Yesterday was such an exciting day. My delivery of Montessori elementary materials arrived, some for school and some for ME. I spent more than two hours looking through the boxes, checking all the materials and making sure everything was complete.

I hadn't actually seen some of these later materials, so I was so excited. Little-N did his bit helping me out. In this picture he is checking the Pythagoras theorem material, I opened the catalogue to the correct page and left him to complete the material making sure all was there. He made another break through with his maths: as he put the pieces, he  looked at the spaces and worked out how many squares there should be for each place. I don't know exactly how he worked it out, but without counting he said 'we need 9 blue squares for here and 8 and 8 is 16 so we need 16 yellow squares!!' He obviously isn't ready for this material yet [only sensorially], so he wont be working with it. 

I ordered a binominal cube, a natural binominal cube, a trinominal cube and a natural trinominal cube. These went straight onto the shelves in the learning area. 
In the morning while Little-N was still in his PJs [he learns a lot first thing in the morning] he got out the binominal cube and did it with ease.

Next he got out the natural binominal cube and tried that. All the cubes are one colour, so it's much harder to do, he did that with ease.

Then he took out the trinominal cube and instead of building a cube, he built a castle. The yellow cubes where the knights!! Then he got up and sat at the other end of the table and started to build the trinominal cube. 
It's been a while since he worked with this so he was a bit rusty. He completed layer one, then did half of layer two and explained that he can see a binominal cube in the trinominal cube.

I didn't ask him to do the natural trinominal cube and he didn't suggest it either. I think he needs a few more goes with the coloured trinominal cube first.

I gave the natural trinominal cube to my 16yr old brother to try and he did it straight away [he's a genius anyways so I was sure he'd do it]. I then gave it to my dad to try and he gave up half way. It's interesting how some adults I meet can do it without a struggle, while others are totally lost. Little-N also took out the 4 bead chain and counted through that and through the 4 squares and cube, but he didn't want to work with the arrows [I'll post more about these later].
While he was doing his activities his Lego men [I mean Lego knights] were working with him too. He seems to want to involve them with everything he does [this has been happening for the past 4 months] Missing companionship??? He took the above picture and told me to include it in this post!

Mental Maths

A question that I get asked a lot : 

'When will the children learn to do sums mentally without using the montessori beads or materials?'

The montessori mathematics materials are brilliant, they introduce the mathematical concepts in a very concrete way. As a child progresses through the materials, they become more abstract but in tiny weeny steps and many things such as colour coding help the child to feel confident when working with large numbers or hard sums. The child gradually progresses from doing addition with the large number rods [holding, counting, seeing quantity] to written addition mentally [sitting at a table with a pencil and paper].

Montessori mathematics materials allow for an enormous amount of repetition. For addition of one digit numbers we have over 12 activities for the children to do! With each activity they are working hands on and using they're senses. By time [and there isn't a specific time or activity when this will happen] the child will begin to mentally recall some number bonds or know how to work things out in their heads.  The ability to do addition mentally can happen anytime from 3 years up and Montessori allows each child to take their own individual time to make this leap.

Below are a few pics of Little-N's work. He's been working with the golden bead material a lot and is now able to do addition with 4 digit numbers [with out changing] mentally. 

He first showed me he could do this when he told a 5 yr old, 'Did you know that 200 plus 300 is 500?'. The 5 yr old was shocked and came to ask me if Little-N was right, we checked the answer with the golden beads and he was correct. The 5 yr old then set Little-N up with other sums until finally he asked Little-N to work out the 4 digit addition sums mentally while the boy worked out the answer with the golden beads.

I find with most children its a matter of practice  and more practice until a switch is flicked within them and they're able to do it all mentally.

Home Learning Environment

Easter holiday is here and Little-N & I are staying put in London. Yesterday I decided to set up Little-Ns learning environment in the conservatory. It's been years since he had a proper learning environment at home, the last few years have involved so much house moving I never felt  ready to make one.

This large shelf unit was unused, the chairs and table where in the store room and activities where in my bedroom cupboard/drawers. This isn't an area where I plan to teach him, but just somewhere he can work/play and learn on his own.

I have a selection of different activities out:

Books: his encyclopedias and appropriate reading level books.

