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.

FREE Spelling Worksheets for Letter Sounds ‘i, p, n’

Sharing more Spelling Worksheets for Letter Sounds I, P, and N. You can download the activity sheets by clicking the individual pictures below.  You can read the post, FREE Spelling Worksheets for Letter Sounds ‘s, a, t’ to know more on how we use them.
          
         
         
Enjoy!

Learning From Books Using Narration Style Method

We are currently doing Charlotte Mason narration style at home.  We used to do Before Five In A Row (B4FIAR), where my son had a great time doing all the activities related to the book.  The only problem is, they have a book list and most books in the list are out of print.  With the narration style, we can use any book available and attack it the Charlotte Mason way :)

 

So without further ado, my first specimen is my son’s favourite book Where the Wild Things Are (Amazon US) (Book Depository)[aff. link].  We read it, pin pointed the words he couldn’t understand (for vocabulary lesson) and I took down notes as well for words worthy of spelling practice.

First activity is the Story Sequence using pictures.  I scanned and printed pictures from the book and had Mavi arranged them.  And then, I asked him to tell me the story (in his own word) using the pictures.  I couldn’t believe he remembers 70% of the lines from the book!

 

Spelling and Vocabulary.  Then we moved on to the spelling and vocabulary.  By this time I ran out of ink so I just have to rely on my papers and sharpies LOL (I don't run out of ink these days and I always print in high quality thanks to our ECO Tank Printer from EPSON).  For vocabulary, I have him read the definitions (practice reading) and then the meaning.  He figured out that he needs to match them.  The same with the spelling, decoding the scrambled letters to form the right words.

              

Story Sequencing using Words.  We’re doing the sequencing using words only.  This is to practice his reading analysis and skills.

Creating and Acting.  After the oral narration, we printed graphics from Making Learning Fun and colored them so we could make them as puppets.  This approach is similar to our Hickory Dickory Duck Unit. 

And here they are!  To assess, I made him retell the story (this was on a separate day) using the puppets and vocabulary words. 

I was so happy that we did this!! I have never seen Mavi become interested in “home” schooling again (he’s on vacation mode LOL).  He even told me “Mommy, can we do this again?”. 

So yes! We are doing this every week.  Now I am excited for our next book narration.

Books for Toddlers: Baby Picture Books

NOTE:  The post contains affiliate links.

My books from Book Depository finally arrived! So happy to have these picture books again :)

 

Baby’s First Colours

Baby’s First Words

Baby’s First Farm

Baby’s First Food

Baby’s First Animals

I looove these baby books, I have them when Mavi was 8 months old and I knew I just have to have them again for Vito. I couldn't find this in our local bookstore so I needed to purchase them from Book Depository as I no longer have Mavi's. In the picture below is Mavi. At that time the book is a year older already and the pages are torn due to excessive use :)  There are 12 books in the series but I bought have 5 due to a  limited budget LOL.

 

Now here are the reasons why I love and recommend this book series:

1. These board books are sturdy. I like its cover the most. It's wrapped with plasticky material, padded and soft, reason why my son loves to bite them :D If its wet with saliva the cover doesn't come off and tear.

2.  The board pages are highly durable. They don't bend and my little boy can flip it easily.

           

 

3.  It has large real pictures thus it holds my son’s interest. He can easily discern on it because of the pictures' size and simplicity. We love looking at them everyday.

4.  The book uses bright colors as backgrounds. Vito is drawn to it especially those with red, yellow and blue backgrounds. There are 12 books in the series and I bought 5. These are tried and tested. I recommend them to babies as young as 4 months :)

  

These books would also be perfect as presents!