Friday 22 February 2008

Fruit pastel maths!

Wednesday is our number day & the last few weeks we have been learning our shapes. We have been using this geometric solids set from www.asorbentminds.co.uk

and these nomenclature cards from Lori at www.montessoriforeveryone.com (pssst! she does great freebies!)

So far, we have worked with the Cube, Rectangular Prism, Pyramid & Sphere. I put them in our 'feely bag' & E has to pick one out (eyes closed!) describe it, & state which solid it is. We have drawn around their bases, rolled them in our salt tray to observe the different markings & tracks they make. We match them to the nomenclature cards (these are really good tools, as they come lots of cards showing 'real life' items for each solid, such as a gift for Cube, etc, etc. A great shape book we have read is Cubes, Cones, Cylinders and Spheres by Tana Hoban. A super picture book, again showing shapes in their real life context.

This week, number day came into its own
Fruit Pastel Math!

We had a ball! What great fun.Making our own solids with cocktail sticks & fruit pastels. E & I worked on the cube together, which she found reletively easy, then the pyramid took some thinking. She really wanted to put three vertices on the top, which made a triangular prism, not a pyramid. Frustrating! But, then, she got it! What a wonderful momment for a proud mummy! She went on to make another pyramid & another cube, then a rectangular prism. *all by herself* :)
who said maths couldnt be fun?

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