Our Montessori Story

Highlighters and Handwriting

2012-01-25T22:13:00.001-05:00

Yesterday at OMS Daily, I briefly mentioned the use of highlighters in our schoolwork. They play a very important role in our homeschool, so I wanted to show everyone a few examples of when and how we use them.

These are our word drawers:

Drawers 1-38 contain Laura from My Montessori Journey's word drawers (which she so kindly made available here). Here's a peek inside drawer 1...

...and here's an example of my 3-y.o. matching words to pictures (drawer 25):

Drawers 39-60 contain our exception word cards, which you can download here. Each drawer contains 10 words, as well as a list of the words that should be in it (just so I know if a word has gone missing):

I also put the drawer number on each card and on the back of each word, so that if either gets misplaced, I easily know where to return it:

I keep strips of lined writing paper and clip boards by the word drawers; once my daughter has matched the words to the pictures, I write the words on the lined paper in highlighter, and my daughter traces over the highlighter (a technique I saw used when my oldest daughter, then 3, attended a private Montessori school). So that I don't have a million strips of lined paper floating around, I tape her strips into a composition book, which is a very nice way to collect them (my daughter loves to flip back through her book and read the words):

Lately, I've started writing directly into the composition book. It doesn't have a dashed line between two solid lines, but I notice that the spacing is identical:

I also use the highlighter with my 5-y.o. We use The Well-Trained Mind and Writing with Ease for our writing/grammar/literature curriculum. Susan Wise Bauer places a strong emphasis on journaling; however, Bauer points out that for a child this young, it would be difficult to think of something to journal about and then keep it in her head long enough to write it down. Therefore, Bauer recommends dictation -- my daughter says her journal entry to me aloud, and I record it for her. As an added twist, though, I take my daughter's dictation in highlighter so that she can then write her entry herself:

I even use highlighters with my 7-y.o., who currently is working on cursive writing. This is an example of a "copywork" page from Writing with Ease, Vol. 1. The theory behind copywork is that, by copying well written excerpts from literature, the child learns proper sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, etc. But because the excerpts are written in manuscript, I model the cursive writing for her with highlighter, and then she writes over my writing:

The majority of the older girls' handwriting practice is not highlighter-assisted, but the highlighters are extremely useful in special circumstances like the ones I just mentioned. And although this may sound trivial, letting the girls pick which color highlighter they want me to use makes handwriting just a little bit more fun :)

Following the Child: Our 3-y.o. and Addition

2012-01-24T00:29:00.001-05:00

Every morning, without fail, our two older girls do math. It goes without saying that after breakfast they grab their math books and get started. So I guess it was only natural that our 3-y.o. wanted to do math, too.

Seizing upon her interest, over the past semester I introduced most of the math basics: the red and blue rods, the sandpaper numbers, the spindle boxes, numbers and counters, numbers 11 - 19, introduction to the decimal system, the "crisis of 9s," etc., until I got to the point when I thought she was ready for "shell math," an activity I read about in the New Child Montessori curriculum guide I bought a couple years ago (the other big Montessori investment we've made since our original purchase of Montessori materials four years ago).

Using addition sentences and answers from Montessori for Everyone (which I printed, laminated, and cut out), she would choose an addition sentence, choose the appropriate number of shells, and then find the appropriate answer card (here she is showing 1 + 1 = 2 and 3 + 5 = 8):

(For the shell math activity, I would select, say, 7 different math sentences and their corresponding answers; then I would set out the 7 answers in random order so she wouldn't be overwhelmed by all of the possible answers, a tip provided by Montessori for Everyone -- thanks!)

She got so good at shell addition that I decided to see how she would do using stamp game units instead of shells; also, rather than matching an answer with a sentence, I wrote columnar equations and then let her write her own answer (here she is working on 4 + 4 -- she gets 4 unit stamps, 4 more unit stamps, lines up all the stamps, then counts how many she has altogether):

She keeps the sandpaper numbers close by in case she needs help remembering how to write a number:

She got so adept at doing addition with stamp units that I ran out of equations -- there are only so many combinations you can do that add up to nine!

I wanted to introduce equations with sums up to 18, but I wasn't sure how to do it. I didn't think she was quite ready for the full-blown bank game, and the addition strip board and addition charts didn't seem like they'd hold her interest. I was curious to see how she would do with a modified version of the bank game, so first I reviewed the overview of the decimal system and the "crisis of 9s" with her:

When she spontaneously said to me, "Mommy, I can make 10 like this..."

"...or like this..."

I thought she was ready! So here's how we did it:

First, I wrote some equations with sums up to 18. Here, she's working on 4 + 7:

I gave her a bank with 10s and units:

She puts 4 units in one cup, and 7 units in a second cup:

She pours all of the units into one cup:

Then she starts counting units. When she gets to 10 units, we say, "Stop!"

I remind her that there is "no such thing" as 10 units -- there's only one ten -- so she gives her units back to the bank and exchanges them for one ten:

She's left with one ten and one unit, so we get the number card for one ten and the number card for one unit, and she reads her answer to me: "One ten and one unit are eleven."

She writes down her answer, and voila!

She really seems to enjoy it and she's thriving, so even though it's a little unconventional, we're going to keep going with this fun modification of the bank game (bank game lite?) and see where she leads...

Free Knobless Cylinder Extensions

2012-01-19T23:57:00.003-05:00

Just in case you missed this post over at OMS Daily, my husband and 3-y.o. did some very cool extensions with the knobless cylinders the other day:

When I saw this extension they did together and recognized all of math going on, I was absolutely blown away:

The red is there, acting like zero. The green and yellow are there, making fact families. I was thrilled that my 3-y.o. got to experience all of this math! I was so excited about it that my husband was inspired to set up and photograph some more knobless cylinder extensions for our homeschool.

Unlike most knobless cylinder extensions (which involve matching cylinders to circles on paper), these extensions are more similar to the pink tower/brown stair extensions we posted a few days ago, which model combinations for you and your child to recreate:

Our 7-y.o.'s creation:

You can see the entire album here.

Please feel free to repost, share, etc.; if you do, please include a reference to the blog and/or link back. Thanks! :)

Montessori Renaissance

2012-01-15T12:01:00.000-05:00

We recently have experienced a Montessori Renaissance in our home, in part as a result of resurrecting this blog. It's been so refreshing for the older girls, because Montessori is a welcome change of pace from the rigors of, "Now it's time to do math, pages 89 - 101 and the corresponding exercises." (I kid. But truly, Singapore Math is INTENSE.)

On Friday, the girls worked for hours. They were busy and happy and productive, and somehow I even managed to clean a little while they worked!

The sensorial materials still have as much appeal for our 5-y.o. today...

...as they did three years ago:

Our 7-y.o. is rediscovering her favorite Montessori materials and -- in a wonderful turn of events for our family -- is thoroughly enjoying presenting materials to our 3-y.o.:

It's like having an extra teacher in the house (and further testimony to the brilliance of the Montessori method)!

I certainly don't plan to abandon the curriculum choices we've made, because I feel confident that our girls are getting a great education; however, I am looking forward to incorporating more Montessori into our weekly schedule, and the girls are too. :)

Free Pink Tower/Brown Stair Extensions, Part 2

2012-01-13T18:08:00.000-05:00

Of all the things I've posted about on this blog, nothing has sparked more interest than the free pink tower/brown stair extensions we set up and photographed in January 2009.

Looking back at the post, I was reminded how beautiful the Montessori materials are -- they are sublime in their beauty, simplicity, and sheer genius. We were inspired to make a new set of designs from scratch, and the girls welcomed the challenge (there are a few pics of the girls working on them here), even designing one of their own.

Below you will find photos of a new set of extensions for you to use in your Montessori classroom (and the names we gave them). Like the Montessori materials themselves, the pictures call to our kids and compel them to build, build, build! We hope you enjoy them!

(Please feel free to repost, share, etc.; if you do, please include a reference to the blog and/or link back. Thanks! :)

Chunky:

Labyrinth:

Circle:

Nautilus:

Stairstep:

Double-S Snake with Tail:

Back-to-Back Skyscraper (our 7-y.o.'s creation):

Symmetry Facade:

Argyle:

Starburst:

Aztec Antenna:

[You can see the entire Picasa album here, and you can see the album with the first set of extensions here.]

OMS Daily

2012-01-12T00:30:00.000-05:00

As promised, we're starting a somewhat daily ;) photo- and video-based blog to record our homeschool work.

Over at OMS Daily, you can see the work the girls do each day as well as a monthly spreadsheet we use to track what they have accomplished.

OMS Daily will be rough and definitely not stylish -- just a place where we upload pics from the day, with brief descriptions of what's happening in the picture, so you get a feel for the pace and subject matter of the girls' work. It's been a fun way to record everything the girls do in a day, and the older girls really like tracking their progress.

Tuesday is our big day to be out of the house, so we won't have much to post on Tuesdays -- the older girls, the baby, and I go to our homeschool co-op (where the big girls take their co-op classes and I go to a ladies' Bible study while the baby hangs out in the nursery), and our 3-1/2 y.o. goes to her preschool.

We have posts back to January 2, so you'll need to click through a page or two to see all the older posts.

If you are interested in what we are doing, please check it out. :)

The Curricula We Use (January 2012)

2012-01-10T23:13:00.000-05:00

After our oldest daughter, now 7, was ready to move on from Montessori as her core curriculum, we decided to try the classical model of education for her (we have a full Montessori preschool set up in our living room, and while we felt comfortable teaching those materials and extensions, we weren't prepared at that time to add elementary Montessori to the mix). We started when she entered first grade, and her younger sister, then 4, did everything right alongside her. We loosely based our curriculum on Susan Wise Bauer's The Well Trained Mind and supplemented with Singapore Math (Standards Edition) and some classes through a local homeschool co-op. This year, we added Classical Conversations to the mix (we do it at home because our local CC groups were full, but that arrangement has worked out well for us :). We have continued to add bits and pieces, and this frankensteinian approach has produced good results, allowing us to tailor our teaching to each child's strengths and weaknesses.

Here's where we are today:

N, 7 y.o.:

Classical Conversations memory work, science, art, and music (currently on Cycle 3) and Veritas Press history cards
Singapore Math (currently on level 4A)
Spelling Power (currently on level E)
Zaner-Bloser Handwriting (currently on 2C)
Writing With Ease (about to start level 2)
Story of the World (about to start volume 4)
Montessori (various practical life, sensorial, and grammar work, and lots of demonstrating for her younger sisters)
Bible (currently reading the Bible in a year)
Homeschool co-op (U.S. Geography and Bible classes 1 day each week)
Piano lessons (1 day each week) and practice (5 times a week)
Ballet (2 days a week)

S, 5 y.o.:

Classical Conversations memory work, science, art, and music (currently on Cycle 3) and Veritas Press history cards
Singapore Math (currently on level 2A)
Spelling Workout (currently on level A)
Zaner-Bloser Handwriting (currently on 2M)
Writing With Ease (about to start level 2)
Story of the World (about to start volume 4)
Montessori (exception word drawers as well as various practical life, sensorial, and math work)
Bible (currently reading the Bible in a year)
Homeschool co-op (Bible class 1 day a week)
Ballet (1 day a week)

G, 3-1/2 y.o.:

Classical Conversations memory work, science, art, and music (currently on Cycle 3) and Veritas Press history cards
Montessori (the full preschool curriculum)
Public preschool (tailored for children with hearing impairments with a focus on precise speech and language development -- 1 day a week)
Bible (currently reading the Bible in a year)
Ballet (1 day week)

E, 1-1/2 y.o.:

Montessori (getting started with basic preschool work :)

I'll post more about why we chose these particular curricula and our opinions of them later, but I wanted everyone to see where we are so our daily blog, which I'll link to soon, will make sense.

Really?

2012-01-09T18:03:00.000-05:00

Has it really been two years since my last post?

How I've missed you all, and how I've missed this blog, and how I've missed the Montessori world. (Because not only have I not been posting, I also haven't been reading very much!) Thanks for sticking with me.

Much has happened over the past two years, and I hope to be able to share a little over the next couple of weeks. Very briefly, though:

1) I changed my name to Renée. Hi. :)

2) The girls are now 7, 5, 3-1/2, and 1-1/2.

3) We continue to homeschool, although--due to a number of families who moved and other changes--no longer in a home co-op format. :(

4) Although the older girls (7 and 5) have pretty much moved on from Montessori as the core of their curriculum, we are in the thick of Montessori with our 3-1/2 y.o., and I look forward to slowly incorporating our 1-1/2 y.o.

