Letter Sounds and Writing Practice

These are the materials I made for my son to work for writing and practicing phonics.  Every week we work on two letters based on our ramfbitg (red), cusnpolh (yellow) and dexqyjkvwz(blue) series.  I got this idea from My Montessori Journey where she categorized her letter sounds by color codes.

Here I’m presenting the letter for M for it’s the beginning letter of my son’s name :)

Each set is comprised of:

• a color coded sound book (DIY)
• a letter builder made from foam sheets
• a letter builder control card
• an Itsy Bitsy book which I got from here
• lowercase tracing card from Kumon
• uppercase tracing card which is a DIY
• a lowercase sandpaper letter

Below is a closer look of what’s inside my sound booklet. Each booklet is made up of 4 pages with images inside that begins with the letter M.  I don’t have specific order as to what we need to work on first.  Sometimes my son and I would read the booklets then do the writing, or the other way around.

After we have worked on a pair of letters, we do some phonics exercises with our Alpha Phonics Boxes. 

Frog Unit Part 2

Here’s a continuation of our Frog Unit.  You can find the first part here.

This is a “Life Cycle” booklet which I bought at a random shop in SG.  It contains life cycles of all significant animals that we will studying for pre-school to kindergarten. Very useful and has lots of beautiful graphics.  My son loves to read this book over and over.

 

Using this 3-part nomenclature card, which I downloaded from somewhere (I forgot the link!) I demonstrated the lifecycle of the frog by ordering the cards.  I was saving ink so I didn’t print a second batch to be use as picture and label cards.

We ordered the cycle of the frogs according to how it is presented on the book.

      

I made a frog puzzle.  The pattern of the frog was from Montessori N’ Such.  I made the puzzle out of foam sheets, but I’m thinking of redoing it using felt craft sheets. 

We read this frog book over and over again.  This is an 8 pages book entitled “I am a Frog” and it is also very informative.  I love how the frog in this book is presented... a little bit cartoonish.  It’s an easy to read, just 2-3 sentences a page which makes it easier for little ones to follow.

      

Frog Unit Part 1

Finally, we started working on our Frog themed activities.  I made sure that I have enough materials on hand to start this theme for my son usually keeps asking for “more”.

PARTS OF A FROG.  I made use of the 3-part nomenclature card which I downloaded for free from Montessori Print Shop.  The author/owner of the site gave a detailed post on how to use and create these cards.  My son loves doing this activity.  He always gets excited whenever I would take out a set of card for us to work on.  I will provide a separate post regarding 3-part cards. 

PRACTICAL LIFE.  I made these cutting strips using MSWord for Mavi to practice cutting.  The first half has a line guide while the rest doesn’t have.  I made him use the ones with the guides first so he would know what to do or how to execute the cutting exercise.  The frog image was taken from a random google search.

NUMBERS AND COUNTERS. I made frog counters for this activity out of green cardstock, covered it with contact paper and cut each frog piece. 

      

Math using Beads Stairs

Our math for the past weeks was all about bead stairs.  I’ve been wanting to try this on Mavi for a long time but he doesn’t show any sign of interest in counting.  These days, he was so fascinated with the beads that he wanted to use it.

I had difficulty when I first introduced this to him for I cannot get him to cooperate. He wanted to play the beads “his own way”.  But when I took the bead stairs worksheets that was the time he finally gave up and allowed me to take control. (that’s because he wanted to color the worksheets)

 

So this how we practice counting at the moment.  First I discussed about the beads, that each bead corresponds to a number. For him not to be overwhelmed by the loads of counting, I just introduced the 1-5 beads.  I placed the number cards and the beads on the table and made him “match” by counting the beads. 

 

Then we use the worksheet.  I made him color the “circles” with corresponding color code of the beads.  In here, I just laid out the crayons on the table, and ask him to color the worksheet.  He perfectly did well in picking up the right color that corresponds to the short beads.

      

I also made another set of short bead stairs and Mavi helped me with it.  He loves putting the macaron beads on the pipe cleaners.  It is a just joy seeing him so happy that he can string the beads together.  And the fact that he was working me with as well! And look! He insisted on taking a picture after we have assembled our bead stairs.

 

      

Here’s what we ended up:

And here’s what more he can do with the beads aside from counting... forming letters!  See even if he’s on a math session, he would steal a moment to build his letters!

Oh I forgot to mention that he can write letters now? It definitely deserves a separate post.