Grab Bag Numbers Game: Arabic Language Numbers 1-10

Today we were running behind on our day, and I decided to go ahead with the Arabic language version of our Grab Bag Numbers game, rather than the higher English Language numbers. We did a few Arabic numbers yesterday, so they were fresh in the Professors minds.

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Arabic Numbers Index Cards

Here are two charts from one of the books we use, that phonetically spells the numbers in English with  their symbol, from 1-10. Written Arabic is read from right to left.  In the first chart, Wahid starts of for number 1, and 'Asharah ends for number 10. In the second chart, the numbers are listed from 1-5 on the left, then 6-10 from on the right.

Baby Professor joined us in the school room today, and kept busy with this puzzle: 

This is a Melissa and Doug puzzle that makes noise when you put the pieces inside. You don't have to put the correct piece in to make the noise either, as long as the magnet senses the piece, it will make the noise. He loved it, Masha' Allah...for a time. When he got bored, and had discarded all the pieces, and the puzzle itself, I gave him this

This is our 'random puzzle pieces bin' It sits next to our puzzle holder, so when puzzles don't get put back together, pieces don't go wandering all over the classroom. It also serves as a quick, easy, and neat way for the Professors to help at clean up time, Alhumdullilah. Masha' Allah, this kept him busy through the rest of the lesson, and story time.

Here is our game bagged and ready to go

This game round, there was alot less silliness, and no focus on the number 10 card. I knew this would require more concentration, as Arabic is not our first language. The Professors did great Masha' Allah, and it was a good way to review our Arabic numbers. This game will be great practice, and I plan to pull it out often, insha' Allah. Using the blocks as counters worked out really well again Masha' Allah, and also served to keep wandering minds focused, by building with them when it was not their turn to play. I think playing in the school room also kept things more serious and formal, than playing in the playroom.

Thank You education.com for such a fun game : )

Grab Bag Numbers Game: English Language Numbers 1-10

As mentioned in the first post, Wednesday is our Numbers/Math day around here, and today we played a game called Grab Bag Numbers, posted by education.com:

http://www.education.com/activity/article/grabbagnumbers_preschool/?cid=90.002

On the link you will find a list of materials needed to play the game, here's what we used:

I had a handful of oversized index cards to work with. I cut them in half and wrote out the numbers as largely as I could. I went back and redrew the 1 and 3 cards, feeling the ink was too light, and they might have trouble reading those two.

 I wanted the cards to be fun, and I mulled over using stickers, but in the end I felt it would be a distraction. Instead I used my awesome Mr. Sketch markers. 

I bought these years ago at a craft store, and Masha' Allah, most of them are still in excellent condition. If you don't know about Mr. Sketch markers, and why they are so fun, you can read more on them here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Sketch

basically they just smell really good, so I thought that would be a fun, colorful way to make the cards. 

Here's our game all bagged up and ready to go!

We used blocks from our block bin as the counters. I divided them up by having one child be circles, one be squares, and one rectangles. They picked the shapes. I didn't get a picture of that, and I did not photograph the lesson, as we normally don't. I debated though, since it was something new, but my hunch was right not to. The older Professors, the twins, were initially interested but got bored quickly, it was way to easy for them Masha' Allah, although one of them did hesitate on two of the written numbers. They got a case of the sillies pretty quickly and had a hard time focusing, part of which I think was because we played this game in the basement playroom, not the school room. (I didn't have it in me to disrupt Baby Professor from his play area today). Professor #3 really enjoyed the game, and might have focused more had the other two not been so unfocused. Sillies are pretty contagious, Masha' Allah.

One thing that surprised me about the activity was that none of them liked closing their eyes to pick a  card. They also got focused on picking the 10 card. They kept trying to grab more than one card, trying to select the 10 card. That lead me to take out the cards chosen after each turn, otherwise I think we'd still be playing ; ) When Professor #1 finally chose the 10 card near the end of the game, he shouted like he won a jackpot, and the other two were visibly disapointed LOL, Masha' Allah. Not sure what that was all about.

We had a great time and it was a fun way for me to observe their progress matching number symbols to amounts. Insha Allah, I plan to play this game again tomorrow with numbers from 11-20, then next week we are going to play the Arabic version, insha' Allah.

Grab Bag Numbers Game.

Wednesday is Numbers/Math day around here, so today being the first day of February, our first February Lesson for 2012 is going to be this game via education. com

http://www.education.com/activity/article/grabbagnumbers_preschool/?cid=90.002

We are going to start off in the 1-10 bracket as suggested. It will be a good review for some of the Professors, and give me a chance to see where we are, associating numbers to their symbols. For safety we will be using small blocks from our block bin instead of pennies or counters.