I'm excited to start blogging again, and I plan to blog here at least once a week about bigger-picture, curriculum-type things and any new materials I've made (but I'll be talking about more than just Montessori, because we use multiple curricula now).

And instead of writing loooong posts about our daily work (my own fault -- I'm too wordy :), in an effort to catalog what we do each day, I'm starting a separate blog where I will quasi-live blog our lesson plans and daily work (I'll link to it as soon as it's ready to go live). That blog will be mostly photo-based, with iPhone snapshots (I'm retiring the big camera that requires lengthy uploads, which means I'll be able to get posts up faster, but the picture quality won't be as nice), and there won't be much text. It won't be clean and polished but instead will offer a quick, real-time look at our work.

I will do my best to respond to every comment/question/suggestion/request, but I can't promise anything...sorry.

My husband will probably help me with my blogging duties here or at the new blog. He is an integral part of our homeschool, and I literally could not homeschool without him. After the addition of daughter #4, there were days--months, really--when I did no schooling and he did everything!

I will have some exciting news about some Montessori resources he and I are developing...hopefully later this year. :)

I'm excited to be back, and I'm excited to share all that we're doing!

I'm Not Sure How I Found These...

2010-01-13T22:41:00.003-05:00

...but the other day I Googled something and happened across these Montessori 6 - 9 Albums for Language, Grammar, Math, Geometry, History, Geography, Biology, and Physical Science.

Wow! What an amazing resource - thanks so much!

Update: Sorry, but the link is no longer working. :(

Writing Workshop

2010-01-04T20:28:00.031-05:00

The break in between semesters gave me some time to reflect on where we started, how far we've come, and where we're going...which led me back to the beginning and Virginia's Standards of Learning, which are described this way:

The Standards of Learning for Virginia Public Schools describe the commonwealth's expectations for student learning and achievement in grades K-12 in English, mathematics, science, history/social science, technology, the fine arts, foreign language, health and physical education, and driver education.

The SOLs are a very broad set of guidelines for what kids should learn in each grade, and I am using them to make sure I stay on track and to make sure my oldest daughter doesn't miss out on anything I may have overlooked.

In reviewing them, I came across this goal in the English curriculum for first grade:

The student will write to communicate ideas.
* Generate ideas.
* Focus on one topic.
* Use descriptive words when writing about people, places, things, and events.
* Use complete sentences in final copies.
* Begin each sentence with a capital letter and use ending punctuation in final copies.
* Use correct spelling for high-frequency sight words and phonetically regular words in final copies.
* Share writing with others.
* Use available technology.

Hmmmmmm...writing? Honestly, other than handwriting practice and grammar symbols work, we don't do a lot of writing.

I wasn't sure where to start, and then I remembered a conversation I had with our local public school's kindergarten teacher when I was investigating schools for the 2009 - 2010 school year. She said that her kindergartners start each morning by journaling. That got me thinking...

I did a little research, and I came across this website, which I found to be extremely helpful. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you'll find links to the writing units this teacher uses each month. I looked through the units and decided to start with October. I thought the whole exercise was a big success!

I started by asking my daughter about our pets and how she would tell someone new about our dogs. Then I asked her to draw a picture of the dogs and write down what she had described. I didn't tell her what to capitalize and what not to, and I also didn't tell her what to punctuate. She occasionally asked me how to spell certain words, and I just encouraged her to do her best. After she had finished, I asked her what she would call her story. She made a front and back cover for it, and we stapled the whole thing together into a book. For her first time ever doing something like this, I thought her story turned out great!

[The cover has her name on it, so I didn't scan it]

My Dogs + Me
By ___________
J/4/2010

Other homeschooling moms I know have mentioned that they're not sure how to teach their kids to write, and I thought this was a great place to start. I didn't use lined paper based on what I read at the website I linked to above. Now that I have a good baseline by which to judge where my daughter stands, I think we can progress through some of the other units.

Question to all you Montessorians out there: How is something like this done in a traditional Montessori classroom?

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T08:30:00.002-05:00

2010 promises to be a busy and exciting year for our family, as we prepare to welcome our fourth child, due to be born around the middle/end of June. I had a really, really rough first trimester, but I've finally made it to the second trimester and am feeling like my normal self again - thank goodness!

Hopefully I'll have more time to post now that I'm feeling better (and now that I'm awake more :) .

I wish you all a healthy, happy, and prosperous New Year!

So Much to Say...

2009-10-30T23:33:00.013-04:00

...so little time!

I have missed this blog and I have missed all of you!

I have so many things to write about that it feels like climbing a mountain to catch everyone up, so I'll just try to hit the important parts and then (hopefully) fill in the details later.

Miss C and her two boys continue to come faithfully on Monday and Wednesday mornings, and her 4yo continues to be my star student (he chooses his work, diligently completes it, and puts it away - oh, if only my 5yo and 3yo would work so well!!).

We attend our homeschool co-op on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Through the co-op, we've met another family with four kids (a 7-1/2yo boy, a 6yo girl, a 4-1/2yo boy, and a 2yo boy) who have started joining us at least two and sometimes three days a week on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoons. That means we're doing Montessori work up to 5 days a week, which makes me so happy!

The 2yo takes a nap in our Pack-n-Play while my 1-1/2yo (and sometimes my 3yo) naps. Maybe there's something about doing work for another person (as opposed to your own mother) that makes kids respond so well, but these kids are fantastic, too. The wonderful thing is that, because my 5yo tends to "play up," they provide peer pressure for her to do her work and do it well - love it, love it, love it!

Also, because the little kids are sleeping, both Miss M and I stay in the Montessori room with all of the school-aged kids. Their family uses a completely different curriculum, so Miss M often brings work for my daughter to do, which I think is a total win-win. I believe wholeheartedly in the Montessori method, but I sometimes worry that my daughter is "over" it. Anyone else out there experience that?

For instance, when working on addition and subtraction, my 5yo will shrug off every offer of finger charts or other manipulatives, saying, "I can do it in my head." She can do the math in her head, but it's hard for her to get in a flow when she has to think about each problem so hard. (She's doing addition with carrying and subtraction with borrowing, which adds a whole other dimension of difficulty.) Maybe I should be cheering her "passage to abstraction"? In the meantime, though, I love having a Montessori-free outlet for her - if she so chooses - on the days when Miss M's family is here.

That's it for now, I guess. Thanks to all of you for sticking with me! As I said, I truly miss this blog, and I hope to be able to post more often.

The Plan - Co-Op Days

2009-09-10T23:00:00.014-04:00

Before school started, Miss C and I got together to make a plan for our co-op days. This is how we laid things out:

Circle Time:
- Pledge
- National Anthem
- Welcome Songs
- Calendar
- Circle Time theme
- ASL letter of the day
- Review previous letters learned
- ASL sign of the day (related to our Circle Time theme)
- Review previous signs learned
- Introduce any new work on the shelves
- Pray
Work period
Snack
Work period
Jobs
Read one story and verse from My ABC Bible Verses

As you can see, we've added a little bit of sign language. Miss C's son loves learning sign language and already has a pretty big sign vocabulary, so we're going to implement that vocabulary further.

I also plan to introduce a daily yoga pose, which I'll post about soon.

We're going to start My ABC Bible Verses all over again this year. I looked around online and found many, many sets of Bible verses for each letter of the alphabet, but when you take the verses out of context and just have the kids memorize them, they don't make a whole lot of sense. That book has so many valuable lessons that Miss C and I decided to follow it again this year.

Yesterday was our first day, and things went very well. I'll try to post pictures soon!

The Plan - Circle Time

2009-09-09T00:14:00.004-04:00

Here is how I plan to run Circle Time:

Pledge of Allegiance
National Anthem

Sit Down Song:
Tapping at the window, tapping at the door.
Everybody sits down when we count to 4.
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 !

Songs:
[To the tune of "Mary Had a Little Lamb"]
We welcome you to school today,
School today, School today,
We welcome you to school today,
To learn and grow and play.
We're glad to have you here today,
Here today, here today.
We're glad to have you here today.
Yes, it's a special day!

[To the tune of "Skip To My Lou"]
Hello everybody, how do you do? (Wave at children)
Hello everybody, how do you do?
Hello everybody, how do you do?
How do you do this morning?

I'm fine (point to self), I hope you are, too (point to kids)
I'm fine, I hope you are, too
I'm fine, I hope you are, too
I hope you're fine, this morning!

Turn to your partner, shake their hand
Turn to your partner, shake their hand
Turn to your partner, shake their hand
Shake their hand this morning!

[To the tune of "Good Night Ladies"]
Hello, (child's name); Hello, (child's name);
Hello, (child's name), it's nice to see you today.
[go around the circle and sing for each person]

Calendar:
Review month (Sing “Months of the Year” song)
Review calendar day
Review year
Review day of the week (Sing “Days of the Week” song)
Review season (Sing “Seasons” song)
Discuss the day's weather

Circle Time theme

Close Circle Time in prayer

I Can't Believe I'm Saying This, But...

2009-09-08T16:07:00.003-04:00

...I think I'm almost ready!

School doesn't start for 17 hours, and the Montessori room is pretty much ready to go! I have a few more things to do (I have to finalize my circle time plan for tomorrow, I have to put the finishing touches on a couple more PL activities, and I have to make a poster and cupcakes for my middle daughter's third birthday tomorrow), but I'd say I'm about 97.5% done! As a procrastinator extraordinaire, this is a major accomplishment for me. Typically, I'd be working until 3:00 in the morning (rationalizing it by saying that I'm a night-owl, anyway), and I'd go to bed disappointed and kicking myself because I hadn't planned ahead.

So instead, I'm going to toot my own horn for a second (please bear with me :). I often get discouraged, thinking that "you can't teach an old dog new tricks," that I'll be a procrastinator forever, that at this point in my life I just am who I am and I will never improve. But this is real, actual, visual proof that I CAN change and I CAN do better. Woohoo!

Here are some shots to document what I hope will mark the end of my procrastination days:

If only I had taken some "before" pictures so you could see what the room looked like when I started (let's just say that Maria Montessori would have been mortified!). More about how I managed this miracle transformation coming soon...

The Plan

2009-09-04T19:56:00.010-04:00

Here in Northern Virginia, school starts next Tuesday. I've been busy lesson planning and getting everything set up, and I'm feeling pretty good about how things are coming together.

This is how our Kindergarten year is going to look:

On Mondays and Wednesdays, Miss C and her two sons are going to join us for Montessori work. I will lead my soon-to-be 5- and 3-year old daughters and Miss C's just-turned 4-year-old son in the Montessori classroom, while Miss C plays with her soon-to-be 2-year-old son and my 17-month-old daughter in the playroom. It's a small crew, and I was hoping more kids might be able to join us, but we've yet to find another family that is interested. As things stand right now, I think the setup will work out great - I was just kind of hoping that we could find a family with a kindergartner so that my oldest daughter would have someone to work with/challenge her (last year, one of the wonderful things about Miss D's son was that he and my daughter were such nice complements to one another - she excelled at reading while he excelled at math, etc.).

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, my daughter is going to take classes at a homeschooling cooperative hosted by a local church. On Tuesdays, she'll take an Elementary Bible class (at the same time the church hosts a Mom's Bible Study with free childcare!), and on Thursdays, she'll take a Beginning Art class and an Elementary Science class.

On Fridays, we'll do Montessori work or we'll take a field trip somewhere.

Through my husband's work, we have access to one Rosetta Stone language (for free!), so we're going to learn Spanish as a family.

I think it's shaping up to be a great year. If you're in the Northern Virginia area and would like more information about possibly joining our little co-op, feel free to leave a comment or send me an email through the "Contact Us" link on the left.

What's the Goal?

2009-08-14T13:48:00.006-04:00

It's officially official - after considering every Christian/secular, Montessori/traditional, private/public kindergarten within a VERY wide radius of where we live - including a beautiful Christian Montessori school 46.7 miles away (seriously) - we have decided to homeschool for kindergarten - hooray!! I'm giddy with excitement and nervous all at the same time! (What? Me nervous? ;)

In considering all of our options, my husband and I started thinking about our goals for raising/educating our children: Is it to raise independent, "normalized" children through Montessori? Is it to raise "socialized" kids? Is it to raise the "best educated" kids? Is it to raise well behaved/well disciplined kids? Is it to raise kids who will be accepted to the best colleges and grad schools? Is it to raise kids that perform well on standardized tests?

