.  I have had difficulty at times getting one or the other to cooperate and concentrate while I am trying to teach them something.

Well today, the 2 youngest children were napping. Zachariah had already taken a “cat nap” and was resting in his room when I decided this would be a great opportunity to work with him. He had a letter “V” project that we needed to finish. So I called him out of his room and we went downstairs, just the two of us to work on Letter V. He has never cooperated so well. First, we pretended that Letter V was a road for his cars,

then he glued pasta noodles back to back on his V. Normally, he would have given me great resistance to this task. But without the siblings around, he loved the project!

Then came the light bulb moment! I had been working with him on sequencing for many weeks, it has never clicked, or at least I thought it had never clicked. After we finished the letter V, he ask if we could do “his letter” which is letter Z. So I thought I’d try to get him to sequence the colors and he did it! I would ask him after every noodle what color comes next and he got it right time after time! I was so proud of him!

So I must find a way to give each of my Triple Smiles individual learning time. If any of you moms out there have any tips on this topic, please please forward them to me!

And just for fun after supper, we pretended Zach was a Veterinarian and then he shopped  at a Vegetable Market!

“Vegetable Stand OPEN”

“During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.”

Hoover Dam was erected on the border of Arizona and Nevada along the Colorado River.  The dam was originally named the Boulder Dam and it took five years to construct.  Upon it’s completion, the dam was the largest concrete structure as well as the largest hydroelectric generation station in the world.  Since then it has been surpassed in size and strength and is currently 38^th on the list.

Beer Bread Recipe: 3 cups of self rising flour, 3 tablespoons of sugar, 1 can of beer (the darker, the better)  Mix and pour into a loaf pan and bake at 350 for 50 minutes to 1 hour.  Slice and serve.  YUMMY. 

What do Al Gore, the Hoover Dam, and my favorite beer bread recipe have in common?  Not a damn thing… except, I learned them all from the internet.  Were we just all stupid before the creation of Google or what? 

My kids started playing on the computer when they were old enough to sit upright.  It has taught them a lot, but Google isn’t going to replace a good education and discipline at home.  There are just some things that the internet, television, and video games can’t teach our kids.  I know, because I saw a lot of those kids who are now legal-age adults in Las Vegas this weekend.  Some of them had clearly skipped the chapters in life on integrity, self-control, and self-respect.

While I don’t encourage allowing your kids to continually glaze over in front of the light of the computer screen, there are some great kid websites out there that promote learning, reading, and fine motor skills. 

http://www.pbskids.org/

http://www.yahooligans.com/

http://www.starfall.com/

http://www.tumblebooks.com/library/asp/home_tumblebooks.asp

www.coolmath4kids.com