Five Favorites: Educational Apps

 I'm not getting paid for any of this, but you can repay me by telling me your favorite educational apps in the comments!

 1.  Dragon Box  This is a game about why math is fascinating.  It's a puzzle game that teaches algebra.  Unlike a lot of the math games which reward you for doing math by letting you progress in the game, here algebra is the game, and it is seriously addictive!

I got the family pack, which was good because the younger kids finished the "5+" game and wanted to start the "12+" immediately!

 We all got sucked into this one, from Oob to Mom.  You start out with symbols like in the picture above.  The box wants to be alone!

You end up doing things like the picture to the right.  The box is hiding as an X, but it still wants to be alone.  Every few puzzles, the creature in the box grows a little bit. 

The family pack also included "Elements," a separate game that does geometry puzzles that teach you Euclidian proofs! (So I'm cheating, the first pick was three apps... but I hope this company makes a lot more games!)

2. Stack the States  (and Stack the Countries) And the second pick is two apps.

But so fun!  You answer question about states (or countries).  If you get the question right, you stack the correct state into a pile passing a particular line.  If you pass the line you "win" a random state.  Winning enough states unlocks other mini games. 

We mostly finished this a year ago, but when places come up in the news, Choclo and Oob tend to remark, "I have that state/country!" 

I found the states fun and the countries surprisingly challenging!  With both games you can select the kinds of questions you are asked which makes it usable for a wide range of ages.

 3. Presidents Vs. Aliens  Made by the same people as Stack the States, you answer questions about presidents.  Correct answers give you a president to aim at the aliens - you win by clearing all the alien invasion.  And you win presidents and unlock mini games.

Very fun, plus Oob really shocked an adult by knowing all about James K. Polk.

4. Letter Quest.  This is basically Bookworm as an app.  You build words to defeat bad guys and progress on your quest.  You can play the whole thing free, but we used it enough that I bought it. Great way to learn spelling.

5. Hungry Fish Very simple fun way to build number sense.  Your fish is hungry.  You feed it numbers that add up to the number on the fish.  You can pull numbers together to create larger numbers and, as you progress in the game, the numbers your fish wants get larger and larger.  I believe this game can be expanded to subtraction as well.

I got this for my youngest kids, but found that older kids who had a weaker number sense were drawn to it as well (at higher levels).  It seems to me that it's possible to progress in math without a good number sense (I know I did), but it does not seem possible to enjoy math without number sense.

And now you know why my phone runs out of batteries!  Please tell me your finds in the comments

More Bored Games

The Zoomlians having been playing some more bored games.  These are not board games, these are games you play when you are bored.  They are usually done when you have to wait in line, or at a doctor's office, or in the car- that sort of thing.

For some reason they had been going on a Rock, Paper, Scissors jag.  I was getting a little tired of hearing, "Rock, paper, scissors, shoot." (it was making me bored!), and I had heard there were more variations out there.  A quick Google search turned up these pleasing diagrams!

So now they are doing that.

We've also gone back to a game we used to play when they were much younger.  You think of something, then something that rhymes with the first thing.  Then people have to guess by asking questions, and you have to guess what they are talking about.   It goes like this:

"I'm thinking of something that rhymes with blue."

"Is it something on my foot?"

"No, it's not a shoe."

"Is it something a cow says?"

"No, it's not  moo'"

"Is it somthing like soup?"

"Yes!  It's stew."

It's fun because the older kids come up with some pretty tricky things!

Fun and Games

 The other day I (literally) stumbled upon Zorg and Leena playing a game in the front hall.

It turned out they had created a game using little drawings.

They drew various characters, situations and sayings, cut them all out and then used them on a another piece of paper.

The game is more like a story: the first person lays out a scenario and explains what is happening.

Then the next player added and removed items using their store of drawings, to tell what happened next.

Whenever they get stuck in the story, they can always draw more pieces.

Simple, fun, and completely limitless - very Zoomlian!

Soldiering On

We are soldiering on, despite an attack of the flu.

