Montessori Print Shop Nomenclature Giveaway

I am on a spree, entering the giveaways hosted at the various wonderful blogs!  Here is another superb one!
 

Montessori Nomenclature Giveaway

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Neat Storage Solution

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Isn't this neat! Enter this giveaway @ Mommy Moment.

Coins/Currency Work - Denominations up to 10 cents

I've been looking for a montessori way to get D to understand and work with making change up to 10 cents. She was familiar with the value of the various coins, i.e., penny = 1 cent, nickel = 5 cents, dime = 10 cents. We practiced enough with sorting and also through our poem. The next step was to make her visualize the various coins and their values up to 10 (Courtesy RightStart Math, but more on that in another post). So here is tray I put together for D. We did these trays over a series of a few days, but in sequence. Small, incremental steps leading to the big concept the montessori way.

This tray contains 55 pennies and 55 craft sticks to be used as tally sticks. D is already familiar with the tally stick counting, so this was an activity to relate the pennies with their values. Here is how the layout would look after the work is done.

I've taught D to visualize numbers 5 through 10, as 5, 5 + 1 .. 5 + 5 (RightStart Concept). So using the tally sticks as guide, she can quantify 5 though 10 cents as nickel, nickel + 1 penny .. nickel + 5 pennies. I added another bowl with 8 nickels and 15 pennies and one dime. This is how the work looks after it is completed.

Another few variations I might put out later is to associate these quantities to number rods and bead stairs, and eventually moving on to teen and ten boards and work her way to a dollar, you get the picture!

Spelling using the moveable alphabet

D has suddenly developed tremendous interest in spelling words out.  The other day she grabbed the box that had "h-u-s-c" objects and our moveable alphabet boxes and did this:

Sorry that the words she built aren't clear in the picture as our mat is green too!  Her words are cup, can, strobery (strawberry), disc (disk), spoon, hedfon (headphone), umbrela (umbrella) and sizurs (scissors).  She wanted to continue, but we ran out of "s"s!  Here is a close-up view:

I purchased our green moveable alphabets without the box.  We were originally using red and blue magnetic letters, but these wood ones feel so much nicer!  For the box we are using these cheap Ikea boxes, but each box can only hold 9 alphabets.  So we ended up having three of them.  Also since the alphabets kept moving a lot inside the box, it was difficult for D to figure out which one went where, so I taped the corresponding alphabet in each slot.  It is a bit cumbersome to work off of three boxes, but we are managing and this doesn't seem to be a problem for D!  The moveable alphabet is one of my favorites in Montessori!  I love how a child can spell even if he/she has not developed enough motor strength to write!

Coins/Currency Values Poem

D always enjoys songs and poems.  I looked online and found this song/poem to re-enforce the coins value. D has a lot of fun reciting/singing this.

Here is our poetry tray.  I need to refill my printer ink meanwhile I wrote the poem out.  The small box that holds the coins/dollar bill was sent by my mom from India.

Here is the text of the poem:

Tune: First two lines of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

Penny, penny, easily spent
Copper brown and worth 1 cent.

Nickel, nickel, thick and fat,
You're worth 5 cents, I know that!

Dime, dime, little and thin,
I remember, you're worth 10.

Quarter, quarter, big and bold,
You're worth 25 cents I'm told.

Half-a-dollar, half-a-dollar, giant size,
50 cents to buy some fries.

Dollar, dollar, green and long,
Worth 100 cents, you can't go wrong!!!

Creative Writing

D had always loved stories, both listening, re-telling and making up her own. Her sensitive period for writing has started as well. The other day while shopping I picked up this dry-erase board that has the handwriting lines, as well as traceable small/capital letters and numbers. D has been hooked onto that and has been practicing a lot. It also has this board that has a blank space for pictures and lines below for creative writing. Here is what D came up with when I told her where her picture goes and where her writing goes.

Castle, the long haired princess and the word "Rupoonzl" (Rapunzel)

By the time she was done drawing her picture she was tired and just wanted to name her princess and not write out a long story.  I hope she keeps this up and starts writing more!

A friend in need...

D's friend, a 4 year old boy broke his ankle and is in a cast for the rest of the summer! What a bummer!  So D and I put together this pirate sensory tub for this sweet little boy! We got the idea from here.  I love the Counting Coconuts blog and so far, the pirate one is my favorite of all her sensory tubs! What a lucky boy she has!  So here is our tub.

 

D decorated this tub with some pirate stickers.  We filled it up with the following:

• Black beans
• Fake money
• Fake gold coins
• Necklaces
• Rings
• Rubber snakes
• Spiders
• Skeleton
• Some candies
• A wooden boat

We also included

• A pirate Eye mask
• A compass
• A magnifying glass
• A scroll

Here is our scroll...

I made another one for D to play with too!  You should have seen the little boy's eyes light up when he saw these goodies!  Hope he has fun and gets better soon.

Currency/Coin work

Like any other kid, D has always been interested in coins and money.  So I quickly put together some works to get her familiar with basic coins.  We started off with the penny, nickel, dime and quarter.  First I put together this sorting tray, where she sorts and identifies the value of the coins.

We extended this to our practical life area with some penny polishing.  

D takes a penny from the bowl and sets it on the paper towel.  Then she puts two/three drops of lime juice and also spoons some salt on to the penny.  She uses a q-tip (not in the picture above!) to polish the penny.  She flips the coin and does the same to the other side.  She rubs the penny with the cloth and puts the polished penny into the bottle on the right.  D loved this and it was awesome how shiny each penny became!  Here is D polishing the penny!

I am planning to put out more work on the coins to teach her to combine denominations and learn the values.  Plus I will also play some shopping games with her so she can put to use what she learns!  I will post more as we proceed with her lesson!

Some pink tower and brown stairs extensions

D and I together did some pink tower/brown stairs extensions.  These two have been sitting untouched for quite some time in our school room.  Doing this has revived some interest, plus I am planning to print these pictures and have them for future reference.

We found these at our favorite sites in the montessori blog world!

We are still here

We are still here! With the weather being nice most of our days have been spent outside, but we did get some school time too!  Here is some of what we've been up to...

An oldie, but a goodie! A variation on cards and counters.  D does this with so much ease, but I keep this work out regularly with some minor variations as repetition is always good!

Color box three!  This again is done with ease, but we just love the look of it!  She did this work after ignoring it for a long time!

Continent pin map that we found here.

Tracing with the insets.  I usually cut the paper to size and have color pencils out following traditional montessori.  But this day I just let her have a go at it with just regular paper and markers and let her make her own designs.  She worked on this for the longest time ever!

Salt spooning.  I usually don't have any spooning work for D as she is very comfortable with spooning and just plays with it.  But I had a penny polishing (will post on that soon) activity out and D was enjoying spooning the salt, so I put this together quickly.  This held her interest for a couple of days.

Other than this we did more activities, but each one deserves its own post.  So I will update in the next few days on the other activities that we did!