Montessori Object Boxes

Both my superheroes have used their Montessori Phonetic/Alphabet Box extensively.

Please see my post about Phonetic Boxes for toddlers here.  

You might think - why objects? Pictures work as well, and they are not nearly as expensive!

I personally think that the tactile experience of handling the three dimensional objects, and seeing miniature replicas of the everyday objects makes it more fun for the kiddos, and makes language work more exciting. And the possibilities with them are endless - you can extend them and get lots of mileage out of them. 

To sum it up, it makes language work more fun and exciting!


Back to the boxes.
Initially, I had a few letters in each box. And I introduced the letters in this order, according to one Montessori Album.

r a m f

b i t g

p o n l

h u s c

d e x q y

z v w j k

The object box is introduced as a Phonetic Object Box, for the kiddos to learn the sounds associated with all the letters. That means short vowel sounds, and hard sounds for c and g. 
My kids always manage to sneak in their toys, which is great! It shows that they understand Angry Bird starts with "a", or Dora and Diego start with "d", and McQueen starts with "m". 




These pictures were taken when Spiderman was already confident of his sounds. After working on a few letters at a time, I  combined all letters from A to M in one box, and letters N to Z in another box. 

And for both Spiderman and Batman, I would ask them to sort all 13 letters at a time once they were conversant with it. I know my kids have the attention span for it. You will know your kids and students the best. So decide accordingly.

They had tons of fun playing with all the miniatures, their toys, speculating about the origin of some of the toys (wasn't this from the goody bag from xyz's birthday etc), and of course, reviewing the beginning sounds.

So they now know their beginning sounds. What next? The same collection can be used for tons of things. 

• Extend them. Create sensory bins with them - something simple, like just plain white rice, with some or all the letters and one or more objects corresponding to each letter can make the whole experience different and playful and fun!
• Use then for pre-reading activities. Take a peek here.
• Use the same objects and work on ending sounds.
• Middle sounds are harder to identify for beginners. So pair the objects with the same middle sounds. Start with 10 objects, with one pair for each vowel (short) sound. Line up one of the pairs, and ask them to find the matching pair.
• Rhyming Words - you probably already have quite a few pair. See bank and tank in the picture. If you are working on the pink series, look for objects like pen - hen - men, lid - kid, mop - top, bed - red (a piece of felt works). You can find more pictures here. 
• Use them with moveable alphabets for Pink, Blue and Green Series work.
• Use them to introduce blends and digraphs and diphthongs. See my post here.
• Extend them to teach doubles - vowels or consonants. I had an apple for a, book and ball for letter b, egg for e, green for letter g - you see where I am going.
• For syllable count - ask the kids to sort them in 1 syllable, 2 syllable, 3 syllable words etc.
• Work on compound words - for example, if you have a butterfly, or ladybug, or football in the collection, the kiddos can identify the components. Or if you have a pin, wheel, cow and boy, they can come up with the compound words - pinwheel and cowboy!
• Once the kiddos have mastered the short sounds, use and extend the object boxes and go hunting for long vowel sounds in your collection. Have grapes for g? Teach them about the silent e in it, and how a says its name.
• Similarly, extend and use them object boxes for soft c and g sounds.  
• If you look at the pictures here, you will see I have car, feather - use them to teach about r controlled vowels. 
• Use it for singular / plural work. For kids working on the pink series, instead of giving them the labels, you can get them to spell the words using moveable alphabet. If they can spell pen, pens is easy-peasy for them!
• For Montessori grammar work - you can start with noun and article box. You already have everything you need. And if you have farm animals, you are all set for Montessori Grammar Farm.

And they are not just limited to language work. Use them to count and categorize. 
Use them for math work.

They can be used to introduce the kids to living and non-living things, or perhaps natural and man-made, soft or hard, sink or float etc.

For older kids:

• Present them a few things from your collection, and ask them to compose a story with the those elements. The results can be quite hilarious.
• Provide the objects (nouns), and ask them to write down adjectives.  
• Categories for older kids: magnetic or non-magnetic, conductive or non-conductive, vertebrates or non-vertebrates.

