Life Cycle of an Apple

This is the first time time I attempted to give Mavi a 3-part card, so everything is on the process of experimentation.  Since I don’t have a proper training on Montessori, I just rely on what I read on the net and on some Mommy blogs on how they use this type of card (Montessori-sh).

So here goes....

This week we’re working on “letter A is for apple theme” and I was inspired to show him how an apple seeds becomes a fruit.  I was given a book by a friend which is all about fruits... and coincidentally, it showed the life cycle of an apple.  Maverick was into it for a long time... and he asked me to read the book over and over again. 

     

I prepared my cards early on.  Got the printables from Montessori for Everyone (free), printed it and put it in a cardboard.  Then I showed him the part of the book where it presented how the apples came to be... from seed to a fruit.  As I show the picture on the book, I also present to him each card (first part - picture with label), describing the stages of the apple’s life.

He was very very interested. All the time I was discussing, he paid attention.  After I have shown him the cards, I took the second part/set of the cards (without the label) and asked him what the picture on the card was.  He got 4 correct answers out of 6.  He got confused between the seed and seedling; and the bud and flower since they have similar pictures.  Then I asked him to match the picture card to the ones with the labels which he worked breezily.

Supposedly, I have to show him the third-part of the card which was the labels, and then asked him to match it to the pictures.  But I have this feeling that it might be too early for him to match or recognize words since he can’t read yet.  So what I did was that I showed him each labels, describe the word and then match it to the pictures.  This way he will have an idea on what to do with it during our future activities.

So far, this was a hit and it made me think that I should continue to feed him new ideas and things to learn each week.  He may not have digested everything I taught him, but at least he knows now what a “bud” means :-).