The Pinay Homeschooler

Montessori Inspired Skip Counting

Thursday, November 13, 2014

skipcounting copy I wonder how you teach kids to skip count? When I was younger this was one of the thing that I despise the most. Why? Because basically they just want us to memorise it. With the available resources now, I want my boys to love skip counting…. as I always tell Mavi, you will use this technique all the time for the rest of your life :)

We had a few practice on this but I never had a the chance to come up with a serious unit or lesson for this. Now he’s a bit older to understand and appreciate, I decided to come up with sheets to get him into the skip counting thingy.

First I created the hundred sheets, and discuss the concept about skip counting (by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s). I cross-out the count in our sheets and made him mark it using our Do-a-Dot markers.

“Look Mom! It has a pattern!”

Now using these visuals, we put it into action using our decanomial beads and hundred board number tiles (both Montessori Math materials from Absorbent Minds UK).

Here we have the counting by 5’s.

And I compared it to the counting by 10’s.

And his least favourite skip counting is by 2’s (because it takes a long time to read 10, he said LOL).

Now well be practicing this for the entire week. I’m coming up with materials so we can use the concept using non-Montessori materials. I’ll be sharing it with you so watch out for it.

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The Natural Homeschool

Water Cycle: All about Water

Monday, November 10, 2014

Last week we worked on the first part of our Water Cycle study which is all about water. The objectives of this study are the following:

Define the states of matter using water
Discover the properties of water
Analyze the water cycle

WATER

Water illustrates the three states of matter: solid (ice), liquid (water) and gas (steam). The presentation includes a glass of water, a bowl of ice and a cup of hot water (steam is not visible in the picture). Mavi explored the three states, touching feeling and tasting (we waited for the hot water to cool down).

“Mom, they don’t have a taste!”

Yes, because water is tasteless, odourless and transparent.

EXPLORING THE PROPERTIES OF WATER

Then we discuss what makes the water liquid, solid and gas. I pointed out that temperature affects the state of the water. If the temperature is low (and freezing), the water turns into ice (solid) because the molecules that in the water does not move around as much. Thus they form into crystalline (rigid) structure which turns it into ice. As seen on the photos below, we made ice… and took a photo of before and after exposing the water to low temperature.

I asked Mavi to look for a spot in his body that can melt the ice easily. One, he ate some ice…. and then another he put some in his underarm LOL. Try this with your kids!

For water turning into gas, that’s because it is exposed to a hot or high temperature with molecules moving very fast with large spaces between molecules. Here I showed Mavi how to produce steam.

WATER CYCLE

I conducted a simple demonstration of how water cycle works. You can read about it here.

WATER PHASES SORTING CARDS

You can download our free water form cards which we used to sort out whether the water form is in solid, liquid or gas state.

Thank you and enjoy!

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
Share It Saturday
The Natural Homeschool

The Water Cycle Experiment

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Objective: Analyze the water cycle.

Materials:

clear crystal container or jar
lid cover or plate (crystal in our case).
ice
boiled water

Procedure:

Heat water until it produces steam or boiling. Pour the hot water in the bowl/jar until it is about 1/3 filled.

Cover the bowl/jar, with a lid. Wait for a few minutes, then add some ice cubes on top of the cover.

And now observe what happens. Streaks of water starts to form at the bottom of the cover. When it gets too heavy it starts to fall down just like the rain!

So easy and fun! You can read the scientific explanation here. Mavi was like “Mom it’s raining inside the bowl!”

Static Addition

Thursday, November 6, 2014

My son has been doing a lot of addition exercises (static) using both the stamp game and bead frames. I created equation cards, place value mat and stamp game booklet for the exercises. I’m sharing how we do static addition using both materials.

Static Addition using the Stamp Game.

1. Take out an equation card and copy the equation in the booklet.

2. Using the equation, select the stamps for both numerals placing them on the place value mat.

3. Now say “Let’s add the amounts together.” Push the rows of stamps together (combine them), starting with the units. Count and record the number. Do the same thing for the tens, hundreds and thousands.

4. The four rows of the bead frame represents the decimal. The upper green beads is for the units, the blue for tens, red for hundreds and the lower green beads for thousands. Now using the same concept as the stamp game, count and move the appropriate beads from the left to right side. Once you’re done counting, record the numbers. In this case, Mavi used it to check his work.