5 Autumn Golden leaves high up in the tree!

Another year... another season.. And this is actually my favourite season (I think): Autumn time!! I love the colours, I love the themes.. So I re-introduced all the bits and pieces I use to decorate our classroom every year:

our autumn tree

Reggio Emilia and Playful Maths ideas - Part 1

Those for have been following on this blog will know that I love creating or thinking of new activities using open-ended materials such as pebbles, shells, sticks, buttons etc... following the ideas of the Reggio Emilia approach.

This year, I added two activities on our shelves.

Associate Numerals to Quantity

The first one is an activity helping children to associate numerals to quantities. The manipulatives are very appealing to the children.

Geometry in Art & Craft

  

In our classroom, children regularly use the Montessori Constructive Triangles Boxes. These boxes contain various triangles of different colours and they are used to form plane figures. They help children to refine the discrimination of geometric form and prepares them for geometry. I wrote a great post a few years ago about geometry and you can check it out right here if you re interested in knowing more about how children learn about shapes in our setting.

Number and shape game at circle time

 

Building our ability to recognize and form geometrical shapes is part of our everyday math experiences in the classroom and we like to bring it to circle time as often as possible. We also like to use circle time to work as a group and practice our counting. So we brought these 2 elements together in a game during circle time today.

Using the Abacus with the Montessori Sandpaper Numerals

 

Two 4 year boys wanted to use the Abacus today. Tanya came up with a great idea by pairing it with the Montessori sandpaper numbers. She brought them to the mat along with the abacus and the numbers.

Pebbles for numeracy and literacy

This year, I have tried to follow the Reggio Emilia principles  to enhance my children's learning . Now, there is no text book as you know and it is sometimes hard to figure out which way is the best. However, from what I have learnt so far, I understand that the materials I use are extremely important. This year, I have tried to select very carefully each materials I use for their potential to enhance learning and discovery.

Wasting our time and our enthusisam...

Right.. I guess this post is going to be another one of my rants!
Last April, I started a course entitled "Literacy and Numeracy in early years".. I didn't need the qualification to meet the new qualifications requirements. I just did it to maybe improve my teaching methods and for the benefits of the children in my care.

Working hard

Here are a few pictures of what the children were up to the few weeks leading to xmas...


a bit of pre-writing....

 

 

 

A bit of maths ...

Montessori Cards & Counters

Montessori spindle box

Shapes

introduction to halves, quarters and thirds

 

Sensorial activities....


Waldorf tower.. using the circle first on their own, sorting them out by size

then using the rectangles alone, sorting them by length

 

all together now

 

 

more soring exercises by colour and shape

shape and colour again while developing fine motor skills

associating colour to matching picture

 

Developing fine motor skills with the Practical Life exercises...

 

jigsaws are great for little fingers but also develop problem solving skills, concentration, hand eye coordination etc..

as you can see, we are using the Montessori teen beads for the sole purpose of refining fine motor skills (no number, no counting). the hooking up movement is a great exercise for little ones ....

 

 

Play Dough Fun

I heard one mother the other day talking about how she has never encouraged her children to play with play dough in their house because she said she simply could not cope with MESS!! 

The Little Red Hen

If you have read my last post (here), you know how strong I feel about fairy tales. So, two weeks ago, we started reading the Little Red Hen as its moral teaching coincides with what we are working on with the children this September: work ethics, personal initiative, responsibility and cooperation and much much more.

How to build a castle...

I am so glad I have developed our new construction area in the classroom. We used to have one before but it was too small and it was shared with the reading corner, the circle time area and the science corner. Too much happening at the same place, too many kids wanting to use the mat at the same time. Less room for creativity and imagination.  I read so much this summer and I came to firmly believe that I couldn't offer my children the learning experiences they needed without having a block corner. Blocks are the epitome of open-ended materials and they are a must if I want to allow children to express their creativity. When they design and build, they are learning, discovering, growing and developing skills essential to their understanding of the world around them. When a child plays with a block, he must think creatively, learn to solve problems, negotiate and invent. Building a tower or a bridge teaches them about balance, stability. They will also learn about symmetry. They make mistakes and learn at the same time. And hey, why don't you add mirror and see how suddenly, you have added a dimension of height and perspective to their learning too.

 

I was sitting on the mat with a group of children yesterday and asked them if I could look at them and if they could teach me how to build something with the wooden blocks. I sat very silently at the beginning and the children went on explaining to me what they were doing as they went on with their work. It was quite interesting. Look at this:
 

 

Using blue fabric to create water under the castle

Adding a bridge over the water, using brown felt for the animals in the field, and green felt for the forest!

And here is a field of hay

The children taught it would be easier for the people living in the castle to use stairs

Pink fabric = field of pink flowers

Adding a slide for the animals

a fence for the farm animals

Here are some animals under the second castle the children built.

 

 

 

Mind blowing!!!

 

The Trinomial Cube .. A success!

After our Easter Break, I introduced the  Trinomial cube to our classroom. The kids were ery curious and it was a hit! The Trinomial cube  is a Montessori -designed material that teaches early math skills and help him create connections that will lead him to easier understanding of math concepts.  To see how we use the cube, please click right here and this will give you a step by step demonstration of the activity on YouTube. I have added below photographs of the wok in progress these past few days with the Trinomial cube.

 

 

 

Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear...

Patterning is a very important math skill for preschoolers. While some children achieve mastery of patterning ver quickly and effortlessly, others struggle and it can takes months before they get the "hang of it ". this is why i always look for different games to provide my students with plenty of patterning practice all year long.

At the moment, we are using coloured bears with laminated sheets. I bought the exercises in a local shop and laminated them myself. At first, the children showed no interest whatsoever in the activity. And then all of sudden, it became very popular as they love playing 2 by 2 and go through as many sheets as possible. They even help and correct each other which is also a great teaching moment and opportunity and which enhances their sense of self esteem! 

Clever Little Snowmen.....

For this post, I am referring you to an activity we did last year with the children. Have a look here. What is it about? in a nutshell, I precut white circles and write letters on them. I also precut hats for snowmen. The children must find the letters of their name and place them on a blue sheet in the correct order. This is quite a cute pre-reading activity. But be well prepared in advance and be patient. The cutting part takes a while and the children really take their time when gluing the circles down! So plan your activity well if you don't want to be overwhelmed. I chose a quieter session with bigger kids and had everything organised in different containers (circles in one, eyes in another, hats in a 3rd one, scarves in a 4th ...). You will also need a lot of room as you need to spread all the circles with the letters on a table to allow the children to recognise their letters. 

This year, I added a  little twist to the exercise and asked the children to count the number of letters in everybody's names. Names which had the same amount of letters were placed on top of one another. . One child placed the sand paper number cards under the names and then the children placed them in order from bigger to smaller. They were able to see straightaway whose name was the longest or the shortest. The children kept undoing their work and redoing it and this was great fun to watch them working as a team! 

Another Montessori counting game ...

This week, I introduced the children to a new game to practise number recognition and help them to associate quantities to numerals. I gave the children a plate with a card representing a number from 0 to 6. I asked them to read the number on their card and to go and retrieve the corresponding amount of items. Waaaaa.. They loved the game! There were a few mistakes made the 1st time we played it but they finally got the hang of it. None of them liked to get the number 0 but I think it does help the smaller kids to fully grasp the concept of "nothing" associated with 0. Though the children worked well with the loose number  cards, I thought it would be much more practical to have the numbers actually taped onto the plate. So I cut little squares of paper, wrote a numeral on each of them and taped it down. It is easier to tidy up! I just forgot to take a picture but you get the idea.