Not that all of those things are mutually exclusive, but after all was said and done and the dust had settled somewhat, we were left with a mission statement of sorts:

Our goal in raising and educating our children is to raise adults who love, trust, and obey God and who have the academic and extracurricular foundation they need to pursue God's calling for their lives.

After considering all of our options, we've decided that homeschooling using the Montessori method is the means that best helps us reach that end (for kindergarten, at least; we plan to reevaluate at the end of the year to determine our course going forward).

What do you think? Do any of you have similar goals/mission statements for your kids' education?

Hook, Line, and Sinker

2009-08-13T20:11:00.002-04:00

Well don't I feel foolish...

Alert reader Jen informed me that the chameleon video the girls and I adored so much was actually a fake. Oh well.

Apparently I've been watching way too much Max and Ruby (have you seen that one, the one with the chameleon?).

Thanks for letting me know, Jen, and sorry to all of you out there for spreading false information. Mea culpa!

Capitalizing

2009-07-31T00:29:00.010-04:00

That sounds much more opportunistic in print than it did in my head...

Anyway, recently I'd grown weary of our morning and bedtime routines. Not so much the routines themselves, but the constant reminders to brush your teeth, brush your teeth, brush your teeth, put on your pajamas, put on your pajamas, put on your pajamas!!!

I read Stephanie's posts about her success with Goal For It, and I considered trying it. In the end, I decided that Goal For It, while really cool, wasn't all that different from our Melissa & Doug Responsibility Chart. And the M&D chart, while neat, wasn't really working for us for a variety of reasons (the most basic being that we have only one chart, which caused problems because my two-year-old wanted to add her accomplishments to it, too). I probably could have figured out a work-around on that one until it occurred to me that the reason the M&D chart wasn't working for us - and why the Goal For It chart probably wouldn't work for us, either - was me! When reflecting on Stephanie's posts, it became clear to me that Goal For It worked for her because SHE was committed to it, not just her daughter.

Goal For It is the kind of thing my oldest daughter lives for, but me? Not so much. I'm not a structured person, I don't have a lot of things that I do habitually each day, I have trouble making schedules and plans and sticking to them...and I just knew that if I created a Goal For It chart that would require me to sit down with my kids, log in, go through each person's tasks each day, yada, yada, yada, it'd be just another system that we started and then fizzled out on - not the kind of example I wanted to set for my girls.

Then I thought about Practical Life activities and the gusto with which my girls do them. My two-year-old, in particular, is meticulous about doing each step in order and even reminds me when I forget steps. I decided to take advantage of their enthusiasm and put all of their morning and bedtime responsibilities squarely on their shoulders, with no check-marks or tallies or systems required of me. In the end, I created a list of things they should do each morning when they wake up and each night before they go to bed. I used clip art so that my two-year-old could "read" her chart, and I posted the charts in each of the girls' bedrooms.

The difference has been astounding. My oldest daughter wakes up and diligently does all of the items on her chart without any nagging/prodding/begging from me. My two-year-old needs a little bit more help (afterall, even with a step stool, she still can't reach the faucet), and I am more than happy to help out. But I cannot tell you what a difference the charts have made in their attitudes! Instead of doing something just because Mommy tells them to, they do it because it is their responsibility. Bedtime is still not 100% perfect, but it's running much more smoothly than it had been. Instead of constantly being after them to to brush their teeth, go potty, wash their hands, etc., the conversation goes more like this: "Great, now that your pajamas are on, what's the next thing on your chart?" See the difference?

The most amazing change has been morning, by far. One of the girls' nighttime tasks is to pick out their clothes for the next day. Then, in the morning, one of their tasks is to get dressed. So by 7:30 in the morning I have three kids dressed and ready to roll - how empowering is that?!

If you'd like to try something similar, you can download the morning and nighttime charts I made. I uploaded Word versions of the files so that you can change them as you like (for instance, I don't have "take a bath" on the girls' charts, because I consider that to be my responsibility, not theirs).

If you have a system that works for you, I'd love to hear more about it. And if you decide to try out the charts, please let me know how they work for your family!

Holy Cow

2009-07-22T00:16:00.003-04:00

I hope everyone is having a nice summer. Ours is flying by, and I can't seem to find time to write all of the posts I have floating around in my head. In the meantime, I just had to make sure everyone saw this.

Jonathan Feagle at Cultivating Dharma made his elementary math album available for download (for free!) online. It's called Math Album, First Part, so I don't know if that means there's more to come, but this is years worth of material to work with.

THANK YOU!!!

Exception Words

2009-06-23T13:52:00.013-04:00

I recently posted about wanting to make sight word drawers for my oldest daughter. I consider sight words to be those peculiar words in the English language that cannot be sounded out phonetically and must be memorized (in other words, recognized on "sight"), such as one, two, once, what, the, etc. I did some research into sight words, and I kept coming across the Dolch word list, which is a list of the 220 words that appear most frequently in the English language. The theory behind the Dolch list is that if a child can memorize those 220 words, they'll be able to recognize (and therefore "read") 50 - 70 percent of the words that appear in books. After going through the list, though, I quickly realized that it wasn't what I needed at all. The list is made up of high frequency words, so it includes simple phonetic words like cat, bed, ran, had, has, got, on, etc. I guess the Dolch list is used in schools that don't teach phonics?

Anyway, after doing a bit more research, I realized that what I actually needed was a list of "exception words," or words that defy simple phonics. I made this list into a table, and then I cut and laminated everything. You can download a .pdf of the table I made here. If you would like to add/remove items from the list, you can download a Word version of it here. My list is a little different than the one I found online, just because I took some words off (not really ready to go into Nazis with my four-year-old yet), but you can always go through the list and amend my Word version of the table as you like.

Coming soon...the farm!

Materials, Beads, and Printers

2009-06-07T22:53:00.015-04:00

Koko's Mama emailed me with some questions, and I hope she won't mind if I use this forum to answer them, because they may be helpful to others, as well.

First, she said:

I purchased from IFIT and Adena, but I was wondering about Alison's.

To date, I have bought all of our materials from Montessori Outlet, so I don't have any experience with IFIT, Adena, or Alison's. You can read more about our materials here.

Next, she asked:

I was seriously thinking about [buying] the bead cabinet. Is this something you are thinking about too or do you think there are cheaper/better options out there that teach similar concepts?

This is something I've been thinking about a lot. We're at a crossroads right now, and we need to decide whether to stick with Montessori or start with a new curriculum. I love, love, love Montessori teaching methods, particularly the math manipulatives. We have the hundred chain and thousand chain, and we have hundred squares and thousand cubes, but we don't have the bead cabinet yet (units 1 - 9 and 10). If I decide to make another big purchase of Montessori materials, the bead cabinet will be the first thing on my list. One thing I've noticed while shopping around for them: different suppliers use different colors of beads, so if you want all of your beads to be the same color, be sure to buy all of your bead materials from one source.

As for cheaper/better options, I haven't explored any yet, but I've heard a lot about Math U See. Anyone else out there know much about it?

Finally, Koko's Mama asked:

What color printer do you recommend? I look at everything you download and since I don't have a color printer as of yet, I wonder if you are happy with yours.

We have a Canon Pixma 620 that my husband bought for super-cheap on Black Friday, and so far I've been very happy with it. It's a photo printer, but it's also a regular printer. Office Depot and Staples periodically run buy one/get two free (!!) deals on photo paper, and that's the paper I use when I print out picture-heavy materials. Otherwise, I just use regular paper. I try to laminate everything (I have a Scotch-brand thermal laminator that I bought brand new off craigslist for $10. It was a bulk version originally purchased from Costco, so it came with a bunch of laminating sheets.)

Hope that helps! If any of you have any comments/suggestions for Koko's Mama, please feel free to leave them in the comments section (thanks!).

Chameleon Fun

2009-06-04T22:04:00.002-04:00

We were at the library last week, when a book on chameleons caught my daughter's eye. We brought it home with us, but I thought it was just OK - it didn't really do chameleons justice with respect to their camouflaging abilities.

Then, out of the blue, my mom emailed me this video, which my daughters and I have enjoyed watching over and over (and over!):

Awesome!

Worst Blogger Ever

2009-06-02T22:54:00.015-04:00

Back in April, N at The Learning Ark gave me an award...

...which is ironic, considering that I've been the world's worst blogger lately. Nonetheless, I'm very grateful and honored to receive this award (especially coming from a "real" Montessori teacher).

Many of you have emailed me with questions or left questions in the comments, and I plan to get to all of them.

First, to wrap up some unfinished business, Spesamore Academy asked me if I could share the last three verses from My ABC Bible Verses, and I'm happy to oblige:

X: "eXcept ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 18:3

Y: "You are my friends if you do whatever I command you." John 15:14

Z: "Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house." Luke 19:5

I know I've said this before, but I highly recommend this book. Sure, the stories can be a little cheesy and Pollyanna (oh, if only all children could be like Missy and Bill!), but they certainly model the way I would like my kids to behave; and after reading the stories enough times, I can use examples from the book during "teachable moments" with my daughters ("Remember the time Missy was in the grocery store with her mom..."). Plus (and I know I've said this before too) the kids really did learn these verses, even the two-year-olds (and we mommies learned the verses right along side them :)

The book is well thought-out, and the verses build on each other (the story for verse S might refer back to the verses for stories A and I, for example). I found a list of verses for each letter of the alphabet here, but the book also puts the verses into context, which makes them easier to understand and therefore easier to memorize.

Field Day Fun

2009-05-16T00:22:00.008-04:00

Here are some more pictures from our last day of school.

Miss D and Miss K set up most of the activities, which included three-legged races...

...sack races...

...soccer relays...

...parachute fun...

...water and sponge relays...

...and water balloon tosses:

We ended the day with a fun picnic, including oreos (gasp!)...

...and popsicles, which were a huge hit...

...especially with the teething babies:

We had a blast! (Or should I say, we had a field day!)

Class Photo

2009-05-14T00:21:00.002-04:00

We had a great last day, with tons of Field Day fun. Before all of the festivities, my husband got the whole crew together for a class picture:

From left to right we have me with my three girls, Miss D with her two daughters and son, Miss K with her two girls, and Miss C with her two boys.

Field Day photos coming soon - we had a blast!

The Year in Review

2009-05-12T22:12:00.003-04:00

It doesn't seem possible, but tomorrow is our last day of school!

Today for Circle Time, Miss K's theme was "The Year in Review," and she and the kids went over all of the topics we've discussed over these many weeks.

We have a Field Day planned for tomorrow, complete with a three-legged race, a water balloon toss, and face painting. We'll end the day with a picnic at a nearby playground.

I hope to have many pictures to share, as well as reflections on the past year.

Wikisori

2009-05-06T06:39:00.002-04:00

Wow! This morning I was looking something up in Google and came across Wikisori.

Did I already say, "Wow!" ?

Wow!

I've been thinking about this for some time - how frustrating it is that I have all of these links to all of these different Montessori resources and that it would be helpful to have them all in one place. Well, this is that place! Anyone can join and contribute links, materials, videos, etc., and the goal is to become a sort of "one-stop shopping" for all things Montessori. I've added it to my sidebar. Check it out!

Busy, Busy

2009-05-05T17:51:00.011-04:00

On Monday, things were buzzing in the classroom, especially as a result of this little guy:

Miss C's son has taken his classroom work to a "whole nother level." He chooses his work, diligently finishes it, puts it away, chooses his next work, diligently finishes it, puts it away, lather, rinse, repeat. On this day, he chose the hanging bead stair (above)...

...this sensorial puzzle (check out that rabbit!)...

...the open and close boxes...

...pouring rice...

...another sensorial puzzle...

...grinding spices with a mortar and pestle...

...and numerous other activities that I missed because I just wasn't quick enough with my camera!

(By the way, the spice grinding activity, which I saw at The Wonder Years, has been the most popular PL activity in the classroom for about five weeks running now. I started out using a whole black peppercorn/coriander blend that I happened to have in my spice cabinet, and now we've moved on to allspice berries, which I also happened to have. After taking another quick look in there, I've also found celery seeds and dried whole thyme, which I'll put out over the next couple of days.)

Miss D's son busied himself with the stamp game...

...and more word drawers (he's definitely in a sensitive period for reading and writing right now):

My daughter worked on the map of Asia...

...she spontaneously grabbed the dustpan and broom to clean up some crumbs...

...and then she and Miss D's son played dominoes, which is their current favorite activity.

