World Map and Continent Box

 

 

Nito was working diligently on the world map this past week.  I never really presented this last year to him or Bubs.  Bubs is really behind on learning his continents and oceans, but it will be good for them to do some group work together to reinforce the information.

After Nito worked with it a few times, he chose a continent box off of the shelf.  Authentic Montessori continent boxes, I believe, have items from the actual continents in there for the child to manipulate sensorially.  For example, maybe a cool instrument might be found in the South American box or a small carved wooden animal in the Africa box.  Ours are just a few different language booklets along with a geography folder with pictures.  (I know pretty lame.....maybe one day!)

Here is a picture of what's inside the Europe box.  There are several three-part card booklets to choose from.  In each box, there is an assortment of animals from that continent, food, instruments, flags, etc.  Then the child can start to associate those different things with that continent and eventually with the specific country.  Some of our conversations with working on the animals or instruments leads to possibly watching a cool video (usually found on YouTube).  Hey, whatever gets the child to be excited about geography and language right?!  Their teacher secretly likes watching these videos too.  I am learning right along with them :)

Sample folder with various pictures and descriptions from some of the countries located on the specific continent.

Picture of ladies in Poland.  This also helps the child visualize the attire, climate, landscape, etc. from these countries.

Sample picture from Croatia.

 

Bubs decided to join in on the three-part cards.

They really enjoyed the animal pictures from Europe.  I have to say there are some interesting ones that I had trouble pronouncing.

Phonogram dictionary

Let me first start by saying that I had never heard of one of these.  But man does it come in handy for the beginner reader. 

 

**Just a disclaimer before I get into the details of the dictionary.  I clearly don't have one of those fancy binding machines which makes a dictionary look like this, but I did the best with the materials I had at home already.  However, I took it upon myself to laminate the dictionary (when no one else did) because I have 4 children who will be using it now or in the future and I wanted it to last.  The downside......well, um, you clearly need to know how to hole punch in a straight line 4 times in a row for about 60-70 pages.  Or otherwise you get the oh so fancy product that you see pictured above.  With only 2 rings, yet 4 holes for rings!  Let's just say that you can't force the rings to go vertical when they are made to go horizontally so the pages turn nicely.  With that being said, it is functional, just not the nicest job of material making that I have done in the past.  But I refuse to reprint, cut, laminate, and cut again and waste another 5 hours or so of my time. 

 

Ok on to the details......I came across this dictionary when I was using the Muriel Dwyer approach to reading rather than the typical Montessori approach.  MyBoysTeacher does a great job comparing the two approaches at her blog What did we do all day.  The last phase of it includes this dictionary.  The child learns the key sounds through the sandpaper letters, sound games, moveable alphabet, and eventually moved on to the reading folders.  Therefore he is very excited about reading, but may not have everything memorized to read independently.  This is where the dictionary comes in.  You teach the child to use it just like a regular dictionary.  It has tabs that help the child find the phonogram that he is looking for.  As the child is reading a book or looking at words that he does not know, then he can go to this dictionary to help him learn the sound of the particular phonogram he is struggling with.  Another way to think of it is the child learned the key sounds with the sandpaper letters or even the double sandpaper letters.  He wasn't introduced to the "other" sounds that a letter could make until he started using the reading folders.  For example, with the sandpaper letters, the child would learn that "c" makes the "c" sound like in cat.  However, the reading folders introduced the "s" sound for the letter "c" like in the word ceiling.  The child may not remember this so he would then use the dictionary to find the key sound.  The picture below shows the first page of the dictionary which is the key for the child.  (Remember the photos will enlarge when clicked on.)

The first sound listed is "a".  The dictionary lists out the four sound options for that letter.  For example, "a" could make the sound "a" for apple, "ai" for paper, "o" for all, or "u" for above.  This helps the child determine which sound is needed to pronounce the word.

 

Another example is "ough".  The child's choices are "au" for fought, "ou" for drought, "oa" for though, or "ue (coo)" for through.

 

I chose to use a more thorough dictionary and included a second column of tabs which include more sounds just to help the child in the beginning stages.  Here is an example of the "sc" sound.  It can make the "sc" sound as in scale or "sc" can make the "s" sound in science.

