This one’s quick and easy. I’ve found it also helps get a kid’s attention back when they’re getting bored and possibly mischievous.

All you need to do is say: “I’m thinking of an animal. See if you can guess what it is. Here’s a hint: schmippopotamus.”

If your kid is old enough (three and above, certainly), they’ll get the joke, and correctly figure out the animal.

Keep naming animals, but with the “schm–” sound at the beginning instead of the actual consonant sound. So, make them figure out the true identity of a schmiraffe, a schmea lion, a schmuirrel, a schmelephant, and so on.

This is fun, but it’s probably better for younger kids. I haven’t tested this out personally, but you might not want to try it on any teenagers.

In our house, food is endlessly fascinating. Buying food, cooking it, eating it, and yes, even talking about it provide hours of enjoyment. Anything with so much variety is inherently interesting, right?

And here’s more fun with food: Taste Tests!

Are you old enough to remember the Pepsi Challenge? In that test, blindfolded people sipped both Coke and Pepsi, and then announced which they liked better. (Big surprise: Pepsi won, and was the favorite of most of the participants.)

Why not have a taste test tonight at your house? All you need is a blindfold and some similar foods.

Your blindfolded kids can do two things: (1) try to guess which food is which (this can be tricky!), and (2) announce which food is their preference.

Here are some similar foods for them to compare, side by side:

Oranges vs. Tangerines
Apples vs. Pears
Crunch peanut butter vs. creamy
Different kinds of sliced cheese (cheddar vs. Swiss)
Hot dogs vs. sausages
BBQ Sauce vs. Ketchup
Different flavors of yogurt (strawberry vs. rasberry)
Whole wheat bread vs. white bread
Ice cream vs. frozen yogurt
M & M’s vs. Skittles

Have fun with this one. Please use the comment section below to let us know about your results with your kids. With all the fun and tricky tasting, everyone will pass the taste test! (Oh, and one more thing: try not to get any food on the blindfold!)

–S

I’ve started doing something with my kindergartner that is turning out to be a nice introduction to fractions, I think. He just thinks it’s funny and interesting.

At breakfast time, we cut his piece of toast in half. Then we leave one of the pieces alone and cut the other one in half again.

We repeat this process: we leave one of the new pieces intact and cut the other one in half. (This gives us two pieces that are now one quarter the size of the original piece of toast.)

We keep doing this: leaving one piece and cutting one piece.

In this way, we create:

half the piece of toast

a quarter of the piece of toast

an eighth

a sixteenth

a thirty-second

Sometimes we can even get down to a sixty-fourth!

As I said above, this toast trick is just an introduction to fractions. We’re not learning higher math here.

But my son is really learning the concepts.

He understands that there can only be two halves.

With the smaller pieces, he understands what information is communicated by the names. He has learned that if you need two halves to make one whole, you need eight eighths to make a whole.

I’ll ask him: if you have one sixteenth, how many more sixteenths do you need to get back to the whole piece of bread? I’m proud to say, my boy answers correctly. Read more >