Montessori Infant and Toddler Curriculum Part 2: Math and Language

This is part 2 in my Infant and Toddler Montessori Curriculum series.  I talked about sensorial in this post.  http://www.discoverykidzone.blogspot.com/2015/08/montessori-infant-toddler-curriculum.html

We are going to continue the series by discussing Math and Language.  Infants are always learning and it is exciting to watch and facilitate. 

Math

From day one infants are surrounded by math.  We ask what time it is, how old they are, how many ect.  Math is a very abstract and small children can’t understand the concepts.  They need to experience real objects in their environment to make the concept much more concrete.  Math begins with the realization of one and then more than one.  To witness a child evolving in this area is an amazing discovery.  Math activities for infants and toddlers can include:  Stacking and nesting cubes, number and block cubes, sorting and counting materials, matching and grading and sandpaper numbers. 

 

Language

From birth children are completely aware and are learning at an extremely rapid rate all about the human language.  Language is vital to the process of thinking.  The child needs to be spoken to, read to, sung to and listened to often.  Children need a broad exposure to language. 

Here are some song ideas:

Fuzzy Wuzzy Caterpillar Fuzzy, wuzzy caterpillar Into a corner will crawl. (squat and move to a corner) He’ll spin himself a blanket (move head in a spin) And then go fast asleep (pretend to sleep) Fuzzy, wuzzy caterpillar Wakes up by and by ( wake up, slowly move arms) To find he has wings of beauty Changed into a butterfly. (fly with arms)

Jack-in-the-Box Down in a box (squat to ground’ talk softly and slowly) There lives a little man. He waits and he waits, As quiet as he can Until I open the lid – POP!

Johnny Works With One Hammer Johnny works with one hammer, One hammer, one hammer, Johnny works with one hammer, Then he works with two. (repeat with 2, 3, 4) Johnny works with five hammers, Five hammers, five hammers, Johnny works with five hammers, Then he goes to sleep.

To aid the child in his language skill development the Montessori environment needs to be set up with literacy rich and language in mind.  Teachers and parents need to have books, pictures, picture labels, objects and matching pictures all thorough out the environment.

Click on the links below for book ideas for infants and toddlers:

Peek a boo Forest

Where is Baby's Belly Button?

Look! Look!

You can find more infant toddler resources here:

http://www.michaelolaf.net/BirthtoThreeDevelopment.html

http://www.blog.montessoriforeveryone.com/montessori-basics-7-essentials-of-a-toddler-classroom.html

http://www.infomontessori.com/language/introduction.htm



 Thank you for visiting.  Let me know if you have any suggestions or comments. 

Rachel Supalla



Show me the money! Montessori money math!

Sensory math!  Sorting coins that are "hidden" in water beads.  

Show me the money!!  I mean really, who isn't excited about money?  Kids included.  It is natural for children to have a desire to learn about money.  It is a part of our everyday lives.  We should take this opportunity to teach them about something when their interest is high.  I like to introduce money around President’s Day.  We start with a discussion about Washington and Lincoln and that leads into learning about pennies and quarters.  

Another good time to build excitement about money is on St. Patrick’s Day when you can go on a search for the money at the end of the rainbow.  

This is when you can introduce the nickel.  We start with sorting coins, nickel , quarter and penny.  I use clear water beads and hide the coins to sort in the water beads.  After they have mastered that I add in the dime.  The next step after they have mastered coin sorting is to introduce the coin values. 

I do this by making it a Montessori counting work, I use sandpaper numbers to help reinforce the value of the coins and have objects to count to reinforce one to one correspondence.  

At the end of our money unit we celebrate with a PJ day and snack money store.  Each child brings in a snack and I pass out coins for them to count out to buy snacks.  

This was a fantastic learning experience and super fun to top it off!!  Have fun showing the kids the money! 

Montessori Monday Pond Trays

Montessori Monday

Frog Pond Trays

We are studying frogs and ponds this month.  For Montessori Monday I

wanted to do a post about our trays.  I get quite a few questions and

comments on where I get my items and how I set up my classroom.  I am

going to give you some tips on how to set up interesting trays in your

 classroom and at home. 

This is a duck dropper work, the child squeezes the dropper to fill up the blue water and then fills up every duck on the tray.  This builds fine motor skills and hand eye coordination.

Let me start off by saying that I was a preschool, Kindergarten teacher

 and mom all before I got my Montessori certification and became a

Montessori teacher.  The way I set up my school and homeschool reflects

 both backgrounds and I believe I have combined the best of both worlds. 

