Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Star-Spangled Pop And Unscramble Game


A's friends were such good sports about frosting the star, state cookies, I decided to try out another patriotic challenge on the brother sister pair that came to hang out with T (age 14) and G (age 13) the next day.



I printed a couple of copies of sheet music with the lyrics for  "The Star-Spangled Banner",  cut them apart into seven lines (the first one being the title), and rolled them up to place into balloons...


...which I blew up, tied, and marked with 1's or 2's to keep the two sets separate...


...until I could get them into garbage bags...


 ...to deliver outside to the two teams (boys against the girls).



 The object of the challenge was to be the the first team to pop the balloons, finding all seven pieces of paper...


...then to gather all the popped balloon pieces back into the garbage bag...


 ...and race inside, to reassemble the song...


...in the correct order...


 ...and sing it to the rest of us.  I can't believe I actually got these boys to sing.


But then, I was offering a prize for the winners...



...and leftover cookies and milk for everyone.


It's great to be a homeschooler.

7 comments:

Christy Killoran said...

I LOVE this! My T will do just about anything for candy! I assume they can all read music. Seeing as though I cannot read music, this would be quite the challenge for me!

An Almost Unschooling Mom said...

Christy - I figured with the national anthem, they probably knew the tune. Really I was just happy they manage to get the lyrics in the right order - the fact they were willing to sing, was pure bonus.

Ticia said...

I'm amazed you got them to sing too! How cool.

Unknown said...

This is a fantastic idea! With temps in the hundreds this week, the extent of my boys' patriotic game play has been using special holiday themed word lists in their SpellingCity activities, lol. This is one that they could do inside, with friends. Love it! And the cookies look great too, lol.

You always share the coolest stuff... :D

Thanks!
Katie

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

I like "boys vs. girls" slant on this - you really made them work for the prize. It's awesome that your teenagers were up for this!

Joyful Learner said...

This is so awesome. I love the idea of piecing the music together! But I'm terribly afraid of popping balloons (long story) so I would skip that part. I will have to find a way to improvise.

Christy Killoran said...

Cool,the first time I read this, I didn't realize the lyrics were on the sheet music. I thought they had to read the music!!!