Montessori Activity: Tracing Chinese Character with Feathers

Age: From 3.5 years old

Objectives:

1. To provide a fun way to teach writing Chinese characters

2. To train the child's fine motor skills

Materials:

1. 1 bowl contains feathers

2. 1 Chinese Character chicken
3. 1 glue stick
4. 1 toy chicken (optional)

5. 1 tray

Directions:

1. Demonstrate to your child how to trace the Chinese character using the glue, taking care to show her the correct sequence of strokes.

2. As you trace, read the Chinese character clearly to your child.
3. Let her try to paste the feathers onto the Chinese character.

4. As her to say out loud the Chinese character that she is tracing.

Additional Information:

I tried this activity with C today 23 November 2019 (3Y6M7D). She enjoys pasting the feathers. It is hard to recognize the Chinese character, when it is full of feathers, but it is for the fun for it and the purpose is to cultivate love for learning Chinese.

Montessori Activity: Tracing Chinese Character with Stamps

Age: From 3.5 years old

Objectives:

1. To provide a fun way to teach writing Chinese characters

2. To train the child's fine motor skills

Materials:

1. 1 stamp and stamp pad

2. 1 Chinese Character
3. 1 toy horse (optional)

4. 1 tray

Directions:

1. Demonstrate to your child how to trace the Chinese character using stamp, taking care to show her the correct sequence of strokes.

2. As you trace, read the Chinese character clearly to your child.

3. Invite your child to try.

4. As her to say out loud the Chinese character that she is tracing.

Additional Information:

I tried this activity with C today 19 November 2019 (3Y6M3D). I use this activity to revise the Chinese character "horse" that she learned during the Chinese enrichment class last Sunday. She preferred other tracing activities better, especially the one with gel crayon. She wasn't so fond of tracing out Chinese character by stamping. She had fun stamping all over the paper instead, which was also fine :-)

19 November 2019 (3Y6M3D)

Montessori Activity: Tracing Chinese Character with Stickers

Age: From 3.5 years old

Objectives:

1. To provide a fun way to teach writing Chinese characters

2. To train the child's fine motor skills

Materials:

1. 1 sheet of stickers

2. 1 Chinese Character written on a piece of paper

3. 1 tray

Directions:

1. Demonstrate to your child how to trace the Chinese character by pasting the stickers.

2. As you paste the stickers, say the stroke of the Chinese character clearly to your child.

3. Invite your child to try.

4. As her to say out loud the stroke of the Chinese character that she is tracing.

Additional Information:

C tried this today 18 November 2019 (3Y6M2D) and really enjoyed it. I think it also helped her to learn to recognize the Chinese character for cow well.

18 Nov 2019 (3Y6M2D)

Montessori Activity: Tracing Chinese Character with Play Dough

Age: From 3.5 years old

Duration: 30 minutes

Objectives:

1. To provide a fun way to teach writing Chinese characters
2. To train the child's fine motor skills

Materials:

1. 1 container of play dough
2. 1 Chinese Character
3. 1 tray

Directions:

1. Demonstrate to your child how to trace the Chinese character using play dough, taking care to show her the correct sequence of strokes.
2. As you trace, read the Chinese character clearly to your child.
3. Invite your child to try.
4. As her to say out loud the Chinese character that she is tracing.

Additional Information:

I tried this activity with C today 15 November 2019 (3Y5M30D). I use this activity to revise the Chinese character "lamb" that she learned during the Chinese enrichment class last Sunday. She could remember the character, and was able to say it out loud. She enjoyed this activity very much, more than J did at this age. She was able to concentrate and play much longer than J. It could be development difference between boy and girl. If you wish to make your own play dough, you can follow this recipe:

Ingredients:

- 2 cups flour
- 1 cup water cup hot water
- 1 TBS cooking oil
- 1 cup salt
- a couple drops of food colouring (optional)

Directions:

1. Dissolve the salt in the water first to reduce the lumpiness due to undissolved salt in the dough later on.

2. Mix together and knead into a dough.

3. Divide it into 4 doughs, dip a hole and add food colouring to it (make sure to wear gloves to prevent staining. Then knead and blend well.

15 November 2019 (3Y5M30D)

Montessori Activity: Rainbow Name

Age: From 4 years old

Activity Duration: 5-10 minutes

Objective(s):
1. To teach the child to write his own name in a fun way.
2. To provide a varied way to practise letter-writting.