Initially the dominoes were on the shelf for domino math, but they played one time a couple weeks ago, and now they play daily. I know dominoes isn't a traditional Montessori activity, but I don't mind it because my set goes up to double 12. I love that they can look at a domino and say, "That's the 11/6," or "I have a double 9." (In the meantime, I'm looking over their shoulders, trying to count the dots :)

Catching Up and Earth Day Fun

2009-04-22T14:37:00.014-04:00

I haven't been posting about school much lately, but we've been meeting faithfully and getting quite a lot accomplished.

Among the many Circle Time themes Miss K has introduced since my last post (cringe) - including Spring, community helpers, Palm Sunday, and Easter - Miss K's Circle Time theme for last week was the zoo. I used it as an opportunity to introduce all of the lessons I recently bought/printed out from Montessori for Everyone: Living vs. Non-Living, The ~~Five~~ Six Kingdoms, Plant vs. Animal, Vertebrate vs. Invertebrate, and the five categories of Vertebrates (amphibian, bird, fish, mammal, and reptile). We also took a class field trip to the zoo - a little crazy, considering we were visiting the National Zoo during high tourist season, but still very fun and memorable.

Miss K's Circle Time theme for this week was Earth Day. To celebrate, Miss K got each of the kids their very own terra cotta pot and packet of seeds (which they chose at random), and today they decorated their pots and planted their seeds.

Over the past many weeks, we've continued to read and enjoy My ABC Bible Verses. The verses and stories we've read:

T: "Thou shalt not steal." Exodus 20:15
U: "Unto Thee, O God, do we give thanks." Psalm 75:1
V: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on Me hath everlasting life." John 6:47
W: "We love Him because He first loved us." 1 John 4:19

I continue to be amazed at how easy it is for the kids to learn these Bible verses. At the end of each school day, we go through the alphabet and say the verses one by one, and even though we're all the way up to W, with only very little assistance, they can say each verse from memory!

A Clearer Picture

2009-04-21T21:35:00.008-04:00

With kindergarten looming on the horizon for my oldest daughter, a (somewhat) clearer picture of next year has started to emerge. For various reasons, both Miss D and Miss K (and their respective children, of course) will not be returning next year. That leaves my family and Miss C's. If nothing else changes between now and then, this September we would have two adults and five kids ages 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1, or three kids in the Montessori room and two kids in the playroom, which sounds...totally doable.

Without Miss K to lesson plan and run Circle Time, I'm considering purchasing this curriculum. Has anyone out there tried it?

Still Here...

2009-04-08T23:34:00.005-04:00

...and working harder than ever (and therefore not blogging much at all).

My oldest daughter will be five this September, and it's looking more and more likely that we'll homeschool for kindergarten (I'm touring a Montessori school next week, and if that's not a good fit, we'll probably homeschool). (I just re-read that last sentence - how's that for commitment? :)

The possibility of homeschooling has forced me to reexamine our current setup and has revealed many deficiencies, which I hope to blog about soon. In the meantime, I've been trying to finish up some outstanding projects and create some new ones.

I've finally finished making all of the word drawers from Laura at My Montessori Journey's system. I've had the three-letter word drawers out on the shelves since day one (drawers 1 - 16), but the four- and five-letter words with digraphs have been long overdue, and I've finally finished them. I have 60 word drawer compartments (two sets of drawers with 30 drawers each, like this), but there are only 38 sets of words in Laura's system. Rather than let those 22 drawers sit empty, I've decided to fill them with sight words (words that must be memorized because they cannot be sounded out phonetically). I'll upload those files as soon as I'm finished creating them (read an excellent post about introducing sight words here).

I have many, many other projects in the works, and I'll try to get a post up each time I finish something new.

I Heart Blog Awards

2009-03-30T20:02:00.013-04:00

I recently received two different blog awards - thanks! :)

First, Gigi from Montessori Spanish and Amber from Hey, I'm Just the Nanny gave me the Lemons to Lemonade award:

Next, Basia at United Teaching gave me the I Heart Your Blog award:

The Lemons to Lemonade award is for bloggers "who have a good attitude or who show gratitude," and I'm passing it - and the I Heart Your Blog award - along to bloggers whose positive attitude always comes shining through in their posts:

Julie at Havin' Fun Yet
Xia at Grillos y Canarios
Hannah at Old Creek Montessori
Adventures in Montessori
Little Hands, Big Work
Amber at Adventures of a Rainbow Mama

Thanks very much to Gigi, Amber, and Basia for nominating me. If you're nominated, you can...

1. Put the logos on your blog or post.
2. Nominate other blogs that you enjoy.
3. Link to your nominees within your post.
4. Let them know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
5. Share the love and link this post to the person from whom you received your award.

Have You Read This Book?

2009-03-24T22:54:00.009-04:00

I stumbled upon this post today at Starry Sky Ranch. Midway through the post, the author mentions a book called A Montessori Mother by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, which was written in 1912. It's out of print, but I was thrilled to find the book in its entirety (library card pockets and all) through Google Book Search.

After a quick perusal, I find I can't "put it down" (what's the equivalent expression when you're reading a book online?). The author gives very detailed descriptions of a day she spent in one of Maria Montessori's Casas, and I find it fascinating. I hope you enjoy it too!

I Surrender (A Little Bit)

2009-03-23T21:38:00.019-04:00

OK, obviously not much blogging going on lately, and here's why: I've been spending the majority of my free time trying to make new materials for the classroom. I say "trying" because sometimes - with some things - I tend to agonize over every single detail, to the point that I get nothing done. Anyone else out there like that?

Case in point: I recently decided to create a biology/zoology lesson on the five different categories of animals (mammal, bird, reptile, fish, amphibian), which made me realize that I hadn't done a lesson on vertebrates vs. invertebrates, which made me realize I hadn't done a lesson on plants vs. animals, which made me realize I hadn't done a lesson on the ~~five~~ six kingdoms, which made me realize I hadn't even done a lesson on living vs. non-living things.

So, I sat down to create some living/non-living sort cards, and I was literally paralyzed. I would be struck by this great idea - I know! Include oranges growing on an orange tree as "living" and then orange juice in a glass as "non-living" - how cool! But then I'd read somewhere that "living" means anything that has once lived (so lumber is considered "living"), and then I'd get stuck trying to come up with other great ideas. You can see how absolutely nothing would get done (it's a sickness - truly).

Fortunately, liberatingly, I saw this post at The Wonder Years, a blog that I totally admire because its author is a trained Montessori teacher who just seems to have it all together - you know? But wait a second - she BOUGHT pre-made cards?! She didn't make them herself?! You can do that?! Duh.

I spent about $35 (gasp!), but I think the investment will prove to be worth every penny (not to mention all of the agony and hand-wringing it will spare me, and, consequently, all of you :). I got living/non-living cards, the six kingdoms nomenclature cards, the plant/animal cards, the vertebrate/invertebrate cards, the five types of vertebrate cards, and the eight types of invertebrate cards - definitely a beautiful set of materials that will form the basis of many new lessons. Now I'm off to print/cut/laminate/cut, but at least now something will get done - how exciting! Progress!!

Controlled Chaos

2009-03-17T07:46:00.011-04:00

On Monday, Miss D's son, Miss K's daughter, and my daughter decided to build a pink tower/brown stair extension, and then they flipped the brown prisms on their ends and built a brown skyscraper. (Find pictures of pink tower/brown stair extensions here.)

Then the building got...interesting:

At first I was hesitant, and then I became complicit. First of all, it's not like there were any other students in the classroom waiting to use the materials (Miss C's crew wasn't with us, and the 2-year-olds were otherwise occupied). Second, I realized I'd be able to do a three-period lesson on a lot of the things the kids got out. Third, everything they got out would have to be put away, which is a learning experience in and of itself. Finally, the kids worked together so nicely that it was hard to deny them.

Thus, "What else can we use, Miss Jennie?"

"Why don't you grab the geometric solids?"
"Why don't you get the hundred squares and thousand cubes?"
"Why don't you use the knobless cylinders?"
"Why don't you grab the binomial and trinomial cubes?" (Cue the mad scientist laughter - bwah hah hah hah hah!!)

In the end, the kids ended up building with - and then properly using - the pink tower, brown stair, long red rods, red and blue rods, color box 2, the geometric solids, all five colors of sorting bears, the baric tablets, the sound cylinders, all four sets of knobless cylinders, the hundred squares and thousand cubes, dominoes, and the binomial and trinomial cubes - not bad for a day's work!

For PE, Miss D led the kids in bowling and calisthenics.

We closed with the "T" verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Thou shalt not steal," Exodus 20:15.

The Bank Game, Explained

2009-03-13T11:45:00.003-04:00

In response to my question about the Bank Game, N at The Learning Ark posted this tutorial. All I can say is, "Thanks!!"

In addition to her very helpful explanation of how to use the bank game, she also explains when to use it:

Before using this the children should have already had plenty of practice with the stamp game, dot exercise, small bead frame, large bead frame, checker board and flat bead frame.

My daughter is still working with the stamp game, so we have some work to do before we're ready for this activity.

As N points out in her post, this version of the bank game is different than the bank game played with the golden bead material.

Reunited!

2009-03-11T23:18:00.006-04:00

Miss D's crew joined us today, 4-week-old baby and all!

Miss D's son and my daughter did the stamp game together...

...and then they did two sides of this six-sided puzzle:

Nicely done!

The kids were very excited to be back together, and it - ummm - showed. To try to rein things in a little bit, I taped a blue line on the floor, and the kids took turns walking the line:

We need to work on other people's personal space a little bit:

(I guess it would help if I put down the camera :)

Pics

2009-03-10T22:16:00.009-04:00

Here are some pictures from preschool the past two days:

The seldom-used open and close boxes:

I think I got too cute with this activity, which is why it's not used more. I put the containers in their own treasure chest with a snapping hinge closure (Get it? The container for the open/close activity has an intriguing open/close mechanism itself! Aren't I clever?) But because the box sits closed on the shelf, the kids aren't often inspired to use it.

I may change this up a bit, because the containers themselves are pretty cool. The little heart-shaped box has a hinged lid that snaps shut with a very satisfying "thwack," if you know what I mean. The lid on the star-shaped box is held on with magnets that are embedded in the points; if the points aren't aligned properly, the lid won't stay on, making this box a little more challenging. The apothecary jar (lower right) is just fun to open and close, because the wire hinge is a little counterintuitive. There's also a hermetically sealed glass jar and some other, simpler containers.

Using a handheld broom and dustpan to sweep up pompoms:

Bead sequencing:

(When I present this activity, I show the kids how to hold the rod in their left hand and read the pattern on the sequence card from left to right. Miss C's son did the activity properly and then switched the rod to his right hand to admire his work.)

The stamp game:

(Find a lovely stamp game paper grid download here - thanks!)

Short bead stair and hanger:

(Download coloring extensions here and here.)

Preschool Update

2009-02-28T23:00:00.014-05:00

In the past three weeks, because of various sick days...snow days...national holidays...new babies being born...we've only met for preschool three times. We've had good, productive days, but I want to dedicate this post to the really cool Circle Time lessons Miss K put together to teach the kids about keeping their teeth clean and healthy.

She gave the kids some background information about teeth - how many, what they're made of, little teeth vs. big teeth, etc. She explained why it's so important to keep our teeth clean and why crunchy fruits and veggies are so much better for our teeth than sugary snacks or sodas. After explaining that the kids should brush their teeth two times a day and floss daily, she showed them these videos on proper tooth brushing technique.

Next, to illustrate the affect that sugary foods have on our teeth, she dunked a hard boiled egg in soda and left it to soak overnight. The next day, the egg looked like this:

We used fluoride toothpaste and a toothbrush to brush the egg...

...and voila! A nice clean, shiny, bright ~~tooth~~ egg:

On another day, Miss K brought in a set of tooth molds (yes, those are her husband's molds that their family dentist let them have!), and the kids took turns brushing them with proper brushing motions:

Also, she put together a "Happy Tooth/Sad Tooth" sort:

Finally, for Arts & Crafts one day, the kids used a "brush" (a paintbrush) to turn a yellow tooth white:

Once again, very nicely done, Miss K!

Over the course of the three weeks, we did the "R" and "S" stories and verses from My ABC Bible Verses:

"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy," Exodus 20:8

"Seek the Lord while he may be found," Isaiah 55:6

Sorry for the delay between posts! Lots of good stuff going on - hopefully I'll get to blog about it all soon!!

Free Nomenclature Card Downloads

2009-02-23T21:04:00.006-05:00

In case you missed them, ETC-Press has a beautiful collection of 3-part cards that you can download for free here (special thanks to Lisa from the montessorimakers yahoo! group for mentioning them).

