Hannah with the movable alphabet

Hannah worked on pink set 1 this week with the movable alphabet for the first time. She has been asking for a while to do this activity as she sees Aliyah doing it but I thought she wasn't really ready. I eventually gave in and thought we'd do it together but she amazed me, she could identify all the sounds in the words without a problem and just needed a bit of help finding the letters in the box. I had been thinking about the Pink, Green, Blue versus Dwyer approach and came to the conclusion that Dwyer seems the better approach for a home ed set up. However, if I was going to follow that route Hannah wouldn't be able to work with the movable alphabet for probably another 1 or 2 years. She was so happy to do this today it would be a shame to miss out on this enthusiasm so I'm glad I do have the P, G, B boxes and I'll just try to 'follow the child' and let her work with it whenever she wants. 

Livvy is get more mobile and found her way off the mat to have a look at the nature table today!

 Aliyah worked with the coloured bead stairs today to see how many ways ten can be made. She enjoyed this and did it twice and then asked if she could write them all down.

Maths and Letter Sounds

This week Aliyah has been choosing mainly maths activities. I do sometimes worry that some of the equipment we buy isn't getting used as often as I would like but the the bead bank and number cards are used over and over again. These materials are really helping Aliyah understand large numbers and their quantities.

 We have been doing addition for a while and this week we started multiplication ...

and subtraction. So far only subtraction without change but hopefully next week subtraction with change.

Hannah is definitely in a sensitive period for letter sounds at the minute. She is always trying to segment and blend sounds and does lots of pretend reading and even some real reading from very easy readers such as Bob books. Here she has matched all the movable alphabet letters to the sandpaper letters. This took quite a long time but she stuck with it. She has some difficulty recognising the cursive letters which don't resemble the print versions. I know that officially the Montessori method would introduce reading much later but she is so interested that I feel it would be a shame not to follow that interest.

Here they are together doing the 'letter race' game. Thank you to http://trilliummontessori.org/trillium-blog/ for this idea.

Just an extra picture. We found this lovely natural corner at our local Sure Start centre. Will be keeping a look out for some of these items.

Getting into the Swing

We're starting to settle down now and get into a bit more of a routine. We managed to do quite a few sessions of Montessori this week and even did a morning and afternoon on Wednesday. First time ever to do a full day and it went surprisingly well, though we were all quite tired afterwards.

Hannah is really into shapes at the minute. This is one of her favourites. It looks easy but she has struggled for a long time to be able to get all the pieces back in so she is very pleased with herself now that she can do it all on her own. 

Another shapes activity, here she is just making up pictures using the shapes. We're struggling to find a more structured way to use this material.

Because she seemed so interested in shapes I got the mini constructive triangles out. We've only done the first box so far but she likes it a lot and it seems just at the right level for her.

She is also enjoying some 'scarecrow' activities - number cards to use with the bead stair and a matching activity. I downloaded these from one of  my favourite blogs - http://www.trilliummontessori.org/trillium-blog

Finally Aliyah is showing some interest in writing in cursive. She had been doing some work with the green boxes and the moveable alphabet and then choose this practice sheet to fill in.

Aliyah was very excited to get to use the metal fractions as this activity is usually used by the 'big girl' It madin our co-op. It her feel very grown up but she did struggle when she got to the 9ths and 10ths. They do look very similar! She wanted to go on to labelling them but she really isn't quite ready for that.

She has done some adding before with the number rods. This time she was using the short bead bank. First she did a sheet of questions with answers up to 10 and then in the afternoon she asked to do some with answers in the teens.

September activities

Well this is my first blog post. Here's a few pictures of what we've been doing this week.

I got out the hanger for the coloured bead stair for Hannah this week. She's been practising counting and does well up to six but usually needs prompting to say seven. We've worked with the number rods and the coloured bead stairs before but I thought the bead hanger would make it a fresh activity and it looks very inviting. She wanted to do it straight away and was able to concentrate to the end. It's also good for her fine motor skills too. She does find it a bit tricky getting it on and off the shelf though as the beads roll off easily and end up on the floor. 

In this activity they are supposed to copy the pattern on the laminated strip but Hannah is just having fun building a big tower.

Back to an old favourite.

I had nearly put this flannel folding activity away as neither of the girls had used it in ages but today Hannah got it out again. 

Lovely seeing them work together on their sewing cards. I always thought this activity was quite an easy one but it's only just now that they are getting the hang of it. It takes a while to work out that you have to keep turning the card over to find the right hole. They were very proud when they both managed to complete their cards.

Aliyah has been doing some counting too. She seems to have taken to the spindle box recently. Although she has been able to count to ten for quite a while she never had enough concentration for this one before but now she chooses it often and can do the whole activity and put it back by herself.

This was the first time Aliyah has had a go at the Animal Puzzle Activity and I was surprised how well she could do them. She did the horse and the bird. Now I have to make sure I get out the other animal puzzles that go with the set so that she can do the rest of them.

I just couldn't resist buying these World Landmark Tubes. Both the girls have really enjoyed this matching activity and I can't wait until they are ready to place them on the maps. 

We've been using the tens board as a game challenging each other to read and then form a number with the beads.

We now have this mini trampoline (which was supposed to be for me to exercise on but as yet I've only used it once!) in the lounge during Montessori time so that they can choose a bit of physical exercise as one of their activities if they need to burn off some energy. 

Livvy can now wriggle right off her mat ...

and enjoys being read to by her big sister.