Baric Tablets

Although I've been making my own purees for J-jo, I find an occasional Gerber now and then is a real sanity saver.  I discovered these rectangular packages and love to reuse the containers to store tiny things like beads and buttons.

I decided they would make the perfect baric containers.  I took 5 empty containers. In the first, we put nothing.  Then in the next four, we put in corn kernels, increasing the amount by one tablespoon for each container. Right now, Bear works with three of the 5.  The empty one, the fullest one and the one in the middle.  She grades them according to weight.  She closes her eyes and I place a container in each hand and she tells me which is heavier then we line them up in order.  I'm waiting for J-jo to eat a few more so I can make a match for each of the baric containers I just made.  After I have all the containers, I'll get two different colored tapes to cover the containers so we can't see how much corn is in there.

If you don't have a baby at home, toddlers often like these mixed with plain yogurt.  This is actually the reason I have so many Gerber jars collected - Bear is a yogurt fiend and especially likes it mixed with applesauce.  As there are no Mott's applesauce cups in Costa Rica, I ended up buying her Gerbers.  The good thing is that the yogurt that is already mixed with fruit has tons of sugar added to it, whereas Gerbers don't. 

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Montessori from the Start

This post is really for me, some things I am pondering or want to remember from the book Montessori from the Start by Paula Polk Lillard and Lynn Lillard Jessen.

"We can further help with preparation for language development and the development of order by categorizing objects within the baskets.  Doing so helps the child to understand that certain things go together in our world...."

"...repetition is the key to the learning process at all ages.  Rotation (of toys or objects in the baskets), not substitution, is the answer to the process of habituation to objects. " (In other words, buying new stuff all the time is highly unnecessary.)

"We need to be constantly aware of the infant's capacities at each age and to think through the purpose for every object that we give to him.  We want to give him only those items that are helping him and remove from the environment those objects that are not serving a purpose." (For example, infant rattles that don't take into consideration the limitations of the infant's hands.)

"As parents and grandparents, we think that we are showing children we love them by giving them things.  In fact such practice, in and out of itself, may send them the wrong message.  Children may conclude that if people give you things, they love you.  If receiving things tells you that you are loved, the next logical step is to measure self-worth by what you have, not by what you are.  The reality is that very young children can only truly love one doll, one stuffed animal, and a few toys at a time. This experience provides a basis for adult life where one must learn to cherish one spouse, one family, one life, instead of fantasizing that it is possible to 'have it all'." (Mom, I hope you are reading this post!)

"We want any object that we give to the child under the age of three for independent play to enhance our ultimate goal: connection with others and an understanding of his world. .... Look for toys that help him to distinguish the real from the unreal, look for order in the world, and understand categories and process.  ....A dollhouse....realistic models of animals that live today...."


The authors also had interesting points about redirecting a child.  Things like not swooping in from behind to pick up a child (when redirecting especially), using language (describing an object in detail) to focus their attention away from something else (this has been working brilliantly to redirect Bear).  


This was a good read.  I wish I had read it while I was pregnant with Bear, though a lot of it still applies to J-jo.

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What Bear Is Reading

We love Kevin Henkes and Rosemary Wells in this house.

Our current Kevin Henkes favorites are:

Wemberly Worried

 Circle Dogs

and of course Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse, Kitten's First Full Moon, and Sheila Rae, the Brave.  Okay, well, maybe I should just say we love ALL of Kevin Henkes' books!

As for Rosemary Wells, I've had to read Felix Feels Better every day for three weeks now!  We also loved Yoko's Paper Cranes as it tied in well to our look at Asia and fit nicely with our activity to watch Mommy fold paper cranes :)  Bear also asks for Noisy Nora and Shy Charles frequently.

To see what others are reading, visit Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.

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More play with the balance scale

Last weekend, Bear and I played with her balance scale.  A few days after we compared the weight of containers full of beads, I showed her how to use the weights to find out how much the beads in a specific container weighed. 

She scooped beads into a container of her choice (different sized yogurt containers from the recycle box), then poured them into one side of the balance scale.  Then on the other side of the balance scale, we placed the weights until the two sides balanced out.

 

Then I counted out how many grams of weights we had for each container.  

I have to say that there is no way Bear could possibly do this activity on her own yet, but I love doing things beyond her zone of proximal development to see what she can absorb.  We will need to play with the scale a lot more.  Right now, her favorite thing to do is to pile the weights in on one side and then the other.

We also tried to compare the weight of certain amounts of pattern block shapes.

 

Here we are comparing ten blue diamonds and ten green triangles.

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Geometry

I got this idea from Joyful Mommy and Joyful Child.  I love that blog!

I traced various shapes using different amounts of square tiles from Bear's set of pattern blocks one evening.  The next day, I set out the cards for Bear, along with ten tiles in a cup.  Her sandpaper numbers were spread out along the couch.  She loved filling in the outlines.  Then we counted the tiles together and she found the sandpaper number to trace.  I think she is going through a sensitive period for tracing numbers because she traces numbers everywhere she finds them. She isn't that excited about tracing letters though.

