Animal kingdom Questions

Recently I made these animal question cards to go with the animal kingdom classification work. I made a set for each group fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Each set contains ten questions that children need to research using books to find the answers. I made sure that all the answers could be found in the various books available in the classroom and I colour coded the cards so that the children would know what animal group to look for. Little-N especially loved this activity as he is very fond of all animals and he surprised me with already knowing many of the answers from his reading.

I'm not sure if this activity will be of interest to anyone, if it is you can download them here. The colour coding is Fish- green, amphibians- purple, reptiles-brown, birds-blue and mammals-red. Please make sure all the answers can be found in the resources you provide for the children so that they can find the answers without getting frustrated!

Pin Maps

I decided that it would be too expensive to buy the Montessori Pin maps and I could better spend the money on something un-makeable. So I made my own. I noticed a few other blogs that had home made pin maps, but not exactly what I wanted. I spent a long time making these files that include flags, countries and cities for each continent [except Antarctica]. You can make your own or take the easier route and buy them from here. It takes a very long time to cut everything out and put all the pins in, but its well worth it. Little-N said that these maps are much better than the wooden ones he used to use. I think it's something to do with the colour coded pins.

Beyond 10

When Little-S started with me in June he knew how to count to 100 in French but not in English. I decided to take him through the Montessori materials for counting beyond 10. Here is a list of the Montessori activities for learning to count beyond 10.

Teen beads: Child learns to count from 11-19 using the beads.

Seguin board A: Child learns the symbols for numbers from 11-19.

Seguin board A with beads: Child matches the quantities and symbols from 11-19.


Tens beads: Child learns the quantities 10,20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90.
Seguin board B: Child learns the symbols for 10-90 using the tens board.

Seguin board B and beads 1: Matching the symbols 10,20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90 to quantities.

Tens beads 2: Child counts through the beads starting with 1 and continues adding a unit bead and counting. When the child places 10 unit beads it should change it for a ten bar. Read more about this here.

Seguin Board B 2: counting through the symbols. Child counts from 10 to 99.

Seguin Board B and Beads 2: Child starts from ten and counts through the numbers all the way to 99. He makes each number on the board and matches the beads at the same time.

For further practice with the tens beads I made this activity. Download the file and read more about this here .

Hundred chain: Can be done counting in units or counting in tens. It provides the children with further practice in counting from 1-100 and also ensures that the child really understands the quantity of the hundred square used in golden beads exercises. Read more about it here.

Hundred board: Further practice with symbols from 1-100. Can be used in many ways to reinforce the understanding of numbers from 1-100.

Word Study: Suffix

Big-S was learning about the suffix. Here are a few photos of the different activities we did.

Suffix activity 1: In this activity the child is introduced to the suffix. A truck and trailer are used to demonstrate to the child that the suffix itself has no meaning but when attached to a root word has a meaning, as with the trailer that can not move unless attached to the truck.

Big-S then wrote the words in her book and thought of some other words that have a suffix.

Suffix 2: In this activity the child has a set of root words that each have a matching suffix. The child matches the word cards then writes them in their book.

Suffix 3: The child is provided with a set of root words and only one suffix. The child must find all the root words that match with the suffix.

Suffix 4: The child is provided with one root word and a set of suffix cards. The child works through the suffix cards to find out which ones can be joined to the root word.

Big-S also made a suffix chain where you join a suffix to each root word and it creates a long chain. She also used a dictionary to find other words that can be joined to a specific suffix.

There are more activities that can be done, however Big-S lost interest in this and we moved on to studying antonyms.

Shaped Pancakes

I love making pancakes for breakfast and I came across this nice idea on another blog. You make your usual pancake batter [I usually make thick pancakes] and place it in a squeezable bottle. You can then draw or write whatever you want with your pancakes. I surprised Little-N and my hubby with this the other morning and they were very happy.

Summer Break

I'm taking a bit of a summer break from teaching. We will be moving homes in a couple of weeks and I have plenty of packing to do. The classroom is in the process of being packed and will be moved to the new flat. I'm hoping that it will work out better having the classroom in my own home rather than in my mothers. I'm excited about being able to work in the class at any time of the day, I have a long list of he materials I need to add to it. The new class will be a lot smaller, but I am hoping that I can work some magic with arranging the space so that it feels cosy instead of tight. I am also thinking of limiting the number of children that come each day to 4 [including Little-N]. I want the next school year to be easy so that I can spend more time preparing the class.

In my free time I plan to spend some quality time with Little-N, it's only now I realise that during the last school year I haven't given him half the time that I should have and I really do miss spending time with him without being in a hurry. I will be working on a few projects with him and hope to take him out more often. For myself, I hope to spend more time working on some art pieces that I would like to finish and I'd like to get back on track with exercising and healthy eating.

Thank you all for your comments on my last post. It made making a decision so much easier. I'm excited to get started on the 9-12 course!