Crafts: All sorts of bits and bobs, glue, tape, paper, beads, play dough and painting. 

Mathematics: Addition chart A and B, golden beads activities. 

Sensorial and  Geometry: Pattern blocks stamps, colour box 3, tessellation shapes, pentominoes, constructive triangles box  6, puzzles, tangram and blocks.

Language: Chalk board, writing paper, reading books. I'm hoping to make some of the green level sentences that he is working on at school. 

I also have a few materials for learning Arabic: Basket of animals [to learn names], Arabic cut out letters [instead of moveable alphabet], Arabic dictionary.

I also have a microscope activity on the shelf  which I presented to Little-N this morning.

The activities are all self contained and mats are provided where needed.

I'm hoping to add a few more things over the next few days, let me know if you have any ideas :)

Our Garden

Our garden at school is small, but full of wonderful things the children can do. The garden can be accessed directly from my class, so the children have free access to it. We have the same ground rules for the garden as indoors, except that they are allowed to run [and they can't inside]. The children are free to choose whether they want to work with an activity inside, or take it out. They have their daily plans inside and all know that they can spend the time wherever they want as long as they're responsible for completing their daily plans, this is my way of keeping the balance for those children who would rather just run all day. Here are some more pictures of the garden:


This is a climbing frame that we got made especially for the garden. We have a selection of works, continents and other learning cards stuck on it.
In this sand [mud] pit we have lots of mud, water and other strange things growing. The children like to add stones to it and mix it with a spade. They use a wheelbarrow to transport the mud from the logs area to this mud pit. This is where we will be putting our tadpoles soon. Sorry that I don't have a picture of it when its open. On the wall you can see some pegs, that's where cloths are hung to dry.
This is our vegetable patch. The children plant in it each year and they pick and eat from it. This year they have planted radish, carrots and cabbage.
This is the log area, a favourite for the young and old. They climb these logs, walk along them, roll them about and take off the bark. We have loads of fungi growing in between them and the children like to count and observe them. Beneath these logs live plenty of creepy crawlies and many beetles.
This is the compost bin where the children throw the food waste.
This is a bamboo plant that they planted years ago. The children love to break off sticks from this and then make kites and other structures with them.
This is called THE BOAT, it's supposed to be a walking beam for the children but they prefer to pretend its a boat and sit inside it. The wooden pillar in the middle has the children's height marked on it.
This is a walking beam that was made for the children. Little-N thinks its a crocodile!


In the garden we also have a small slide and a large sandpit that they can sit in. We have the Community Play Things building blocks which the children use to build structures that they can actually walk or climb on. We have a few shelve units with various practical life activities for the children to work with. There is a selection of rakes, spades, buckets, watering cans, wheelbarrow and other planting patches where the children dig freely.

March's pictures

Here are some pictures I took this month. The children at school work independently most of the time and I am usually just there helping out when needed. This term has really been successful and my class has progressed so well. I'm proud of all my children :)

Little-N reading independently. Reading is one of the most popular activities in my class. Some children read about 6 books per work cycle. [Note: Little-N has finally had a hair cut!!!]

This picture is really special as Little-N doesn't like to sit and eat with anyone, however somehow his best friend managed to convince him.

Here a child is working with the pin maps. This is very easy to present, I just show the child how to use the control to find the flag and then to place it in the correct place. I leave the child to work with this independently then.....

Just a week later she sat and placed 20 flags of Europe in the correct places from memory. This girl was once told by a professional doctor that she had memory problems, she's proved them wrong!!!

Little-N working with the green series 'oo box', using the small moveable alphabet to spell the words.

Someone proud of her grammar work.

A castle Little-N made from the polydrons.

Practicing hand writing in the garden.

Matching fraction circles to fraction symbols.

Land form cards.

Flag cards for matching.

Working in the garden, the child have free access to the garden when weather permits.

Two boys busy with a written hundred chart.

Writing a story about a fairy. Girls!!!

Practicing her handwriting on special paper.

Lego Golden Beads Alternative

A while ago I posted here about the golden beads I made for Little-N from Lego. Thank you everyone for your comments, I really appreciate them.

