finshing fact families

This was the last week of our math block and our initial work with the Fact Families. Despite the fact that the boys enjoyed the games, they both expressed happiness to be done with it. I'm apparently moving too slowly with the math for their taste, so I'll have to revamp things a bit for next time around and pick up the pace.

We spent the bulk of the week playing fact family games, reviews and variations on last week's games, but also this new game which Enki Education calls "Family Ties," and my kids have renamed "The Fact Family Crossword Game." We each took turns spinning the spinner and selecting a card with that value, placing it adjoining another number card on our "crossword" layout, and adding a card to make a fact family out of it. We started the game only with cards up to 10.

Then we upped the ante and added in cards up to 25. That sent the kids scrambling for their counting stones. J is solid with his memorization of math facts up to 10, but neither of the boys have anything past about 15 memorized. So that was interesting. I had thought J was at least pretty solid with doing the calculations in his head at this point, but I guess I was mistaken. Good to know!

We've just got one more week of our Western European block left, and then the following week we're on to Western Africa! I'm excited and ready for a change, although there are still a few Western European crafts I'm hoping to get to this coming week....