 
Even more fun might be to give a collection to the kids, and ask them to categorize it. 
Having two boys, I always have lots of transportation themed stuff. You could extend use them for Land/Air/Water Unit with vehicles and animals.
I also had quite a few animals. With one or two toobs of animals, I was able to do a categorization of the major habitats - grassland, desert, ocean, forest, polar-regions. 

Here's a picture of Spiderman working on the pink series work with me...

 

Great places for scoring miniature objects: 
Motessori Services
Tubes like the Safari Toobs 
 Hobby Lobby
Factory Direct Craft
Michaels, Dollar Store, stores that sell doll-house miniatures, other craft stores
Etsy stores like HighPie 
Toy bins at home (you will be surprised at how much you have at home already)



For more ideas on the objects, how to use them, where to get them etc, please follow my Pinterest board: Montessori Language Arts with Objects

As you can tell, I love object boxes, and would love to hear how you are using them! Leave me a comment, or a link.

Pink and Pirates at TpT Store

No, it's not about pink pirates this time!

But I did put some fun stuff on the TpT store, and I hope you will find it useful and have some fun with it!

I started with the Montessori Pink Series for Language Arts (start at the beginning, right?).

One is free preview of the series with a little bit of everything....

....and the other one is  focused specifically on the Pink Series Rhyming Fun, with 30 cards, 4 worksheets, and rhyming chutes and ladders game with just words from the pink series...
My two super-heroes love this twist on the fun classics game.

If anyone is just starting with the Pink Series, and would like to see something specific, I am open to suggestions! Another file with just the Pink Series Cards will be up shortly, followed my more worksheets.
The ambitious idea is add more on the Pink, followed by Blue and Green, but I get ahead of myself, lol :)

I also added some ten frames, pirate style, from 1, all the way up to 20...

It has a fun ten frames game - along with the ten frame you get, you need to pick the corresponding treasure chest with the right number on it, so you can get to 10. In this case, a pirate picked up a 9, and needs the chest with 1 on it!

 

The file also has addition cards to reinforce the learning with the ten frames, and tons of cliparts for the pirates to fill up their frames with. It also provides some excellent fine motor skill if they cut the pix themselves!! 

That's all for now, although I am working on adding more fun stuff.

So if you have are interested, head on over to the TpT store, and give me some feedback please! 

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Montessori Manipulatives - Master of manipulation!

It is very important to train the next generation of super-heroes who will open that stubborn bottle of pickles, or jelly.

And even more important, that they co-coordinate their hands and eyes, learn about concentration, and develop their fine motor skills, all while having fun.

I tried to come up with things that will appeal to the super-heroes in training, and will have different kinds of closures - such as simple lids on the boxes and bottles, screw on lids, snap on lids, zippers, drawstring, latches...

Batman zipped through everything, I did not even get in one click. Fortunately, Spiderman took his time :)

We opened and closed an assortment of boxes, bottles, and a few other what nots. Spider-man's favorite were the hermetic jars. Surprisingly, it was the small black netted bag with string closing that was the toughest for him. Maybe it was the tiny black box inside the black bag. The picnic basket was a hit. The handle has to be just at the right position for the lid to stay close. Few of the boxes had surprises waiting for him, to reward him for all his hard work, and to keep him motivated. He loved aligning the hands just so, to close them, and thought the surprise inside was "cute". He loved the smell of sandalwood from the fan inside the green box.

Spiderman also found a sippy cup, and opened and closed that a few times, all the better to spill the water next time if so desired!



  
After that, we hung some fairy clothes to dry on the wash-line. The clips are kid sized ones, with just enough spring action so as to challenge Spiderman. and went on to some manly work with nuts and bolts.

Batman gave braiding a try.

Water play is always welcome. Big dropper, and then the smaller dropper to transfer the water from one bowl to another.

We then decided to do some pouring with more colored water. Tiny and medium sized pitchers, colored water, and go.

Linked up to:
Tot School Tuesday 

Toddler Style Montessori Object Boxes

There is no reason why "big kids" like preschoolers and kindergarteners can't play and learn with these, of course, but these are geared more towards toddlers, and beginners. Both my super-heroes still use these for a variety of language work. But they are at a stage where they are more attracted to miniature ones.

