Our Number Rods

Now we can enjoy Montessori math even more!

Language Red Series: r a m f b i t g

My Montessori Journey has a wonderful idea of pre-school Montessori language and I just couldn’t resist but make one for Mavi.

So I figured that I should re-do my alphabet activities since Mavi knows all his letters already.  And since we are on the stage of learning to read and write, I adapted the system of My Montessori Journey of teaching letters on how they will be used in reading.

Thus... the ramfbitg, cusnpolh and dgyzqwejkvx.

Presenting to you my red series, consisting ramfbitg letters.  So my letters usually consist of the following:

• letter sound book which has the same function as that of My Montessori Journey
• the read book which consist of 4 images.  I just collected four coloring images from the internet and stick them on the pages of the read book
• then we have the Itsy Bitsy books.  Too bad, these books are available for consonants only
• tracing letters for lowercase I use the Kumon Wipe Clean Lowercase letters (not shown)
• a guide for building letters and the foam building letters (not shown)
• a lower and uppercase plastic magnetic letters
• a lowercase sandpaper letter
• an uppercase tracing letter which I just downloaded from the net and placed in a poster

Here’s the sound letter.  Mavi glued the letter on the paper after we sand the letter “r” song based on the tune of Leapfrog.

The read book. 

The building letters.  Here’s Mavi doing the letter A.  I’m still looking for lowercase building letters.

We will be working with these materials for a while... because it seems that Mavi loves this scheme and it’s really organized.  With this scheme I don’t have to think of what to do with the letters every week!

The Moon

This book inspired us to make our moon using a black cardstock and poster paints.

First we looked through the pages and discussed the different colors used by Eric Carle. Mavi is doing well with his color recognition but he cannot identify the gray color yet (the color of the moon in the book).

We started by making the sky (blue hues) .  The green were supposedly for the grass, but he insisted to add it up in the background hehe.

He had a beautiful shape of a circle, but he wanted to add a another one

To finish the painting, I told him that he should paint the circle white, just like in the book so he can have his moon.  After a while he got tired of doing the white and asked me to finish it for him.

Here's how it ended.

Singapore Zoo

It’s been our 3rd zoo for the past 4 months!

Here’s a few pictures just to share what we did at Singapore Zoo. 

It was really hot, so we only spend around 2 hours there. I’m just glad that even in a short period of time my Mom and Mavi bonded.

Here’s Mavi fascinated with the rabbits.

 

The giraffe looks so divine!

And here’s Mavi in awe of the largest alligator he has ever seen!

Whew what a day!! We didn’t bother seeing the lions and tigers even if it’s Mavi’s favorite animal since we’ve seen them a lot of times already (Belgrade and Subic). 

Tot School Wrap-Up Week 4

Mavi is 30 months old.
March 14 – 20, 2011.

Since my son is in school we didn’t do that much homeschooling this week. 

CRAFTS

We’ve been skipping crafts project and instead do a lot of painting this week. We still continue using oil pastel for artwork.  This week I sketched him a cow and he painted over it using a watercolor.

MATH

I’ve been missing our shape projects so I gave him this activity again.  He covered the “flat” shapes using buttons (with his Daddy).  He love this activity.

Another shape-related activity was forming objects out of shapes.  I cut out different shapes from a cardstock, and used a contact paper for sticking shapes together.  It was Mavi’s idea actually.  The original activity was just to stick the shapes together on the contact paper. 

But he took out his Mouse Shapes book and started doing what the mouse did in the story.

And we count 1 to 54 using dot markers.

LANGUAGE

We read books and did plenty of story telling.

He traced letters and practiced erasing.

 

He put some stickers after we color our alphabets.

 

PRACTICAL LIFE

He practice scooping this week.

And more scooping...

   

And later on folding a paper. Sorry for the blurred picture hehe.

SCIENCE

We sort animals according to which they belong... on a zoo, farm or ocean.  Then used a few of my miniature animal farms and Mavi matched them to the pictures.  Too bad I only had a few.  It would have been best if I have the complete collection.

Hope you enjoy this week’s post! Till next time :-)

Tot School Wrap-Up Week 3

Mavi is 30 months old.

BOOKS

Books we’ve been reading this week:

• The Very Hungry Caterpillar
• Mr. Brown Can Moo
• The Very Busy Spider
• Usbourne’s Chicken Licken

View Full Album

CRAFTS

For this week he was the one picked the letter craft.  After scanning all through the letters that we have, he finally picked uppercase letter I for our activity.

 

This is Mavi’s I for Iguana version.  If interested, you can view the basic procedures from here.  I wanted to make a separate post for our letter crafts but I’m a little bit preoccupied right now. Promise to do interesting post next time.

Then I showed to him the oil pastel and talked about how it’s different from crayons.  We later did the Oil Pastel Art that I posted here.

Since coloring books are so expensive on this side of the planet... I collected a view clipart from the net and printed them all out on a piece of A4 paper.  At first he just shaded everything.  Then I showed him how to properly "color or  shade” areas of a picture.  So tried another set of coloring pictures and finally he was able to color each photos.  As you can see, he can color areas of each clipart... he needs more practice though.  I want him to learn that each picture is different from the other so he can color each one separately and just within the area or lines.  But of course with his age, I can truly understand that he can’t color images within the lines yet.

MATH

We did the math color-number wheel here.

Then arrange butterflies and caterpillars according to their size.  He learned how to use the word “medium” with this activity.

And we did a lot of dot-math using our do-a-dot markers.

 

LANGUAGE

I introduced a new activity for this week.  Was a little bit inspired on the language section.  You can read about our activity here.

 

We re-visited our Itsy Bitsy Books and this time he wanted to read it all by himself.  He reads the book by sounding each letters first, then read the pictures.  He can’t read yet but I know that he can identify all the pictures on the Itsy Bitsy.  So everytime I took these books from the shelves, he would pretend reading it hehe.

 

PRACTICAL LIFE

In line with our Very Hungry Caterpillar book, I printed out this “ordering” printables from the internet.  The point here is to order the events of what happened from the book.  I was so surprise to see Mavi identify all the fruits and foods mentioned in the book without me telling him.

Say, I asked him about the 5 oranges... he would look at the cut-outs for a while then pick the 5 oranges pictures.  Can he actually count the 5 items? Or can he just identify the oranges?  I asked him about the plums too... and he picked the correct cut-out again! 

Some sensorial activities... making our very own caterpillar and butterfly.

Then he helped his grandmother arrange the spoons and fork in the kitchen cabinet.  We didn’t ask him to do it but he did.

And while his Dad was sick, the little guy behaved the whole time... for he was very very busy painting his car!

SCIENCE

Yehey! We did science this week.  I took out our “Butterfly Life Cycle” and the “Life Cycle of an Apple” nomenclature cards and we matched the pictures.  Since I guess he’s too young for some detailed stuff, what I do here is I would tell him a story based on the pictures of the chronological event of a certain species..which is the butterfly and the apple.

After having discussions with him, asking him the colors in the picture, how big it is or how small... we would match the pictures cards to the control cards.  I am surprise that he’s learning a lot from this activity.  His word bank just keeps growing and growing. Aylavet!