Activities

The last little while L has been mostly playing outside and we have been enjoying the summer.  We have managed to fit in some activities along the way.

L is still sounding out simple words.  This is a game we play where I write the word on a piece of Post It note and L has to decode it and the stick it onto the animal it belongs to.  Of course the part L enjoys most is the sticking part.

L also enjoys doing these cvc eggs .  A lot of them she doesn't  bother to read the whole word and just guesses by the first letter sound.  Of course this only works for her until she has two words that start with the same letter.  Once she starts this activity she always wants to go through all of the colors of eggs.

Another exciting way to read is to pull the words out of an egg and match them to drawings that Mummy made.

L has also been experimenting with writing letters on her chalkboard.  We take out a few of her sandpaper letters and she first traces them with her fingers and then tries to write them.  She was so proud when she first wrote her name.

Burning off some energy.  I wrote some numbers onto the stepping stones and then called them out for L to find and jump on.

and of course cleaning the toilet!

Montessori Monday

I am so happy to finally have my laptop back! Oh yes and my husband ; ) he's finally finished his training. So now I can post whenever I get the urge.
For Easter we got L an African safari book that has puzzle like pieces you can put in and out and also stand them up to put in an African plains scene. I decided to get L to pair them up with these African animal cards I found at a boot fair ages ago. L really enjoyed this but it was very easy for her. After she paired them up we sorted them into meat eaters and non-meat eaters.

We haven't done anything with color tablets for ages so when I found these old paint samples I'd brought from England I thought I'd see how she did with color grading. Amazingly this was really very easy for her and she did three different color grades in a few seconds. I used the uncut paint sample for a control card that she would turn over to check her work.

I also got these plastic shapes ages ago for sorting. They are supposed to be used to link together to make jewelry. L can now do this so we've been having fun making all sorts of things. I also took it as an opportunity to introduce patterns. I think L sort of gets it but she wasn't in the best frame of mind for it. I think next time I will take the rest of the basket away and just use a few pre-selected ones to make the patterns.

I saw this brilliant idea for counting on The Wonder Years and thought I would change it up a bit using our ladybugs and not putting dots on. Just in case it's not clear in the picture the numbers are written on the top of the stick and L has to pick one from the glass. She then places the correct number of ladybugs on the stick. She liked this one a lot and has brought it out several times.

The lead up to Easter....

Here are a few things we did last week. Thank you to Karen for the inspiration for this counting activity. I'm still looking for better containers to put the sticks in but for the first time we used these glasses. This only lasted until we got thirsty ; )



Talk about great minds think alike. By the time we had done these next two activities I'd seen them on so many blogs!! I love those little chicks they are so cute. L actually thought up this one herself. When we were in the Dollar store I picked up the chicks and then the bag of eggs and she said "ah to put the chicks into!" As soon as we got home she had to "re-home" them.

She didn't like this one quite as much as the cheap chicks(hehe) kept loosing their beaks when she tonged them.

More Easter fun to come....

Montessori Monday

Last week we did more language activities. This is a picture of a rhyming activity we did. For example I would ask L if she could find the item that rhymed with "moon". This is the first time we have done an actual rhyming activity. I've said before oh cat rhymes with hat and then kept saying more words but she has never really participated. She did get this but is not 100% on it. It may have just been the time of day when we did it. Will have to try it again this week.



We also did an activity with objects on this tray like hen, dog, bed, hat and pig. I said to L I'm thinking of something on this tray and then wrote it down. I gave her the piece of paper and asked her if she could figure out what object I was thinking of. She sounded out the letters and I then I said them a bit closer together. She got most of them and we'll be doing a lot more of this.



L found this little tape measure my mom got from a material shop. I let her play with it and she had great fun as there is a little button on the top of it you can press that makes it detract. The next day I made up this activity( I think I originally saw it on Activity Mom) so she could see how to use the tape measure and also practice her numbers. She really enjoyed this and it was quite easy for her. How great to see her go from randomly playing with something to knowing it's purpose and using it appropriately!

Today L really helped out in the kitchen. This morning she helped daddy by whisking up her blueberry pancakes and at lunch time she whisked up her eggs.

She also grated her carrot for the first time. This took a LOT of restraint and trust on my part and my hands were hovering just out of view in case of need of quick assistance. She was a star though and also cut up her cucumber with a sharp knife.
Putting the bits in the compost. I realised today that L is much more co-operative and willing to help with everything if she is involved with making a meal from the very beginning. She never usually wants to set her table any more but at lunch she did all of it.

Counting activities

This last week we've been heavily into counting activities. In this first one I replaced the fish with circles with the numbers 1 to 5 on them. When L catches a number she gets to count out that number of fish.

We also made our own materials. Here L is painting her egg carton caterpillar to use for..

this penny balancing activity. I wrote the numbers 1 to 5 on the caterpillar. L counts out the correct number of pennies and tries to balance them on each number.

While L was painting her caterpillar I was using the other half of the egg carton to make these little ladybug flowers. It's basically the same concept. L flies the correct number of ladybugs back to their flower homes.

It's interesting that when we first started these activities L could easily do 1 and 2 but then either lost interest or didn't get the concept of 3 and above. After doing these type of activities for a few days she is handing me three of something with no problem.

A many step number and counting activity

Sometimes I get inspired by an activity idea and want to do it right away with L (without really thinking it all through). This is a case in point. The idea was to take all of the objects out of the bag, sort them and then place them into the numbered bags that I'd made but I soon realised she needed another step. So this is how it went.

Take objects out of the bag

Sort them (too funny how she put them all around the edge of the mat like she does with the puzzle pieces!)

This is the step I added. I found it was too hard for L to just recognise how many things were in each pile so we counted them and then put them by their number.

Then put them into their corresponding numbered bag. L loves this last step!

This activity has a lot of steps and I introduced each one as she completed the last one. She really seemed to like it and brought it out again the next day. She isn't 100% with the numbers yet so I sit with her and help her if she asks me.

Some new activities for L

Here are some of the things that L has been doing.

This is one of her favorite games. I think almost every animal she possesses is on it's home continent here! I tell her where they go and she puts them on, although she knows quite a few of them herself. Especially the koala bear. He has the honor of being the first animal on every time. L knows Australia and North America (because that's where Canada is) and is becoming more familiar with the other continents but still doesn't 100% know them. You can see she's also put some of her dolls on. Her two favorites always live in Canada and the Cuba dolly from her uncle obviously lives in South America.

I also made up this hammering activity

which lasted for three golf tees and then she just gave up on the hammer and put them in with her hands. Fair enough. She brings this one out quite a bit and sorts them differently every time.

L has shown a real interest in numbers and counting lately so I've been slowly introducing the written numbers to her. I've been too lazy to make sand paper numbers so have used these ones from a card game we have. Here she is sorting them into piles and is supposed to be saying them as she sorts them. She still gets confused some times and I find it really interesting that she is having a much harder time remembering the numbers than she did with her phonics. Maybe it's because the numbers aren't in any context whilst every time I introduce a new phonic sound it comes with three pictures with the same sound for her to latch onto.

OK I have to admit I've formed quite an attachment to these little tropical frogs. Expect to be seeing them pop up in many future posts. Here is a counting activity where she puts the frogs on the dots on the lillypads and counts them. I sit with her for this and make sure she is on the right track as counting objects is still really new to her.