Our Montessori Activities: Fine-Motor Counting Activities

I introduced a couple of slightly new activities this week. I did leave the spooning cottonballs on the shelf as they still remind me of snow, but they didn't seem interested in it. I replaced the heart picks with red chenille stems for the girls to place in the cheese shaker.

I added a new dimension to this activity by having the girls place pony beads or cheerios on the stems.

I had Tabitha sort 5 different color beads onto the stems, making it a color sorting activity for her.

In addition, each color represented a different number of beads. When she was finished putting them on the stems she got to count them and place them on a number mat I made.

I only went to 5 because I didn't want to overwhelm her. I think it was a little simple for her (She picked them right out of the shaker and put them in the correct spot), so I am going to make a mat representing the numbers 0-10. I didn't allow Amelia to use the beads because I had found her trying to eat them earlier in the week when I was setting up the activity. So she got to use cheerios. No pictures of her putting the cheerios on though.

I also changed the tonging activity again, to go with the theme. I call this the build-a-snowman tonging activity.

I am also linking to

Carnival of Maths Play

Montessori Time

Well the girls used the Montessori materials sporadically this week. The one that held their attention the longest was the heart picks:

Sorry the pictures are a bit dark.

Here they are using the spooning with cotton balls. The cotton balls were what we used at the Montessori I worked at, with the toddlers.

Yes, she tended to use her hands to put the cotton balls on the spoon.

Tabitha seemed to enjoy working with tonging with the hearts. Unfortunately, the tongs came up missing and Amelia tore some of the mini cupcake liners off. Without being able to find the tongs I didn't worry about replacing the papers. Here are a couple of pictures from when it did get used.

She also seemed to enjoy the matching heart shapes activity I found at Carissa's site.

Tabitha also decided to try some tracing, all on her own. I looked over and she had taken one of the foam hearts and was tracing it.

For more Montessori activities head over to One Hook Wonder

Penguins galore! Plus...

Wow! What a busy week we had. Besides getting ready for and throwing our picnic party, we were quite productive trying to finish up our Pp lessons. We focused on penguins (cold enough out there to make it quite appropriate). Let's see, we made potato print penguins,

an idea out of The Mailbox magazine. Same great issue (Dec/Jan 2009-10) I got the "Goodnight Moon" and "If You Give a Moose a Muffin" craft ideas from when we were doing Mm. On a side note, I was so thankful when I went to the library to get the magazine out again. The librarian was getting ready to take the past year's issues home and burn them! I got all of them and didn't have to pay a dime!!! Praise God! Anyhow, the girls liked being able to paint, but Amelia really had a blast when I let her continue painting with her fingers after I took the penguins away to dry.

She prefers the freedom of open ended art projects. Didn't really care for me holding her hand to create the penguin. Then I cut up sponges into geometrical shapes and let them sponge paint. One of the books we are reading with the penguin theme is "Baby Penguin Learn Shapes With Me." Tabitha got the hang of placing the shapes down and lifting them up carefully. Amelia on the other hand thought it would be fun to paint with the sponge shapes.

We also made shape penguins.

And they glued snowflakes to an icy (foil) background

I wanted something else where Amelia could work on her own.

We also talked a bit about where penguins live and what they eat. I found a really cool website that shows a map of the area around the south pole. You can click on an area to find out what penguins live there and all about them. We have also been creating a penguin habitat.

We glued on some batting type material for snow and placed our potato print penguins on it and the shape penguins we made.

And of course the penguins needed some water to slide into and go fishing for their lunch.

Toward the end of the week I decided we would make Penguin Lapbooks. So we will definitely be working on Pp next week as well. I'll share the lapbook in it's entirety next week.

Another activity that Tabitha really enjoyed was a Penguin Fishy Subtraction game that I first discovered while browsing the One Mom, Five Boys blog. She had found it at Making Learning Fun.

I printed out the penguin and attached it to a cereal box. I left the top on so we could store the pieces in the box without worry of them falling out. I printed out the fish, they recommend 15 fish per player, so I printed 3 sheets. And I printed out the number cards. In the first picture (which you probably can't tell as it is small) Tabitha tried to feed the penguin the number card instead of how many fish the number card showed. She wanted to play this 3 or 4 times that night and then again a couple of days later. Amelia played for a while the second time, she lasted longer than I thought she would, but she had a hard time waiting her turn. Mommy usually plays. I tried to emphasize how many fish Tabitha had and then how many she was taking away and how many she had left. A little over her head until we got below 5, then she could answer me correctly.

I also introduced some new Montessori type work:

And I let Amelia work on it too, though I omitted the tongs.

She insisted on putting two in each compartment

And they worked well on her fingers

She showed me when they were all gone

And another fine motor activity (Amelia hasn't done this yet, but Tabitha did it over and over again while Amelia looked on longingly):

Not sure who's blog I saw this activity at. Sorry. If I figure out who's blog it came from I will add the link. I thought it was a neat idea. Putting toothpicks through the holes of a shaker jar. Tabitha actually was putting two in separate holes at the same time with one hand. I wouldn't let her try three.

Yesterday we had a lesson on making lunch. I showed the girls how to make their own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I gave all of us our own bowl which contained a spoonful of peanut butter and a spoonful of jelly. I brought the bread in on one plate and let the girls pick out 2 slices of bread. They had their own utensils to spread with. I took them through it step by step.

Then Tabitha cut the cheese into pieces for everyone.

To see what others are doing with their little ones go to Homeschool Creations and check out the others linking up to Preschool Corner.

And for the little ones: