Chicks Addition Game

Last Easter my son and I had a wonderful time playing this “Where’s the Easter Card” game. Here I had 9 cards with numbers on it, I used chicks as counters and an Easter Card (not shown).

The mechanics of the game is similar to the ones played by Julie in the Adventures of Bear for “Where’s the Cake?” game.

Here, I hide the Easter card under a number card. Then I give him an addition problem to solve. The answer to the question is where the Easter card is hidden.

He puts the chicks on a container to count.

Here he is working on 4 and 4 is 8.

And can you see how happy he is when he guess it correctly?

We love this game and he truly enjoyed it!

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Montessori Work

Montessori-inspired activities we did lately...

Language

Blue Series

Pink Series

Math

Reading numbers in different ways... numerical symbol, beads, hand symbol.

Number dots...

Then there’s numerical words..

Using counters.

The end product.

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Euro Coins

Before the Holy Week I pulled out a lesson about money and learning how to count/use Euro coins.

I got the coins from ELC which was on sale last Christmas and it was just this month that we get to use it because my son has been playing a lot of “going to the grocery” and pretending to buy something.

Here’s the set-up. The control cards were homemade and the Euro coins we’re using at the moment are 2EU, 1EU, 0.50EU, 0.20EU, 0.10EU, 0.05EU. Since I don’t want to overwhelm him with so much info, I skipped using the 1cents and 2cents.

First I discussed all about the money, and where we usually use it. Then I made him match the coins with the control cards. He did very well!

After which, I cut out these pictures from a magazine and we played the “grocery” game using our Euro coins.

Here he is selecting what he wanted to buy. Then I would tell him how much it cost... say 1Euro. Then he would go back to the table and pick the 1Euro from the pile shown in the picture below. I was surprise that he never missed! He always gives me the right amount!

Now, there were times that he selects more than one item... and that means I added the total amount. Say it cost 3.50Euro, so I would tell him to get a 3.50Euro... and instruct him that the amount is composed of 2Euro, 1Euro and 0.50Euro. He loves loves playing this game! And it’s also a perfect exercise for learning addition.

I am planning to do plenty of money games in the next few days wherein I will focus on learning how to add coins in order to match the total amount. As he progress, I will introduce more denominations including the bills as well.

Happy Easter everyone!

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The Moon

Here’s the Moon unit we did for the past few days to go along with our Goodnight Moon Before FIAR. 

Read books which I borrowed a few books from the library aside from the ones we already have.

My son can now appreciate space facts, astronauts, rocket ships and planets.  Unlike the first time we had the moon unit.

    

The space toob which was a gift for him was very useful during his play pretend of space and planets.

Now on serious stuff, I discussed the the position of the moon, earth and sun in space.  

Then I talked about the moon revolving around the earth and that the earth revolves around the sun.  I demonstrated this using our felt planets and he was fascinated.  He tried doing it by himself.

Then we worked on the phases of the moon.  I was very careful telling him that there’s only one moon but it looks different from time to time.  Since this topic is a bit complicated for a 3 year old, I just compared to it making faces.  Sometimes we look sad, happy or mad but we only have one face.  And with this, he started making faces as well... just funny that he was able to get the point somehow.

Here he worked on the nomenclature cards of the phases of the moon.

 

And using felt moons, we talked about the moon getting bigger and getting smaller.

 

I made him worked through the phases by positioning the moon phases as to the ones on the book.  From here, I asked him on what side does the moon gets bigger or smaller.

 

So everytime we’re outdoors, and he would see the moon, I love that he would describe it to me as “it’s a gibbous moon” or “it’s a crescent moon”... not just “ a moon”.    As a mom, it really makes you happy that your child digest what you have taught them :)

 

Over the weekend, we made a hanging moon phases and placed it on our verandah.  I cut out the shapes of the phases and my son covered it with kitchen foil.

    

Here they are... the phases of the moon all in silver!

Then I put it all together and hanged them for us to look at each night :)  The camera though cannot do justice on how good it looked during the day, especially when the sun would shine on it... it sparkles!

 

And the silhouette looks lovely too! 

 

I hope you enjoyed reading  my post.  These days, I really don’t have the luxury of time to make an update so I just try to post as much photos to describe what we did.  Till next time!

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