Grammar Box - Adjective Command Cards

Nito and Bubs dabbled with some command cards from various grammar boxes today.  I wanted them to spend some time together working nicely while I had to step away and these usually work well since they have to stay active and move around the classroom.  

In this picture, they had to use pieces from the pink tower.  The adjectives were large, largest, small, and smallest.  Sorry, the pictures aren't the greatest.  Poor lighting!

Ok, so I was clearly not available to help them with some of these, but they improvised nicely.  They were supposed to use the circles in the plane insets.  However, they chose the globe, the clock stand, and a clay shaping piece.  The adjectives were large, small, and intermediate.

Oh my!  Here is another example of how they didn't read the card correctly, but they still made it work.  They were supposed to only use one color of tablets, but instead they chose white, yellow, brown, and black.  The adjectives were light, lightest, dark, and darkest.  

Ok, so these guys are hilarious!  At least they keep me smiling in the sometimes very stressful school day.  I would have chosen the smooth and rough boards for this work, but they chose a music staff board, a metal inset, a rough basket, and a rock.  The adjectives were smooth, smoother, rough, and roughest. 

Here we have light, lightest, heavy, and heaviest.  They actually whipped out the scale for this and somehow managed to put the candle and the thesaurus on it to see which one was heavier!  This makes me think that perhaps I should go and check on the status of our scale.  It could be broken at this point!

The brown stairs were used for this one.  The adjectives were thick, thickest, thin, and thinnest.

Overall, I have to say that they did a decent job.  They are moving on to some of the other command cards in the next week or so.  I'll be sure to post their interpretations of the cards.

Language Games

Ok, so this is not a traditional Montessori material for language, but someone from our parish gave me some homeschooling materials she used when her kids were young.  I decided to put them to use and see how it goes!  Well...the kids had a blast with them.  I started Kui out with this game below called the Prefix Mix.  She is, or should be, done with prefixes, suffixes, etc., but this game was a good refresher for her and something fun to do.  We are reaching the end of the year so it is always nice to have new materials to spice things up a bit.

 

This game can have up to six people or maybe each person could have more than one card to make it more interesting.

 

Each person gets a card with four prefixes on it.  Then you draw a card from the bag and read the word.  If you can make a word with one of your prefixes then you place it on your board and it is the next person's turn.  If not, you put the card back in the bag.  For example, Kui drew "belief".  She put it with "dis" to make the word "disbelief".  When you have all four spots filled up, you win!

Kui really enjoyed this.  The game goes pretty fast so we played a few times.  It is actually kind of challenging to make the words.  I made up my own word and ended up losing in the end because my word wasn't on the answer key!!  (I do the same thing in Scrabble as well!)

 

We also played a bingo game called "Diphthong Bingo".  We included Bubs in this game since he is learning how to read and it would be good practice for his sounds.  For those of you who have forgotten elementary English class, a diphthong is two vowel sounds joined in one syllable to form one speech sound.  That clears it up right?!  For example, "ou" in the word "sound".  Don't worry, I had no idea there was an actual name for it! Haha  If you enlarge the picture above, you should be able to see that the diphthong is highlighted a different color.  This helps the child distinguish the sound.

 

The kids had markers and I called out the words and then you play just like regular bingo. 

There is even a card for the caller to check the words at the end of the game.  The kids loved this one so much that they asked if they could play it in the afternoon!!  I secretly wanted to play with them, but was cooking dinner :( 

Adjective command cards

 

Today we worked with the command cards for the adjective grammar box.  I recently discovered (because I clearly don't have this whole elementary Montessori thing down yet) that Kui should be done with the grammar boxes.  That being said, I cleared them off the shelf and just left the command cards and experiments.  So today we decided to work with those to get a little more practice with examples of adjectives and their meaning.. These command cards provide a great resource for the child to develop a concrete understanding of the definition of a word.  It is a hands on way of learning instead of just using a dictionary. 

 

Yesterday we did sentence analysis which was a great change for her in the language department. So she was also excited to do command cards instead of those tedious filler boxes.  Plus the command cards allow her to be goofy and move around.

 

 

 

 

She first dealt with adjectives like: few, none, some, many.  Then followed with: double, triple, quadruple, quintuple, tenfold, half, and equal.  She did have to look up a few of them, but didn't mind since she was getting to use her brother's golden beads!  (Just a note that the pictures can always be enlarged simply by clicking on them.)

 

 

This card dealt with first through tenth.  She was excited again because she was using "primary" materials.  She was acting like a kid in a candy shop with her little giggles.  Nito was not too excited though because he has just begun to use those few sensorial materials (pink tower, brown stairs, etc.) and is clearly in the mindset that they are all his and she shouldn't be using them.  She decided to skip over the other two command cards with first through fifth using the drawers from the geometry cabinet.  She said that was too easy. (Well!)

 

I apologize for the poor picture quality.  Our camera is officially broken and we are waiting patiently (ok not me) for a new one to come in the mail.  My Ipad doesn't do the greatest of jobs with poor lighting.   The color tablets were a great material to use for light, lightest, dark, and darkest.  Bubs wanted to help her with this, but she was adamant that it was her work and he could only watch.

 

My other three pictures are being stubborn and refuse to turn right side up.  I didn't want to post pictures upside down.  Those pictures dealt with adjectives dealing with heavy, heaviest, thick thickest, soft, and softest. 

Kui is now inspired to dust off more of her command cards and experiments from the grammar boxes.  Maybe we can get them finished before the end of the year!






Btw.....my posts are a little sporadic and have no set timing of when I post.  There will probably be a few more coming in the next few weeks as we are wrapping up school and I am having a little more time to post.  As always, thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment on anything I post.  I would love to hear from you!