Montessori...Tuesday?

Okay...so it's Tuesday today.  But I thought I'd share with you a little Montessori/Tot School-inspired activity I made for Niamh some time ago.  She took it off the shelf today, so I took the opportunity to snap a few pictures:

I made these little numbers out of this glittery card I bought at Spotlight.  It has a sand-paper texture, and she can trace each number with her finger.  My intention for making them was to try to link the feel of each number to its shape and name in her mind - eg, 3 looks like this, and feels like this.  To that end, I glued some wooden beads and buttons onto each card.  She can count these to self-check whether or not she has named the number correctly.

She has known her numbers up to 10 for a while now, but repetition is very Montessori, and I am sure it is doing her very good to start forming a picture in her mind of numbers being more than just a squiggle on a page.

The little surprise she gave me with the cards (don't you love when they do that?!) was that she can also use them to do a bit of very basic addition (eg 1 + 2 = 3...she can then count the beads on number 3 to check her work).

Here she is, coming up with addition all by herself:

1 + 2 = 3:

The shapes of the numbers are also self-correcting.  If she puts one on the floor upside down, she can't feel the beads.

Please check out the wonderful TOT SCHOOL blog.  They have so many fabulous ideas for little ones.