The Montessori Number Rods

I love Montessori math materials.  They are so engaging and well thought of that  the child can easily absorb concepts and retain what is learned.  Take for example this Number Rods which I recently  introduced to Vito.  We are mostly using counters in our math activities, it’s more abstract and quantitative.  With Number Rods, counting here is more linear and sequential. My goal was for Vito to learn:

• how to sequence  ‘one’ to ‘ten’ (they form a staircase)
• to understand the value of each number

The Montessori Short Bead Stairs: Learning About Quantity

Vito is 38 months old.
This is a Montessori math activity on teaching the child about quantities from 1 through 9. We’ve worked on this since last year (starting from 1 to 5) and has been doing a lot of extensions.  This is a simple presentation of the work and I’m sharing some of the extensions we’re working on as well.

Telling Time Activities

Mavi wanted to practice more of reading the time, especially when it comes to reading and writing “quarter to” and “half past”.  He seems to be confused with the positioning of the small hand.  So with this, I made a few activities for him to work afterschool.  I am sharing these activities as well as the printables were are using (yes it’s free!).

 

Wooden Counting Pyramid Puzzle from Beleduc

I guess by now you know that I am a HUGE fan of Beleduc, a toy company in Germany that produces beautiful educational materials for kids.  The boys love our Beleduc puzzles and we always use them.  You’ve seen us using our Body Puzzle and Pumpkin Life Cycle in the blog lately. And look what I discovered recently… it’s a wooden puzzle pyramid used for counting!

Montessori Coloured Beads: How We Use It At Home

It’s starting to get chilly in our side of the world and though we prefer walking in the fields and in the forest during this beautiful season, the weather doesn’t seem to be in line with my plans.  So last week, I introduced Vito to the Montessori colored beads which I have for 3 years now.  But the thing about siblings, they just wanted to do what the other is doing.  Mavi insisted that I should give him some work with the beads as well, not just Vito.  In this post, I’m sharing how I made the boys work independently, but still supervising them as they work.

Introducing Montessori Hundred Board for Preschoolers

I know that Montessori math should be introduced later on (language/reading should come first) but with Vito I just couldn’t resist introducing him to some traditional Montessori math materials as early as 35 months old!  You see, currently he just wanted to count.  Whenever we read books, he wanted to count the images first before allowing me to start reading.  If I ask him to make letter sounds, he would say “no, let’s count first” referring to counting the letters in a word rather than reading it.  We’ve done a lot of counting,  but he seems pretty bored lately.

So the other day, I was tidying up my storage shelf and Vito saw our Hundred Board.  He immediately took it out and excitedly said “Oh numbers! Let’s count!” and that’s what we basically did for the past few days. 

October Preschool Math Activities

I am so excited to share with you the fun preschool math activities I prepared for Vito! He saw me printing these materials and he kept on asking if we can play. Of course we did! We started using a few of these materials and will share his progress in the days to come.  For now, allow me to present to you our adorable and cute learning materials for the month of October.

Autumn Themed Graphing Game

We are loving DIY math games! The boys enjoyed our Race Game a few weeks ago, so I didn’t hesitate to give them our Graphing Game.  Not only can my preschooler practise his counting skills and taking turns, this is also a great opportunity to introduce date recording (and analysis) for older children. 

 

A Math Racing Game for Preschoolers

Vito always wanted to join us whenever we play board games but we don’t allow him because it’s too much for him.  Too many cards (and paper money) to scatter, dice which he couldn’t figure out how to use and what to do with it and so much more.  So when I was making Autumn-Themed Math Activities, I made sure that I include a game that’s suitable for his age. 

Autumn Themed Preschool Math Activities

Vito is starting “preschool” math this school year and we are not using any curriculum.  I guess it’s not necessary in our case.  I will be using my experience with Mavi and with the thousand ideas online on setting up “play-based” and Montessori-inspired activities for Vito this school year.  So in order for me to be able to organize and prepare materials ahead of time, I decided to come up with seasonal-themes for the upcoming months.

Vito’s Favourite Counting Material

Vito is 28 months old.

Odd as it may be, but Vito loves numbers and counting more than letters.  Yes, I find it odd because Mavi was into letters at his age and started to learn spelling by the time he’s 2.5 years old. It amazes me on how they can be different!

Anyway, I wanted to share with you this beautiful wooden number peg board I recently bought from a local store (materials are from Europe) and Vito loves this!  A precious piece of math material that teaches little children to count and practice hand-eye coordination at the same time!  I wanted to buy the Montessori Math Spindle, but when I saw this, I knew this is way more better (and a lot cheaper)!

Exploring the Bucket Balance

Vito is 27 months old.
I have this bucket balance years ago and was mostly used by Mavi (Measuring Mass of an Object). He’s been using it to learn concepts like mass units and the concept of gravity.  I’m so hesitant to let Vito use it for the obvious reason that at his age, he might break it or doesn’t know how to use it.  But I was wrong!  One day, I ran out of ideas for him so I bravely took our bucket balance and a bunch of Duplos for him to explore.  Well, lo and behold!  It was a total hit and I didn’t expect that he’ll enjoy using it!


So what did Vito exactly do with the balance and what are the things he discovered?

Practising One to One Correspondence

Vito loves counting. He’s been counting since he’s 1.5 years old.  He recited and recognized the numbers from 1 to 10 first before the letters.  He is unlike Mavi who recognized and recited the alphabet first (1.5 years old) before he became interested with numbers (3 years old).

And because of Vito’s interest, I am always giving him different counting activities to feed this interest.  One of his favourite is using our counting cards for one to one correspondence.  These were Mavi’s and I barely used them with him.

