Our Literacy Centre

Blending Letters

My little one learnt her phonics easily.  But, she suffered a little while blending the sounds to form a word.  Then, I found this ‘magic words’ trick to blend sounds. I wrote words using wax in white papers and the words cannot be seen initially.  Then I heated the papers against candle light one letter at a time.  Whenever the letter appears, my little one will tell the sound and continue blending them as the letters appear one by one. Instead of showing a full word, this trick really did a magic.

Reading practice is one of our daily routine and it will not continue for more than ten minutes.   But, those ten minutes will be in a way my little one likes it.  Moreover, finding ways to encourage phonics learning without worksheets is really challenging that too in a minimum budget.

Picture matching

It is very simple to play.  I cut pictures from old books; wrote words in a paper. I gave the paper and a bowlful of pictures to my little one.  She has to read the word, found the picture from the bowl and paste it under the word.

Missing letter puzzle:

Here is our missing letter- find the route puzzle.  My little one has to identify the correct way for the girl to reach her home.  At each point she has to identify the missing letter and choose the path accordingly.

Quill pen for writing practice

I asked her to write few words to identify her spelling skill. We used a quill pen for her writing practice. She took a pigeon’s feather from our feather collection and dipped it in the ink to write words.

Our First Geography Lesson - Continents in a Tray

We planned to start our Geography lessons in a Montessori sensible way and I created this continents tray as a first step.  To show my little one what are continents, I filled a tray with blue water to represent the oceans and made 7 sand spots to represent the continents.

Then we placed the map of  each continent.  

We also sang the continentsong.

My little one and her friend tried to put the continents map in the correct places. Though they could not do it perfectly, they enjoyed it.  They identified Asia by spotting India, identified Australia and Antarctica by the unique shapes.  My little one identified Africa by spotting Madagascar -‘This is ‘penguins of Madagascar’(Her favorite cartoon serial.)  See Africa and Madagascar looks like India and Srilanka’

Then, they started making hurricanes and started their sensory play.

  

Nature walk - Nature's architects

We had a great week and I wanted to share some of our interesting findings during our nature walk.  We found a piece of bee hive.  We investigated the perfect hexagon shapes in the bee hive. It’s really amazing how these small bees built their house using beeswax and how they built theses perfect hexagon shapes. 

I drew the beehive using rangoli powder and my little one’s attempt to draw a hexagon ends in a oval shape.

Another attempt

Here are the second tiny architects.  Found these busy weaver ants during our nature walk  Look at their nests. How beautifully they connected the leaves using saliva and built their houses.

Bayaa weavers are common in our farm land.

  But, I have been looking for a weaver bird’s nest. When I visited my professor at Nit, Trichy, his daughter showed me this weaver’s nest in their backyard. My professor’s wife is maintaining a great backyard and I am lucky to see this weaver’s nest there.  I clicked this for my little one.

We found these big caterpillars in our backyard.  There are so many.  We are waiting to see the pupae.

Found this guava seed in our nature walk.  Look. Isn't it look like a brain?  Taken it for our nature box.

 You can view all our nature study posts here