Montessori Activity: Teaching Letter Recognition

Age: From 3 years old

Objectives:
1. To provide a fun way of teaching letters recognition

Materials:
1. 1 page of large-print advertisement from used magazine. (You can also use used printed powerpoint presentation).
2. 1 pencil
3. 1 tray

Directions:
1. Pick a letter, for example, the letter "e" and circle out the first letter "e" you see on the page.

2. Encourage your child to try to look for all the letter "e" on the page and circle them out.

Tips:
1. Read out the word to your child, as he succeeded in finding and circling the letter.

Additional Information:
This is another way of variation of teaching letters, that is free, and enable you to recycle the magazines in a useful way. Joshua tried this today, but he wasn't so interested. I will try it another day.

Montessori Activity: Pasting Pictures of Denmark with Glue

Age: From 2.5 years old

Activity Duration: 5 - 15 minutes

Objectives:
1. To train the child's motor skills.
2. To train the child's hand eye coordination.

Materials:
1. 1 blank piece of paper (write a title if you wish)
2. 10 pictures cut out from magazines
3. 1 stick of glue
4. 1 tray

Directions:
1. Show the child how to put the glue onto the back of the picture.
2. Show your child how to paste the picture onto the paper.
3. Encourage your child to try.
4. Talk to your child about the pictures he has pasted.

Additional Information:
It was a big success with pasting pictures of Singapore with glue. As part of Heritage Education Programme that I designed for Joshua, I have decided to repeat this activity with pictures of Denmark. I have cut out some pictures of Copenhagen from tourist brochures that I took for my sister's visit here. The first picture that Joshua (2Y6M7D) chosed to paste is the picture of Tivoli.

I noticed that what attracted Joshua to this activity were the attractive, full colour and well-designed brochures of Singapore and Denmark. This seemed to prove Maria Montessori's hypothesis of only using pleasing materials when educating children, although I am still more of a functional and pragmatic type of person that would not sacrify function for design.

Montessori Activity: Pasting Pictures of Singapore with Glue

4.9.2011 (2Y5M30D) - The collage completed by Joshua with my guidance

Age: From 2.5 years old

Activity Duration: 5 - 15 minutes

Objectives:
1. To train the child's motor skills.
2. To train the child's hand eye coordination.

Materials:
1. 1 blank piece of paper (write a title if you wish)
2. 10 pictures cut out from magazines
3. 1 stick of glue
4. 1 tray

Directions:
1. Show the child how to put the glue onto the back of the picture.

2. Show your child how to paste the picture onto the paper.

3. Encourage your child to try.

4. Talk to your child about the pictures he has pasted.

Video Demonstration:

Additional Information:
The pasting tray has been lying on the shelf for some time, but Joshua showed no interest for it. Yesterday, he took it out and asked to work on it. He enjoyed it very much.

Last night, Daddy FECS and I were doing some spring cleaning on an old book shelf. We cleared out some old literature, amongst which some old travel brochures on Singapore. I decided to use it for the pasting activity by cutting out some pictures of Singapore, and thus adding some heritage education element into this activity.

Recently, our Little FECS has been mentioning about taking the plane to Singapore. It would be good to introduce him the scenes and sights of Singapore through these pasting. The materials are prepared, and I wrote the word Singapore on the blank paper.

After breakfast this morning, the first thing he picked from the shelf is this activity - yeh!

Montessori Activity: Cutting Magazine Pictures with Scissors/Skæring med Saks/使用剪刀 [shǐ yòng jiǎn dāo]

Idea from my neighbour Yang Li

Age: 2.5 years old

Activity Duration: 5-15 minutes

Objective(s): To train the child’s fine motor skills

Materials:

1. 1 pair of scissors for kids
2. 3-4 pages of magazines with pictures of food, household items, etc.
3. 1 basket to put the cut pictures (optional)
4. 1 tray

Directions:

1. Demonstrate to your child by cutting the out the pictures on a page with the scissors slowly one by one.
2. Then assist your child to hold the scissors with thumb and fingers in the handle himself and have him practice opening and closing the scissors.
3. Hand your child a page from the magazine and encourage him to try cutting.

Additional Information:

J is starting to be bored with cutting papers with scissors, although his scissors skills can still be improved. Thus, I have replaced the papers with pictures from the magazines, so as to bring back some some novelty to this "old" activity. Of course, at this age, don't expect your child to be able to cut out the pictures perfectly, so long as he is having fun.

Updates 10.9.2011 (2Y6M5D):

J asked to cut with scissors today and he worked on this cutting activity for 30 minutes this morning - the longest ever. As he gets older, he has more concentration and spend a longer period of time on an activity, practicing and practicing and practicing, repeating and repeating and repeating, which was really nice.

On a busy day, when I am not so prepared with activities, instead of having to spend time drawing lines for him to cut, it is very easy to just pass him some pages of the advertising papers and scissors. One can't be a perfectionist with Montessori activity, especially for a working mom like me.

Daddy FECS was cutting J hair, while J was cutting the magazine, while sitting on the potty, while mommy got to do other things like blogging... killing 4 birds with 1 stone. One of our best attempts at multi-tasking thus far, but it gets easier with J getting older (2.5 years old) and able to do more things by himself.