Tray activities for Doll

Yesterday I prepared some tray activities for Doll. When she came home and saw the trays, she immediately wanted to work on them. That's the beauty of Montessori, it's invites the child to play and learn. No need for strict routines, it's a natural process. 

The activities I prepared weren't anything academic, it was more to remind her the beauty of 'work'.

Looping the rubber bands around the bottle to work on that fine motor skills. 

Using ice cream sticks to form shapes. Its a good way for them to learn the differences in each shape ie triangle has  sides while a square has four. 

Using an aided chopstick to transfer poms poms into ice cube tray. 

As usual I simple couldn't forgo counting activities. Since Doll has learn to count to 30, I wanted her to practise.  So I prepared her only two boxes (didn't want to overwhelm her) of buttons. She had to count each boxes.  One she had to count up to 26 and another 30. 

I love that she enjoyed herself and didn't see these as 'work'. I hope I can keep this up. These days taking care of two school going kids keeps my schedule very tight and exhausting. 

Beading for her mama

It all started when I bought this cheap DIY necklace box from Daiso for $2!

 

 

I saw that this was a good opportunity for Doll to work on her pincer grasp. However, she couldn't connect the stars together at first. It works like a paper clip; to connect one only needs to join each star through the small disconnected loops on each star. IF you can understand all that...anyway!

 

I did a necklace for her nevertheless & she fell straight in love with it. She wore the necklace for the entire day. But I wasn't comfortable with it because the stars have rather pricky edges. So I bought her a gorgeous beaded necklace & of course she ADORES it (I have a girly girl here)!

 

I pretended to sob and grumble that I don't have any necklace & no one got me one. She immediately comforted me and assured me that she would make one for me! AWWWWW

 

 

 

Doll knew I bought another beading jewellery from Daiso and bug me day after day to let her do it. (She REALLY wanted to use this to make a necklace for me) AWWWW

 

I finally let her do it and oh boy, did she work it!

 

As I watched her string bead after bead, I saw how a simple (and cheap) activity unknowingly taught her (and me) many lessons.

 

Obviously, she learnt how to use her pincer grasp. As she strung each bead, she became more and more efficient and skillful. Also, I let her decide which is her master hand ie which hand to hold the string and which the bead. From here, I could tell she will be a right hander.

 

The other thing that left me in awe was how patient and persevering she was. She set herself to finish the beads and didn't want to stop until I had to interrupt it as we had to pick Sonshine up. I love her working attitude- I hope it will translate into her school work next time! :P

 

 

 

Later, she tried her hands on the stars again and to my delight, she did it! She made herself a full bracelet with the remaining stars. I am so proud of this girl!

 

Our final masterpieces! The bead necklace was mostly done by Doll and she actually presented it to me! How sweet!

 

This beading activity is absolutely cheap and satisfies the 3 Ps:

 

1) PLAY

2) (hones) PATIENCE

3) & PERSEVERANCE

 

LOVE IT!

Orange Juice anyone?

I am planning to start Doll on writing which explains why I am focusing more on Practical life activities as well as working on her pincer grasp. 

 

Plus, practical life activities are the easiest to prepare! Yesterday Doll made her own orange juice.

 

It started one day we chanced upon an orange juice maker vending machine! My hub was so y fascinated by the novelty that he splurge $4.50 on it without battling an eyelid.

 

It was intriguing watching how the machine selected the oranges, sliced them, squeezed them, collected the juice into a cup and served the fresh drink to us. Doll slurp up every last bit of the juice, she said it was "very very very nice"!

 

So grabbing the chance when that experience is fresh in her mind, I made Doll squeeze her own and at the same time exercise her hand muscles (for writing in future).

 

 

 

My invitation tray to play! Well, an invitation was quite unnecessary actually!

 

Squeeze, squeeze *grit teeth* *growl*

 

She had quite a hard time squeezing, she didn't have the strength. Still, she did not give up and could not keep her hands off the orange!

 

Good thing we had an HUGE orange that day because we extracted quite alot of juice!

 

Doll poured the juice into her cup (yes, another hidden practical life activity & chance for her to practise pouring- this time with a purpose!) and generously shared with me!

 

It was absolutely yummy!

Practically practical.

This past week, I have been focusing on practical life activities. Oh okay, I have been too lazy to plan Doll's home activities, so I decided to whip out our everyday things for her to dabble.