There are 3-part nomenclature cards for land formations, geometric solids, cloud formations, phases of the moon, the solar system, parts of a flag, parts of a leaf, parts of a tree, world continents and hemispheres, and world oceans.

In case the link above doesn't get you to just the right spot, click on "Free Materials" on the left-hand side, and 11 items should come up. Once you've selected an item, you'll see the words "click here to download the file" in teeny-tiny print underneath the item's description. Look closely - I missed it the first time through.

Infant Activities

2009-02-20T22:53:00.054-05:00

This post has a loooong background, and rather than bore you with all the details, I'm going to try to get straight to the point.

Our 10-month-old has a hearing impairment that was detected at birth. Official diagnosis: moderate bilateral sensorineural hearing loss. The upshot: this is a permanent hearing loss, it's not genetic, it's just something that happened, and as long as she wears hearing aids by the time she is 6 months old (which she has), her speech and language should develop right on par with her "hearing" peers.

Now, it just so happens that we live in a county that has amazing services for babies with hearing impairments, including a speech and language development specialist who comes to my house once a week to work with my daughter, make sure she's developing appropriately, and teach me simple techniques I can use to make sure my daughter's development isn't affected by the hearing loss.

The other day it occurred to me that these techniques would be beneficial for any baby, not just one with a hearing impairment, so although they may not be Montessori-based, I think this is a good forum for sharing them (especially considering that many of you have babies around the same age as my daughter). Also, I know that our county is one of the only ones in the country to provide these kinds of services, so perhaps these posts will be beneficial for parents of infants born with a hearing loss who - through complete happenstance - don't live where we do.

This first activity is so simple and so obvious, I can't believe it never occurred to me to try it with my older girls. I'm sure everyone is familiar with using picture books to teach babies the names of things. My daughter is still too little to look at picture books, though - she's teething right now, and all she wants to do is eat the books I show her. So instead, I started looking around my house for objects, and just look at what I found already sitting on my shelves:

A hen, sheep, pigs, and cows:

An elephant, a seal, a monkey, and a lion:

Birdies:

And numerous other baby-safe "objects." So here's the game:

Using two objects at a time, show your baby the objects and say (for example), "This is a sheep who *baaas*, and this is a cow who *moooos.* Can you show me the sheep who *baaas*?" If she reaches for the correct object say, "That's right, that's the sheep who *baaas.*" If she reaches for the wrong object, say, "That's the cow who *mooos*; can you show me the sheep who *baaas*?"

Once your baby is consistently reaching for the correct animal, add a third and eventually a fourth object.

My daughter is ten months old now, and she can totally do this! I don't even know if my older girls could have done this at this age, because I never tried it with them - I just waited until they were old enough for picture books.

I consider myself to be fairly proactive when it comes to my kids' early development, so the fact that I never thought of this game before now makes me think that others of you out there might not have, either. I'd be interested to know if these types of posts are useful to parents with "hearing" children.

And to parents of children with a hearing loss who might stumble across this blog, hopefully these activities will be helpful to you, too. It was only recently that I truly understood their purpose: I'm sure most of you are familiar with vision loss - things are blurry, you put on a pair of glasses, and your vision is corrected to 20/20. Hearing is more complicated than vision, though, so although hearing aids are beneficial and necessary, even "aided" hearing is never "20/20," so to speak. For instance, even with amplification, the sound /m/ can sound like /oo/, and vice versa, which can make speech very difficult to understand and emulate. Activities like this are intended to make sure that the baby's hearing aids are working effectively and that she can discriminate sounds. Of course, she'll be able to tell us these things in a few years, but the goal is to try to catch and identify any issues early before they can affect her development.

For now, we're encouraged that our daughter's development is right on track, and - considering all of the emotions that go with learning that your child has a hearing impairment - I couldn't ask for anything more!

Birdwatching Activity

2009-02-17T16:03:00.028-05:00

We have a very faithful community of "feeder" birds in our backyard, and I supply them with thistle and safflower seed all year long. Although a lot of birds around here migrate south for the winter, many stay put, relying on birdfeeders and other sources of food to make it through until Spring.

This past weekend was The Great Backyard Birdcount, and I was inspired to make a new activity that I'll file away under "cultural."

First, I used Mrs. Riley's PageBuilder to create 3-part cards of the birds that visit our feeders most often:

(Thanks to Shannon for introducing me to this site. Up until now, the site has been free, but the public beta will expire at noon on Feb. 23, after which time subscriptions will cost $12 a month.)

Second, I created a birdwatching sheet featuring the birds introduced with the 3-part cards.

After my daughter matched the 3-part cards, she pulled a chair up to our back window and sat - patiently - and identified and recorded any birds that visited our feeders:

She really seemed to enjoy it and often yelled out new birds she had identified.

I was really pleased with how this activity turned out, because it required patience, observation, visual discrimination, etc. We reviewed the terms "male" and "female" and discussed the differences in plumage between male and female birds. The concepts "common" and "rare" made themselves abundantly clear, because some birds were always all over the feeder, while other birds were seen only once or not at all. Most important, my daughter seemed to enjoy it. At first she said, "Birdwatching is boring - there are no birds," but then they showed up and I noticed she grabbed her clipboard and headed right for her chair. The only drawback would be that I was the only control for error ("Mommy, is that a bluejay?").

I've made the birdwatching sheet I created available for download here. You could easily modify it to include birds that frequent your yard. Also, you can find/modify the cards I made at Mrs. Riley's PageBuilder by searching for "Feeder Birds of the Eastern US" Parts 1 and 2.

Happy birdwatching!

Phonics Swap 2009

2009-02-16T13:57:00.012-05:00

Jo at A Bit of This and A Bit of That hosts phonics and culture swaps six times each year, and I recently participated in my very first phonics swap. Basically, I sent two swap partners 10 phonetically correct miniatures for their collections, and they each sent me 10 miniatures for mine.

My swap partners were Joann in Olympia, WA, and Gabriel in Austin, TX. Here's what I sent them:

Pin
Hammer
Glass
Indian
Orange
Duck
Bowl
Sack
Ax
Whisk
Eggs

Here's what Gabriel sent me:

Lighthouse
Horn
Carrot
Guitar
Moon
Cupcake
Pencil
Tree
Watermelon
Ladybug
Umbrella
Saxophone

Joann sent:

Frog
Blackberry
Raspberry
Mitten
House
Plate
Yarn
Spool
Violin
Zero (typewriter key)
Nine (typewriter key)
Book
Doughnut
Mushroom
Carrot
Key

They also sent lovely postcards from their respective hometowns. We live in a very culture-rich area (American Revolution, Civil War, George Washington's home, not to mention that we live 12 miles from the capital of the United States), but somehow I just could not get my act together to include postcards. I had big hopes and lots of culture-based ideas for things to send, but in the end, I sent only miniatures. I can get paralyzed by details, and I knew I would never get the miniatures in the mail if I veered off on a tangent. Alas, perhaps if Jo hosts a culture swap in a couple of months...

To see what other people swapped, click here. To my swap partners, thanks for all of the goodies!! I'm just starting my phonetic object collection, and I'm glad to have all of these additions!!

It's a Girl!!

2009-02-15T15:22:00.002-05:00

I'm thrilled to announce that Miss D gave birth to a healthy baby girl this morning. She weighs 7 lbs, 12 oz and is 20 1/2 inches long. Congratulations Miss D and Mr. T (big brother and big sister, too)!!!

New Practical Life Activity

2009-02-14T00:56:00.006-05:00

I can't remember where I saw the idea for this sweeping activity (sorry!), but today I set my two-year-old up with a basket of pompoms, a small hand-held sweeper, and a dustpan. She poured the pompoms onto the table...

...diligently used the broom to sweep them into the dustpan...

...emptied the dustpan into the basket...

...and then started all over again:

She must have done this 15 times, and each time was just as fun and satisfying as the time before. If you're looking for a simple way to keep a two-year-old busy, this is a great activity!

Valentine's Day Fun

2009-02-13T14:42:00.017-05:00

Continuing with her mail theme for Circle Time, on Wednesday Miss K brought each of the kids their own little mailbox, and they spent the morning making Valentines for each other and delivering them to each other.

The kids really loved opening their very own mailboxes and finding mail inside.

During Independent Work time, I presented the Pythagoras Board to Miss D's son. I know I've mentioned before that he has a real head for numbers, but on this day he absolutely blew me away. He's four and a half, and he can skip count (in his head, no less!) by every number up to ten. He could probably skip count by 11 and 12, but I wouldn't know because the Pythagoras Board only goes up to 10! Miss K and I sat there watching him with our jaws on the floor! Once he finished it, he immediately got to work on what he really wanted to do while patiently enduring my presentation - play Rush Hour Jr:

Miss K's daughter worked with the nuts and bolts...

...and the map of the United States:

My daughter did the continents map:

The two-year-olds were in and out, but when they were "in," Miss D's daughter transferred water through a funnel:

...and my daughter did a bunch of different puzzles, including the parts of a tree:

We closed with the Q verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Quench not the Spirit," 1 Thessalonians 5:19.

New Sidebar Links

2009-02-12T15:11:00.013-05:00

My oldest daughter turns five this September, and we're not sure what we're going to do for kindergarten - should we continue with the Montessori homeschool? Should we enroll her in a private Montessori school? Should we enroll her in our local public school? Should we enroll her in a private Christian school? And on...and on...and on. Years ago, someone told me that school decisions would be among the more difficult ones I would have to make with respect to my children, and at the time, I found that difficult to believe. Now I understand.

For a little guidance re: the homeschool kindergarten route, I turned to someone who is a total source of inspiration for me: Xia at Grillos y Canarios. She Montessori homeschools her three boys, who are 9, 6, and 3. Up until a few posts ago, she posted both in Spanish and English, but she recently made the decision to post in Spanish only. I find that Google translator does a good job of letting me keep up with her blog in English.

She makes Montessori homeschooling look so easy that I emailed her with a few questions about her materials as well as resources for presenting them. She pointed me to some places that I had never seen before, and I thought some of you out there might not have heard of them, either (or maybe I'm just a total noob :). I've added them to the sidebar, but they include 3 - 6 and 6 - 9 albums from Montessori Teachers Collective. She also reminded me of the Montessori by Hand and playschool6 yahoo groups, which I knew about but which I had filed in the back of my mind and then promptly forgotten. She also recommended that I read Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius.

Also, Carla emailed me recently and mentioned the montessorimakers yahoo group, which I hadn't heard of (thank you!!).

Hopefully these links will be helpful to you too! If you know of a link you think I should add, please email me or leave a comment - thanks!!

You've Got Mail!

2009-02-11T22:44:00.014-05:00

On Monday, we were finally back together again (well, sort of, because Miss D's family was sick - bummer).

Miss K's Circle Time theme for this week was mail. She explained how a letter gets from here to there, what stamps are, how to address an envelope, etc. We made Valentines during Independent Work time and addressed them to various friends and family members.

Also, I had a couple new things on the shelves. Miss K's daughter practiced pouring from a pitcher into two containers. The goal is to pour only to the line, and the white pitcher contains more water than necessary. The sponge is for spills.

I also had a scooping/leveling activity out, which my 2-year-old used. Here she's working from left to right - she scoops, levels, transfers.

The inspiration for this work came from The Wonder Years, which, in case you've missed it, is just an amazing blog - thank you!!

Miss C's son used the sand tray and sandpaper letters:

Miss K's daughter used the knobless cylinders:

Over the weekend, Miss K's youngest daughter celebrated her first birthday, and we had fun re-celebrating with her. Miss K brought cupcakes and we sang "Happy Birthday" - so much fun! Happy Birthday, little one!!

We closed with the Q verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Quench not the Spirit," 1 Thessalonians 5:19.

The Sequence of Montessori Work

2009-02-06T00:16:00.025-05:00

No preschool this week - all of the families were sick, so we weren't able to meet. The girls and I have gotten some good work done, though, and I will post pictures soon.

As I mentioned recently, my oldest daughter is ready for some new challenges in the classroom. I pulled out a bunch of new math works but have felt uncertain about the sequence in which I should present them. That has led me back to the beginning, taking a fresh look at the Sequence of Montessori Work from David Gettman's book (which is very similar to other "scope and sequence" lists made available by multiple different authors and sources). I thought other homeschooling Montessorians might find it useful, as well.

You can download a Word version here. Otherwise, I've typed up the sequence below. But before you go :), what resources do you use for sequencing your own Montessori presentations?

