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!

Toddler Montessori

I've introduced some works to M in the montessori area.  I have the bottom couple of shelves from one of our shelves in our school room assigned to M where her works are set up.  Here are some pictures of M in action!

We have the mini knobbed cylinders that I got from KidAdvance.  M is so drawn to those, so I let her have a go at the first set.  As you can see from the picture above she uses the correct grasp!  I don't know if this is too early for her as she is only 13 months old, but she seems so ready and interested and look at her focus and concentration in that picture! (On a side note, don't you love the chubby little hand and feet in the picture! My baby is growing up so fast!)

She is dropping some craft sticks through the piggy bank slot.  She has been practicing for months now and is a real expert in this!

Another variation and this time she is dropping some large buttons of different shapes through the slot.

We usually work in the morning for 10 - 15 mins and close up the school room for M to prevent her from getting into all of D's work.  But she sneaked into the school room later on that afternoon and I found her doing this!

She had emptied the bottle of all the Q-tips that it had (another work that I had out for her) and dropped all the crayons and pencils through the opening into the bottle!  Love how she invented this work for herself! Definitely a Montessori child!