five brothers one sister: number bucket

Monday, January 25, 2010

number bucket

With school due to start back soon planning and organising things are going on in earnest here.

This year I will be working with B5 and The Girl in what we call Dragonfly Days (our little pre-school-kindergarten).

We will be learning numbers, colours, phonics etc.

Each week we will have a nursery rhyme, a book and a bible story connected in some way to the above.

For example in week one our phonics focus will be "l", our number 5 and the colour red.

I chose these because B5's name begins with "l" and he has just turned 5 (I would have actually started at number 1 but thought it too close to "l" not to cause confusion).

We will sing Ladybird, Ladybird and read the "The Bad Tempered Ladybird" also known as "The Very Grouchy Ladybug" for my American readers by Eric Carle.

Our bible story is Daniel in the Lion's Den.

Our activities will be connected:

- Science looking for ladybirds in the garden

-Craft making red ladybird pictures with 5 dots

-Cooking will be ladybird cakes and lemonade.

I want to have a little bucket/basket/container of our focus areas to help bring them to life and for the children to have some hands-on things to do.

So I thought I would set up a little numbers bucket to see how it went.

I have in it a wooden number 5 and red counters, this is from a Montessori activity I made when B1 was little. I also added a card that shows the number and the counters and the word.

I arranged the numbers as you would see them on a dice, as I am sure I read somewhere that this was a good thing to do.

I included another set of things to count, in this case shells and the green 5 is a foam sticker to go on the outside of the bucket for the week.

I actually thought I had a set of magnetic numbers which is why I chose a metal bucket but as I can't find any I will have to buy some this week and replace the sticker with the appropriate magnet.