 

 

 

Learning to pour.

 

To make it a tad challenging, I deliberately chose a small jug for her to pour water into. I made sure she positioned her hands correctly when holding & pouring the filler. Obviously, it was no sweat for her.

 

 I notice young kids do not have the discernment to know when to stop pouring. They will continue to pour as long as there's still water in the filler which of course means, the jugs will end up overflowing with water.

 

So I gave her two jugs and filled the filler with water just enough for the two jugs. I wanted her to make proper judgement when to stop filling the jug i.e I reminded her she should stop when the water level in the jug reached to a certain level.

 

The other no-brainer practical life activity is to work on Playdough! I gave her a rolling pin, scissors and a slicer and let her work away! As she played, she was unknowingly exercising her pincer grasp and fine motor skills. WOOT!

 

Remember this counting card? I decided to use it again!

 

This time together with a handful of marbles, number cards & tongs. I have her count & determine the number of symbols on each card. When she has the answer, she had to transfer a marble with a tong onto the correct number card. My 2 in 1 activity- learn counting cum practical life activity!

 

So you see, one does not really need to have an elaborate plan nor deep pockets when home teaching a pre-schooler!

Montessori- Cylinder Blocks

This was the activity that first attracted me to Montessori- Cylinder blocks.

 

 

It consist of 4 blocks and in each block there are 10 (mine only has 5) drilled holes to fit the cylinders in.

 

Each cylinder differs either in diameter or depth or both. For instance, in one block, all the cylinders have the same diameter. However, they vary increasingly/decreasingly in depth. In another block, all the cylinders have the same depth but vary increasingly/decreasingly in diameter etc (sorry, to lazy to give lengthy explanation but read here if you want to know more) 

 

 

The direct objective of this activity is to sharpen the child's visual discrimination of varying dimensions. The indirect goals are for pincer grasp exercise (as the child use her index finger and thumb to manoeuvre the knobs on the cylinders) and if I may add, eye-hand coordination skills as well as Mathematical concepts.

 

During the initial work, present only one block at a time. Once the child is seasoned in working with each block; present all 4 blocks at a go to her & mix the cylinder blocks for more challenging work.

 

 

The best part of it is I don't need to give her lengthy lecture. As she worked, she instinctively learn that each cylinders have differing dimensions. I thought it was very interesting how she always pick up the largest pieces first- I guess these were the easiest to identify & match. She naturally discovered that the bigger cylinders don't fit into the smaller ones and some smaller ones don't fit into the smaller holes because they may differ in depth.

 

According to David Gettman, when the child matures, we can use this to explain the terms 'shallow' vs 'deep', 'thick' vs 'thicker etc.

 

Admittedly, this is something you can't DIY easily unless you are an expert in sawing and drilling wood- even if you are, you must be well equipped! However, if you like you can pick this book up. It comes with a template, though 2-dimension (but better than nothing & much cheaper than purchasing) which emulate this activity.

Babydoll's working on....

Activities for Babydoll this week:

 

 

Transferring water with sponge

 

Squeezing...working out all her hand & finger muscles.

 

Sorting shape & color buttons.

 

Matching & counting.

 

She used Montessori counters and match them to the cards- this helps her to count in correspondence to the red dots on the cards. Otherwise, she would be counting till 10 when there's only 3 dots on the cards or she would be pointing either missing a dot or double count.  

 

Another practical and fine motor skill training cum sorting activity,

 

Inspired by Playhood! The wooden cylinders can be found at Daiso. Here, doll stacks the cylinders according to numbers. Each time she places one on top, she counts from the bottom to determine the next number.

 

Then, she created her own activity and decided to 'tong' the cylinders.

 

Viola!

 

I bought these puzzles from Toysrus. Instead of facing the flashcards, I used these to inject more fun in her learning. Actually, this is just revision. I only took out those words she can read- just so she can keep seeing these words while learning new ones. I use this activity more for revision (wow that word sounds so odd to use on a 2 year old!).

 

A better look of the puzzles.

 

 

Color Play

 

 

Materials:

Food coloring (I used yellow, red & blue)

Tissue

Dropper

Tissue papers

 

 

 

And fire away!

 

Let the child drop colors on the tissue paper and watch the transformation!

 

The primary objective of this activity was meant for doll to practise her pincer grasp while using the dropper.

