Monday, May 24, 2010

Montessori Monday

Sensorial
Enjoyed doingthe binomial cube, but enjoyed the challenge of the trinomial even more.
This is a great game in which you listen to animal sounds and have to find the matching animal card.
A game we have came with these color spinners that Bear loves.  I wanted to know if she remembered which colors mixed to make what color, so I set up a game in which she chose the secondary color chip before spinning the wheel.  If she chose correctly, she got to keep the chip.  She got them all.
These packages of flowers (from dollar spot at Target, reduced to a quarter!) are meant for scrapbooking. This day we used them for patterning.  I started a sequence and she continued it.
Bear made a collage with the leaves and bark and twigs she had collected from our unit on trees.

Practical Life

Weaving - this idea came from prekinders and My Montessori Journey.  We only did it once as it was not interesting enough to bear to repeat. 
Do you know the book Mouse Count in which the snake catches the mice and puts them in a jar?  Well this game is called Snake Count, in which Bear catches snakes (with chopsticks) and places them in a jar.

Writing and Reading

While cleaning out the "school" and toy cupboard, we came upon these foam pieces to build letters.  So Bear built letters and traced letters for awhile.

This book from Valerie at Frugal Family Fun Blog is Bear's obsession right now.  I actually can't get her to the Montessori shelves because she is SO enthralled in tracing everything in the book.  She also never wants me to take a picture.  "Not for the blog, Mommy!" she exclaims.  Oh well, what can I say, I sneaked a picture.)
 
Using alphabet stickers found at Target brought a new twist to the moveable alphabet and renewed her interest in spelling words for me a little bit.

Math
I presented her the ones, tens, and hundreds and we played a game I've played with my third graders that Joyful Learner calls Race to One Hundred.  You roll the die, add that number of ones.  When you have ten ones, you trade the ones in for a ten.  You play until you have ten tens or one hundred.  Getting Bear to finish the last two tens was a bit of a challenge as she had lost interest by then.
 Bear tried tracing numbers in corn flour.  Although she can trace her sandpaper numbers perfectly, she can not transfer to the tray.  Any ideas?













6 comments:

  1. Wow! Bear did a lot of activities which all look like so much fun. I love how you improvised the Race to 100 by drawing the lines instead of drawing the spaces. I might redo mine because I didn't like the way mine came out. My friend has been playing the game with her daughter who is now 5 and they seem to enjoy it. Bear might still be too young for it as she is only 3.

    I love the color spinners! Which game did it come with? That's impressive that she got all the colors right! I don't think JC knows them even though we've done lots of mixing in the past.

    As for writing, I have the sandpaper letters and the movable alphabet but have not used them much. I think the stencils ($1 frames from Michaels) helped build fine motor skills and she enjoyed that more as she's used the shapes to trace over and over again. I regret buying the expensive Montessori items. I wish I had improvised instead. Using $1 chalkboard (also at Michaels) combined with Handwriting without Tears alphabet sheet seemed to help with writing and tracing letters. Basically, the child writes the letter, use a wet sponge to erase the letter in the same manner it was written, and then use a cloth to wipe. Then, do it over again with a different letter. We've done the writing in sand but it seemed to provide more of a sensory experience than writing. Sorry, it's such a long comment!

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  2. Wondering where you got the animal sounds game from? I love reading what you do with your daughter. Thank you for sharing. I get a lot of ideas from this blog.

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  3. It's a great week! Bear is such a good student - Anna doesn't really want to do a lot of activities with pen or pencil at home unless it's free drawing. She spends a lot of time playing with her playmobil :)

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  4. Thanks for linking to Montessori Monday! I would also like to know where you got the animal sounds game - Pita Pocket would love that one. Thanks for such great ideas - we'll be doing the snakes in a jar soon I'm sure.

    Bummer about the weaving - I saw that as well and am setting it up for Short Pants this week - I wonder if he'll like it or not.

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  5. I added a link to the sound game on the post. This is a link to the game that came with the color wheels. My sister got it for Bear in Halifax...I couldn't find it on Amazon. http://www.lesenfants.fr/jeu-educatif/3070900083028-83/Eduludo-Couleurs-Djeco.html

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  6. I think we'd enjoy the animal sounds game too, thanks for sharing! Sorry, no tips for moving from the sandpaper numbers to sand trays...just keep working at it :)

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