This is a pom pom transfer extension.  They have to use the tongs to transfer pom poms to the matching color frogs.  This is a build fine motor and math skills.

 First I start with a theme,  for example this month our theme is pond life. 

 Every month I go to the thrift store, target and the dollar store to

 constantly look for interesting trays and containers that can be used on

 work trays.  After each holiday and season I shop all the SALES!!  I

 have built up items over the years and now I have an abundance of things

 to choose from every month.  At the beginning of each year I make a

 scope and sequence to lay out what I want the kids to learn for homeschool

 and preschool.  I break it down into months.  Every month when I write my

lesson plans I use this as a guide and I fill out each individual child’s lesson

 plan to target those goals.  Here is where the fun part comes in!!  I

 search my items to look for works.  For example if I have kids who need

to work on operating a dropper I will look for fun ways to reinforce this

 skill with theme based items.  Every month when I put out the new works

 the kids are always waiting in anticipation to see what will be next and

 even if it is reinforcing the same skill it is packaged in a new way thus

making it more exciting! 

These are some of our language trays.  The first one is the 4 little speckled frogs.  They use the felt pieces to retell the song and story.  This reinforces language skills, counting, subtraction and sorting.

Next is draw and label a frog and sort the frog life cycle.

Here are some of our math trays, Lily pad addition using frog counters, frog sort and classify, frog counting with counters, frog patterns

Here are a few of our Practical life trays,

  frog egg transfer using small Styrofoam balls, operating a dropper duck pond, build a turtle with wiki sticks and our sewing basket.

 Some items that I always keep in stock to use are:

theme ice cube trays and silicone baking trays, Silicone shape baking cups, Colored trays, Theme erasers, Small

 plastic toys such as frogs, Water beads, Suction cup bath shapes, Marbles, Dollar store items for sensory box,

 Different colored and scented play dough , Theme based counters and letters, Theme

 based shape books made on the cricut, Crinkle paper, Medicine droppers, Various scoops and tongs from

Montessori Services, Theme based foam or felt shapes from Oriental Trading, Wiki Sticks , Pom Poms, Colored

noodles, Pipe cleaners, Letter and number beads

With these basic items you can make hundreds of fun work trays and change them often to keep it

fun and exciting!!

What new works did you make this week???

Rachel

I am linking up with living montessori now and what's on the tray wednesday

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Montessori Monday, Math Madness!!

Montessori Monday Math Madness

Why and How?

This week for Montessori Monday I decided to write about Montessori Math.  I wanted to tell you why I LOVE Montessori Math and how it works.

Why?

Let me start off by saying that I am TER I BLE at math!!  I just didn’t get it.  I am incredibly visual and kinesthetic and if you said to me what is the square root of sixteen I would look at you with a puzzled face and say what kind of plant makes a square root? Yep, it is that bad!  Well let me tell you that I went to high school and college and did not truly understand math until I was completing my Montessori certification and I had to figure out what the square root of the pink tower was that I finally had my AH HA moment!  You know the one where the light turns on and everything seems glorious?!  I finally could visualize math and how it works.  It is amazing that I literally had to go back to preschool to learn, but that is what it took.  Now I do understand math and I am thrilled to give kids that glorious AH HA moment at such a young age! 

How?

Montessori math is completely concrete and hands on!  No boring drills and flashcards.  You start with the basics and build on it through mastery.  This week I am going to talk about steps one through three.

The first step is the sandpaper numbers and counters.  I always introduce these concepts simultaneously in order to reinforce one to one correspondence.  This is a fun math activity because you can add different themed counters all year long! 

Start this math work as a sensory activity.  Have the child trace the number and then repeat in different sensory materials such as sand, rice or shaving cream. 

After they trace and repeat have them count the number of items they have traced. Mix the numbers up to reinforce number recognition. 

The second step in the Montessori math process is the number rods.  The number rods are a versatile tool that will be used all the way into kindergarten and beyond.  You start very basic by counting the colors on the rods.  You will then combine the number rods and sandpaper numbers followed by red and blue patterns.  After the child can successfully count to higher numbers they can make a number rod maze!!  They LOVE this activity and repeat it often.  Finally the number rods will be used for addition and subtraction!  Talk about a fabulous concrete math tool!! 

Geometry is the third step of math that is covered in the Montessori curriculum.  Constructive triangles are a tool that can be hard for even adults to complete however, with proper training and building concentration children as young as three can accomplish this task and with great joy! 
Constructive triangles come in a wooden boxes with multiple triangles in different sizes with a larger triangle to use a self correcting tool.  The children must match the colors and the black lines to make a larger trianle.  This work gets progressively more difficult and requires a great deal of concentration to complete. 

