DIY montessori maths beads

After seeing the colorful and interesting Montessori maths beads online, I got very inspired to DIY my own set. This Montessori method of using beads to represent quantities is a great way to teach young children maths, as they makes it interesting and more concrete.

I just finished my bead stairs and is using them to introduce the numbers 1 to 100 to both of my boys currently. There are many other ways to use them and the boys like to play with them a lot.

Materials needed:

 

Beads of course! In 10 different colors to represent the different numbers: RED, GREEN, PINK, YELLOW, BLUE, PURPLE, WHITE, BROWN, NAVY and GOLD. Traditional Montessori materials requires wooden beads, but I couldn't find them at a reasonable budget  thus I just improvised and opted for the cheaper plastic beads option. I purchased Darice plastic faceted 8mm beads. each pack have 480beads and I got 1 of each colors and 2 of the golden sun colors. Cost 42usd excluding shipping fee. I got them from consumer crafts.com or you can get them from amazon.

Next up is the beading wires, I got them from walmart craft section, a total 3 of them at 2.50usd each. cost: 8.20usd after tax.

 

And of course, the tools. A basic round nose plier and wirecutter will do.

 

Making the bead bars:

 

You need to make a eye loop using the round nose pliers and bead it accordingly, leave a small length for another loop and cut the wire. I kind of went into a factory mode by cutting all the wires for the particular length 30pcs in one go, thus the making process went quite fast. Its' really easy and my boys were nosy around when I was making them as they can't wait to get their little hands on them.

 

The beads I brought were more than enough and I had tons of the leftover beads which I turned them into mini bead bars set for my niece. I am planning to make more of the golden 10 bars to be able to introduce the value of up to 1 thousand for my 5 yr old.

 

 

And lastly, I went to get this organizer box for storage from Michaels, with a 50% coupon of course. Sadly there wasn't enough compartments thus I got to merge the 1s with 2s and 3s with 4s. Or you can pop by ROSS to get their make up organizer tray which have more compartments but I had this box already so I gave it a miss.

 



 

 

So in total I spent around 55usd and made a set of Montessori bead bars for my kids, a mini set for my niece and still have tons of leftover beads in the colors of 1 to 9.

 

 

In comparison to this amazon set pricing, with less than 20usd more I got a bigger set of Montessori math beads bars and many many 10 golden bead bars. What do you think? Is it worth the effort and pricing to diy or to just purchase the authentic set?

 

Thanks for stopping by:

XOXO

Ashley

 

 

 

 

Sharing a DIY Name recognition worksheet

Inspired by the fun hands-on spelling worksheets online, I attempted to make one for little brother to practice writing and name recognition. It involves tracing your name, coloring, searching and cut and paste activity. Which makes it fun for the kids to do and luckily Allen enjoyed it.

I created it using Microsoft words office and you can find the file here and edit it to what ever name you want. Note: you will need to install the tracing font in order to view the tracing portion correctly but if you dun have office and interested in having it customized to your preferred name, do comment below, I will try to edit it and turn it into a pdf and upload it for you:)

Thanks for dropping by,
XOXO
Ashley

Alphabet of the week: Letter C

We are in the 5th week of the curriculum by thisreadingmama.com. (mainly for little brother to reinforce his alphabet recognition and to encourage him to write them. Big brother knows his alphabets well enough so I only involves him in the sight words portion and spend more time on his spelling of cvc words and phonics blending.) The first 4 letters covered were T, F, P and M but I wont be covering the stuff we did then as I did not have any nice photos taken.

And I dun really follow the intended lesson plans for each day as we normally finished all the activities planned within 2 to 3 days of homeschool. So I got to look online and get more ideas of activities and games to add on to the weekly plan for the rest of the week.



Everyday we will begin with the reading of the letter booklet. Allen takes a lot of pride in reading the mini books. He will always pester me to listen to him reading the books. After that we willl sing the sight word song.



This week sightword is 'look'. I love the sightword songs cos it makes it so much easier for them to remember the spelling of the words. Both the boys will take turns to do the sight word mazes and sightword search. For big brother, I will also print out the sight word worksheet from confessions of homeschooler blog for him to practice his writing as well. And whenever we had our story time, I will take note to stop and ask the boys to read the words that they have learnt so far to reinforce and help them 'sticks'.



I also printed out the following activities from confessions of a homeschooler blog:
number arranging caterpillar and the hungry caterpillar picture cards which I laminatrd and punched hole in each picture and the boys will practice their fine motor skills by lacing the picture cards in sequence when I read the book to them. They loved this activity so much that I was requested to do this with them for at least 4 times this week.



Next is the pocket chart sentence building for allen. (aidan dun really like doing this activity not sure why but allen loves it. Yup my 2 boys are 1 heaven 1 earth. super different from each other)






Allen is practicing his scissors skills wih the patterning cards and we did the ABAB pattern which allen finds it easy peasy after which I tried AABAAB and he got a bit confused initially. Lol.



