What's on our Trays

Here are the tray activities I've put together for this week. Normally, I'd have a few more Practical Life activities, but since I am in the process of re-organizing the PL shelves to be more Montessori-friendly and we are introducing lots of new Sensorial materials, I thought one might be enough. If not, I'll add more later in the week...

Sorting Fruit - with so many new things, I wanted to put in something familiar. Although he has mastered this as a whole hand activity, he hasn't seen it for a couple of weeks and still enjoys playing with the fruit.

Puzzles - I have put out a single 4-piece puzzle. I will probably add a second soon, but am rather fed up of picking up box-fulls of puzzle pieces so have limited the number to make it easy for Nikki to tidy away himself.

Sandpaper letters - our first three letters - Nikki is used to seeing capital letters in print (very un-Montessori) so it is taking him a while to learn that these lower-case cursive letters are the same as the ones he knows...

Sound balls - we haven't had these out for a while. Nikki was very excited to see them!

Bead chains - we are focusing on learning quantity. Nikki is great at counting, but hasn't 'got' that each number has a specific quantity. We're working on 1-4 with our numeral board, so this should reinforce what he's learning.

What's on the Tray Wednesday

Here are this week's tray activities:

Fine Motor - Tweezing Pompoms and Spooning Buttons

Our first fine motor tray this week is Tweezing Pompoms. This is a great challenge for Nicholas - he hasn't done a lot of tweezing as he has struggled with holding the tweezers tight enough for more than a second or two (and he has broken the two sets of easy tongs I bought for him...) but I thought he might be ready to try again. I was right - when I presented this tray to him, he struggled for about ten seconds before getting the hang of it and flying through all the pompoms in minutes!

colour matching with pompoms

 
He can also practice matching colours as there are two of each pompom which can be nicely paired up in the ice cube tray.


Our second fine motor tray - Spooning Buttons. Nikki is fairly expert at spooning, so I added the challenge of a clip-lock box that he has to open first. He also has to try to spoon only one button at a time...

The small measuring spoon fits the buttons perfectly!

Maths

I finally caved and bought the Melissa and Doug pattern board set. It is expensive, but worth it! We are using this to practice shapes, puzzles and colours all at the same time!

Language

Daddy bought Nicholas this lovely set of alphabet cards which we can write on. We are using them to practice reading and writing Russian letters. Also in the box is a set of English letter cards which, although smaller, serve exactly the same purpose.

Dry-wipe flashcards for Russian fun!

We also have our Kumon pre-writing exercises, which are almost being used the way the book intends now - rather than the background to multiple circles!

Music

This week we have a new activity! Nicholas was given this lovely set of sound balls by his father - there are four pairs of sound (I am guessing salt, rice, beans and a nut) and you have to listen carefully to find the pairs. Nikki doesn't quite get it yet, but has great fun shaking the balls and following my lead! 

Sound shaker balls - each big one pairs with a small one.

I'm linking up to H is for Homeschooling and Montessori Mondays