Amber from Adventures of a Rainbow Mama also made them and blogged about them, her blog is great so if you haven't seen it before you better go over and check it out.

Amber asked what the trick was for making the 100 square and 1000 cube. So I decided to post this so that anyone else who is going to try this out knows what to do. If you have a better idea please share it :)

For the 100 square I made a 10x10 square from flat lego pieces. In the above picture I have separated them a bit so you can see. I did 3 layers so that each square is the same as a normal lego piece in height. The bits were sometimes quite small so I made sure I crossed them to hold the square together firmly.

Here's the 100 square from the top. I wanted the pins to show so that Little-N can count them to make sure that each square was 100.

For the 1000 cube, make a base of a 10x10 square basically the same as with the 100 square. Then build up the 'walls' so that there are 8 layers of walls on top of the based square.

If you have enough lego u can fill the inside so that it is really solid and does have 100o pins inside.

To finish off put a 100 square on the top and then u should have a 1000 cube. I made each layer in a different colour so that Little-N can count that they are ten layers. 10x 100 is a 1000.

Amber also made a short bead stair from the lego which is a brilliant idea. I decided to make it as well just for the sake of it and this is what I came up with. I tried to keep each number a different colour for the sake of colour coding.

For the 5, 7 and 9 piece, I made them up of flat pieces and layered them so that they would be the same height as the other pieces. The picture above shows they're side views so that you can see that the 7 bar was made from flat 4s and 3s layered.
Here's the view of the short bead stair when each piece is on its side. I think I prefer the first pic as it looks more like the real short beads stair.

Introducing the Stamp Game

The stamp game is one of my favorite pieces of math materials [as are almost all the other materials!] and recently I introduced it to one of my 6-9 class children.

Before doing this activity they worked through the golden beads  completing all the counting, changing, addition, multiplication and subtraction activities. I didn't do division yet as I felt the child was getting bored and needed to move onto another activity, so they'll be working with the stamp game as well as doing division with the golden beads.

The child will need a good understanding of the decimal system and changing [i.e ten units for a 10 bar and so on] to work with the stamp game, so its a good idea to do the 100 and 1000 chain before this.

Step 1: To introduce I ask the child to go get me 1000, 100, 10 and 1unit from the golden beads and I show the child how the tiles from the stamp game are equal in value to the golden beads. This is just one of those tiny steps you should do in order to help the child progress through the materials gradually and to help them see the relationship between of materials. 

When I do this i usually say something like 'I see you've been working with the golden beads a lot lately and you  seem to be getting all your sums right with them. Would you like me to show you another way you can do those sums with a new material?'

Step 2: Next I tell the child a quantity and ask them to make it on the mat. If they're finding this confusing then they can make it with the golden beads and with the stamp game.

I do a few quantities just to make sure the child can make them with ease.

Step 3: Now we start a simple addition sum similar to those we did with the golden beads.

Here I have photos of a child doing addition with the stamp game with change. Here's how you present this:

Step 1: Ask the child to read the question and make the first quantity with the stamp game.

Step 2: Ask the child to make the next quantity below the first making sure they leave a gap between them.

Step 3: Show the child how to push all the stamps together to start counting. 

Step 4: the child counts starting from the units and upon reaching 10 units the child is shown how to change 10units with 1 ten.  They should already understand this from working with the golden beads. The changed ten is placed at the top of the ten column as one would write it when doing a written sum. The remaining units are counted and noted on the question sheet.

 

Step 5; The rest of the stamps are counted in the same way, exchanging when necessary.

Once all have been counted and answer noted the child can check the answer on the control card.

I've used the mat I posted about here for the stamp game, I've decided to make another one to be used only with the stamp game as sometimes more than one child needs the mat for different activities. I'm wondering if it would be better made out of another material, any ideas??

Jennie at Our Montessori Story posted a link to this website that has a free stamp game download. 

Apparently Maria Montessori originally used real posting stamps for the stamp game. A great lesson to learn from this example is that there are many materials in our environment that can be reused to create fun and exciting activities for language, mathematics or other areas. I'm going to go through my things this week and see what activities I can create from things I already have.

Susan at The Moveable Alphabet also has a post about the stamp game worth checking :)

I'll post about multiplication and division with the stamp game soon.