SEQUENCE OF MONTESSORI WORK

PERIOD ONE
[Early Practical Activities, introductory Sensorial, Culture, and Language Activities, no Math]

Practical:
- Pouring beans between two jugs
- Opening and closing containers
- Buttoning
- Buckling
- Other simple dressing frames
- Carrying and laying floor mats and table mats
- Saying Thank You
- Other early grace and courtesy work
- Carrying a tray
- Lifting, carrying and putting down a chair at a table
- Climbing and descending stairs
- Walking on the line
- Folding
- Hanging clothes on a hook
- Brushing hair
- Dusting

Sensorial:
- Cylinder blocks
- Pink tower
- Color tablets, box 1
- Presentation tray of geometric cabinet
- Sensitizing the fingers
- Touch boards
- Presentation 1 of geometric solids
- Stereognostic bags

Language:
- Classified pictures, exercise 1
- Classified pictures, exercise 2
- Speech
- I Spy, Stage 1
- I Spy, Stage 2
- I Spy, Stage 3
- Book corner and library

Mathematics:
- None

Culture:
- Land and Water

PERIOD TWO
[Building fundamental skills in all subject areas except Math, concentrating on sight and touch in Sensorial work]

Practical:
- Pouring water from a jug
- Medium difficulty dressing frames
- Simple braiding of rope or yarn
- Laying a table for a meal
- Polishing brass, glass surfaces, shoes or furniture
- Washing hands
- Washing cloths
- Scrubbing a table top
- Sweeping sawdust
- Brushing clothes
- Folding clothes
- Hanging clothes on a hanger
- Handling a book
- Asking for and receiving scissors
- Greeting people
- Kindness to visitors
- Being silent

Sensorial:
- Advanced cylinder block exercises
- Brown stair
- Red rods
- Color tablets, boxes 2 and 3
- Geometric cabinet, exercises 1 – 4
- Binomial cube
- Blindfold
- Tactile tablets
- Later geometric solids presentations
- Stereognostic bags
- Sorting grains
- Sound boxes
- Preliminary presentation of bells
- Three-stage lesson on the names of the sensorial qualities

Language:
- Classified pictures, exercises 3 and 4
- I Spy, stage 4
- Single-letter sandpaper letters, exercise 1
- Metal insets
- Speech “questioning”

Mathematics:
- None

Culture:
- Land and Water exercises
- First maps
- Places classified pictures
- Classification by leaf, preliminary work

PERIOD THREE
[Developing more advance Practical skills, concentrating on other senses in Sensorial work, completing preparatory work in Language, fully entering Culture work, starting Math]

Practical:
- Pouring water from a jug
- Pouring water through a funnel
- Bows, laces, and other difficult dressing frames
- Advanced braiding, then plaiting hair
- Tying a tie
- Simple cooking chores
- Ironing
- Making beds

Sensorial:
- Geometric cabinet exercises 5 – 8
- Constructive triangles
- Square of Pythagoras
- Trinomial cube
- Fabrics
- Thermic bottles
- Baric tablets
- Presentations of bells

Language:
- Double-letter sandpaper letters, exercise 1
- I Spy, stages 5 and 6 frequently
- Exercise 2 with all sandpaper letters

Mathematics:
- Number rods, exercise 1

Culture:
- All maps
- Places picture folders
- Past and present
- Stories about the past
- Air
- Water
- Magnetism
- Classifying animals
- Classification by leaf
- Parts of animals
- Parts of plants

PERIOD FOUR
[Advanced Sensorial activities, early Language reading and writing, Mathematics Group 1 and starting Group 2]

Practical:
- Responsibility for certain daily Care of the Environment duties
- Helping and advising younger ones in a group

Sensorial:
- Geometric cabinet, exercises 9 and 10
- Thermic tablets
- Mystery bag
- Visual work with blindfold
- Bells exercises 1, 2, and 3
- Tasting cups
- Smelling boxes

Language:
- Movable alphabet
- Writing individual letters
- Writing families of letters
- Positioning letters on lines
- Sandpaper capitals
- Box 1 of object boxes
- Action cards
- Box 2 of object boxes
- Reading folders, exercise 1

Mathematics:
- Number rods, exercise 2
- Sandpaper numbers
- Number tablets (with the number rods)
- Spindles
- Numbers and counters
- Memory play
- Limited bead material
- Number cards
- Function of the decimal system
- Fractions

Culture:
- Gravity
- Sound
- Optics
- Places artifacts

PERIOD FIVE
[Further development in Language reading and writing, essence of counting, adding, subtracting, and multiplying in Math]

Practical:
- Assisting with group activities
- Attending to visitors
- Comforting other children

Sensorial:
- Knobless cylinders
- Bells, exercises 4, 5, and 6

Language:
- Matching and writing capitals
- The alphabetic sequence
- Writing copies
- Puzzle words
- Reading folders, exercise 2
- Classified reading
- Environment cards
- Articles
- Adjectives
- Conjunctions
- Prepositions
- Verbs

Mathematics:
- Formation of complex numbers
- Introduction to teens
- Introduction to tens
- Unlimited bead material (Addition, subtraction, and multiplication)
- Counting
- Stamps (Addition, subtraction, and multiplication)
- Dots
- Fractions exercises

Culture:
- Plant life cycles
- Timeline

PERIOD SIX
[Advanced Language work, basic division and arithmetic memory work in Mathematics]

Practical:
- Serving snacks and meals
- Subtle etiquette

Sensorial:
- Advanced bells work

Language:
- Margins
- Punctuation cards
- Reading folders, exercises 3 and 4
- Adjective matching
- Detective Adjective Game
- Adverbs
- Command cards
- Adverb matching
- Verb games
- Plurals
- Feminine and Masculine
- Root word charts

Mathematics:
- Unlimited bead material (Division)
- Stamps (Division)
- Addition and Subtraction Snake Games
- Addition and Subtraction Strip Boards
- Multiplication tables
- Multiplication bead board
- Addition, Subtraction and Multiplication charts
- Advanced work with fractions

Culture:
- Reading classified cards in Geography, Nature Studies and History
- Fact books from the library

PERIOD SEVEN
[Application activities in Language, abstraction in Mathematics]

Practical:
- Helping the Director prepare the environment
- Presenting practical activities to younger children

Sensorial:
- Presenting sensorial activities to younger children

Language:
- Written questioning
- Free writing
- Reading folders exercise 5
- Reading analysis

Mathematics:
- Unit Division Board
- Division Charts
- Short Bead Frame
- Hierarchies
- Long Bead Frame
- Simple Division

Culture:
- Definition stages of Classified Cards in Geography, Nature Studies and History
- Field nature observation work

Thanks!

2009-01-31T23:28:00.024-05:00

I just wanted to say a heartfelt "Thanks" to everyone for their comments and emails in response to my last post. I feel very encouraged and have a lot of new ideas for managing things a little better so that my older girls can get in the Montessori room more.

On Thursday, we had a "perfect storm" of sorts (in a good way) in which my husband and oldest daughter were out of the house and my 9-month-old was napping, leaving just my 2-year-old and me - what fun! When she has no distractions, she can sit and focus on her work for what seems like an eternity (for a 2-year-old, at least :). However, she definitely has trouble concentrating when her older sister or friends are around. I was excited to have 30 - 45 minutes to let her "play" in the Montessori room.

She tonged...

...and poured:

She knows all of her numbers, and she has recently mastered counting without recounting the same thing, so I thought it would be fun to try the large number rods and number cards. I put the number rods in random order on one mat and the number cards in numerical order on a second mat. We worked together to count each rod, and then she ran to the second mat to find the right number card:

She was very proud of her work when she was finished (and so was I :)

She has only worked with the long red rods a couple of times, so I was delighted when she was able to put the number rods away almost effortlessly.

Her very favorite thing to do in the Montessori room is the sandpaper letters and the sand tray - which is really just her way to get to play with the sand ;) . We worked together to trace and write about ten letters (here she is making an /o/)...

...and then I let her just enjoy the experience (I love the look on her face here as she watches the sand slooooowly fall through her fingers):

And here she is watching the sand pile up on her arm:

She has worked with the sand tray about 15 times now, and she knows to be very careful and to try not to spill sand (this took some practice, but she's very good at it now). A long time ago, this is an activity that I would have said was too messy for her. Thankfully, I've gotten over myself and my fear of messes. (I mean, seriously, it took me all of 2 minutes to sweep up the cornmeal that fell to the tabletop/floor, but it was a solid 15 - 20 minutes of sheer delight for her.) With the weather so cold outside, it was nice to bring the "sandbox" inside for a little while.

The Bank Game?

2009-01-28T15:34:00.024-05:00

Calling all you Montessorians out there - I need your help!

First, a little back story. Lately I've noticed my oldest daughter's interest in the shelves waning. She has pretty much mastered everything I've got out right now, and I blame myself for not staying two or three steps ahead of her. My 9-month-old is very mobile and is extremely hard to manage in such a toddler-unfriendly environment, so we rarely do work in the Montessori room outside of "preschool." We turn out the lights in that room when everyone leaves for the day, and they don't usually go back on until the next time we meet, so the Montessori room just isn't at the forefront of my mind (plus, life is just busy with three young kids, you know?). So, here's an additional, off-topic call for help to all you Montessori homeschoolers with small kids - do you have any strategies for managing your crawlers/toddlers so that your older kids can get some work done?

Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. We didn't meet today because of the ice/snow storm we had last night, so I used it as an opportunity to take stock of everything and see what new things I could put out that might pique my daughter's interest. In the far reaches of my basement I discovered, of all things, something called "The Bank Game."

The Bank Game? I thought we already knew how to do the Bank Game. I opened it up and quickly flashed back to this summer, when I was setting up the Montessori room: I opened the box and little number cards flew all out of order and I had no idea how to reorganize them, so I quickly put the lid back on and vowed to come back to it another day. Well that day has come. Today when I opened the box, I knew somewhat intuitively how to arrange the number cards, but that's where I got stuck, and here's where I need your help. Can anyone out there tell me how to use this beautiful game, or at least point me to a written or video demonstration of it?

As you can see from the photo, there are white number cards with colored numbers along the left-hand side that go from 1 - 9 in each category (1 - 9, 10 - 90, 100 - 900, etc.) from units to 1 million. On the right side, there are colored number cards with black numbers that go from 1 - 9, 10 - 90, 100 - 900, and 1000 - 9000. There are three each of the unit cards 1 - 9, and then there are three "00" cards. There are six labels: Cashier, Banker, Bookkeeper, Controller, Clerk, and Customer.

I would be very grateful for any advice you might have, be it related to "The Bank Game" or to reining in a 9-month-old. Thanks!!!

Preschool Update

2009-01-27T14:46:00.020-05:00

Just in case anyone was wondering - yes, we're still here!

Last week was a short week for everyone around here - Monday was the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and on Tuesday, everyone had the day off for the Inauguration (we live in a large suburb of Washington, DC, so schools and many businesses were closed).

We met on Wednesday, but I didn't get any pictures. Miss K's Circle Time theme was The Mitten by Jan Brett. Amazon's description sums up the book well:

A Ukrainian boy named Nicki wants his grandmother Baba to knit snow-white mittens for him. She warns her grandson that a white mitten will be hard to find if he loses it in the snow, but of course he promptly does just that! What happens next is the surprising part, as a mole takes refuge in the lost mitten, then a rabbit, then a hedgehog, an owl, a badger, and a fox. If you think the mitten might be a wee bit stretched out at this point, just wait: "Then a big bear sniffed at the mitten. The animals were packed in tight, but the bear didn't care. He crawled in anyway." When a tiny mouse squeezes in, her whiskers tickle the bear's nose. He sneezes, and "Aaaaa-aaaaa-ca-chew!" all the animals fly out of their crocheted cave. As the mitten sails through the air, Nicki spots it, reclaims it, and takes it home to show his smiling Baba.

Miss K read the book to the kids and then used it as a way to introduce the concept of estimating. She showed the kids four different sized mittens, and then they each took turns estimating how many little balls would fit into each mitten (the largest held 16, the smallest held 3).

For Arts & Crafts, Miss K led the kids in this activity, in which they colored the different animals from The Mitten, cut them out, and then pasted them into a mitten.

We closed with the P verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Praise the Lord! For it is good to sing praises to our God." Psalm 147:1

This week will be short as well, if we meet at all. Yesterday, my family was recovering from the stomach flu, and today the whole town has pretty much shut down as a result of our first official snowfall of the year (for real this time ;). Our area doesn't handle snow and ice all that well, so our outlook for tomorrow is tentative, at best. In the meantime, I've been working on some new stuff for the classroom, which I'll try to post about soon.

