Learning About Number Bonds for Kids

Help your child understand number bonds with our fun and engaging learning materials.  They are so easy to use and prepare!  These number bond activities will aid your kids, and students in understanding "Parts of a whole", basic addition, subtraction, and number recognition.  These will keep your little ones engaged as these learning materials encourage the use of manipulatives which promote hands-on learning and real-world experience in object manipulation and counting.

Back to School: Our Math Learning Resources

We are using Montessori Math albums in our homeschool so our math works revolve mostly on classic Montessori materials.  I also integrate seasonal activities in our learning activities to add some twist.  I got my albums from Montessori Parent and KHT Montessori for early childhood.  These are amazing resources that have helped me understand the order of materials to use and basically how to use them.  We tend to do a lot of extension works, something that are not included in most of these albums.  I share these activities mostly in my Instagram account and hopefully I will have some time to share them here in the blog as well.

Note that this list is for our personal homeschooling only.  It doesn’t reflect what’s in a Montessori classroom.  The list serves as my guide in the subject area and Vito's possible activities this school year.  Although I have a plan and a guide it doesn’t mean that Vito is forced to work on all of these for the next 10 months.  Depending on Vito's interest and progress, we will choose which activity to do and prioritize.

Learning Addition Using Montessori Stamp Game

The Montessori Stamp Game is one of our favourite math materials at home.  This learning material can be used in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.  And for us, this is how Mavi learned how to understand the concept of regrouping (dynamic addition).  He enjoyed this material more than any other methods of learning addition and subtraction.

Next Level: Patterning

Did you know that the ability to recognize pattern is one of the most important intelligence skill ? Aside from mathematics, it can also be found in behaviour, routines and in nature.

Speaking of routines, we came across this activity in our workbook of pattern relating to a series of movements of a certain object. Take for example this link cubes in a grid.  Here Mavi has to guess my next move using the patterns of how I remove the cubes from the grid. 

Amazing isn’t it? We are so used of learning patterns of numbers, colors and shapes and patterns of movements, behaviours and such didn’t even crossed my mind!

And you know what I’m thinking as well?  We can also do dancing patterns!

Now, I just wanted to share this too. As part of learning patterns, Mavi developed a “stairs”

 

Then he realised that all number combinations are number bonds or parts of number 10!

1 and 9 (violet)

2 and 8 (blue)

3 and 7 (light green)

4 and 6 (brown)

5 and 5 (black)

6 and 4 (white)

7 and 3 (red)

8 and 2 (orange)

9 and 1 (green)

He’s like “they go together!”.  I love it when he discovers and learn things on his own. Amazing!

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Integrating Workbooks and Hands-On Materials

With math, I use workbooks and Math Montessori Album which I purchased from KHT Montessori. In this post, I will show you how we integrate workbooks and Montessori Math.

So we start with     a workbook. As you can see we are currently reviewing the place value. Using the book, we discuss this a little bit, then close the book and prepare our Montessori materials for a hands-on activity.

In Montessori, there are a number of ways on how to present place value. I have talked about this before using the Golden Beads. This time, we used the Stamp Game tiles.  Here's my presentation of hundreds, tens and ones. Each digit can range from 0 to 9.

Then I set up an activity for Mavi to see if he was able to grasp the concept.  I don't want to overwhelm him so we only worked up to tens. The number tiles you see here is from our Hundred Boards.

After the hands-on activities and when he's ready we work on the workbooks. Adding hands-on activities to textbooks/workbooks/activity sheets makes the learning less tedious and more exciting for little fellows. So either way, workbooks or hands-on activities you'll be fine.

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Learning About Southeast Asia

Here’s a summary of activities for learning about Southeast Asia.

Southeast Asia Map and Flags

This activity is all about familiarization of the Southeast Asia Map and identification of countries which belong to this region.

