Wooden Puzzles for Visual Spatial Intelligence

Visual Spatial Reasoning is the capacity to think about objects in 3 dimensions and draw conclusions with limited information. It helps the children to imagine objects in different angles and perspectives. It is also an important skill tested in many academic and professional fields. Skills such as estimating, geometry, measurement, map-reading and simple drawing are some of the mathematics ideas behind this topic. Tangram, patterns blocks and tetris are some of the fun ways to promote this skill amongst young children.

Wooden blocks are another powerful tool to improve spatial thinking skill. You can read more about this here.

As the first level, I used our wooden blocks to construct various 3D structures and asked my little one to count the blocks from a particular distance and height. She was not allowed to come closer.

In the second level, she had to draw the top view, front view and side views for the 3D structures what I built. 

The third level is little trickier and what my little one enjoyed a lot.  I drew the top view and side views and asked her to construct the 3D structure for it.

Light

We reviewed our first part of the study of light. We always love short lessons.  We used our information cards and did some experiments alongside.

Though we use Montessori inspired activities for learning, I don’t know about the assessment methods in Montessori elementary.  I love Singapore question papers and it is really useful to assess whether the child understands the concept.  It is not about how much they score, but about how they think.  Each question is associated with pictures and leads the kids to think.  My little one really enjoys these questions. This is what I prepared from the Singapore primary science papers for the first lesson on light. DOWNLOAD

Elementary Geometry - Seven Triangles of Reality

Early this week, my little one worked on seven types of triangles that exist.  We started with the three types of triangles based on sides – equilateral, isosceles, and scalene.  She constructed the triangles using geometry sticks. (Geometry stick material is really expensive and I cut these strips from foam).

She learned about angles and degrees a few weeks ago.  We reviewed it, made some triangles and identified the angles in the triangles- obtuse, right and acute angles.

 Then I told her to try all the possible combinations of equilateral, isosceles, and scalene and obtuse, right and acute angles. She tried on her own, found the possible combinations and labeled them.

She labeled these blue triangles as a practice.

Electrical Conductivity of Materials

This week we did a simple experiment to check few materials whether they are conductors or insulators.  We used the following circuit and a number of different materials like Copper string, Aluminium foil, graphite(Pencil lead), Popsicle stick, paper, plastic pen, and a piece of cloth.

Instead of using wires, we constructed a simple paper circuit using aluminium tape. You can even use aluminium foil. It is really simple and your child can construct their own circuit next time, if they experience it once. I showed her how to form a hypothesis and test it. 

My daughter placed different materials in the gap to make it a closed circuit and see whether the LED light up. She also noted her observation in the worksheet.

This experiment piqued my child’s curiosity. So, we are going to do a lot of paper circuits in the coming week and I will post it.

Teaching Sentence Writing

I would like to share some of our activities that I did initially to encourage my little one to write sentences.

Silly sentences

        Being an ESL, we started with simple sentences.  I kept three bowls for noun, verb, and adverbs. Initially, I used only the adverbs of time to check whether she can make sentences in all tenses.  She has to take cards from each bowl and make sentences accordingly.  This activity is really funny and my daughter loves it.

Picture cards

                   I keep picture cards in a bowl and my daughter has to take picture cards from the bowl and constructs sentences. She used to write at least five sentences per day in her writing notebook.

Punctuation

  For practicing punctuation, I used ‘Edit a sentence’ – a daily activity suggested by Montessori for everyone. I write sentences without punctuation and incorrect capitalization, my daughter has to correct it.  Sometimes I write dialogues from her favorite books. She loves to find which book it is from.

Geometry Fun : Angles

We learnt about angles the other day and I wanted to share those activities we did.

I hope nomenclature cards are the easy way to introduce any concepts and names of new things. I made these cards and my little one created the angles using Geometry sticks. You can download the nomenclature cards here.

I wanted to find a way to practice angles. I made this game and kids played it both as indoor game and outdoor game. They enjoyed it a lot. You won’t believe my little one is good at angles now. You can download the template here.

Here is another activity to practice angles. I found this activity here . My little one wrote the names in grid paper, mark all the acute angles red, obtuse angles green and right angles violet. Then, she learnt to use the protractor to find the values.