For number recognition, I will call out the number and allen will have to color in the correct numbers. He just mastered 1 to 10 and I am hoping to start on 11 to 20 soon.



I also used this Velcro stick on numbers chart for him to play with. This is a printable from http://toddlercanread.blogspot.com/.



Allen writing his alphabet on the salt tray. We will also practice all the alphabets learnt so far and I will also write down all the learnt sight words one by one and ask him to read them for me.

Allen dotting his alphabet C worksheet.

And we baked cookies for breakfast!

Books we read: Corduroy, The very hungry caterpillar, The cat in the hat and many more...



And this concludes our alphabet C week. With a picture of Baby Abbie tutu mouth.

Thanks for dropping by:
XOXO
Ashley

Sight words slapping game

Today I wanted to have a revision activity to assess and reinforce the sight words we have learnt so far. So I used recycled paper, wrote them down and taped them to the wall. Invited the boys over and introduced the game to them. Both of them have to stand a short distance away from the wall, and I have their names written down on the chalkboard for their scores charting. They got so excited with this mini 'competition' and I also mentioned the winner will get chocolate!

To play, I just call out random sightwords and the first one to run over and slap the correct word gets one point.

 

What happened? Aidan started crying after the first game caused he slapped on the wrong word and Allen won the first round. I was shocked!!! OMG! After consoling him and lots of encouragements, he perked up and we continued on our game, this time with happiness and laughers. No more wayangness...

 

My wayang boy... Sigh...

 

Fast recovery.

 

After about 12 rounds, both of them get their chocolates as both are winners! A fun and super easy game to play. You can easily use this idea for other words, numbers and even names!

 

And the scores charting also intrigued the boys a lot. When I was busy making breakfast, both of them are 'playing' the game themselves and charting their own scores. Goodwork boys!

 

Busy mum lactation cookies recipe

Previously read about lactation cookies online and since I am breastfeeding little princess, I ordered the special ingredients needed from amazon. Golden flaxseeds and lecithin granules. But taking care of 3 kids = tired and lazy mum. So I improvised the cookies and brought oatmeal cookies premix and just added the 'extra ingredients' to the dough, mix well and bake according to instructions. Tadaa! Lactation cookies within 20 mins including baking time. And the cookies taste great! My boys love them too.

Dun ask me how many tablespoons of the seeds and granules I added, cause I just poured them in happily.

Effectiveness of this cookies? Not sure as I currently only latch on for my girl, so cant measure the amount of bm I had. But my little princess is getting chubbier n chubbier and ahem... should be enough and they tastes great, so who cares? Better than spending lots of $$ on the cookies sold online right?

If you tried it do leave a comment and let me know what you think of it?

Thanks for dropping by!
XOXO
Ashley

 

So far I have tried 2 flavors of cookie premix: oatmeal and oatmeal chocolate chips. The second one tastes awesome (cause of the choco of course) while the first one seems less fattening and healthier.

 

A new blog, a new lifestyle

 

Some facts:

I am a mum of 3. 5yrs old big brother Aidan, 3yrs old small brother Allen, and lastly a 1 month old baby sister Abbie. We made a big change in our lifestyle on last year September by starting to homeschool the 2 boys. We started collecting books and educational games and toys and a bookshelf was purchased and placed in the living room. And a daily routine of bed time stories are also implemented. I am so happy to see the improvement in both of them and regretted never starting the change earlier. But better late then never right?



Now I am starting this blog to share our weekly activities and I will also be sharing some DIY pintables as well in future. Hope that you all will enjoy this blog as our family embark on our learning journey.

Meanwhile this is our achievements since september last year till now so:

Aidan:
Literacy: Learnt and able to write all the 26 alphabets and says their sounds, knows how to write his name. Knows 32 short a families words and able to read and spell them.
Math: Counts and write up to 30 (used kumon workbooks and diy games) Meanwhile I am introducing simple additions to him.

Chinese: Pathetic.... I am using my first Chinese words to encourage them to read and speak Chinese. My husband n I converses between each other in Chinese mostly, but somehow the boys only prefer to speak English.



Allen:
Literacy: Learnt all the 26 letter sounds (leap frog letter factory is awesome!), we just started on reading the alphabet curriculum by thisreadingmama.com with additional activities added. He's not keen on holding any writing materials yet so I am trying very hard to encourage him to scribble or draw more.
Math: Counts and recognizes up to 10 (used flashcards, sandpaper numbers and mini games)
Chinese: Very pathetic too... LOL

Just a few months into homeschooling the boys, and i thoroughly enjoyed this journey. Especially the satisfaction whenever the boys learnt and gained knowledge through the activities we did. How about you? Do you homeschool your kids at home?

Thanks for dropping by:
XOXO
Ashley