School Days in April, 2011

Sound eggs

I filled the eggs with different things to make different sound like

beans, popcorn, toothpicks, pasta, rice, marble, and; pebbles. I used packing tape around them!

There is a matching set for each sound. Both boys enjoy this!

I was surprised at his concentration level and determination to find the matches, It took him awhile but he did it!

Pouring Rice with a funnel

Shape sorting

I traced the shapes in his shape sorting box onto a piece of paper in the corresponding colors and laminated it.

Tracing Continents

I do not have the Montessori wooden puzzles, so I have to make do...

I took tissue paper and traced the continents shapes off the globe. Then I cut them out (very carefully). I traced them onto the corresponding Montessori colors of construction paper.  Mason cut them out for me, he was very careful and took his time, because he was doing "Mama's" work! I laminated them and cut those out (sounds like a lot of work, but it didn't really take long). Now they are in a basket, and Mason decided to make a map with them.  He taped paper together and traced the continents onto the paper about where they should go on a map.

Our new study on the continents has led to lots of questions from Mason..

"Which ocean is the biggest?

"Why is Alaska next to Hawaii on the map?"

"Which continent is the north pole on?"

"Is Australia an island?" (we are also doing landforms)

"Which continent is the largest/smallest?"

James LOVES to cut!

We moved on from 7 continent studies to North America (Mason's choice)

On the shelf is a continent box of N. America with LOTS of great things to explore inside.  I will take a pic of it and put it in the next post.

For some math, Mason worked on the Dot Board

This material is used in transition from the (concrete) bead material to the (abstract) paper and pencil.

I will try to explain the concept.

 Mason was given the number

2568,

 he made  8 dots in the units (ones) collum, 6 in the 10's, 5 in the 100's and 2 in the 1,000's with the correct colored pencil to match the collum.

then he was given

2568 (again for fun),

 this time he adds dots to the lines he already started, so from the last green dot in the (ones) collum he starts to add 8 more dots, then 6 more in the 10's, 5 more to the 100's and 2 more to the 1,000's.

Next he crosses off any lines that are filled with ten and carries another "dot" to the next collum to represent the ten he just crossed off. (are you confused? I had to do it myself to understand it)

in the end he ended up having:

6 (green dots) in the 1's, 3 (blue dots) in the 10's, 1 (red) dot in the 100's and 5 (green) dots in the 1,000's

to get the answer 2568 +2568 = 5136

He really enjoyed this work and did it several times!