Montessori - Sensorial - Sound Boxes

Click HERE for full description of the activity.

Once again, I found it too costly to purchase the authentic Montessori material, so I made my own.

- Containers pack of 6 purchased from $2 dollar shop. You can use any suitable small containers that you have at home. Just make sure that they all look the same.
- contents, all free. Found from things around the house.
- tray to hold container purchased from $2 shop.

A good thing about making your own sound boxes is that you can change the materials in the box whenever you wish to adapt to the abilities of your child. It is always good to start off with something easy that makes distinctively very different sounds, then slowly increase the difficulty by changing the contents of the boxes to produce more similar sounds.

Montessori - Sensorial - Mystery Bag

This week, we tried for the first time the Montessori Mystery Bag activity and it was loads of fun. Read HERE for a full description of this activity.

We started off with the most familiar items that T loved. Her colourful threading beads that she has been playing with for the past year. These beads were 3 dimensional and all the basic shapes were there (there was even a fish shape).

Getting Ready :

Display all the diffrent shapes out and name and feel with eyes closed each one. (We had ball/circle, cube/square, triangle, star, heart, fish)

Activity 1 :

To start off simple, I put just 1 item in the bag without T knowing what it is and she will have to feel it and tell me what it is. We keep repeating until we finished all the shapes.

Activity 2 :

I put all the items in the bag and ask her to feel and bring out only the item that I call for. This is more difficult and requires more focus to get it right.

This activity refines her sense of touch and requires her to be focused in order to feel the correct shapes. We started off very giggly and she kept wanting to peep into the bag. You can repeat the activity introducing the name of the shapes in different language, but we didn't do that yesterday since it was our first try at this and I didn't want to spoil the fun.

HomeSchool Activities for the past weeks

Finally the 1st Trimester is over and I am feeling more 'normal' now. We tried to get our homeschooling back on track. Here are some of the activities that we have done over the past weeks.

Sorting beads by colour.

The same set of coloured beads can be played in several ways. In this game, I made the first colour sequence and T has to repeat the same sequence using the remaining beads.

We continued practising finger dexterity with this threading toy. I noticed her fine motor skills are pretty good for her age and she does enjoy this threading game. I made her a necklace and she made me one too. We wore it around the house for the afternoon.

We tried to practise some writing skills with this set of Kumon cards. We did succeed in 'writing' all the alphabets. However, personally, I don't fancy these cards that much for the following reasons :
1. the marker included is too fine/thin for a 2.5 yr old proper handling
2. some of the picture for the alphabet were too confusing / difficult.
3. the cards didn't show clearly the proper directions have the stokes the alphabet should be written in.
I think I shall soon be making my own cards.

Let's play more

My MS is good on some days and bad on others. I days when I don't feel so tired, I try to do some simple activities with T at home. Here's T having a go with the Montessori cylinder blocks.

She's pretty good when its just 1 block, but when 3 is put together, she has yet to finish it.








This magnetic playhouse is one of T's favourite toy in recent months. She takes it out quite often to play. This day, I recall an episode in Desperate Housewife where the children in school were requested to draw pictures of their family and they ended up portraying embarrassing images of their family.
I couldn't help feeling that we must be doing something right in our family when I see T playing with her toy family. She puts mummy and daddy sitting on the sofa and 2 children sitting on mummy's and daddy's lap.

HomeSchool - Big & Small

I can't emphasize how important it is for parents to whole-heartedly play with their child and be attentive to them when they are playing. In the past week, I noticed that T was confusing "BIG" with "Small". She would ask me for a piece candy and says she wants a small piece. But when I give it to her, she would point to a bigger piece in the packet and say no not this one, I want a small piece. And so I realised that she got her concepts wrong.

I printed some picture cards off the internet to show the difference between BIG & SMALL. We made 12 sets of pictures, each with a big image and the same image in small size. We took out a big & small plastic bowl and we sorted the picture cards into the correct bowl. As we put the card in the bowl used the "Montessori Three Period Lesson" to re-enforce the concept of big and small.

"Three Period Lesson"
1st Round -
Mum says : This is a big flower, please put the big flower in the big bowl. This is a small flower, please put the small flower in the small bowl. (Repeats this sequence till the all cards are completed)

2nd Round -
Mum says : Which one is the big flower, can you please put the big flower in the big bowl. Which is the small flower, can you please put the small flower in the small bowl. (Repeats till all cards are completed)

3rd Round -
Mum takes a card and asks : What is this?
T replies : Big flower !

Montessori - Sensorial - Colour Tablets

I made my own modifications on this Montessori activity as the real learning aids were too costly. A set of Ikea colourful plastic cups (no cost, had them at home for years), a pack of coloured popsticle sticks for HK$5 from stationery shop.
Activities :
1. sort the tray of sticks into the correct cup (as shown in photo.
2. take out only 1 cup and ask child to pick out the same colour sticks from the tray.
Here is a link to an official Montessori site for this activity : http://www.infomontessori.com/sensorial/visual-sense-color-tablets.htm

Montessori - Practical Life Skills - Using Tongs

As T gets older, her attention span gets shorter and she has less patience. I tried to train her patience and concentration with this beans sorting activity. At the same time, she also practises her hand muscle coordination as she learns to use the tongs to pick up the beans. She was excited to use the tongs and stayed focused for about 15 mins until daddy came out and turned on the TV. This activity trains the following :
1. concentration
2. fine motor of the fingers
3. practical life on how to use tongs
4. sensorial when differentiating the types of beans

Happenings - Week 41, 2008

This is the 2nd week of school. But as there are some public holidays this week, there was only 3 school days. T is not handling school so well and both she and I are kinda stressed about the situation. Will blog about it later when things hopefully take turn for the better.

On the brighter side here's what we have done at home this week :

We have progressed to play with 2 sets of Montessori cylinder blocks at the same time. I am amazed by how she tries to simplify the problem by first completing the easiest set, before moving on to work with the more difficult one.


Recently, T has a craze for Minnie Mouse. So this weekend we made Minnie cookies. She had a blast playing with the flour, dough and cookie stamps. At one point she was powdering my neck and face with flour.


It is so amazing how children learn by just observing. I wanted to teach T how to gurgle and rinse her mouth, but didn't have any idea how to show her what goes on within the closed mouth. Anyway, after 2 weeks of drinking tap water, she finally figured out how to spit out the water instead of drinking it. Here's a clip of her rinsing her mouth and washing her hands after eating.

Montessori - Cylinder Blocks, Block 1

I noticed that T likes to figure things out and enjoys games such as the colour sorting, shape sorting, etc... and I really like the serious look on her face when she does them.

2 weeks ago, I invested in a set of the Montessori cylinder blocks as I could think of any homemade toys that can replicate the same effect.(http://www.infomontessori.com/sensorial/visual-sense-cylinder-blocks.htm)

I've only introduced block 1 to T and she's gotten better and faster at it. I might try to introduce block 2 next week.