Tangrams are great for math. They help with spacial awareness and they’re fun.

We have a great book the kids like to use with the tangrams, “Grandfather Tang’s Story” by Ann Tompert.  It’s a great story with different puzzles through out.

You can find lots of different Tangram sets on the web. We are particularly fond of out wooden set, but I would love to have a travel set as well.

I don’t know about you but I love buttons. No, it’s not some weird fetish. It’s just a warm memory of my Grandma. She had humongous jar of buttons. Actually it probably wasn’t that big but everything seems bigger when your a kid. I used to love to look at the buttons when I visited her. I would pour then out and sort them. You can do a lot with buttons. There are different shapes, sizes , colors and textures.

I now have have my own button collection although not as big as my grandmas. My daughter loves to look at them. She will sort them and tell me what color they are, which ones are here favorites etc.

We use them for word bingo. A great spelling/reading game.

We also use then for math checkers. And once for a Medieval History craft project we made button bracelets. Can’t find the picture for the life of me though. We learned that buttons were a status symbol for wealth and people sewed them to their clothes for decoration. See I ‘m not the only one who loves buttons.

Fridays are game days in our house. For school we play learning games. Math dominoes is a great game. I made these dominoes specifically for math. They are green one ones side for addition and blue on the other side for subtraction. We take turns putting one down and according to the color we have to say the equation and answer out loud. It’s a great way to practice our addition facts. You could change the rules around and come up with different variations. If your child does the same facts over and over then you could make them say the equation that the last person put down instead of everyone saying their own.