Thanks to all of you for your supportive comments and emails! If you've emailed me, be on the lookout for a reply soon, and if you've left a comment, thanks and keep 'em coming!! :)

Snow Day!

2009-01-14T21:24:00.020-05:00

Well, not quite. Although it's been very cold here, we have yet to see our first flake. And since Miss K's Circle Time theme for this week was winter and snow, she took matters into her own hands and made snow of her own using a little sno-cone machine.

The kids loved tasting the "snow" and using their senses to learn more about it. They each got to record their observations in their very own "My Little Snow Book," which Miss K made for each of them. They loved filling in the blanks on each page ("The snow tasted ________," The snow felt __________," etc.):

During Independent Work time, Miss D's son spent the entire day playing this game.

I'm not sure if the game would be found in your typical Montessori classroom, but I love it. The object is to navigate an ice cream truck through traffic, and Miss D's son did card...after card...after card. His brain was working pretty hard - toward the end of the day, he would lie down on the floor and rest in between "rounds."

Miss C's son also was hard at work. He poured water...

...spooned split peas...

...and pin-punched a snowman (among other things):

For arts and crafts, Miss K showed the kids how to make their own snowflakes...

...and she talked to them about how God made each of them unique as snowflakes. The kids glued their snowflakes to construction paper and then added this verse: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful..." (Psalm 139:14).

We closed with the "O" story and verse from My ABC Bible Verses: "Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good," Psalm 118:1.

2009-01-14T00:15:00.015-05:00

We had a small crew on Tuesday - just my family and Miss D's - but we had a lot of fun. Miss D's son worked on all 6 sound boxes at once. He put six mats around the room and matched pictures to their beginning sounds. Here's what it looked like when he started:

And here's what a portion of it looked like when he finished:
:

My daughter worked with Miss D's son, and she also worked on this pre-sewing activity (in this picture, she's copying the house pattern you can see underneath her right arm):

For Music Time, Miss D gave the kids rhythm sticks and took them "on a trip" to a carnival. First they sang "The Wheels on the Bus" as they rode to the carnival, then they got off the bus and *ran* to get in line at the first ride, and then they waited. And then they *ran* as the line moved forward, and then they waited. ;) Then they *rode* a roller coaster, stopped to eat cotton candy, etc... The kids love that portion of Music Time. To go along with this week's five senses theme, Miss D taught the kids this song (to the tune of Old McDonald):

On my face I have two eyes;
I use them every day.
They are used to help me see
When I work and play.
With a look, look here,
And a look, look there,
Here a look, there a look,
Everywhere a look, look.
On my face I have two eyes;
I use them every day!

On my face I have a nose;
I use it all the time.
When I sniff it I can tell
Vinegar from lime.
With a sniff, sniff here,
And a sniff, sniff there,
Here a sniff, there a sniff,
Everywhere a sniff, sniff.
On my face I have a nose;
I use it all the time!

In my mouth I have a tongue;
I use it when I eat.
Tasting with it I can tell
Sour from the sweet.
With a lick, lick here,
And a lick, lick there,
Everywhere a lick, lick.
In my mouth I have a tongue;
I use it when I eat!

On my head I have two ears;
Listening all day long.
And if I didn't have them there,
I couldn't hear this song!
With a listen here,
And a listen there,
Everywhere a listen, listen.
On my head I have two ears;
Listening all day long!

On my body I have skin;
Feeling cold and heat.
It stretches from atop my head
Way down to my feet.
With a touch, touch here,
And a touch, touch there,
Here a touch, there a touch,
Everywhere a touch, touch.
On my body I have skin;
Feeling cold and heat!

We closed with the "O" story and verse from My ABC Bible Verses: "Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good," Psalm 118:1.

Making "Sense" of Winter

2009-01-12T23:30:00.025-05:00

Today we were all back together for the first time since before Christmas. It was great to have everyone back!

Miss K's Circle Time theme for this week is the five senses, and today she talked about using senses to appreciate winter. She explained what the five senses are, and then she and the kids worked together to write sentences like, "In winter, I can wear a soft hat" (to explore the sense of touch), "In winter, I can see snow," "In winter, I can taste hot chocolate," etc. It was a great activity that incorporated creative writing, reading, handwriting, new information, and applying that information to the world around us. As usual, nicely done, Miss K!

Not many pictures from today, but I do have downloads (I used primopdf to convert the files to .pdfs - it worked really well!). As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently created number cards for the red and blue number rods and small number cards for basic addition as set forth in Elizabeth Hainstock's book Teaching Montessori in the Home: The School Years. I printed out three sets of these cards, cut them, and laminated them. Miss D's son and my daughter had fun doing static addition.

Also, I put out a new snowman outline to pinpunch, although I had no takers today.

For PE, Misses D and C led the kids outside, where they dribbled soccer balls through cones and kicked them into nets, and they played with the parachute.

We closed with the "O" story and verse from My ABC Bible Verses: "Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good," Psalm 118:1.

Free Pink Tower/Brown Stair Extensions

2009-01-10T09:41:00.007-05:00

Since reading this post at Montessori Free Fall, I've been wanting to put an extensions photo album out on the shelves. The other day, I finally got around to setting up all of the combinations from Stephanie's post, and I thought they turned out just lovely. (If you had told me five years ago that pink and brown would be all the rage, I would have thought you were crazy. And yet, here I sit in layered pink and brown shirts, admiring not only Maria Montessori's genius, but also her sense of style :)

I've uploaded the pictures to a Picasa album, so you can easily download them to your own computer and print/laminate them, or you can order a set of prints.

(Edit: You can see a more recent set of extensions we created here.)

New Activities

2009-01-07T22:58:00.029-05:00

On Wednesday, school was a no-go. Despite my great hopes, the "respiratory infection" that reared its ugly head in my two-year-old last Friday...then worked its way to my 9-month-old by Monday...managed to grab hold of my four-year-old on Tuesday night. I wouldn't wish this on any family (especially now that my 9-month-old has a secondary double ear infection!!), so we're biding our time and hoping that we will all be healthy and contagion-free by Monday.

I used the time to finish up some activities and create some new ones. I finally finished all of the sound boxes from Laura at My Montessori Journey's system. Basically, she breaks the alphabet up into three sections: red (RAMFBITG), yellow (PONLHUSC), and blue (DEXQYJKVWZ). (I think I've modified the order somewhat.) For her phonetic objects/sound boxes, she breaks the three groups into six smaller ones and has a set of phonetic objects for each group. Typically, phonetic objects are dollhouse miniatures, which my budget doesn't really accommodate (although I'm always keeping an eye out on craigslist and freecycle - just in case!). Instead, I made my own phonetic objects (phonetic pictures?), printed them out, laminated them, and organized them into six boxes:

Boxes 1 and 2: RAMF/BITG

Boxes 3 and 4: PONL/HUSC

Box 5: DEXQY

Box 6: JKVWZ

I tried to find six pictures for each letter, but some were harder than others. After I made these, it occurred to me that I should have included "inchworm" for the letter I - I'll revise the file and re-upload it soon.

I also made number cards to go with the red and blue numerical rods. I'm not sure why my initial materials order didn't include those, but it's been bothering me that I didn't have them. Sandpaper numbers don't work, because those go from 0 - 9, and I needed 1 - 10. I went ahead and made my own set that I cut up and laminated. The font I used is not all that common, so I need to figure out how to save the file as a .pdf, and then I'll upload it.

I also made a set of small number cards so that we could move beyond the bank game to simple addition, as Elizabeth Hainstock does in her book. The font is very important with these too, though (because the numbers have to be spaced just so), so I'll need to save them as .pdfs as well.

Those activities have been on my To Do list for a while now, and it feels great to have them finished. I hope you and your family are weathering this winter better than mine, and here's to healthier days to come!

A New Year!

2009-01-06T23:34:00.013-05:00

Today (hooray!) my family was healthy enough to host preschool (well, my 9-month-old was kept in semi-quarantine, but that counts, right?). However, both Misses C and K could not join us, so Miss D and her crew came a little later than usual for preschool-lite. It turned out to be a nice way to ease back in.

After Circle Time (during which Miss D and the kids discussed the new year), the two-year-olds joined us briefly. Miss D's daughter spooned split peas and practiced water transfer with a funnel, while my two-year-old built towers with the knobless cylinders.

Miss D's son and my four year old did the bank game, the hundred board...

...and the hanging bead stairs:

Miss D led Music Time, and then we closed with the "O" story and verse from My ABC Bible Verses: "Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good," Psalm 118:1.

The Unfortunate Part of Hosting Preschool...

2009-01-05T23:22:00.002-05:00

...is that if you or any member of your family is sick, then no school :(

We were so excited to see everyone today after our lengthy Christmas break, but my two-year-old and I simply weren't healthy enough. It was probably for the best that we didn't meet, though, because my 9-month-old had a fever all day today. Hopefully everyone will be healthy tomorrow so that we can get back to it!

What God Wants for Christmas

2008-12-22T23:01:00.000-05:00

Wow - has it really been almost two weeks since the last post? My mom came into town last Saturday, and despite my best intentions, I have not been able to get a post up. If you've been checking in periodically, thanks for sticking with us!

On Wednesday, Dec. 11, we celebrated our last day of school before taking a break for the Christmas holidays. For Circle Time, Miss K read the kids a really neat book called What God Wants for Christmas:

The book comes with a nativity scene, six nativity figurines, and seven boxes that are wrapped like presents. As the reader reads the story, the first six boxes are opened to reveal the nativity figurines. Finally, after asking again and again what God wants for Christmas, the seventh box is opened to reveal a mirror, because...what God wants for Christmas is YOU!

This was the last day we would be meeting for quite some time, so we made it a little special. Everyone got dressed up, and we spent the day making Christmas crafts. Afterward, we even went to lunch together - how fun!

For starters, the kids made wreath picture frame ornaments...

...and then they decorated miniature gingerbread houses:

Miss D's daughter's ski chalet:

Hmmm, not sure what happened to the roof on this one, but it looks delicious:

Miss K's mother- and father-in-law were visiting from out of town. We loved their company, and they were extremely helpful - the gingerbread houses were kind of an "all hands on deck" sort of thing.

Finally, the kids made an ornament kind of like this one, although I can't find the exact one. We closed with the N story and verse from My ABC Bible Verses, "No one can serve two masters," and then we headed to McD's for nuggets all around - it was a fun way to end our first semester together.

Go Tell It on the Mountain!

2008-12-10T22:34:00.023-05:00

This is the last week we'll be meeting before the holidays, so Miss K's Circle Time theme for this week is the nativity story. She brought in her family's Little People nativity set and read the nativity story:

The kids enjoyed this so much, they did it twice.

At the start of Independent Work time, my daughter and Miss D's son made plans for their day. Miss D's son chose the addition strip board, and my daughter chose reading, pin punching (I put out a new Christmas tree to punch), and the addition strip board. She sat on the couch and started reading a book, and Miss D's son plopped down next to her. She read to him for a little while before getting fatigued, so I sat down with them and read to them for a while. We don't usually read together in the classroom, and it was a nice (and somewhat refreshing) change.

Miss K's daughter chose (among other things) nuts and bolts...

...water transfer with a funnel...

...and pin punching...

...which was a very...

...very popular activity:

Miss C's son also chose sandpaper letters and the cornmeal tray, and then almost the whole crew worked together on the geometric solids matching cards:

Toward the end of the day, Miss D's son wanted to read some more, so Miss K picked up where I had left off - she attracted quite a crowd:

During Music Time, Miss D led the kids in a rousing rendition of "Go Tell It on the Mountain," which has been stuck in my head for days now! She also brought in jingle bells and sang all the requisite jingly Christmas songs. Then she gave the kids rhythm sticks and led them by donkey to Bethlehem, clip-clopping all the way.

We closed with the "N" verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses, "No one can serve two masters," Matthew 6:24.

More on Pin-Punching

2008-12-08T21:30:00.019-05:00

Today, my 8-month-old was pretty sick and pretty contagious, so regretfully, I had to cancel school. The doctor recommended a 24-hour waiting period for the antibiotics to kick in, so we should be good to go for tomorrow.

In the meantime, though, I've been meaning to do a post about the pin-punching activity I put out recently, because it would be so simple for anyone to set up at home. I'd been searching for punches in all of my local craft stores and couldn't find anything, which left the internet. All of the Montessori sites wanted way too much money for punches and felt, and they wanted even more for shipping, so I wasn't sure what to do. Fortunately, I saw this post at My Montessori Journey and noticed that the "pin" in the tray was a simple push pin. Surely it couldn't be that easy, could it?