 
Look how small the astronaut and anchor are compared to the wooden apple. I have all 3 and some more for "A", but that is another post :)









Here is a snapshot of what Spiderman played with till 2.5 years or so. You are the best judge of your child. You would know best when to introduce them, and when to graduate from these to something smaller, and more complex! These are all sturdy, does not need delicate handling, can't be swallowed, and can even take some gumming and chewing (mostly!)

.

A-M Toddler Object box

A - wooden apple
B - ball (from a b'day goody bag)
C - caterpillar (came with the Very Hungry Caterpillar book)
D - wooden duck
E - plastic or wooden egg
F - feather from craft stash
G - glasses from Dollar Store
H - straw hat
I - wooden Iguana
J - jar (of baby food)
K - wooden kangaroo
L - plastic leaf
M - wooden monkey


I started with one object for each letter.  They should be the short sounds for the vowels, and hard sounds for consonants like C or G. C as in cup, not as in city. G as in gum, not as in giraffe.

Once the kiddos know their letters, and are beginning to learn the sounds, you are ready! 

As a side note, both the kiddos learned their letter sounds by watching the Leap Frog Letter Factory DVD!!
They love the catchy song, and I love the painless way they learn the letter sounds. 

The letter cards shown here came with the DVD. These were already familiar to my kids, so I used them. You can let them match uppercase or lowercase letters to the cards, and then introduce one or two object with that sound, or let them choose the object. We also use the sandpaper letters occasionally, so they can trace the letters.

The toddler version of the object box I stored in the cardboard memory boxes, one with the letters A-M (shown here), and the second one with letters N-Z. I would take out a few at a time.

For smaller miniatures, you could use a metal box, like this one, one for every letter, or combine a few and label them.

Storing your miniatures

You will be amazed at how much stuff you already have lying around the house - from every day objects like clip, or spoon or whisk - for sounds ending in -sk, or fake flowers and fruits and veggies, toys, more toys, birthday goody bags, especially the ones that comes from pinata (we got alien, surfboard, maze-tiny plastic ones that don't work very well, but works great for silent e work, fake finger with nails - use it for finger or nail lol, putty, ninjas, rings from cupcakes, tiny erasers....). Raid the dollhouse, or tree-house for more miniatures. Grab a few of their vehicles. I could probably make a whole alphabet object box just with all the transportation themed stuff lying around the house (hmm...).... You just need mindful searching and pilfering...

Linked to Link & Learn, Living Montessori Now, Tuesday Tots, TGIF Linky Party, Show-and-Share Saturday, Weekly Kid's Co-op

Asian Inspired Montessori Pouring and Transferring

It's Raining, It's Pouring....

The super-heroes love new presentations of the same concept, but then, who doesn't? So we added an Asian flavor to our Montessori Pouring and Transferring.  

It was a big hit. If you are doing the rounds of the continents, or visiting certain countries, this could be a great activity for a tie-in.

We started  with India, with water beads in the stainless steel Karahi (Indian version of a wok), and two small steel bowls with lentils/beans. The wobbly water beads require concentration, the beans, not so much.

Indian flavored transferring activity with Karahi and bowls

For pouring, we gathered some ceramic sets. 

Japanese flavored pouring using Sake cups and pot

We had the Sake pot, called tokkuri, and Sake cups from Japan. This is an extension activity, so a good one for kids who have already mastered the basics. We added some blue food coloring for fun. Batman had no spills, and neither did Spiderman. The notch in the Sake cup has to be aligned just so when pouring.

Next was a tea service in a traditional Chinese motif, with tea-pot and the cups being just the right size for small hands. Pouring from the tea pot needs extra care, as you have to place a finger on the lid to keep it in place, making it a bit more challenging. There were quite a few drips with Spider-man, although no spills. Batman did a perfect job.

We finished it with some play food from Japan and China, and chopsticks.

Transferring with Dimsums and Chopsticks

Montessori Transferring with a chopstick

The play foods gave Batman ideas! So we also served pizza and transferred nachos...

We are global citizens after all.

Montessori Transferring with pizza slices and nachos

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