Never underestimate the mind of a young child.  It is truly an amazing thing!  They are an empty vessel and it is our job to fill them up!  Happy Montessori Math Madness day!  I am linking up with www.livingmontessorinow.com for Montessori Monday!  

Rachel

Mommy Monday Hip Homeschool Hop!

Dolls, Barbies, fingernails and hairbows!!

On Monday's we stay at home and have "mommy day".  This is our day to do fun homeschooling and projects.  Allie loves to play with her dolls and barbies.  Her favorite thing to do is cook and she loves learning anything that has to do with cooking!

Allie is getting very good with her fractions because of all the cooking she does.  She can go in the kitchen all by herself and make the whole family scrambled eggs and she even adds bacon, cheese, dill (and one time even raisins!)  While we are cooking I always grab that teaching moment.  We talk about volume. measuring, adding, subtracting, dividing equal shares and fractions. 

 

This is one of our math songs!

For reading today we read Aesop's Fables.  We did a comparison chart and we discussed why Aesop chose certain animals for his fables.  She chose her favorite fable and told me why she chose that fable.

Her favorite fable today was the one about the peacock.  She liked how the goddess pointed out the peacock's strengths and how everyone has something they are good at and everyone can't be good at everything. 

Allie as a fairy in Peter Pan

After we talked about the peacock story she told me what she was good at.  She is good at acting, singing, cooking and riding horses.  For her writing assignment today she made a bubble map all about her.  She then used her descriptions to write an acrostic poem about herself.  She really enjoyed this creative writing assignment. 

We use the Workbox system for homeschooling.  A few of Allie's workboxes today were her contraction snowmen (see freebie!) and clay suffixes

making clay words with suffixes. 

For art we are just finishing up our Polar regions unit.  Here are the projects she did for this unit.  She also made a Polar bear mask.

Here is her torn paper landscape with polar bears!  I think she did an awesome job :)

Here is her Inuit Native American and her igloo made out of Styrofoam blocks.  This was a great math project!  She had to cut the cubes and spiral them in tilting towards the middle.  I put on the hot glue where she wanted and she placed the cubes.  The little man was made out of a wooden clothes pin, paper and fur.  Allie made his arms and legs out of pipe cleaners and then wrapped the paper around them and taped it. 

I love homeschooling!!!  We had a great day, I would love to hear a comment about how your day went!

Montessori Monday Valentine's Day Fine Motor Skills

Valentine's Sensory Box!!

Spooning water beads into heart trays.

Today I want to share with you some of our Valentine's day "works".  In a Montessori classroom we call the items that we put out on the shelves for children to work on "works".  Many of these activities can be made with common household items.  The kids are given an individual or group lesson and then they may choose them off the shelf to work on. 

These are our practical life shelves. 

Practical life "works" are introduced to kids to build fine motor skills and to work on practical life skills.  Many of the tasks in this area are to practice everyday skills.  The children love working on activities that they see adults work on everyday. 

Card writing basket. 

This has word wall words, Valentine's day words, pens, markers, pencils, and items to decorate a card

Sorting, counting and patterning Valentine's erasers

Valentine's Tangrams

We are working on Pouring into 4 containers. 

Lacing beads extension, making a criss cross on the buttons

Heart lacing

Shape nuts and bolts, sorting, and matching fine motor practice

Letter Pinning and heart pinning

Fine motor practice marbles on a suction cup paddle

Letter writing on white boards

Wikki Stick letter and heart shaping

Fine motor practice heart sticks into a Parmesan cheese container

I found this adorable broom at the Dollar Store and thought it would be perfect for "crumbing" the tables.  The children love doing this work. 

Heart "I spy" box.  I found this box at the Dollar store.  I filled it with rainbow rice, Valentine's shapes, letter number beads.  The children shake the box and find letters and numbers.  The younger ones circle the letters and numbers they find on a control chart.  The older ones write the numbers down. 

Heart shaped links.  I found these at the Dollar store.  The children make patterns and sort them.  This week we will use them for measuring. 

Our Math Shelves

Here is what is on our math shelves right now.  When a new parent asks about Montessori I show them our math shelves as an example.  I tell them you will not see a lot of worksheets come home because everything we do in the classroom is hands on.  We have a "math work time" and a "language work time" everyday.  

Fine motor practice and counting

Shape matching

Pattern Block and unifix cube graphing

Penny sorting, and coin rolling. 

These are a few of the works we have on our shelves right now.  I would love to know what you are working on this month.  Please leave me a comment and let me know how you can use some of these works at home or in your classroom!