Fraction Equivalences Chart - FREE Download

If you've been reading our weekly wrap-up posts, you will see that we are working on Fraction Equivalences.

While I hand-wrote our Fraction Problem tickets, I created a Fraction Chart for self-checking.  The idea is from here.  Similar to hers I've created this with the Montessori Bead Colors.  You can download it here.

As it is with all over the blog world, these downloads are for your personal use only and not for distribution or sale.  If you choose to share anything you've seen in this blog, please link back to here.  Thank you for your understanding!

New Math Works

Last week we've had awesome progress with D in Math.  In fact I was not that prepared, but somehow managed to pull through and put together trays for her!

We started off by learning to tell time.  We've had not done formal Montessori lessons on telling time, but D knows the basics from some of the books we read.  I had originally bought a "Classroom Scheduler" thing from Target last September.  At that time I wasn't sure how I was going to use it.  So, I used that and cut out the clocks and set it up so that D can learn to tell time to the hour.

She caught on quickly and then proceeded to learn to tell time to half past, quarter past and quarter to.  She was also very curious to know how to tell time at 5 min intervals.  Since she already knew how to skip count by 5s, I put together this tray quickly, using the pumpkin picks I already had.

Till now we've been skip counting by 2s, 5s and 10s, but have never used bead chains.  I recently bought the short bead chains, so again, we did an impromptu lesson on bead chains for 10s and 5s.

I need to print out the proper colored arrows and set this up properly for her, so she can continue to skip count the various numbers.

She then started counting and wanted to do the hundred board and proceeded to finish that too!

This is another home-made material I made using a piece of card stock for the board.  I drew grid lines 1 inch apart using a marker.  I have some foam stuck on this card stock as a border and re-inforced using duct tape.  For the number tiles, I used 1 inch decorative glass tiles that I purchased from Lowe's and wrote the numbers with a permanent marker.  These tiles have a nice solid feel to them and they do not move!

As you've probably noticed from my previous week's post that we've also moved away from the concrete golden bead materials and into the stamp game.  Since I do not have the stamp game I've used the RightStart Material Base-ten cards.  We were at the point were D was feeling that the golden beads were a little too cumbersome to work with, so I introduced this and so far D is comfortable using these cards for addition, subtraction and multiplication, both static and dynamic.

I was glad that D was on a roll last week and did so much! I love to "follow the child" at these times! (wink *)  We are going to be on a 2 1/2 month vacation starting Feb, visiting family abroad, so any work that gets done this month is awesome!

DIY Sound Cylinders

I wanted to share some of the DIY materials from our homeschool.  As you all already know Montessori Materials are expensive and lets face it, buying all the materials for home use, where only one or two children use it seems like a terrible expense, especially in single income households.  While some sensorial materials are extremely difficult to make like the knobbed cylinders, some are extremely easy to put together using simple household objects.  One such material is the Sound Cylinders.  If we were to buy this online, it would cost us anywhere from $20 for a reasonable quality one to $75 for a premium quality.  The cost for making this using items from the house, $0!

Here is what you need:

1. 12 Opaque containers, if you are making six pairs.  I re-used chocolate pudding containers and made only 4 pairs, oh well!  I've seen a variety of other containers throughout the blog world, from painted glass bottles to the toilet paper tubes.
2. One sheet of red and blue card stock.
3. Tape.
4. Items for filling the bottles.  I used - large rocks, small rocks, rice and paper.
5. Stickers for marking the pairs

Once you have the above items, fill each item in two containers measuring out approximately the same quantity.  Shake them slightly to make sure they make similar sounds.  Cut one piece of red and one piece of blue cardstock to cover the mouth of the container and tape it shut.  Repeat this for the remaining items and you are done!  Easy peasy!