 

For older kids, you can use this activity to teach them about primary colors and the results of color mixing.

 

Doll absolutely loved this activity! She was smiling and squealing away with each drop. She keeps telling me 'I Like Colors!'. I love how she talks and talks while working on this activity, she would describe the colors, tell me which color she will be using i.e. 'I want yellow'. At one point, one of the color in the cup turned purple and she even declared 'Purple!'. Absolutely love watching her do this activity. :)

Homemade Printables

This week, doll had some fun with  math printable made by mama.

 

 

 

Matching colored symbols.

 

For each symbol, I made two of each but in different colors. I wanted to her to exercise her observational skills i.e it may be the same shape but is it the same color?

 

Matching numbers from 11-20.

 

This was intended for her to learn counting beyond 10. She is at this moment comfortable in counting from 1-12 and then it gets fuzzy in between but picks up again from 18-20. Hee Hee!

 

A montessori inspired number board. Instead of the 100 board, i made a 20 board for doll to arrange the numbers in order. 

 

 

Another printable to help her in counting.

 

Each tree has a number indicated on it and she has to put the corresponding number(s) of apple(s) on them. The permanent Velcro stuck on each tree acts as a control of error for her. It guides her on the exact number of apples she should put.

 

Tong-ing cotton balls.

 

I thought she didn't have the ability to use tongs which was why i put this activity off for a long time. I have under estimated her. She took this like a professional! She even knows how to angle the tongs such that she can clip the balls into place. Lesson learnt from this mama!

Threading a caterpillar

Here's an easy DIY threading activity!

In this activity Babydoll gets to exercise her fine motor skills and practise her 123s!

 

I made threading cards for babydoll. On each card of the ten cards, there is a number (from 1-10).

 

 

 

The goal is to thread the cards according to the number sequence.

 

 

Viola! Our cute little caterpillar (with no legs) is created! 

 

You can do this with ABCs or even work up a spelling activity with this! :)

 

Have fun!

 

Linking up:

 

Peel the Egg baby!

This is a common activity done by lots blogger moms. I couldn't resist either!

It is a great activity to practise eye-hand coordination skills and pincer grasp. Plus, it is just pure entertainment for the little one.

 

You got to boil the egg first, yah? I cracked the egg a little to make it easier for Babydoll.

 

Happily peeling the shell away. Focus, focus, focus...

 

 

Ta-da! Job done albeit broken but still taste as yummy as ever!

 

Week #9- Babydoll

Our work shelf is pretty much the same as last week. Babydoll is still working on the Montessori Pink tower and word matching cards. She is improving! Yeah!

 

 

Some other things we did. Working on this animal puzzle. Too easy for her but i took it out just to spice our work shelf a little. Also, as she work on them, it gave me a chance to name the animals in mandarin. So happens that we are reading an animal book that has exactly the same set of animals as this puzzle!

 

She worked on alphabet puzzle. She loves to push each foam pieces out of its place. Through this work, i accidentally found out she could sound out the letters 'm, o and s'! Hooray!

 

We have doing sorting since last week, i was too lazy to take pictures. We sorted with lots of stuff around the house like red dates, macaroni, barley seeds and duplo. In the above picture, doll was sorting the duplos by color. Like any Montessori work, i didn't have to 'teach' her, i just sat & watched. It was intriguing that whenever she placed the wrong color duplo under a column, she would freeze for a moment, looking at the piece hard. Then in seconds, she would remove the piece and place it at its corresponding color column. She did this without me prompting her her error. :)

 

A new stuff we did. I made two print outs. On one, there is an oval and circle, on the other sheet, there is the square and rectangle. Previously, doll would name ovals as circles and rectangles as squares. Hence, i deliberately printed t he two similar shapes in the same sheet, side by side. Again, this was kind of inspired by Montessori. I didn't need to give her a whole load of explanation that rectangles has longer lengths than its breaths while squares have equal dimensions all side. All i had to do was to point to the square and say 'Square' and same to the rectangle. Instantly, a child would be able to see that two shapes are different. Soon after this activity, she is able to show me which is oval and which is rectangle.

 

I also made phonics book. On each page is a letter and a picture that starts with that letter. I do not say the name of the letter but i say its sound as we go through the book.

 

I made a similar book but this time is pictures of our family. Not that she can't recognise who is who in the family, this book was more for word recognition.