montessori at home

This week we played shopkeeper quite a bit, a personal favourite of mine when I was little (and in fact I still have a slight obsession with tills!) Whilst obviously not a strictly 'Montessori' practice, it's still good to remember that such games encourage role-playing, turn taking and concentration all whilst having a fun game!

We'd take it it turns to be the shop keeper, asking the customer what would you like to buy today, then we would select a few items on display and give them to the shop keeper to beep through the till then tell the customer how much it is. We're not so concerned with recognising actual money value at the moment, but playing shops is a good way of teaching what different coins are worth and of course counting. So far we stuck to simple amounts as 1- 10, 20, 30 ect and just pretended to give the right amount and occasionally some change!

These past few weeks we've also been playing the memory game 'Kims game' or what we like to call the 'what's missing game'!

We placed a few random items on a tray, then I asked Theo to name them one by one. After he did so we placed a cloth over them and Theo closed his eyes whilst I removed an item. Then we took the cloth away and he had to tell me which item was missing. If he was struggling we would go over and name the items that were remaining and see if we could remember the missing one. It's such a great simple game using memory and naming objects. We then took it in turns and Theo took an item, but he always has the habit of telling me what he's taken! You can obviously make it easier or harder by the amount of objects that are there!