 

  

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Geography

I found this map placemat in the Target dollar section.  Bear and I like to talk about the different States and their shapes.  Sometimes we take out the play dough and cover the States to try to make their shapes, then we flip the placemat and try to put our play dough blobs onto the correct States.

With clues, Bear can point out 8 states. 

(Where is New York? It's a triangle with an island attached. Where is Texas? It's the biggest state.  Where is Florida? It's the state with a handle. etc.)

  

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Knobless Cylinder Extensions

After the initial success and appeal of the caterpillar, Bear showed interest in creating her own caterpillars to cover with the knobless cylinders.  Although she can trace insets (yogurt lid stencils), she is not quite able to trace around a cylinder, or any other solid.
Hence, I traced the cylinders and cut out the circles in corresponding colors of construction paper.  She can lay out the circles any way she wants and then match the cylinders to them.

 

  

  

Another extension (although I don't know if this one would upset Montessori purists) was to place animals on each cylinder.  Next time I would have her match the size of animals better to the width of the cylinder.  She really enjoyed balancing the animals on the cylinders.

For other Montessori activities, visit Montessori Monday at One Hook Wonder.

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Foam Base Ten Set

As I mentioned in this post I had the opportunity to review a product of my choice from Toys and Games Online, one of the many online stores at CSN stores.

I chose the Foam Magnetic Base 10 Set because it seemed similar to the Montessori golden beads.  I also remember learning carrying and borrowing using a base ten set in my elementary school days and it is also how I taught these concepts to my third graders.  I knew that something like this could be useful in my homeschool classroom.

This learning material is good quality.  The foam is sturdy and the magnet is a single sheet covering the entire foam part.  The magnet seems adhered very strongly.  The product looks durable.  I am disappointed though because, based on the picture, I thought I was getting the same base ten set I used as a child - one with 3D unit cubes, bars and thousand cubes.  I was very disappointed that this set was 2D and that I hadn't read the specifications under the photo, where it mentioned that the thousand square is 2D (but does not mention that the other parts are also 2D).
It took a day to get past this disappointment. My husband politely told me to just get over it, since I still got a free product I can use to teach Bear and J-jo.  I wish now I'd chosen something more fun instead of something useful!

I love that it is magnetic. If you work on a cookie sheet, the little units (which aren't even that small, another good thing) can't get lost.
Or you could use your fridge (especially if you have a white fridge) as a white board and display a number for your child to decipher. 
Bear already is counting by tens to one hundred since we got it as she likes to take the 10-bars and line them up on the hundreds board.
So even though at first I was disappointed that it wasn't exactly what I thought it would be, I can still totally see us using this product and learning with it. 


I am very grateful to have received this product free from Toys and Games Online.  This has in no way influenced my review. 

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Asia

We are about to embark on a unit study of Asia and here are some resources and ideas I've been thinking of using as we concentrate more on China.

• Here are some Chinese traditional nursery rhymes and some Asian mountain poems.
• I love alphabet books. An alphabet book of Asia using some of the words from this word bank will be an easy activity to do.
• I know Bear won't be able to make this origami crane, but she will enjoy playing with it.  
• We'll definitely be building the Great Wall of China with blocks.  
• Bear already loves to build with her tangrams.
• We'll look at Asian animals.
• After reading about panda bears, we'll create a diorama of their habitat. 
• Joyful Mommy and Joyful Child shows a Chinese calligraphy lesson that could be recreated even without a fancy calligraphy set if you have those watercolor disks and a plump brush ending in a good point.
• It will be a good time to introduce the landforms of mountains and canyons, so I will make these out of plasticene for her to play with and explore.

These are just some of my initial ideas as I browse the internet.  If anyone has blogged about other ideas, feel free to include your links in the comments.  

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Postcards

If you are still waiting for a postcard from us, I haven't forgotten you.  They're sitting right here hoping I'll go to the post office sometime soon.  I'm so sorry.  It's all very complicated but we're dependent on other people driving us around right now so I can't just run out and mail them.

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Montessori Monday

Bear still enjoys the cylinder blocks.  She likes to do two blocks at a time and has a long way to go before mastering this particular work, but the challenge keeps her going.  Her favorite is still the fourth block.  She likes to purposely stick the short cylinders in the deepest holes and then turn the whole block upside down to recover the cylinders.  I have been letting her do this as I figure her desire to do this must be driven by something.

Some other sensory and practical life activities we have done include

One to one correspondence with buttons and the heart ice cube tray.

  

I finally got her some of those bath shape things.  She used the eye dropper to fill each suction cup.  She also used the tweezers to transfer pony beads onto each suction cup.

  A matching game with some geometric solids.  She knows cube, rectangular prism, cylinder, ovoid, hemisphere, and sphere. 

