This post is a recap of my compensated Ambassadorship for Bedtime Math Crazy 8s Club. All opinions expressed here are my own.
Before I had kids, I was a teacher. As a teacher AND as a mother to young kids, one thing that I felt strongly about was that kids learned best when they were having FUN. As my kids were making their way through their early years of school, I tried to stress the FUN in learning…but inevitably, as they progressed in school and got more homework and had harder tests, they got discouraged. Not all the time, but often enough.
This past year, I had the amazing opportunity to get to know Bedtime Math, and the thing that impressed me more than anything (and there is a lot that I love about Bedtime Math!) was the fact that Bedtime Math is intent on bringing the FUN back to learning math.
About Bedtime Math
Bedtime Math was created by Laura Bilodeau Overdeck, after she started giving lighthearted math problems to her first daughter, and then her second and third children once they were old enough. In fact, the younger kids insisted on having their own math problems at bedtime because they could see how much fun the older kids were having with them.
Laura’s kids’ daily FUN math – a new version of the bedtime story – eventually gained a lot of attention and followers, proving that other people were also hungry for kid-friendly math.
Bedtime Math’s mission is simple: to help kids love math the way they love playtime or dessert. Laura Bilodeau Overdeck now has THREE Bedtime Math books, full of creative and fun math story problems that kids actually look forward to doing each night. My 9-year-old son can’t get enough of his Bedtime Math books. We have the first two, and the newest book, Bedtime Math: The Truth Comes Out, just came out in March 2015!
Did you know that Bedtime Math is a nonprofit organization and that they use all of the profits from the sales of the Bedtime Math books to fund programs to bring fun math to even more kids? That’s where Crazy 8s comes in.
What is Crazy 8s Club?
Crazy 8s is an over-the-top after-school club designed to get kids fired up about math. Every week they get to build stuff, run and jump, make music, make a mess…and make friendships at the same time. Their goal is for math to become the cool thing to do after school.
Here’s how Crazy 8s works: As part of their nonprofit mission, Bedtime Math has created a free kit of materials and instructions that brings math to life, and they’ve made it easy for adults interested in starting a club to get involved. Each kit is designed for 10-20 kids with items that kids use during the weekly club meetings for hands-on math fun, along with many fun things that the kids get to take home in the end to continue the math exploration at home.
Crazy 8s Clubs are available for three age levels: grades 3-5, grades K-2 and Pre-K, all of which feature the same lively hands-on themes tailored to fit the specific age groups. Clubs can take place at schools, libraries and other after-school community programs, and pretty much anyone can volunteer to start a club – parents, PTAs, librarians, etc.
I hosted a Pre-K Crazy 8s Club that met at a local library. We just reserved one of the rooms in the children’s section once a week…except for when we needed a little bit of outside space for our Toilet Paper Olympics. Then we just met at a local park.
I loved that Bedtime Math provided me with all of the resources I needed – from the measuring tapes for the kids (they were so excited to keep their own measuring tape when the club was over!) to the detailed lesson plans. I just had to provide a few basic supplies like toilet paper.
Our club did fun learning activities like Bouncy Dice Explosion, Toilet Paper Olympics, Glow-in-the-dark Geometry and more. All of the club picture collages in this post are from my club so you can see how hands-on and exciting the activities were!
This is the Bedtime Math Crazy 8s kit that I got before starting my club
The kids loved the club, and my older kids were jealous of the younger kids that got to participate! They were often my pre-club testers so I was prepared before I went to teach! I was often unprepared, though, for how much the preschool kids could do and understand. They were particularly fond of measuring things, and they almost always carried their activity one step further, which I thought was awesome.
And don’t worry if you don’t feel like math is your specialty. Everything is laid out that you can follow the step-by-step instructions and explanations. Yes, I found myself learning things along with the kids!
Want more information about Crazy 8s or Bedtime Math? I highly recommend that you sign up for their daily email on their website so that you’ve got a daily math problem in your inbox before bedtime each night. We love it!
Connect with Bedtime Math and Crazy 8s:
- Bedtime Math website and their daily math problem
- Bedtime Math Twitter: @BedtimeMath
- Bedtime Math on Pinterest
- Bedtime Math on Facebook
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