Materials:
1. A few magic pens - those color changing markers are the most fun, that will change colour as white is added on
2. 1 piece of paper with your child's name written on it with a pencil for him to trace.

Directions:
1. You can prepare this beforehand, but you can also write your child's name on the spot with him, as he gets to see how each letter is written.

2. Encourage him to trace each letters a few rounds so that it become very colorful.

Additional Information:
J (4Y0M27D) has started to show some real interest writing his name. I think he got inspired by the children at the church's Sunday School, who are writing their own names. I tried to introduce this activity a few months ago, but he wasn't interested in writing. So I think it is a good time to re-introduce this activity.

Yesterday, J started to write his own name during Sunday School, and really motivated to do so, this time around. However, he got the "s" inverted and has difficulty writting "a". So I think tracing his name will help him get the right practise.

The color changing markers are also available from Amazon:

Montessori Activity: Metal Inserts

AGE: 4-6 years old

OBJECTIVE(S):

1.     To prepare the child for writing by learning to grip the pencil and controlling it including lightness of touch, evenness of pressure, continuity of lines and control of lines.

2.     To develop eye-hand coordination.

3. To familiarize the child with the curves and angles found in letters.

MATERIALS:

1.     1 metal insert (They are exactly the same as the wooden inserts of the geometric cabinet)

2.     3 color pencils

3.     1 piece of paper

4.     1 tray

PRESENTATION:

1.    Choose a shape.

2.    Show the child how to correctly hold the pencil.

3.   Trace the outline of the inner circle from the metal insert and say: “I have made a red circle.”

4.    Place the metal circle directly on top of the circle that you have just drawn.

5.    Trace the outline of the outer circle with another color pencil.

6.   When the child has done many of the different shapes of metal inserts, and you feel confident of the child’s ability of tracing the metal inserts, tell the child to make lines inside of the blue shape.

9.   Select another colored pencil and draw starting from inside left edge of the drawn shape and draw a vertical zig-zag from the top to the bottom of the shape drawn.

7.    Invite your child to try.

8.   Show your child how and where to store the finished work.


VARIATIONS:

1. After drawing around the interior edge of a frame, the child places the insert on the paper so that it does not correspond with the first drawn shape (this would not be possible with the circle.)

2. After drawing, the child combines two and more shapes to create a symmetrical pattern with many sections to be filled in.

VIDEO DEMONSTRATION:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6PkTDvmiXg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sQWUO2jT2o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO96KdrB9us

TIPS:

1.     Cut out the figures and paste it on a page.

2.     Make booklets.

3.     Make patterns with tracing different shapes and turning them around.

4.     Let the child experience the effects of different pressures on the pencil.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

The variety of movements required in this work provides the child the chance to practice the control of the writing movements and with changing directions. According to Info Montessori, “the child can learn to make continuous stroke. This is particularly helpful in cursive script.

J (3Y8M14D) tried for the first time at home today. He had tried it at the kindergarten and he enjoyed it very much. He was still not very good at controlling the metal inserts so that it did not move around, when he traced the shape.

If you don't have Montessori metal inserts, you can use shape stencils or any shape blocks to substitute. 

Updates:

We tried this activity on 27 November 2013, and J (4Y8M22D) was very enthusiastic in trying out many different shapes.

REFERENCES:

http://www.infomontessori.com/language/written-language-metal-insets.htm

 

The Montessori metal inserts and optional tracing tray are available from Amazon:

Montessori Activity: Tracing Letters & Numbers with Stencil

Age: From 3 years old (Level 4)

Activity Duration: 5 - 15 minutes

Materials:
1. 1 letter stencil
2. 1 magic pen or marker
3. 1 plain paper

Directions:
1. Demonstrate by holding the stencil on a paper and tracing a letter with a marker.

2. Let your child try.

Additional Information:
Here is another method of providing a varied and interesting way to learn the letters and at the same time, practising pencil grasp. Joshua (2Y11M25D) tried this today and he enjoyed it. He did it twice for a total of 20 minutes. Joshua commented that the letters were not joined, because there is a strip in the middle of the stencil to hold the letters together.

You can get similar stencils from Amazon: