Montessori Wrap-Up

Mavi is 37 month old.

Here’s the summary of our Montessori-related activities for the past two weeks.

MATH

Working with bead stairs worksheet.

Learning how to add and understanding the ‘teen numbers. 

         

Patterning using popsicle sticks.  The sticks were from National Bookstore (Bacolod).

Forming polygons using popsicle sticks.  We counted the sides of each polygons formed.  I realize that whenever we do some “shapes” activity related to polygons, I should give emphasis on counting the sides.

          

 

PRACTICAL LIFE

Sorting pompoms using a clamp.  The pompoms were from Spotlight Singapore.

Sorting pompoms using a chopstick trainer.  You can get this trainer anywhere in Singapore.

                               

Wooden nuts and bolts.  I bought this one at Daiso Singapore.  It was difficult for him at first to roll the nuts, he gets confused on what direction he should turn it.  Eventually he figure it out and started playing with it for hours.

         

 

SENSORIAL.

We have lots of old magazines at home so here I cut a few pictures and made it into puzzles for the little one to play.

         

Lots of drawing this week and he prefer using oil pastels and Crayola’s Pipsqueak.

LANGUAGE

Phonics search for letters CUSNPOLH.

         

Just wanted to show these landmarks :) I find it really cute.  Of course, they fall under U for United States and United Kingdom hehe.  In case you wanted to know where I got these, it’s from Safari Toobs.

Pink Series and moveable letters.  We’re still working on sets 1 to 4 and this time I taught him how to use the moveable letters with our CVC words.  The letters were made from foam art papers. 

         

Then we did more writing practice using his mini-chalk board, a gift from his Dad’s friend and using Kumon lowercase Write and Wipe.

         

Leaves

To enjoy much of the Autumn season, I recalled our leaves theme last week even if I don’t have enough resources.

I first thing we did was walk along the estate to collect leaves and discuss the different shapes and textures of leaves. He was eager to learn! Especially when we touch the leaves and learn about their textures :) He loves it!

He enjoyed collecting leaves as well.  I explained why some leaves are orange/brown/red and some are green.

         

At home, we trace the leaves and differentiate their sizes.

 

We also made a leaves collage.  Unfortunately, we use a stick glue which doesn’t stick so well :)

         

So later, I decided if we could just paint a replica of our leaves collage.  He ended up painting a car.

I remembered that I also have a print-out of Leaf match activity which I got from Montessori for Everyone a long time ago. He just loves matching game and it surprises me that he can do it independently in a breeze. 

And of course, my favorite was the nomenclature cards for the parts of a leaf which I downloaded for free from here.    There’s another version of it from here too.  I only discussed relevant parts of the leaf that my son can easily identify.

Learning Addition

In attempt to add a little change and spice on our Math curriculum, I decided to introduce addition to Mavi last week.  I made orange boxes (in time for Halloween!) for this activity and use our blue pompoms (in lieu of our Blueberries for Sal unit). 

First, I discussed the plus and equal signs... it’s his first time to encounter the symbols.  I don’t know if he really understands it but he kept nodding his head whenever I talk about how these symbols work.  He just kept on calling the “equal” sign as eleven though :)

So after I place one pompom on each box and say “one pompom plus one pompom equals...” then I made him combine the pompoms in the steel container and count. 

We played around the numbers 1,2,3 so that all the sums would not exceed 5.  It seems that he wasn’t too giddy and attentive when we did this activity.  Although he participated and do exactly what I tell him to do, the interest wasn’t just there (at the moment).

I intend to teach him basic addition for now, playing around with small numbers and touch large ones as we progress.  

Counting 11 to 20

Mavi is 37 months old.

My son love is into counting these days so after we had this, we did numbers 11 to 20 as well.  We used the bead bars, although I wanted to use other counters, we just don’t have enough for this activity.

I presented 11 to 15 first, by placing the number cards and bead bars as presented below.  We counted the beads together to support the number the cards.

Then I put together the number cards and the bead bars and as seen on the picture below.  While doing this, I explained that a ten and a one makes eleven.  Same goes as I do twelve to fifteen.

Then we would do the activity all over again, but this time, it’s him leading.  I made sure that he understands the ‘teen numbers before we proceeded with the 16 to 20.

When we got to this part... he wanted to do the activity all by himself.  

I just placed 2 golden bead bars to represent 20.

We still haven’t done any numbers and counters for practicing 11 to 20 but so far he’s getting the point.  Since we’re done with lower numbers I would probably explore the ‘teen section of counting, up to twenties or thirties.