Decanomial - Sensorial and Bead

THE DECANOMIAL......dun dun dun......

 

Coincidentally, I showed Bubs the sensorial decanomial in the same week that Kui and I got to the bead decanomial (Well really we got to it because we finally got the beads in the mail!) 

 

I presented this to Bubs after I had shown him the short bead chains and he had worked with them for awhile.  He is quite aware of the different colors for each number.  For example, red is one, four is yellow, etc.  So when I started showing him this material he immediately pointed to the bead cabinet and said, "Mommy, it looks just like that!"  His shrill little excited voice encouraged me greatly in my homeschooling journey because all of these materials are quite time consuming to make.  Yes, there are quite a few materials that can be bought, but there are also quite a few that need to be made by the teacher (a.k.a. myself).  A great example of my hand made material can be seen in the third picture below.  Anyone see the wavy rectangles?!  Ha  Those got jammed in the laminator and when I tried to reprint them, my ink cartridge ran out and the blue squares looked more like a sky blue.  Needless to say that I wasn't going out to get ink any time soon and every day is precious in the wonderful world of Montessori learning.  So.....I decided to go ahead and present to him even though the materials were somewhat less than perfect.  (I do plan on fixing these, but for this presentation, it had to do.) 

 

I also need to make a storage container for all of these little rectangles.  Not sure where I will find that.....

Those wavy rectangles just add character right?!  This material is truly one of a kind.

 

Now for Kui's bead decanomial.  Wow, I definitely did not allow enough of the morning to complete this one!  I mean how long can it take to lay beads out in rows?  Clearly over an hour.  Ok maybe we had a few distractions like the table being bumped and beads messed up, T-man discovering that he can reach the top corners of the table and grab beads, snack time, etc.  Kui finally completed it though.  She was very proud of herself. 

Working diligently

 

In the picture above, Kui has already switched out her loose squares with the fixes squares on the diagonal.  If you click on the picture it will become larger.  Then you can see them in the top left hand corner and going diagonal to the bottom right hand corner.  Then she switched out the beads using the commutative law of multiplication.  2 x 3 is the same as 3 x 2 for example.  This is what gives you the pattern of the decanomial.

 

Her finished decanomial.  Phew!  It was a lot of work, but she discovered that it was the same thing that Bubs was working on and he thought that was pretty cool.  He looks up to his big sis and the fact that they were doing something so similar was cool to him.

Fun with the brown stairs and pink tower

 

This morning Bubs and I worked together with the brown stairs and the pink tower.  It was great to see all the different extensions of this work.  We made one pattern after another.  I think he did this for over an hour.  Some of them took great concentration while others were straight forward.  It all started because of the way they happened to be arranged on the work rug.  It sort of looked like a sunburst to me.  Then Bubs made the connection and said it looked like his color tablet work (when he made the sunburst with all of the tablets).  So off he went, trying to arrange them in different ways.  I did help him along the way.  For some of them I helped him get started and just watched to see if he could understand the pattern and continue it.

 

 

Bubs decided to sit in the middle of this one.

 

He said it looks like little steps, so of course there he goes stepping in the middle of it.

 

This one he decided to drive his car along.  Not sure if you can see it.

 

 

He tried to recreate the sunburst like from his color tablet box.

 

 

 

For whatever reason, he was super excited to finish this one and was attempting a handstand in the picture.



Bells - The Matching Game



 



Bubs really loves the bells.  However it is quite a pity that I have to shoosh him as often as I do because Anto is sleeping.  Then when he's awake I completely forget.  It's like Bubs and Nito decide to be in an orchestra or on a drum line right when I lay Anto down to sleep.  Let me tell you, Nito's favorite instrument are the cymbals (bam bam bam bam bam as he marches through the classroom!). Oh, but he stays right on the walking on the line tape!

Ok, back to Bubs and the bells.  He has already done the first presentation of matching three bells.  We are now doing one of the first games.  The child is supposed to place one rug in an area of the classroom and another rug somewhere else.  This creates movement for the child and makes it a little bit harder for them to match the correct sounds.  For Bubs' case, he stayed on one rug and I stayed on the other.  He would bring his bell to me when he found the match.  He tends to get discouraged easily so I wanted to make sure it stayed fun and exciting for him. I wanted him to feel like it was "doable".  (I also selfishly wanted him to work with these darn things because they took a long time to make!).  I even had my mom spray paint the bells while I was pregnant to avoid fumes.  It was quite interesting trying to get enough paint to coat the original colors of the bells.  If you want to cut costs, you can find a good tutorial here for making your own bells. I recently got the additional 5 chromatic bells (sharps and flats), but have not painted them yet.  You can see them in the picture at the top of the post.  They are quite colorful!
 

 

 

So I would ring one brown bell three times and then Bubs would have to ring each bell until he found the right match.  Once he found the correct match, he would bring it to me and put the matching white and brown bell in the upper left hand side of the work rug.  

 

Bubs chose to pull the little rocking chair over to sit in while he was working.  He also wanted to be crammed over in the corner next to the atrium materials.  What are ya gonna do?  He was working right?

 

Of course Nito had to be right there helping me ring the bells and line them up.  Bubs was not a fan of him "helping" with his work.  As long as Nito got to help me ring the bells on my rug he was ok and we were able to get through the presentation without a tantrum.  Phew!

 

Bubs was very proud once he found all of the matches.  We repeated about three more times before....let me think....oh snack time!