I love Montessori math materials. They are so engaging and well thought of that the child can easily absorb concepts and retain what is learned. Take for example this Number Rods which I recently introduced to Vito. We are mostly using counters in our math activities, it’s more abstract and quantitative. With Number Rods, counting here is more linear and sequential. My goal was for Vito to learn:
I love book extension activities. This is one of the reasons why I enjoy doing Before Five In a Row with the boys. So when I introduced the book Harold and the Purple Crayon, I knew that its a story that we can explore beyond than just reading. The book itself is enjoyable to read, engaging and the boys found it funny. Vito was glued to it for a long time. At times, he would even “pretend” to read it by himself, mimicking how I read it to him at night.
If you love this book, or if you plan to get one (highly recommended!) I listed below the areas of learning we touched by just doing this simple easy to set-up activities:
This midterm break (for Mavi), I’m trying to setup activities that both of the boys (3 and 8 years old) can participate in. One of which is learning about flowers and what they are made of. Now, even though Mavi has done this a lot of times already (when he was 4, when he was 6) , he’s still eager to do this activity with his little brother. This is something new for me though, doing the activity with two boys, making sure that it is engaging to the little one, but at the same time able to relay information to my 8 years old. Anyway, you can skim through the post to see how I made the boys work together in the activities I prepared for them.
Due to my work loads and activities, I’ve been missing here in the blogosphere for quite a while. It’s a good thing I take pictures though, and organize it weekly in that way I can easily track and document them easily.
So here are some of the “Christmas” themed activities we did for the past few days, most of which are Montessori related.
Sorting pony beads using a tweezer. Surprisingly, he finished it without my assistance considering that this is his first time to use a tweezer.
Scooping red and green pompoms using a milk powder scoop.
Stringing pony beads by colors using pipe cleaners.
He finished all of it breezily!
One time I caught him doing this to our hand towel. I asked him what he’s doing and told me “I’m ironing. Just like Lola Merlit.” (Lola Merlit means Grandma Merlit) . This is a surprise because the last time we were home (my parent’s house) was July. He still remembers what his Grandmother do at home!
Peeling foam stickers during our Alpha Christmas Countdown.
I am still on the process of learning how to organize some of these stuff properly. Currently, I am collecting food coloring so I can create colored pasta and at the same time do some color mixing activities.
Wishing everyone a happy Tuesday!
It’s so difficult these days to keep up with blogging! Since I still work (at home) I always procrastinate updating my blog and would rather playing with the little one.
Here are the things we did last week.
Instead of doing Advent Calendar, we made letter crafts for our Christmas Countdown. I talked about it here.
We talked about polar bears. This Usborne Beginner’s book has wonderful book about polar bears. It’s been my son’s favorite since I got it for him.
I also made control cards based on our Arctic Toob for matching game.
For math, I downloaded these penguins activity cards from Making Learning Fun. Here, Mavi is learning how to measure the temperature by reading the thermometer:) On the other picture, Mavi is practicing his learning skills by feeding the penguins with “candies”.
He worked on his number puzzle.
We also did some patterning activities using printables from 2 Teaching Mommies.
Aside from reading books and learning to read words using this, we also worked on our Alpha Phonics Boxes... by sorting objects starting with letters ‘dejyjkwvz’.
Linked to:
My son has difficulty writing lowercase letters. He loves to write, and every time he does, he uses uppercase letters and wouldn’t want to write the lowercase. Somehow, he isn’t confident writing it as he gets confused with all the curves and twirls lowercase letters make.
So my target as of this moment is to give him A LOT of penmanship exercises of lowercase letters aside from our usual Kumon Write and Wipe. I know that kids his age gets bored of using materials over and over again... so I try to vary my approach so to preserve his interest. I discovered this from Adventures of Bear... and as Julie would describe it “the child traces the outline over and over each time with a different color until the template is filled.”
Here’s my son doing letter a to g. We’re doing one letter at a time, but he keeps asking for more that’s why we reached letter g. I plan to give 2-3 letters each day if he asks for it.
The colors would have been apparent if we used his Crayola Pipsqueaks instead of Crayola crayons like what we did a few months ago (old blog). But anyway he enjoyed practicing and we’ll be doing this till we reach letter z.
Sharing pictures of what we did last week (aside from reading books). We only worked a few activities as to most days, he prefers playing alone... pretending to be Mister Maker.
LANGUAGE
SCIENCE
We sort his toys whether they are magnetic or not. Oh he loved this activity!
Then we did the 3-part card for Turtle I bought this from Montessori Print Shop. Supposedly, this is for our Pond Unit but since I didn’t have much resources to go along with the theme, I just whipped a few turtle-related activities.
Learned about the Life Cycle of a Turtle
MATH
Turtle sizing activity.
Turtle jumping game using number cards. Here I would tell him whether to jump by 2’s or 3’s or at times, I would just command him to jump to a certain number. Great way to learn numbers, counting and to have fun using motor skills.
I don’t know the name of this game but this is certainly a favorite during parties and get together in the Philippines. Here, I placed the same Turtle number cards on the floor, then have my son followed my instructions. Something like: place your right foot on 4, then have your left foot on top of number 8, place your right hand on 10 etc etc. When the game was over, this is how he end up on the floor.
It was fun fun fun! He kept asking me that we should play it again! (All turtle cards were downloaded from Confessions of a Homeschooler)
PRACTICAL LIFE
Lots of writing practice using our Kumon lowercase write and wipe
Advent project: The Creation
And sorting his toys by beginning letters. He did this all by himself.
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