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:
Mavi wanted to practice more of reading the time, especially when it comes to reading and writing “quarter to” and “half past”. He seems to be confused with the positioning of the small hand. So with this, I made a few activities for him to work afterschool. I am sharing these activities as well as the printables were are using (yes it’s free!).
I am so excited to share with you the fun preschool math activities I prepared for Vito! He saw me printing these materials and he kept on asking if we can play. Of course we did! We started using a few of these materials and will share his progress in the days to come. For now, allow me to present to you our adorable and cute learning materials for the month of October.
We are loving DIY math games! The boys enjoyed our Race Game a few weeks ago, so I didn’t hesitate to give them our Graphing Game. Not only can my preschooler practise his counting skills and taking turns, this is also a great opportunity to introduce date recording (and analysis) for older children.
Vito always wanted to join us whenever we play board games but we don’t allow him because it’s too much for him. Too many cards (and paper money) to scatter, dice which he couldn’t figure out how to use and what to do with it and so much more. So when I was making Autumn-Themed Math Activities, I made sure that I include a game that’s suitable for his age.
Vito is starting “preschool” math this school year and we are not using any curriculum. I guess it’s not necessary in our case. I will be using my experience with Mavi and with the thousand ideas online on setting up “play-based” and Montessori-inspired activities for Vito this school year. So in order for me to be able to organize and prepare materials ahead of time, I decided to come up with seasonal-themes for the upcoming months.
Vito is 28 months old.
Odd as it may be, but Vito loves numbers and counting more than letters. Yes, I find it odd because Mavi was into letters at his age and started to learn spelling by the time he’s 2.5 years old. It amazes me on how they can be different!
Anyway, I wanted to share with you this beautiful wooden number peg board I recently bought from a local store (materials are from Europe) and Vito loves this! A precious piece of math material that teaches little children to count and practice hand-eye coordination at the same time! I wanted to buy the Montessori Math Spindle, but when I saw this, I knew this is way more better (and a lot cheaper)!
Math is one of my favourite subjects, and it always excites me to see math activities in homeschool blogs. Mavi and I are always having a great time working on this subject especially when he was in preschool. I collected all our favourite math preschool activities and you can check them out on the link or image below.
Download here or click the image.Mavi didn’t like math. When he was around 5yrs old, he would rather read books than work with math. He’s excuse would always be “I’m tired” or “it’s difficult”. I can truly understand him though. I didn’t enjoy math when I was younger. Until I stepped into secondary school and discovered why we need math.
So instead of forcing him to solve arithmetic problems and giving him number activities, I exposed him to real life problems so he can appreciate math. I made him understand WHY WE NEED TO LEARN NUMBERS AND MATH. We would go to the groceries and count our items all together, doing addition and subtraction in between. Of course, he’s not aware we’re doing math, all he knows is that he’s helping Mommy do some groceries. At home, I secretly incorporate addition and subtraction by counting his missing pens, his toys and how many books he has read.
He loves the real life math! He can’t stand arithmetic problems but he enjoys real life problems. So what I did was create a bunch of colorful cards for us to work on, making sure there’s pictures (and we mostly use counters as well) to make it attractive. In the problems, I used his friends’ name so he’ll like it, and of course he finds it funny! He kept asking for more, more questions as he liked solving the problems. And that was the game changer.
Through these problem solving cards, he was able to appreciate math, and could now understand why he needs to practice arithmetic. He loves to solve math problems these days on his own and still loves solving problems.
So I created these problem solving cards for Pre-K students. It contains:
Mavi worked on these cards when he was 5-6yrs old. Though this is intended for 5-6yrs old children, older or younger kids can still use the cards as a practice material. Hope you like it and find it useful like we do. Thanks!
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Enjoy!
To those who are interested, I recorded Mavi’s work a few weeks ago on Montessori multiplication using the bead board. We do it occasionally for practice. Whenever he does the bead board, he followed this work with multiplication using the bead bars. Please use the video below as your reference in case you wanted to try this at home.
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