All the Zoomlians got flu shots in an epic trip to the pediatricians a week ago Monday.  An hour in, the nurse asked (in a tone suggesting I had not really had an appointment) who had scheduled me. 

The whole thing took nearly two hours (and went well past lunch), so we played bored games to pass the time.  These are not to be confused with board games!  Bored games are games to play when you are unavoidably detained with nothing to do, and every parent needs to have a few at the ready.

If I had a Rutabaga is a good one, and so is When I Was a Kid.  We played the Scary Alphabet Game (go around thinking of scary things for each letter such as Angry Aardvarks Assaulting Avaricious Ants), Telephone, and The Twelve Days of Christmas. 

Flu shots are just so random: Of the first 4 kids, two kids had no pain, and two had a "little pinch", but then the fifth kid got a "right in the nerve cluster shrieking fit" shot.  He did not actually shriek, but the last kid saw it and tried to dig his way out of the room.  Not pretty.  And the nurse telling them, despite vital evidence to the contrary, that it didn't hurt at all... well.

That was the Monday.  The actual flu showed up Thursday night, and by Friday, three kids had it.
Two more have popped up with fevers on and off, the most recent today, so we have various kids in all the stages: fever, no fever but still coughing a lot, and not coughing much but still cranky. And waiting.

We've been going forward with the castle and so forth, taking into account who feels like doing what. It was the perfect time to watch The Court Jester!

Zoomlian Games: If I Had a Rutabaga

This is another game born out of difficult circumstances.

I was in the emergency room with Klenda. She was feeling much better thanks to a liter of IV fluids and anti nausea medication, and she wanted to Go Home Now. Of course, we couldn't until all the paperwork had gone through....

So I told her, "You know, if I had a rutabaga, a really BIG rutabaga, I'd carve it into a boat and sail you home right now."

She answered, "Well, if I had a rutabaga, a really BIG rutabaga, I'd carve it into a giant squid, just for you." (Isn't that just the sweetest thing?!)

This is a great game for the random pauses of life when your kids really want to be doing something or want something they can't have.

Some things we would have done if we had rutabagas (some require Very Large Rutabagas):
Carved a play castle,
Spun it like a top,
Carved a working rocking horse,
Carved a working rutabaga plane,
Made paper from it and used the top as a quill and the juice as ink and write out Carl Sandberg's Rootabaga Stories,
Used it as a ball,
Made a chess set,
Carved and played a violin (Stradabagius),
Steamed, mashed, and eaten it.

What would you do if you had a rutabaga?

Zoomlian Games: When I Was a Kid

It started with whining. The Zoomlians don't tend to whine a lot, but it was a hot muggy July afternoon at the zoo. Like every zoo I have ever visited, the zoo in DC is built on an enormous hill. Naturally, the default setting is to go merrily down the hill in the cool of the morning and trudge up the mountain after the weather has warmed 20 degrees and the kids are melting down and the stroller has mysteriously gained 10 pounds (I'm not complaining, I've done that too).

The Zoomlians noticed that it was hot. Very hot. Unbearably hot. Mom, I'm hot! I'm hot... I'm sure your kids have never done this, but I'll bet you get the idea.

The Emperor finally said, "You think this is hot? This is nothing! When I was a kid it was so hot..." How hot was it? "It was so hot that you had to drink your popsicle through a straw!"

Well, that was nothing, when I was a kid it was so hot... How hot was it? It was so hot that we had to put a bun on the dog. We were off and running!

The whole thing ended with Zorg. When he was a kid, it was so hot...How hot was it? It was so hot that everybody just...died. Um. OK.

It turns out this also works for cold (when I was a kid, it got so cold we all climbed in the freezer to warm up [yes, they know not to really play in the freezer...]) , wet/rainy (it was so rainy that we had animals gathering 2 by 2 outside our house), hungry (we ate real pop rocks), and messes you have to clean up (when I was a kid, my room was so messy that my Mom got the big leaf vacuum truck and... SLLLLUUURRRRPP!")

If life was tough when you were a kid, (how tough was it?) leave it in the comments!

Next time: the classic Zoomlian game If I Had a Rutabaga.