Learning materials used in this activity:

• Asia in a Nutshell
• Flags of Asia Pack (Nomenclature and Pin Flags)

Bahay Kubo (Nipa Hut)

Bahay Kubo is square shaped house with no divisions, just a door and windows.  It is made up of local materials such as wood or bamboo or  nipa grass.  It is a Philippine icon and represents the Filipino culture.  Note that these houses are raised, for proper ventilation I guess since the flooring is made up of bamboo.  Another reason is to avoid the flood.

Yes I have seen Bahay Kubo and have friends and relatives who used to live on this type of house.  Until now, they still exist and I can’t wait to show them to Mavi.  He has always been fascinated with Bahay Kubo. Maybe he can’t imagine how people can live on just a square house. 

Thus, I decided to create a model using cardboard boxes from Book Depository. 

There are still people who lives in this stilt houses and I can’t wait to show it to Mavi when we visit the folks this year :)

I cut out the cardboard boxes into strips then stick them on a wooden BBQ skewers.

And here’s how the skeleton  looks like when all four sides are attached.

Adding the roof which is made up of cardstock and a wooden ladder here’s the end product.

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ASIA Unit Study 2014

It always excites my son to study Asia.  For some reason, he finds this continent so mysterious.  As I said before, maybe it’s because of the diversity in culture, people and lifestyle.  We came from the Philippines and in a short time we stayed in Singapore.  Mavi even attended a Chinese school and yes at 2 years old he can speak a few Chinese :D  So Mavi was exposed to the different culture and people but he was young then, so he couldn’t appreciate it yet.

Anyway, here are the materials/activities I prepared for Mavi for this year’s study.  This is just Asia in general, I have separate post for each study of the Asian regions.

MAP WORKS

A review of the Asia Map.  We are also doing a puzzle map similar to this activity. 

Presentation and work of the Asian Regions. Asia is divided into 6 regions, namely:  Southeast Asia, East Asia, South Asia, West Asia, Central Asia and North Asia (Russia).  Here we identified major countries of each regions and place the Asia Pin Flags to plot their location.  Mavi also worked on the 3-part card of the Asian regions.

 

HABITAT

Study of Animals of Asia and Habitats. 

Below is a worksheet for Mavi to work plotting the appropriate habitat.

ANIMALS OF ASIA

The study of habitat is side by side with our animal study.  We use the cards to look into the animals and sort them out whether they live in a rainforest, desert or grassland. 

In addition, we made animal skin prints similar to Africa Study.

           

 

Now this study won’t be complete without learning about the treasures of Asia.  We used the Natural Resources of the World cards for this.  In the set-up I placed papers and a pen to write/draw the end products of Asia’s resources.

 

ASIAN CUISINE

Now this is part of daily life as this what I always prepare at home (Asian Cuisine cards).  I just have to emphasize to Mavi from what country our meal of the day came from.

     

Coming up… Southeast Asia!

More activities from here:

Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Continent Study: Asia on Pinterest.

 

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Religious Crafts and Activities for Kids

Sharing with you some religious crafts we did to go along with our study of Religions in Asia. 

Hinduism

Hindus offer garlands to God and to their guests as a sign of welcome.  Our garland was made of tissue paper and I used a thread to tie them up all together to form a garland.

 

Mavi decorated his hand.  This is a Hindu tradition wherein a Hindu bride would decorate its hand with a red dye called mehndi on her wedding day.

Christianity

One of the poignant moment in Christianity is the death of Jesus Christ.  So here, we made Mount Cavalry using paper plates and paint and added three crosses.  This is where Jesus died with two other outlaws.

  

Islam

We made prayer rug used by the Muslims when they worship Allah.  Instead of making a stunning and complicated design which Muslim craftspeople are known of, we just weaved our rug using cardstock.

              

Seen below, Mavi demonstrates how it is used.

Using Legos, we made a model of a Muslim mosque.  We used a styro paper cup and top it with a crescent symbol for the dome.  to signify an Islam mosque. Mavi loved this one the most!

