Friday, 19 August 2011

Little-N's beanstalks

This summer Little-N has been enjoying the garden. Here are some photos of the beans he planted:

Little-N noticed how the beans bent towards the sun.


When the plants were big enough we planted them in the vegetable patch with some bamboo sticks.


The beans grew very quickly.


Little-N enjoyed searching for the beans and picking them.


He washed and cut the beans.


He cooked them with some garlic, butter, salt and herbs.


And proudly served it to us for dinner.
He has kept some beans for drying out and planting next year.

Little-N was so happy to completed the the cycle of cooking by planting, caring, picking and cooking.

Wednesday, 3 August 2011

Times Tables


Little-N has been working on his times tables. The Montessori curriculum has plenty of activities to help practice the times tables. We chose the three times table and worked with the following activities.

Multiplication with the bead stair. He wrote out his own question cards, with answer cards and a control of error on the back. He uses his cards to play a memory game.



Multiplication board.


3 bead chain and writing the number sequence.






Multiplication chart looking at the three times table.


Written multiplication chart.


3 times table on the hundred chart.


Multiplication on the peg board.

A few years ago Little-N worked with these materials to gain an understanding of multiplication. He has now revisited the material to help him with memorisation of the times tables.
Once he is confident with the three times table, we'll choose another one and work with the materials again.