Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Working hard here!!

I thought I would put together a few photos again to show you all what the children are working on in our classroom at the moment. So here it goes:

  •  Literacy
Children learn at different pace and while some children are still struggling to recognise their own name among others, others are able to write theirs all on their own. Different activities are being provided for each individual child to help him progress at his/her own pace (I refer you here to all of our literacy activities). Here are a few activities I wanted to share with you today:

Sandpaper letter and our salt tray

This activity requires the child to find the letters of his/her name and stick them all in sequence on a coloured card:




  •  Maths
In Maths, some children have been introduced to new materials, bringing them forward in their learning of the numeral system (again I apologise: some of the photos came upside down and I can't sort the problem out!!):

In the following photos, the child is introduced to the units, the tens, the hundreds and the thousands using the Three Period Lesson (this is..., Show me... and What is this?). This exercise not only introduces the child to big and small quantities but also gives him/her a visual representation of bigger quantities.

The golden bead material

"This is 10..."

"This 100.."

"This is 1000..."

Here we are working with the counting rods to introduce the child to the concept of adding. This activity provides a controlled exercise for teaching number bond.


First, I ask the child to lay one set of the small rod on the top left corner of the mat and to lay the other set on the top right corner of the mat. I then give the child a sum: 3 + 2. I show him how to take the rod representing 3 from one set and the rod representing 2 from the other set. Both rods are laid side by side horizontally in the middle of the mat. I shows how to count the sections on the rod to make 5. This is a great oral sum exercise.



To practice number 1-9, the children use the Hanging bead stair. The child counts the beads on each bar, places them in sequence and finds the corresponding numeral cards or vice versa.


Here is another exercise with the short bead stairs. I use it to teah the children the concept of "taking off" (i-e subtracting). The child must build the bead stairs first in a triangle at the top of the mat. I then give him an operation (6-2 =?). The child takes the lilac bead bar (representing 6) and counts back starting from the right. I show him/her how to cover 2 beads and invite him/her how to count how many beads are left to find the answer.