The Hundred Board

Aside from the Golden Beads, I also purchased the ever popular Hundred Board.  Now I understand why it is one of the bestselling Montessori materials.  The main function of the board is to familiarize the child of the numbers from 1 to 100 and reinforce the sequence.  But I can see a whole lot more.  At home, we use it for games that teaches patterning, addition and skip counting. 

Here's an example of a simple patterning set-up I have.  You can see missing horizontal and vertical lines for Mavi to complete.  Before we start the game, I let him discuss his observations.  After which I tell him that to complete the board without counting, he needs to see how the pattern goes.  Here on the first set up, the first digit is increasing while the second digit remains the same. 

With the second set-up, the first digit is constant while the second digit is increasing (see the numbers 1-10).

This technique helped him complete the hundred board without starting from 1 or if there's a mixed-up setting.   I was happy that he grasped the concept easily.  At times, I can see him place the tiles on the square by counting and sometimes by just following the order and pattern.

He complains that it's difficult to complete starting from 1, but by introducing some games he was more eager to use it and began enjoying it. 

Linking to:

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

The Golden Beads Layout

 

Just wanted to share our recent work with the golden beads material.  I've been contemplating on purchasing these for a long time and I was convinced by fellow Mommy Montessori bloggers that these materials are worth a try.  Actually, I was convinced because now I have two kids to home school. So definitely these are worth-it!

I am using KHT Montessori Math Album in our schooling.

In a nutshell, I introduced the beads (unit, tens, hundreds and thousands) with their corresponding number symbol.  My son loved this.  He was able to tell the difference between the quantities of each number symbol.  He's like "The thousand is soooo heavy!"

  

We also learned how to compose and read bigger numbers! I made a printable of this but my son showed no interest. However when he saw this large number cards, he can't stop using it!  He loves creating his own number.... but somehow still confused on how to read it :) 

 

Well there are a lot of ways to practice composing bigger numbers and one of which is simply writing it down on a paper and have your child recreate the it using the number cards. 

  

Because the beads arrived in the time that my son has a better understanding of quantities (we previously practice making ones and tens), he was able to create this massive layout on his own.  I swear, I just left him and he did all the work in one sitting!

Completing the units...

 

Working on the tens...

 

Then the hundreds...

 

And thousands. Unfortunately, I only have 9 wooden thousand beads so he finished it till 4000 :)

 

It was impressive indeed! How I wish I purchased this early on.  But anyway, there are still a lot of work to be done with the golden beads. We'll be exploring those in the days to come.

This is so exciting!

Linking to:

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

The Solar System and The Planets II

My son completed his mini project of our Solar System unit and he finally got to display it in his room.  It was a simple project for my 5 years old, something that I made him work during the midterm break.

I mentioned this previously in my post that we're going to plot the planets in a black craft paper.  First thing, he placed all the INNER PLANETS.  My son memorizes the order so I made he did all the work here.  I decided that it would be best to label the planets so he can memorize the spelling.

As you can see, we added "asteroids"  after Mars.

 

Then he continued with the OUTER PLANETS.

 

When everything is in place, he added stars (stickers).

And we both stick it on the wall using blutacks. And look how pretty it is! He was so happy how it turned out.  He felt proud of what he has accomplished! And I have to say that the use of foil in planets made such a huge difference!!  Now this is art and learning combined :)

Linking to:

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

Homemade Grammar Symbols

I finally made our grammar symbols!  So proud of how it turned out. I was on the edge of purchasing the wooden version but they were quite pricey.  Though the paper version was a good alternative but I wanted something durable so I decided to make my own using the foam crafts. 

Can't wait to use them!

The Planets and The Solar System (Part I)

Hello everyone! I'm back! Sorry for my absence as my time was eaten by chores and errands for the past few days. 

We're been doing a lot of Space and Astronomy activities lately and I wanted to share with you some of our activities.  We started off by reviewing the planets in the Solar System. The cards seen on the picture were from Usborne and while we identify the planets Mavi tried creating models using his plasticine.

(You can check this link to view our past activities)

We also play a game "guess the planet". I adapted this game from the toy which he received last Christmas.  He loves this game! 

I also took out our nomenclature cards and he worked on it as well.  For the link of the file, please click here or the image below.

On a separate day, Mavi tried using playdough to create another set of model planets.

I have to say the second batch look better :)

And just like the project that we did with the Phases of the Moon, Mavi wanted to decorate his room with planets too. And instead of simply painting them on a cardboard, we made a similar approach to this one.

I cut out circles for our planets and covered them with aluminum foil. We color the planets using Sharpies. 

  

And look how they turned out! They are so colorful and looks festive!  I love how it glittered on a black background!

