Preschool Totschool Wrap Up: Montessori Fruit Themed Trays

We've been continuing to be hermits this winter.  In fact, due to cold, snow and illness, at least one of my children hasn't left the house in two weeks!  The rest of us haven't gone out much more then that, either.  It has made it a little easier to stay with our routine and get school work done, though, so there are some pros!

One of the lessons we had for the big kids this week was parts of fruit, so I thought it would be a great time to pull out some fruit themed trays.  

Tot Trays:

I set out trays geared to Explorer (2y 5m), and some for Mini Cooper (4y 6m).  They are free to try each other's trays, but a lot of times there is no interest since they are not at their level.  

Explorer is really into colors right now.  She absolutely loves any activity that will allow her to talk about them.

Printable is FREE from Boy Mama Teacher Mama.

Fruit matching from 1+1+1=1.  I used this as a chance to have her try and say the names of the different fruit.

Explorer also loves matching puzzles.  This was a hit.

This printable is (free) from Kidsparkz.

Preschool Trays:

Sorting and counting fruit.  She doesn't love these types of trays, but when she tries them I know she needs them.

I printed 2 copies of the file folder game pieces from Christian Preschool Printables, and then cut out different quantities of the fruit.  

Types of fruit 3-part cards free from Montessori for Learning.

We also read the parts of fruit cards together with the big kids and she tried making a little booklet.  These are available (free) from The Helpful Garden.

Montessori Materials

Mini Cooper had her third presentation of the teens board.  She could quickly set it up and put the correct amount of beads on each number.  However, I suspected that she wasn't truly understanding the concept.  

Turns out I was right.  I gave her little slips of paper with just one number at a time.  She just started randomly taking beads.  It took a few numbers, but in the end she was finally understanding the concept.  I plan to do a review of individual numbers this week and move to the tens board.

I encouraged Explorer to try the pink tower again.  I am not exactly sure if she understands it or not (I guess that's a trend).  She wouldn't build it the way it was supposed to be built, but she did keep teasing like she knew she was doing it wrong.  She preferred to build Wall-E on the right.   She may just be bored, so we will try adding in the brown stair this coming week.

She also requested a presentation of the bead stair.  Mostly, this was because Mini Cooper had just been working with the teens board and Explorer wanted to work with the pretty beads, too.

Food Preparation:

Since our theme for the week was fruit, I thought it would be an excellent time to try some fruit prep.

Cutting a banana went pretty well.  

I think this was the first time we had ever given Explorer a knife (she started trying to use it before I got to show her how-note to self, don't put ALL materials out right away).  She did a pretty good job.

Of course the eating part was lots of fun :).

Apple prep was harder, but she stuck with it and was successful!!  I didn't have Explorer try this one.  

Peeling an orange was, by far, the hardest of our activities.  She gave it a very solid try, but in the end I finished slicing the peel so she could peel it herself.  She broke the slices in half so she would have more.  

 Probably the favorite activity of the week was getting to play with all the kitchen items-the REAL ones.  We also used the classification cards from the 1+1+1=1 E pack and matched the objects with the pictures.  But, mostly, they just played...for a couple of days!

Certainly, this week was a lot of fun!  We are looking forward to this coming week of F is for Frog :).  I hope you had a great week, too!

Thanks for stopping by!

God Bless,
Lisa

Montessori Monday with Charger

Charger has been completely in to language the last week or two.  He stops me in the middle of playing a game to say B!  Ball starts with B!  Or how to spell a word.  One night, as he was going to sleep, he yelled down asking how to spell moon.  It's pretty fun to watch.

It started when I brought out the sandpaper letters.  

He has been doing sound sorts over the last few weeks.  

M is for music box :).

So, today I pulled out the Moveable Alphabet to see what he would do.  His first word was 'jet.' 

Dog was next.

Followed by duck.  He was spelling the animals from Word World, lol.  Now, he didn't know that duck ended in -ck.  At first he had duc because those are the sounds he heard.  But, having seen duck written he knew that it was missing a letter.  He tried l because he knew it was a taller letter.  Finally, I just told him.

Then he ran out of words that he could think of (he was very excited and having a hard time concentrating), so I grabbed some CVC objects and he used those.  Sun and bib.

Pan is on top, ant he came up with on his own.  I did have to help him 'hear' the sounds, but he figured them out on his own.  I was very proud of him and he was so excited!!  We have been spelling words all night, I'll have to come up with more for tomorrow!

Other things that Charger has been up to:

Practical Life:

Lacing people beads.

Lacing transportation sewing cards.

Lacing shape beads (are you seeing a theme?)

Cutting food. 

Dry pouring!  He never chooses pouring, but apparently this little set attracted him.

Mathematics:

Number rods

And extensions.

He really gets into his work.

And is very excited when he completes it.  I am so thankful for the Montessori Method because I can tell you he would NOT sit still and learn these concepts with worksheets!

Table top rods.

Introduction to addition.

Spindle boxes.

He also worked on cards and counters, but I don't have a photo of that.  I am not sure if we will move forward yet or not.  He CAN count to 10, but he gets bored or distracted and just starts quickly placing his counters or spindles.  This usually results in boxes 8, 9, and or 10 having the incorrect number of counters.  We may keep working on it, but for now all he wants to do is spell anyways :).

Sensorial:

Geometric presentation tray blindfolded.  

One day, we tried the experiment of rolling a marble down the brown stairs.  I wish I would have had my camera that day, because he LOVED it.  He liked the musical part, but just rolling the marbles kept his focus for a good 45 minutes!!  

So, those are some of the highlights (or at least the things I caught on camera).  I am very interested to see where the next few weeks take us!

Thanks for stopping by and God Bless!!

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