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.

I Passed!!!

I received an unexpected letter the other day. I opened it up expecting it to be another bill or some junk mail. But too my surprise the letter read 'You have successfully passed your Foundation Degree'.

I'm so happy, the course took a lot of effort. I wrote many essays and read so many books. During the middle of the course I felt like giving up, I wanted my life back. Somehow I found the strength and I continued and now I feel really proud of myself.

This leaves me wondering what is should do next year. I have the opportunity to take the Montessori 9-12yrs course or I can take a BA Montessori course. Both will take one year of intense studying . However the BA course is heavily essay based, while the 9-12 course has a lot of practical work that I love.

So the choice is between having a BA in Montessori or Being trained up to the age of 12.

What would you do??

Is it time for him to move?

Little-N is supposed to be going to year 1 next year in a mainstream school and I'll be honest but I haven't even given that a thought till now. I have not visited any schools, I didn't send in any applications and I didn't even discuss the matter with his dad! I just turned a blind eye to the whole non-Montessori school idea.

Last year Little-N was between my 6-9 classroom and the 3-6 classroom lead by a group of other teachers. He was allowed to come into my class, not because he was my son but because academically many of the materials he was using were in there and many of the lessons he needed to take were part of the 6-9 classroom. He was also able to follow the intense learning that was going on in my class, where as some other children of the same age would come in and not like the 'hard work' that was going on and leave. There were days and weeks where Little-N would stay in the 3-6 class but eventually he always came back to my class. He didn't always work with me, sometimes the mother-son relationship was awkward and he would choose to do an activity from my class with another teacher from the other class.

I can definitely say that Little-N learnt so much this last school year and I believe it was the combination of being allowed the freedom to work between the 3-6 and 6-9 class and the back up he got at home when he had me all for himself. He can read very well for his age, he started writing independently and he even attempts writing stories. He is so mathematically advanced I can't explain, he has amazing knowledge of geography, science, culture and history and he's acquired many life skills that have made his life easier.

This year will be different. My school no longer has a group of 4-5 year olds as all of them have moved onto mainstream. Little-N will be the only 5 year old and there will be a 1 year gap between him and the younger children and the older children!!! It doesn't really bother me, but I'm guessing Little-N will be in my class a lot more now. That means that Little-N and I will be face-2-face 24 hours a day! Sometimes that gets a bit hard for me, especially that I'm a single mum and can't just drop him off at his dads or something [to do that I'll have to travel all the way across continents]. There are days that I just need my me time.... that's why I put him to bed early.

Back to the subject: My class will still have only have six children aged 6-9 + Little-N who is 5. So I'm lucky that I don't have that many children to work with this year, although I would love more as in some strange way the class works better with more children. I will be setting up new materials at the end of August and I hope to post about them if i get the chance.

Anyways the whole purpose of this post was to state my reasons for keeping him in a Montessori school next year instead of taking the easier option of sending him to a mainstream school [drop him off at another school, picking him up at 4 and not have to think about his learning sounds a lot easier to me!!]. So here are my reasons

1. Little-N is already quite an independent learner sending him into mainstream will mean that he cant pursue his own interests independently.
2. Little-N has already covered a lot of the Year1 curriculum, if he goes into mainstream, he will be relearning things he already knows for almost half of the year.
3. I visited the best mainstream school in my area with the children from my school who will be moving there. On the visit my class was allowed to attend the session that was going on in that school. Little-N had his first taste of mainstream schooling and he made me laughed. The teacher was talking about geometric solids to a group, she held up a square based pyramid and asked all the 30 children on the mat what it is. Little-N just started to say Square based.... and she said 'no its not a square'. Little-N said ' Yes it is a square based pyramid, look at its base!' In someway I don't think the usual teachers and the curriculum of a mainstream school will add anything positive to Little-Ns education if he moves there next year.
4. Respect, love, friendship, forgiveness and many other beautiful characters are not developed in the state schools in my area. It's very important for me that Little-N develops these important characters from a young age and that's exactly what Montessori does.
5. At the moment, if he doesn't hear what someone says he'll say 'Pardon' I'm pretty sure if he went to state school he'll say 'waaa' or 'what'
6. In a Montessori school, Little-N is allowed to be himself at all times. He is allowed to dig for bugs at anytime, he is allowed to do a project about anything he chooses, he is allowed to learn something new when he wants to and he is never held back because of a curriculum.
7. Being a only child raised in a single parent family, Little-N does have some issues that come up every once in a while. At my school, the head teacher takes an interest in his 'issues' and she personally helps him [and me at times] through them in a loving way. I know he would never get the same love in another school.

I know there are many more reasons but for some reason I can't think of them now. Perhaps the above are much more important that other reasons have disappeared.

So the plan is that Little-N will continue to attend a Montessori school and he will be part of my 6-9 class :) . Therefore I will continue blogging about his learning and keep you updated.

Pictures from June

Here are some pictures from last month, too much was going on and I didn't always have the luck of catching the amazing things on camera. The children have all done so well and its sad to see this school year end. Last month I presented Great Lesson 1, but all the pictures came out fuzzy so I'll have to represent it and take some more photos to share with you.

Little-N working on some addition sums in a workbook. We don't usually work from workbooks, but sometimes the children like it after working with the concrete material.
Grammar : Definite and indefinite article game
Making Origami frogs and butterflies.
Patterns made on geometric peg board.
A caterpillar in a Pupa.
Great Lesson 1: The bright light
Independent research on sharks done by two students 5 yrs and 6yrs.
Little-N working with the long 5 bead chain and magically he can now count in 5s.
Addition with the stamp game with change.
Grammar: Infinitive Verb
Grammar: Practice with farm and grammar symbols
Little-N sticking in some pictures in his science book the pictures are of living things that are either from the plant or animal Kingdom, the children found these pictures on on the Internet and made their own sticking worksheet.
Working with the green box 'ee' and the small moveable alphabet.
The 1000 chain that was too long for my class. The children did this two days in a row in a group of three children.

May's Pictures

I have had such a busy month and still no internet connection at home!!

So much has been happening at school and the children have taken me on a long learning rollercoaster. Here are some photo's taken in May: 

Making geometric solids.

Working with addition chart A.

Drawing with pastels. This girl made some AMAZING pictures.

Little-Ns castle drawing/story. He often tells a story of how the knights fought the bad dragon, as he tells the story he draws his picture and includes all these tiny details.

Addition chart C.

Past and present verbs.

Addition on a number line: although this isn't an original Montessori material, I think its important for the children to learn how to use one.

Little-N and a caterpillar that we found, a few weeks later it turned into a big black moth . 

Using the grammar symbols with the farm.

A pattern made by an 8yr old with the pattern blocks.

Little-N dressed as a pirate and making costumes for his friends.

Practicing crochet.

After presenting the VERBS i give the children a story and ask them to highlight all the verbs they can find in red.

Working with the 5 bead chain. 

A few patterns made with constructive blue triangles.