Math Resources and {Learn & Play Link Up}

Math is one of my favourite subjects, and it always excites me to see math activities in homeschool blogs.  Mavi and I are always having a great time working on this subject especially when he was in preschool.  I collected all our favourite math preschool activities and you can check them out on the link or image below.

FREE Safari Toob Tree Matching Cards

Download here or click the image.
Vito uses these cards a lot in my post on TREE ACTIVITIES and even in random days, he would pick this up from shelf and work on it.
You can get the Safari Toob Tree miniature objects from here.    

Pre-K Problem Solving Cards

Mavi didn’t like math.  When he was around 5yrs old, he would rather read books than work with math.  He’s excuse would always be “I’m tired” or “it’s difficult”.  I can truly understand him though. I didn’t enjoy math when I was younger.  Until I stepped into secondary school and discovered why we need math.

So instead of forcing him to solve arithmetic problems and giving him number activities, I exposed him to real life problems so he can appreciate math.  I made him understand WHY WE NEED TO LEARN NUMBERS AND MATH.  We would go to the groceries and count our items all together, doing addition and subtraction in between.  Of course, he’s not aware we’re doing math, all he knows is that he’s helping Mommy do some groceries.  At home, I secretly incorporate addition and subtraction by counting his missing pens, his toys and how many books he has read.

He loves the real life math! He can’t stand arithmetic problems but he enjoys real life problems.  So what I did was create a bunch of colorful cards for us to work on, making sure there’s pictures (and we mostly use counters as well) to make it attractive.  In the problems, I used his friends’ name so he’ll like it, and of course he finds it funny!  He kept asking for more, more questions as he liked solving the problems.    And that was the game changer.  

Through these problem solving cards, he was able to appreciate math, and could now understand why he needs to practice arithmetic.  He loves to solve math problems these days  on his own and still loves solving problems. 

So I created these problem solving cards for Pre-K students.  It contains:

• 1 step problem solving for addition and subtraction
• 12 unique questions for addition within 10 (with pictures)
• 12 unique questions for subtraction within 10 (with pictures)
• 12 fill-in questions for addition to let the parents change the numbers for more practice (for advanced students, based on the questions with pictures).  You can use counters for this.
• 12 fill-in questions for subtraction to let the parents change the numbers for more practice (for advanced students, based on the questions with pictures).  You can use counters for this.

Buy now

Mavi worked on these cards when he was 5-6yrs old.  Though this is intended for 5-6yrs old children, older or younger kids can still use the cards as a practice material. Hope you like it and find it useful like we do.  Thanks!

Montessori Decimal System (Base 10) with Golden Beads

It's the time of our 12 Month of Montessori Series, and today I'm sharing with you how Mavi learned the concept of the decimal system and base 10 using the Montessori golden beads materials.  We worked on this when he was about 4yrs old and at times he still wanted to do the complete layout (see the bottom of the post for this).   The aim of studying the decimal system is for the child to understand, organize and  classify the numerical quantities into different hierarchies of units, tens, hundreds and thousands.

One of the best thing about these golden beads material is that it provides a sensorial approach in learning mathematics.  In using the golden beads, a child can easily differentiate a unit from tens, from hundreds and thousands through its depth, weight and quantity.  In effect, there is retention to the concepts because the child can easily visualize the quantity of numbers. 

So without further ado, here’s Mavi’s presentation of how we use the golden beads in learning the decimal system.
Units, Tens, Hundreds, Thousands

Here’s a short presentation which  Mavi and I created on how to use the materials in introducing units, tens, hundreds and thousands.

The Layout

Now for the overall view of the decimal system, combining the number symbols and the quantity, here’s Mavi working on the decimal system layout.  Sorry if he only worked till 4000, as we do not have enough thousand cubes   Enjoy!

This post is part of the 12 Months of Montessori Learning which is hosted by Natural Beach Living and The Natural Homeschool.

Amazing blogs involved in the 12 Months of Montessori Learning

Natural Beach Living ~ The Natural Homeschool ~ Living Montessori Now ~ Planting Peas

The Kavanaugh Report ~ Mama’s Happy Hive ~ Study at Home Mama ~ Child Led Life

The Pinay Homeschooler ~ Every Star Is Different ~ Grace and Green Pastures

Montessori Multiplication Bead Board and Bars

To those who are interested, I recorded Mavi’s work a few weeks ago on Montessori multiplication using the bead board.  We do it occasionally for practice. Whenever he does the bead board, he followed this work with multiplication using the bead bars.  Please use the video below as your reference in case you wanted to try this at home.

Montessori Inspired Clock and Time Activities (with FREE Cards)

A few weeks ago, Mavi brought home some homework about clocks and time reading. I knew then that we should at least have a brief discussion about the clock and telling time as it has been years since we had a clock activity.

Reading and Writing Time

Using my latest clock nomenclature cards and workbooks, we reviewed how to read and write the time, compared the difference between analogue and digital clocks and the relevance of time in our lives.


Clock Nomenclature Cards with Borders are from here. You can get the learning clock from here.

We then moved on to our workbooks for more practice on writing time. Have I mentioned before that Mavi enjoys using workbooks? Oh yes he does!

Learning AM and PM

In addition, I asked him to make a record of his daily routine. Like, what time does he wakes up, eat breakfast, lunch and dinner… till he sleeps. He’s very excited about this! I can’t wait to see that routine record and share it with you.

Other Clock and Time Activities

Click this link for your FREE Simple Hour Clock cards.

Clock Nomenclature Cards

Our next math adventure would be all about clocks and I made these materials for Mavi.  You can have your own copy too! Visit our shop and choose any of these.

Each file has:

• 12 hour clocks
• 12 half past hour clocks
• 12 quarter past clocks
• 12 quarter to clocks

More printable and learning resources from The Pinay Homeschooler Shop!