Matching object to word; pouring; tongs

Activities on 14 Aug 2009

Montessori Pink Series - matching object to word

Noticing that he wasn't so interested in matching picture to word card the last round, I decided to change the activity to match object to word instead. These words are used more frequently (compared to say cab, jab, lab) and the objects are familiar to him. Also, its good to vary the type of activity to keep lessons interesting & seem less like learning & more like fun games.

For this first set of words, he seemed confident. He looked at the words. He took the objects. But his co-ordination was a bit off. E.g. he saw "cup" then took the cup, but when his gaze returned back to the paper, he was looking at the word "bun" and for a moment was about to place the cup at the "bun" word but he eventually sorted himself out and placed the cup in the right place, without me intervening.

Point to note is that he did not need me to prompt him to say out the alphabets, then say out the phonic sound & then blend it. He did went through that process silently in his head (or at least I like to think so). This is the 2nd time I brought out this set of words, so either he has a fantastic memory (of where to place what), or he really is beginning to get the hang of early reading.

Being a new skill that he's still learning, he did place the bun & bib in the wrong place (the object bib, was placed on the word "bun" & vice versa). I merely said out loud the phonic sounds for the word bun while pointing to the printed words (which I normally do anyway as reinforcement at the end of an activity). I didnt drop hints (body language) that it was wrong. I chose to start with "bun" as opposed to "bib" as "bun" is the first item on the page (top left on page). He realised it was wrong & scanned the page & swapped the bib with the bun. So I hope you dont think I'm boasting about my son being so smart.

I thought I'd try another sheet with him, since he finished the 1st sheet faster than I expected & to see if it was a case of blind memorising. So, was it blind memorising? I dont think so. But as with any new skill, he still needs lots of practice....slowly. I'm not a kiasu mum. I also dont want to push and risk him rejecting learning to read & write. Learning should be fun at his age. It just means I've to be a lot more patient & creative.

Photo above shows the 2nd set. Those words are not used as frequently on a day to day basis, as the 1st set. Noticed that he was losing his enthusiasm with this set. Perhaps I should only do one set at a time. With this, it was difficult to draw his attention to the words. So, I let him play with what he wished for a few minutes & then drew his attention back. I helped him along by saying aloud the phonic sound of the alphabets & let him blend them together & place the objects.


Pouring

I picked up a tiny coffee stirrer stick from Subway, where I had my dinner the night before this activity. It's that thin white stick placed across the yellow container in the photo below.

I wanted to see how he'd do with this new challenge, in terms of using it to scoop & pour. He could get a few pieces (just 1-2, but then again, spoon is real tiny) of the tiny pink sago beads onto the spoon but couldn't adjust his arm/wrist to keep the spoon horizontal. So after a few tries on his own, I modelled it for him by placing my hand over his & scooping.

After a just a few tries of that, he flicked the spoon out of the container which sent the beads flying everywhere! I expected a mess based on past experience, so I had placed only a thin layer of beads into a shallow container. For him it was just too fun to resist doing the flicking again! Ended up with loads everywhere. Ah well, I turned it around into getting him to help in cleaning up (he used his pincer grip); practice for using a brush & dustpan (can't do it yet); and to learn that there are consequences to his action.

Tongs

Took out the "cotton ball & tongs" activity from the same "pouring activity" box while I proceeded to nicely pack away the containers used. He's supposed to use the tongs to pick up cotton balls from that rectangular container & place them in the smaller circular container. It helps develop the muscles in his hand. It's an important fine motor skill to learn now, in the build up to learning to use a pair of scissors. When I turned around, he was placing the last ball with his tongs, into the circular container! He did it all by himself! Hooray!

In future, I can vary this activity by placing the cotton balls into a narrower container, or a deeper container (to get his wrist going), or use a tighter pair of tongs, or tweezers, or a pair of trainer chopsticks, or slightly heavier objects....

All done mama!

Pouring Activity

I have accumulated various items to build up his box of pouring activities. To some people, it's like I'm collecting "trash"!

Containers of different sizes:

- small Yakult bottles, Vitagen bottles are good to start off with as it's about the right size for his palm to comfortably grip it and has wide openings for pouring out of & pouring into.

- Sunkist/FruitTree juice bottles are the next size up. It's also contoured like Yakult & allows for easier gripping. Also wide openings are good for placing a homemade funnel into it.

- 100Plus bottle was sawn in half to use as a homemade funnel. The neck of the commercially avaiable ones were too narrow to allow for beans & sago seeds to pass through. Commercial ones are good for liquids.

- paper cups (e.g. soya bean drink from pasar malam) can be a bit soft depending on quality, so I used 2 of the same stacked together.

- plastic cups (e.g. McDonald's milkshake container) with a cover and a hole for the straw are used for pushing fusilli pasta/golf pegs through the hole.

Variety of items to be picked up/ poured, available cheaply from supermarkets/ hypermarkets:

- coloured cotton balls: roll up your own, dip in food colouring & leave to dry completely. Easiest to pick up cos you can make it very large. Colours add visual interest. Easy to clean up when there's a spill or he throws it out (compared to beans & sago which you'll spend a long time cleaning up)

- fusilli pasta/ penne pasta/ macaroni: when pincer grip not yet developed, he used his palm to pick these up. They provide tacticle input too. Fusilli pasta is sold in colours (mixed tricolour) so may be of more visual interest to the child.

- Kidney beans: in terms of beans, it's good to start off when practising his pincer grip cos they're one of the larger types

- Black beans: next size smaller for pincer grip practice

- Black eyed beans: next size smaller than black beans

- Soya beans: not recommended cos the skin comes off too easily

- Green beans: tiny. Used for pouring it out of the container & practise scooping with a spoon

- Sago: super tiny. Also for pouring out of container & spoon scooping. Sold in colours of pink & green which gives visual interest. Gets sticky when accidentally touches water on the floor & his drool drips on it.

I have a variety of instruments to scoop with:

- spoons of different handle length

- spoons of different depth R.g. old baby's 1st spoon would be quite flat & therefore more challenging. At the opposite end of the spectrum are milk powder spoons which are very deep. He still has difficulty adjusting his wrist to keep the spoon horizontal to avoid spilling the beans, but is getting better at it. In between these 2 ends of the spectrum, you have spoons from mamak shops when you buy a take away, spoons from chicken rice seller, spoons from ice-cream stalls in shopping centres when you buy the ice-cream in a cup rather than in a cone etc...

I also have mini brush & dust pan (sold with the spray bottle from Carrefour) which I keep together with in his pouring activity box. Useful for accidents & intentional spills! Good to teach him the consequences of his action i.e. that he has to help clean up esp. when he intentionally spills, and for muscle co-ordination, hand eye etc.

Today, he used a spoon (from mamak) to scoop black beans from a very wide opening container into the Sunkist juice bottle, through a funnel. He was mostly picking up just 1-4 beans at a time due to the way he was using (or not using) his wrist. Showed him how to dig in to get more beans & how to keep the spoon horizontal while moving to another container. After a while, he lost interest, so I got out a paper cup (to keep up the interest) and he continued practising.