Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Story Cubes and Math Dice

For Christmas, The Red Ranger, received two presents that we had placed on our Amazon Wish List with the intent of using them for lessons. Oddly enough, since opening them yesterday for our homeschool, he has continued to play with them - last night and into today, one of our days off.

I consider this a BONUS! 

Many times I use or re-purpose games for use in our homeschool, make stuff up as we go and every now and then I find perfect games to fit in with what we are doing.

The first gift were Rory's Story Cubes from GameWright.
There are 9 six-sided cubes each with a different picture on each side. There are several ways to play but basically the idea is throw "X" number of cubes and use those images as a story starter. Great for creative writing, oral storytime, party games.



We had a ton of fun playing with these and they will work great for The Red Ranger's writing.
They say ages 8+ but I don't see why younger children couldn't use 1-3 or 4 dice to tell stories. Since there are several ways to play with them all ages should benefit from them.
There is also a set of Action/Verb - Story Cubes....which just so happens to be next on our list of purchases when my Amazon Gift Cards start piling up again from my SwagBucks!
They do have a website, although ours were purchased through Amazon, in fact we haven't even checked out the website...we are simply having too much fun playing with them.
The Website is: www.storycubes.com

The other gift was Math Dice from Thinkfun.


You roll the two 12-sided dice first add or multiply the numbers and that becomes your "target number", then roll the three blue 6-sided dice - combine those numbers and see whose roll comes closet to the "target number".
They can be used for addition/subtraction/multiplication/division/powers/roots and more.
Ages 8-Adult (again I'm sure they can be used for younger children), all ages and math levels and multiple players.
We haven't checked out their website either but here's the web address for it - www.thinkfun.com/mathdice

We are loving both of these and can't wait to get the other Verb Story Cubes, I've also added them to the new Amazon Store here on the blog, I've added a tab for the Store at the top of the blog. Its one way of showing you the items we use in our homeschool and in general in one spot in case you are interested in getting them for yourself. Sometimes the things we use are out of print or discontinued, in fact quite a few were purchased through Amazon Associates and through Ebay used.
So far through Amazon Associates I've made a whopping .71 cents in a year and a half...good thing I'm not doing this for money...LOL!
I remember starting out homeschooling and being completely lost, we were accidental homeschoolers, I hadn't planned on it at all. Finding the tools, curriculum, everything was very hard and from time to time I found blogs and other homeschoolers that had paved the way for me - it didn't mean that what worked in their homeschools or homes would work for us but a lot of times it did and I was always very grateful - still am.......so if I can add things from time to time to help out - I will....



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