  A blurry shot of her sliding foam hearts into a slit in a container.  She still loves to do these simple activities.

  Lining up buttons on popsicle sticks.  We had done this with flat marbles before.

Math

 Sorting buttons and then counting them and labeling the sets with the correct number.  She recognizes her numbers most of the time now.

Language/Geography/Culture

Aside from reading books everyday and looking at the globe and US map every now and then, nothing really.  Eventually, when I have a printer, I'll be printing out lots of three-part cards.  I had plans to take out the farm animals and build words again like last week, but it didn't happen.

Baby Montessori

 J-jo is 6 months old and now enjoying pulling things out of baskets.  I will soon be placing common household objects into various baskets around the house for him, for us to talk about as he plays and discovers them.
And he's pretty much crawling now and I totally have to figure out how we are going to play with itty bitty things without him finding them on the floor.

Visit other Montessori blogs at One Hook Wonder's Montessori Monday linky.

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Sensory Tub

I finally got a sensory tub out for Bear.

Pony Beads.

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What Bear is Reading

Two stories set in Africa that we enjoyed this week were

Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain

and

Honey, Honey....Lion by Jan Brett

Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain (Reading Rainbow Book) mirrors The House that Jack Built in its style.  The verse builds on itself and repeats.  I like this kind of book because it lends itself well to memorization and allows the child to recall the story more easily.

Honey... Honey... Lion! is yet another wonderful Jann Brett book.  This one reminds me of We're Going on a Bear Hunt.  The honeyguide bird leads the badger through different sections of the African plain with wonderful sound effects.  Makes reading aloud a lot of fun.

To see what others are reading visit Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns

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Drats!

Well, Blogger decided to post before I was ready, so a bunch of photos to be posted on another post were in the Science one that just posted.  Of course, only the first post (the one with extra unrelated pictures) will appear in all your Readers and not the edited post.  The other photos belong to my Montessori Monday post for Monday.   Just a FYI. 

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A Math/Science Volume Activity

As I was washing out yet another yogurt container (I really can't bear to throw out any container I can reuse), I thought of the oatmeal container I had full of pony beads and of the balance scale sitting on a shelf upstairs.

I turned to bear and asked if she'd like to do a math activity.  Of course she got all excited, as she does when she hears the word "activity."

I got everything together and presented Bear with two empty containers (small ones) and had her hypothesize which would be heavier if she filled both with pony beads.  After she had made her hypothesis, she scooped pony beads into each of the containers (great fine motor activity) and then poured each container into the balance scale.  She then repeated this with another two set of containers, then continued to compare more combinations of containers. 

 

  

Any activity that combines lots of learning objectives is always a favorite of mine.  This one combined practical life/fine motor skills, scientific reasoning (making hypothesis and testing the hypothesis), a math concept (volume), and vocabulary ("heavier" and "lighter").

See other preschool activities at Homeschool Creations.

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Weaving

 

Inspired by the book, Teach Me to Do It Myself: Montessori Activities for You and Your Child

by Maja Pitamic (page 41 to be exact), I set out this activity for Bear.  It was challenging but still within her zone of proximal development (in other words, with a little help and guidance, she was able to be successful).  She was definitely proud when she finished the last two strips with only verbal guidance from Mommy ("over, under, over, under, over"). 

It was another great moment for honing in on fine motor skills, as well as practicing the over under movement used in sewing. 

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A Matisse Valentine

Remember this? 

We did a Valentine version.  

I cut out negative and positive heart shapes for the girls (Bear and her cousin) to glue. 

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Almost Crawling!

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A Guessing Game...

Remember how I said that Pip and Squeak was a story about two mice who lived in a mail box and used the mail as a sled?  Well, take a look at all these great mail boxes!  Wouldn't it be great to be a mouse and live in one of those?  I especially like the barn mail box.  This other one actually looks like a little house.  

CSN stores recently contacted me to see if I'd like to do a review of a product from one of their many stores.  It took me all evening to choose.  I wanted something educational for our school room, something Montessori-ish I could make do with instead of ordering the real thing.  I considered a science kit.  I considered a peg board. I was also tempted by this and this and this (drooling over all the miniatures for phonics drawers).

I have actually purchased from CSN stores (All Childrens Furniture) and was impressed by how quickly my order arrived.  Everything was well packaged too.  The prices were slightly better or the same as Amazon.  I am looking forward to receiving my product for review and letting you all know what I think of it.  Any guesses on what I finally chose?

Stay tuned to find out.

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Counting Beads and Toothpicks

 

An easy counting exercise that Bear enjoyed involved making different lengths of playdough (done by Mommy) and counting out the number of beads together on each strip.  She then counted the number of toothpicks as she placed them in each bead.  There was an empty piece of playdough for zero.  Bear continues to insist that zero should be given something, although she will readily tell you that zero means nothing.

What's great about this is that it practices both counting and fine motor skills, as well as hand-eye coordination.

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