Next step is to plot them into the "space", but since they're still a little bit wet we'll continue the rest of the work by tomorrow.  We'll identify the inner and outer planets, add some asteroids and stars and add labels as well.

           

And there you go!  Ideas for your planets and solar system.  I will share with you how this decor turned out once we're done. 

Happy Monday to all!

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads.

Linking to:

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

The Short Bead Chain (Squaring Chains)

I've been searching high and low for affordable bead squares here but unfortunately, there's none.  So I decided to make my own square chains using our decanomial beads.  Supposedly, I'm going to form them using connectors like suitable tie wire but again, none is available. 

So what I did here was to use the ever reliable contact paper. It was tricky though.  What I did was lay the beads flat on the table, attach a strip of contact paper and then I carefully turn them on the other side to completely cover the other side of the beads with the rest of the contact paper.

And this is how they turned out!  So far so good :) 

Surprisingly, they were sturdy LOL.

 

Here, I am presenting to Mavi how to identify the square of a number (because they will form a square).  He's more interested in the skip counting rather than identifying the square of a number.

 

The next time we tried, we worked on squares of 1 to 5 and we use the bead chain paper we got from Montessori Print Shop (free) to record the square of the numbers.

This is a good introduction for skip counting and a wonderful visual exercise for squaring.  But for now, we'll just proceed with the skip counting disregarding the squares as Mavi isn't interested on it yet.

Happy counting!

Linking to:

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

Phases of the Moon

It's my son's midterm break and I'm happy that we could do lots of activities now that he's at home the entire week.  Aside from the Internal Organs which we had earlier this month, we will also have lessons on Space and Astronomy.

Here are the activities we've been doing so far:

A Model of the Moon Phases.  We painted the phases for this year instead of using our felt moons :) 

 

He arranged the phases using the cards that we have and  a picture that we saw in Google.

 

 

And here's the finish product.  This artwork is now in his room.  He would refer to this at night whenever he checks for the phase the of the moon.

 

Observe and Describe. I also printed out this Moon Phases Mini-Book from Scholastic (please click the image below for the link of the file).  Here Mavi gets to describe the different phases.  I love how he can use one single word to describe the moon.

Moon Phase Calendar.  Every night we're checking out the moon and record it in the calendar which I made. If you are interested I made a generic calendar which you can use.  Just click on the image below for the link.

This recording will allow Mavi to learn how it all works!

 

Below is our reference.  We check this image (from Google) if the ones we are seeing is the same as the ones recorded in the internet :)

Here's a link to all astronomy related activities that we have done so far.

Linking to:

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

Space and Astronomy Unit

We've been watching too much alien movies (animation) that Mavi begins to show a lot of interest in planets and the solar system once again.  This month we're doing the Moon and Solar System once again. 

You can read past astronomy themed activities here.

I also made printable materials to go along with our study.  It include planets and the astronomy cards all in one file.

And you might be interested... I made cute printable for preschoolers! Oh I can't wait to use this to my little one!  It's a 40 pages file which includes the following:

(Click the image for the link)

• Beginning sound word cards
• Matching activity that consist of control cards, picture cards and labels
• Memory Game Cards
• Word cards for reading and spelling (or practice writing)
• 1– 10 Counting Cards
• Number Cards
• Patterning activities
• Sizing/Sorting Size/Ordering
• Color Matching
• Shape Matching
• Upper and lowercase letter matching

Right now, we're making a small painting project of the Moon's phases and before the week ends, we'll be doing more moon-related activities.  I'll be sharing these activities once we're done.

Thank you so much and have a nice day!

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads.

Working on Green Series

This month we are doing Montessori Green Series. The pictures and labels you see on the picture was taken from The Helpful Garden.  We are using our moveable alphabets, and I also created some materials similar to our Blue Series (List).

Introducing the Internal Organs of the Body to Kids

We're doing The Human Body this month and part of which is learning about the basic internal organs of our body.  This is a timely subject to tackle as my son has been sickly for the past few days because of the changes in the weather.

I've always wanted to purchase a human torso model to show how these organs look and how they are positioned in the body.  But the price in this side of the world is not in my budget so what I did was to buy PlayDoh that comes in different colors to create our own model using our Internal Organs Nomenclature Cards.

FREE Montessori Blue Series List

I'd like to share our consonant blend list which we used for our Blue Series lessons.  If printed on a cardstock or ordinary paper, it would look something like in the picture below.  I chose to print mine on a blue cardstock so I can easily differentiate it with Pink and Green Series.


Here's how we used it and I have additional activity sheets to supplement his learning.  We are using our moveable alphabet in the picture below to practice spelling.

Linking to:

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