Just another example.  (I love visuals!)

 

Here is a link to the download I used to make my dictionary. 

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 :( 

Clock

 

Happy Easter Everyone!  We took this week and part of Holy Week off last week, but I wanted to share something Bubs has been interested in lately. 

 

 I had made this clock for Kui a few years ago and it seemed to work perfectly.  I was never a fan of the Judy Clock that most primary classrooms use.  I am not sure why, but I think they just don't look very user friendly. However, I love the idea from this site.  The child is able to manipulate the clock and move around the pieces.  There is also the work of putting the numbers in the correct order which is definitely something that needs to be learned by the child.  I found this out with Bubs.  When I started working with Kui, she already had the basic idea of a clock and the numbers that were on it.  It is not understood that the child will pick up on this automatically, especially if they are only exposed to digital clocks.  I have gotten a digital clock for their rooms just so they can learn to tell time the "old-fashioned" way.  I also purchased these stamps for Bubs to peruse once he has all of the parts of the clock mastered.  These just allow an extension to the clock work and.... who doesn't like stamps, right?!

 

The picture above shows Bubs working with the clock with a bit of an extension.  He already knows how to label the hours (red circles) correctly starting with 12 at the top.  He then added the minutes (green circles).  He wanted to add the hours around it "just because".  It is helpful for him though when he is making the time that I have asked him to make. 

 

 

Further extension of this work are the seconds (blue circles -not pictured).  This allows the child to understand the concept that one hour has 60 seconds.  Bubs is not quite there yet, but hopefully soon we will get there along with writing out the times and using the stamp pad.  Shhhhh.....he doesn't know about that yet.  I wouldn't want to rush him through the critical manipulative stage!

 

Phonetic Object Box

 

Is it calling for rain?  It looks like Bubs has an u..u..u..umbrella to use!

 

Bubs was thrilled to start this work.  He really started it a few weeks ago back in April, but I wanted to wait until he did his second box before I posted on it.  Just to give some additional examples.  However.....I don't seem to have any of those pictures.  Hmm..must be on the broken camera.  Oh, but hey!! Guess what??  We have a brand new snazzy camera on its way.  Can't wait to start using that thing.  I mean, of course, the Ipad is great and all, but not so fun transferring pics back and forth. 

The phonetic object boxes are quite fun and just what Bubs needed at the time to boost his interest in reading.  He is clearly over the sandpaper letters and almost over the sand tray.  He also isn't a moveable alphabet fan either.  We had some difficulty working with this because the shapes of the sandpaper letters don't match to the moveable alphabet for every letter exactly.  So Bubs got frustrated having to essentially learn sounds over again.  I still tried to make it fun, but this new presentation helped ease the tension.

So..I bought the really cute package of objects from Montessori Services.  Wow!  There are a lot of small objects in that bag.  Even a small drum with two miniature drum sticks.  Let's just say it's a miracle that I still have those drum sticks and that they aren't lost in the carpet, in the belly of T-man, or even worse, up Nito's nose!!

The first object box I set up for Bubs had beginning sounds that were phonetic (single symbol - single sound).  Objects like jug, bus, hat, box, mop, cat, etc.  There were 12 objects total.  I would tell him that I am thinking of an object and then I would write it down on a small strip of paper.  Then we would take each sound and say it.  We would say it faster and faster each time until we blended all of the sounds and said the word.  For example, hat.  H. A. T.  h   a   t, h  a  t, h a t, hat.  By the time we were saying all of the sounds together, he would screech and then immediately find the object that I had written.  It was so sweet to watch it click and see the joy on his face.

 

Can you see the old-timey vacuum cleaner in the upper left corner?  Nito thinks its a lawn mower!

 

 

Here Bubs is trying out his g, g, g, glasses. 

 

We still have only two boxes out on the shelf for this work.  Bubs is now to the point where he can work independently matching the labels to the objects.  However, I am struggling with trying to figure out how to get him to read all of the sounds on the label and not just the first one.  He tends to just read "b" and match it to the box for instance, but the label actually reads "bee", not "box".  Maybe it just takes time, but we will keep working on it.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!