Sorry for being MIA. I babysat last minute for my neighbor, full-time all summer long to her two girls in addition to my 3 kids. It was a busy period since her kids were really young (3 yr old and an infant). Then September I was getting my kids school flow going and this october has been a nightmare! First, my grandma passed away and I flew out of town for that and then my husband brought the wonderful swine flu home from the hospital and decided to infect all our kids and me. On top of that I got a really bad cold. We are all okay and I'm almost over my cold now, however, my husband just came home from the hospital again with a fever and strep throat. I really hope, he doesn't infect us all again! Anyways, back to montessori things....
I downloaded and printed out (for free) Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division strips and their answers from http://www.jmjpublishing.com/jmjmontessoried.html months ago. They are redoing their website, so it's not currently uploaded. At the bottom of the website is an email address, if you wish to contact them and see when those will be back up for printing. My problem with the strips is that my son takes forever to find the answer paper. He'll answer the problem quickly, but then takes 5 mins (not joking) to find the right answer paper to put next to the problem. Then this activity takes the whole day and we don't get any other schooling done. I've tried to fix the problem by just giving him the problem strips and putting them on the floor in a row and then having him just right the answers on the paper in order down so I can check them. It worked okay, but wasn't nearly as fun and hands-on as he likes. So I came up with a solution today. I pulled some ceramic tiles out from my craft room. They are called "make-it mosaics" and they are about 1" square ceramic tiles. I had a small bag of 25 tiles that I bought a long time ago for about $2-3. If you use a dry erase board marker, it wipes right off! So now I give my son the problems, the tiles, and a marker. He writes the answers on the tile and puts it next to each problem. When he's done I check the answer and we wipe the tiles clean for next time. He loves writing on the tiles and it's so much quicker. Click here to see the tiles. I bought my tiles at Michaels, but I'm sure they can be found in the craft sections of Joann's, walmart and hobby lobby as well. They are really popular and come in all different colors.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
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