Working with Small Spaces for Toddlers

Punched holes on the lid of an empty canister and made Vito drop craft sticks in it.  This is a simple and easy to prepare activity for hand and eye coordination.

Tried and Tested: Fraction Pies

Obviously, I love math materials.  Through the years, I’ve been collecting a few, just to give my boys’ learning a boost because hands-on math is totally rocks!  Now, I don’t usually give reviews because I have high standards LOL.  I’m frugal that’s why every cent I spend means a lot to me.  The cost must justify the quality of products. 

Anyway, I have two sets of fractions pies.  The first one is  the soft foam fraction pies from Singapore’s Learning Store which my cousin gave to me a few years ago.  I totally LOVE this.  The pies are huge, it’s the size of my hand, magnetic, sturdy, has a label, with bright colours and it comes with tub (with handle!).

Now, this year, I ordered another set from Learning Resources via Amazon.  I love Learning Resources! Most of my materials are from them, so I was expecting this fraction pies to be of equal  with the ones I got from Singapore.  BUT, I was tremendously disappointed.  When I opened it, I wanted to throw it right away into the bin LOL.  They are tiny plastic tiles and comes with a case that is sooo hard to open.  When I checked the pies, they  don’t have labels either so it is very difficult to identify each of them (unless you are so good in visual that you know that it’s 1/10 right away!).  Because the are so tiny, slippery and sharp on the edges, I couldn’t fit them back in the tiny case.  So I just packed them immediately, covered in newspaper (so no one will get hurt due to sharp edges) and kept them in the storage.  I wonder when will it see the light of day.

See the size difference? And just look at the containers.  I swear, the ones from Singapore are much more cheaper!

And here’s the side.  The pieces are so thin! So hard to put back together 

I couldn’t find the EXACT product our foam pies in Amazon but here are the ones I saw closest to it:

• Foam Fraction Pies Teacher Created Resources.  A little bit small, but they are made of foam and affordable.
• Educational Insights Foam Magnetic Circles.  The pies are big, according to Amazon, “Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 10.3 x 2.4 inches ; 2.5 pounds”
• Lakeshore Learning Giant Magnetic Fraction Circles and Bars.  The circle is “5 3/4"

And that’s about it!  Watch out for my fraction activity… will try to create learning materials and share it with you. 

Have a good day everyone

FREE Multiplication Booklets

We are currently using these multiplication booklets with our Montessori Multiplication Bead Board.  There are three booklets:

Making Pizza with a Toddler

We’re rowing Little Nino’s Pizzeria  and Mavi requested that we should make a pizza.  So I asked him to create a list of ingredients he wanted to be in in pizza.  He wanted to make a pizza with lots of pepperoni and mozzarella, so that’s what we did!

And we just have to make Vito join or else we wouldn’t be able to accomplish this.

Watch this short video of how the boys, yes including Vito made pizzas!!