Gold Hunt

I'm on a kick where I've been doing a lot of things that I find on the No Time For Flashcards website. Today is no exception. I really like the ideas on that site. I've found a lot of websites out there that have really beautiful ideas, or really creative ideas, or really elaborate ideas, or ones that require me to buy their really awesome ideas. I'm not as big of a fan of those ones. I like really practical ideas, and I guess what I really mean is "basic" rather than practical, because what does practical really mean anyway?

ANYWAY. A successful candidate for an idea we try out will usually fall into this category: exceedingly cheap, easy to pull together within 5-15 minutes of prep, something that looks like it will capture the attention of my boys. They like boy stuff, they like to move, they like experimenting. They would probably like explosions and fire, but we try not to do that stuff too much :-)

So the point of all of this IS...that...I find that the author of No Time For Flashcards comes up with a lot of ideas that are right up my alley. And I'm happy about that.

Now, without further ado, I will tell you of what we did today. It's simple. I took a sheet of green construction paper and ripped it (literally) in half. I traced 10 circles onto the paper and drew a picture of a leprechaun who wants his gold back. Then I hid 10 pieces of those gold coin candies that you can buy from the store (actually I hid 20 pieces; 10 per kid). The kids had to go on a hunt to find the gold and then match them up to their papers. This is all directly from the Flashcard website.

The only thing I did differently from the source was to make different sizes of circles on my paper. Because I had different sizes of gold coins, and I wanted to challenge my kids a little more, and I thought they could handle it.

It was pretty fun. The kids enjoyed finding the gold, and then they enjoyed hiding the gold, and then they enjoyed eating the gold. Nice.