cleaning with dice

I'm all for making cleaning/tidying the house a little more fun. Growing up we would play snakes and ladders to get the house clean, and I often have to just set the timer to motivate myself to get housework done.

Being a family with 5 kids, our house has no shortage of messes. Add homeschooling to the mix, and keeping the house clean becomes a constant battle.

So this morning, when I was faced with a messy livingroom, I decided we needed a fun, educational (so I could justify putting off "school" work for a bit), and fast way to get the livingroom back to normal. Or at least to sanity-keeping level.

I grabbed 3 dice and made up a little game:
1. roll the dice
2. add up two of the dice (I used 2 red to help differentiate)
3. subtract the third dice (the white one)
4. put away that number of things

This worked great for Brian and Elijah who are in Grade 1.

For older kids:
1. roll the dice
2. multiply two of the dice (red)
3. divide the total by the third dice (white)
4. put away that number of things

This worked well with Hadley - although some end up being a little difficult to divide because they aren't fully divisible.

You could obviously make up any combination of things to do with the numbers instead to fit your child.

We all worked together at it and pretty soon the livingroom looked a lot better and the kids got a little math practice along the way. Double win.