On Wednesday, school was a no-go. Despite my great hopes, the "respiratory infection" that reared its ugly head in my two-year-old last Friday...then worked its way to my 9-month-old by Monday...managed to grab hold of my four-year-old on Tuesday night. I wouldn't wish this on any family (especially now that my 9-month-old has a secondary double ear infection!!), so we're biding our time and hoping that we will all be healthy and contagion-free by Monday.
I used the time to finish up some activities and create some new ones. I finally finished all of the sound boxes from Laura at My Montessori Journey's system. Basically, she breaks the alphabet up into three sections: red (RAMFBITG), yellow (PONLHUSC), and blue (DEXQYJKVWZ). (I think I've modified the order somewhat.) For her phonetic objects/sound boxes, she breaks the three groups into six smaller ones and has a set of phonetic objects for each group. Typically, phonetic objects are dollhouse miniatures, which my budget doesn't really accommodate (although I'm always keeping an eye out on craigslist and freecycle - just in case!). Instead, I made my own phonetic objects (phonetic pictures?), printed them out, laminated them, and organized them into six boxes:
Boxes 1 and 2: RAMF/BITG
Boxes 3 and 4: PONL/HUSC
Box 5: DEXQY
Box 6: JKVWZ
I tried to find six pictures for each letter, but some were harder than others. After I made these, it occurred to me that I should have included "inchworm" for the letter I - I'll revise the file and re-upload it soon.
I also made number cards to go with the red and blue numerical rods. I'm not sure why my initial materials order didn't include those, but it's been bothering me that I didn't have them. Sandpaper numbers don't work, because those go from 0 - 9, and I needed 1 - 10. I went ahead and made my own set that I cut up and laminated. The font I used is not all that common, so I need to figure out how to save the file as a .pdf, and then I'll upload it.
I also made a set of small number cards so that we could move beyond the bank game to simple addition, as Elizabeth Hainstock does in her book. The font is very important with these too, though (because the numbers have to be spaced just so), so I'll need to save them as .pdfs as well.
Those activities have been on my To Do list for a while now, and it feels great to have them finished. I hope you and your family are weathering this winter better than mine, and here's to healthier days to come!
7 comments:
Hey! Thanks for posting those files. I'm sure they'll come in handy. I was planning on using the letter order from my Montessori Journey too. I've spent three months trying to teach my three year old the intitial sounds r a m f so we can play I spy. He still can't do any of them. But in the meantime he learned j b p s and some others in about two seconds because he asked me about them. I may have to ditch the letter order or we'll be stuck forever. Has that ever happened to your students?
thank you for the files. I haven't done any card activities with J yet, but it looks like he will be ready for that soon.
If you want some nice free downloads have a look at sparklebox.co.uk. It is british so you get autumn and colour but nyou can also get some nice things that will help you out! I down laodes pictures for every letter of the alphabet and made them into books, all 26 of them and they have gone down a storm. We use a different series of letters that go with Jolly Phonics (another british thing!) but have the same thouhgt process behind it as Laura's letter order (ie that once the child has learned 6 letters there are a lot of words they can decode from those 6).
There's also lots of numeracy stuff that is useful as a second string to stop boredom setting in before a concept is fully realised!!
Have you figured PDF exports yet? The easiest way to do it is to install a free bit of software from cute http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp It installs itself as a printer, so when you create a document, all you have to do is print it, select cute pdf writer as your printer and it'll pop up and ask where you want the pdf saved.
Best Wishes, really enjoying the blog :)
FYI...Montessori n such sells groups of language objects, the whole lot is around $50 but smaller groups sell for around $10.50. Even with shipping it worked out to 50 to 60 cents each. I purchased these, together with household objects I had plenty for each letter. Montessori Services also sells a couple of language object kits for reasonable prices and individual pieces as well. I'm using objects initially and then will add pictures later. There's just something so appealing about the miniatures for my 4 year old.
Thank you for the files, and putting them in Word . I was just sitting down to go on an image hunt and decided to do a search and found this !!! I too don't have many objects but I made the folders on Montessori journey and then put the card in them . Its a nice system and even nicer now that I don't have to delay school because I haven't had time to look for images. and I would change 1 or 2 of the images personally so thats why I'm soo happy its editable and also , to keep in line with the color scheme I added borders around the document so for ponlhusc I put the borders in yellow so they will correspond with the yellow drawers etc..
Thank you for posting these! It saved me a lot of time and some cash. I need to make images pages, boxes, and books to go with our language works. I found two places to buy them. The first place I was going to have to COLOR them all (yuck), the second place (Montessori for Everyone) I wasn't going to have to color, but you saved me some money and the wait. Hope I can return the favor sometime.
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