 

Hope you enjoy this post.  More of our Asian Unit Study coming your way.  Till next time!

More Asia Unit in my Pinterest Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Continent Study: Asia on Pinterest.

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Religions in Asia (with Resources)

Last week we started our Asia Unit Study by looking at the different beliefs and religions of the Asians.    Click the link of the image for the product details.

We started off with the presentation of materials and an overview of each religion. 

Most of my learning materials come with fact cards. If you might be wondering why, I use these cards as a tool for reading practice for Mavi.  At times books are not available and these cards come in handy.

Speaking of books, our library has the best resource for this :)  My favourite so far are the books from World of Faiths series.  I HIGHLY recommend them if you are looking for books that teaches religion.  They are so engaging, easy to read, very informative but not overwhelming to little ones and it has suggested activities to go along with the specific religion of study.

The books on the series are the following [aff. links]:

• Christianity
• Hinduism
• Judaism
• Sikhism
• Islam
• Buddhism

These are really wonderful wonderful books.  If I have the resources, I would want them all.  They’re treasures! My son reads them every night.

Now, with the books and cards… I printed a map of Asia and Mavi and I tried to mark the places based on their religions.  And look what happened when Mavi encountered the YinYang symbol… he labeled it as Kung Fu Panda LOL. 

  

My next post would be about the craft activities that goes along with this study. So stay tuned!

In addition, we also watched videos of the important celebrations of the three major religions:  Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.

Christianity:  Easter and Christmas. Here we watched the death and resurrection of Christ.

 

Islam:  Observance of Eid-ul-Fitr

 

 

Hinduism:  Celebration of Diwali, the Festivity of Lights.

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Teaching Ordinal Numbers

Earlier today, while all of us are so lazy to start our day, we read Chicken Licken while having breakfast.  Mavi started to memorize the order of the farm animals in the story and I decided to integrate ordinal numbers into it. 

Our Chicken Licken was from Usborne and got it via Book Depository.  The animals used is from Safari Toob Mega Farm Collection and Safari Toob Feathered Dinosaurs. [aff. links]

I made Mavi read the book and instructed to place the animals in the order of how they appeared in the story. So basically, if your child knows how to read and at this time, familiar with ordinal numbers he can work on this independently with minimal supervision.  But for preschoolers, the mother/teacher should demonstrate the concept of ordinal numbers by placing the animals according to the sequence of their appearance in the story.

PS. We didn’t have a turkey figure so we didn’t include it in our activity.

 

Other books that can be used in teaching ordinal numbers [aff. links]:

• Are You My Mother?
• Brown Bear Brown Bear
• A Very Hungry Caterpillar
• The Very Busy Spider

Another way to demonstrate ordinal numbers is by using similar objects (in our case dinosaurs), labels and instructions.

Mavi reads the instructions and happily obliged.  My instructions were simple… like “place a yellow rubber-band on the 4th (fourth) dinosaur”.

You can find more Math activities on my Pinterest Board:

 

Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Math Ideas on Pinterest.

3D Shapes

A few weeks ago, we revisited 3D Shapes.  We previously had this activity using cards and our paper models.  They were a hit!

My son never showed interest on 3D shapes and neither was I.  All I could ever remember was those grueling memorization of formulas in my Engineering class. I never liked geometry LOL.

Because the papers are now gone, I bought wooden 3D shapes in Absorbent Minds.  I bought the small one as we don’t have enough storage here.  Well, he was quite into it this time.  I have to explain why there are called 3D. We made basic shapes (squares, rectangle, circle etc) by pressing the wooden 3Ds on a playdough.

          

Next we tried forming the shapes using craft sticks and plasticine. I’ve seen this activity multiple times in other blogs and thought it was easy to make. But I was wrong! LOL.  They were actually hard to form :) But nevertheless Mavi and I enjoyed it.  We laughed hard each time a shape is broken LOL.  The plasticine didn’t hold the stick that much. I wonder if marshmallows would be a better alternative?

          

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