I emailed Laura at MMJ and asked her about it:

Hi Laura,

I’m trying to set up a pin-punching activity in our classroom. I was prepared to spend about $45 at Montessori Services (not including shipping!) for a set of punches, a punch holder, and some mats, when I saw this post. Do your kids really just use a push pin? Can they hold a push pin in their hands as well as they can hold the punches from Montessori Services? (I know you have both because I’ve seen them in other posts.) If money were no object (wouldn’t that be nice? :), would you recommend I go ahead and invest in the ones from Montessori Services? My youngest child is only 7 months old, and I know we would get a ton of use out of the punch set; however, if a push pin works just as well, I’d love to put that money toward something else in the classroom.

She graciously replied, and then even more graciously allowed me to share her advice with all of you (thanks again!!). Here is her response:

When I first taught in a Montessori school several years ago, we used push pins, but BIG ones. You can buy them at most office supply stores. I am talking about ones that are about 2 inches long, really big. When I came to my current school to teach, they had the wooden handled ones from Montessori Services. After observing the children in my classroom using the regular (small) push pins and the Montessori Services ones, here are my thoughts. If a child can hold a pencil well using a tri-pod grip, I think the Montessori Services ones are great because they are the same diameter as a regular pencil. However, I pulled out the small pins for my littlest students who haven't yet formed a good tripod grip. The small push pins pretty much force the child to use a tripod grasp. So........my advice is to start with the regular small push pins. As far as the pad, I do really like the thick wool ones from Montessori Services. However, in the past I've just used a square of thick carpet padding. You could probably get a remnant piece of that for free from any home improvement store that installs carpet. That would be a cheap way to get started. Hope that helps!

I never made it to a carpet store to get carpet padding, so instead I got eight 9x12 adhesive sheets of felt and stuck two together to make four felt pads (I left the backing on the bottom sheet of felt). Voila! Pins and pads for four kids for about $4! For the outline, I did a Google images search for a leaf outline, copied the image into a Word document, and printed it out on construction paper (never knew I could do that!). Now that I have the pins and pads, it will be very simple to add new outlines to go with the current season/holiday, etc. Fun!

The Gingerbread Baby

2008-12-06T23:34:00.028-05:00

On Wednesday, Miss K introduced a variation on the gingerbread man theme: The Gingerbread Baby. She began by reading The Gingerbread Man story from the previous day, and then she read the new version. Then she and the kids did a lesson in comparing and contrasting using - of all things - a Venn diagram (remember those?):

Of course, the kids love anything having to do with babies, so they enjoyed the retelling of the classic story. As for independent work, recently I had seen a lot of posts about lacing beads onto pipe cleaners. When I saw this craft in Family Fun Magazine, I set it up right away:

OK, so ours didn't look quite like the ones in the magazine, but when do they ever? This was a great activity for the two-year-olds, because the pipe cleaners hold their shape, unlike string.

For Arts & Crafts, Miss K brought in a gingerbread man "glyph" she made. Basically, she gave each kid a gingerbread man print-out, and then they had to follow her instructions and color the gingerbread man accordingly (if you're a boy, color the gingerbread man's nose blue; if you're a girl, color his nose pink).

We closed with the M verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "My little children, let us not love one another in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth." 1 John 3:18.

Run, Run, As Fast As You Can...

2008-12-04T18:27:00.020-05:00

On Tuesday, Miss K introduced her Circle Time theme for the week: The Gingerbread Man. She and the kids read the story of the gingerbread man together, and then Miss K explained that The Gingerbread Man is a fairytale that was written by a person. Next she explained that the kids could use their imaginations to write their own version of the story.

She asked the kids simple questions like, "If you were writing the story, what would your gingerbread man's name be?" "How would you keep him from escaping from the oven?" "Would the fox eat him, or would he get away?" She wrote down each of the kids' answers, and then they took turns reading the stories they had written. It was neat to see how everyone's stories came together at the end, and the kids really enjoyed this creative writing exercise.

Unfortunately, I didn't get many good pictures during Independent Work time (the two-year-olds were with us, and they definitely require all hands on deck :). Miss K brought in a Gingerbread Man story sequencing worksheet, and the kids spent a long time working with it. They really enjoyed reading the captions underneath each picture, cutting them out, and then gluing them in the correct order.

For snack, Miss K brought in some gingerbread cookies for the kids to try, and then they all voted on whether or not they liked them (the result was a resounding "yes" :).

During Music Time, Miss D led the kids in Christmas songs. She typically incorporates instruments or movement into each of the songs the kids sing, but I wanted to take a second to describe how she uses rhythm sticks. Every kid gets a pair of sticks (blue stick in the right hand, red stick in the left hand); while she taps out a rhythm that the kids follow, she narrates a scene or story. For instance (imagine you can hear sticks in the background going tick, tock, tick, tock), "We're walking down the street" (tick, tock, tick, tock). "There's snow all over the ground, and we're going sledding! We drag our sled all the way to the top of the hill (tick, tock, tick, tock). We're almost there! Just a little farther! And we get to the top of the hill so we stop." (She stops tapping, and so do all the kids.) "We sit down on our sleds and weeeeeeee," and the kids furiously tap their sticks as they sled down the hill. "And we get to the bottom of the hill so we stop" (sticks stop). "That was so much fun! Let's do it again! We walk our sleds all the way back up to the top of the hill (tick, tock, tick, tock)..." I'm sure you get the gist. She's taken them on some very fun "trips," including through the grocery store, where they "rolled" their carts through the store, etc. The kids love this activity, and Miss D does a wonderful job of vividly describing things so that the kids can use their mind's eye to visualize her stories.

We closed with the M verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "My little children, let us not love one another in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth." 1 John 3:18.

This may sound presumptuous (as though you're waiting with bated breath for each new post!), but I apologize that there has been such a long time between posts. This is such a busy time of year! I definitely hope to post more in the future - it's just hard when so many other things take priority.

We're Back!

2008-12-02T23:02:00.026-05:00

Last week ended up being pretty light - I had to cancel school on Monday because my daughter was under mommy-imposed quarantine. We had already agreed that we wouldn't meet on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, so that left Tuesday as our only school day.

During Circle Time, Miss K and the kids talked about all of the things they are grateful for, and then they created this thankfulness tree:

In a twist on the cutting activity of old, I gave the kids strips of red, yellow, and orange paper that they cut into small pieces, which they then used to make Indian corn:

Finally, for Arts & Crafts, in a combination of both thankfulness and corn :), the kids created these cute little ears of corn with foam shapes and sequins:

Yesterday morning, our local MOPS group held its annual Birthday Party for Jesus, which we all attended. Today we were all back together, and I'll post more about it tomorrow. Hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving!

Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control

2008-11-19T14:21:00.061-05:00

Today during Circle Time, Miss D and the kids talked about the final three Fruits of the Spirit: faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. They discussed these qualities and what they mean, and then they reviewed all nine fruits. She and the kids also said the Fruit of the Spirit poem from Monday. (And I forgot to mention that on Tuesday, during Music Time, Miss D led the kids in this Fruit of the Spirit song by Steve Green.)

During Independent Work time, Miss D's son finished up his paper weaving project...

...while my 4-year-old presented the brown stair to the 2-year-olds:

They had a lot of fun trying to build a tower with the brown stair...

...and then they got out the pink tower and tried a couple extensions:

Hey...

...how'd that get in here? ;) (As I was uploading pictures to Blogger, I selected everything with today's date and unintentionally uploaded this picture - I couldn't bring myself to delete it. This is my seven-month-old :)

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, just in case you missed it, Stephanie at Montessori Free Fall has pictures of some beautiful brown stair/pink tower extensions. I haven't had a chance to present these extensions yet, but I plan to soon.

Miss D's son, my daughter, and I played the Bank Game today for the first time, and they absolutely loved it. (My daughter kept saying, "Let's do another one!") I used Elizabeth Hainstock's book as my guide for this activity, and here's how it went: We created a supply mat with about a gajillion units, ten bars, hundred squares, and thousand cubes. Then I handed the kids a tray and asked them to load it with as many beads as they liked. We took the tray to a separate mat, where we sorted the beads (starting from right to left) into units, tens, hundreds, thousands. Then we started counting units. Each time we got to ten units, we took them to the supply mat (the Bank) and traded them in for a ten bar, which we added to the ten bars on our mat. We did the same thing for the hundreds and thousands. When we had exchanged everything at the bank, we counted each category and assigned the appropriate number cards:

Wonderfully (and inadvertently) enough, we eventually did a number where we had zero hundreds - we had exchanged them all for thousands.

When it came time to count everything up and assign number cards, the kids kept asking, "But what about the hundreds?" I just said, "There are zero hundreds." (Montessorians out there, was that the right way to explain it?) When we assembled the 7000, the 60, and the 2 to make 7062, they were awed by the zero in the hundreds place (and so was I, frankly! I know I've said it before, but Maria Montessori was a genius.).

After we finished with the bank game, my daughter and Miss D's son worked on this puzzle, and then it was time for Arts & Crafts. I didn't get any pictures of this, but the kids decorated a bear with the nine Fruits of the Spirit, and Miss D and Miss C used it as an opportunity to review all nine fruits.

We closed with the "L" Bible verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Let your light so shine before men that they will see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." Matthew 5:16

Patience, Kindness, and Goodness

2008-11-18T23:06:00.006-05:00

Miss K couldn't be with us today, so Miss D led Circle Time. She continued with Miss K's theme for the week, "The Fruit of the Spirit," which comes from this verse:

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law." Galatians 5:22 - 23

Today Miss D focused on patience, kindness, and goodness. The kids glued these three fruits into the basket they started yesterday, and then Miss D read them the Fruit of the Spirit poem from yesterday, too.

The batteries in my camera weren't charged, so no pics from today. However, Miss C's son worked with the cornmeal tray and the sandpaper numerals, the fabric box, and the metal insets. Miss D's son did the Thanksgiving matching cards from Montessori for Everyone, domino math, and the hundred board. My daughter did the hundred board with Miss D's son, bead sequencing, the pumpkin lifecycle cards from Montessori for Everyone, and she also pin-punched a leaf. Miss D's 2yo did bead sequencing. My 2yo did the cornmeal tray, and later her big sister presented color box 2 to her!

Finally, we closed with the "L" Bible verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Let your light so shine before men that they will see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." Matthew 5:16

I can't believe we're already on the letter L! It has been amazing to see the kids' retention as we learn these verses. The older kids can recite each verse by heart, and even the little kids can recite some of them (particularly the shorter verses, such as, "A soft answer turns away wrath," "Even a child is known by his deeds," and "Do all things without complaining or disputing.").

The Fruit of the Spirit

2008-11-17T14:49:00.030-05:00

On Monday during Circle Time, Miss K introduced this Bible verse to the kids:

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law." Galatians 5:22 - 23

Before she read them this verse, she presented the kids with two bananas - one perfectly ripe and yellow, and one rotten and brown. She asked the kids which banana they would want to eat, and of course they all picked the ripe one. Then she explained that life is like those two fruits: on one hand, we have people who do bad things and make us feel sad; on the other hand, we have people who do good things like helping others and being nice to others. She asked them, "Which fruit do you think God wants us to be, the rotten banana or the ripe banana?"

Next she explained that God wants us to be good fruit, to treat other people kindly and do things that make God happy with us. Then she read them the verse, and she and the kids talked more in depth about the first three fruits: love, joy, and peace.

Then Miss K read a poem to the kids to help them remember the fruits of the Spirit:

The fruits of the Spirit are peace, joy, and love.
All these things come from God above.
We can't have them, just trying on our own.
But if we stay close to Jesus, watch them grow!
Two more fruits are being patient and kind!
Treat others this way, and no one will mind.
One more fruit is the one of goodness.
Trying on our own just gives us stress!
Being faithful is doing what you say.
God helps us be faithful if we pray.
Another fruit is the quality of being gentle,
Not being harsh or judgmental.
The very last one is self-control,
Letting Jesus shine through me - that's my goal!

Finally, Miss K had the kids glue that day's three fruits into a fruit basket.

New on the shelves this week: paper weaving. I had a bunch of cutting strips left over from this cutting activity, and I didn't want to waste them. I used these instructions to set up a simple paper weaving activity, which was very popular:

For PE, Miss D brought in bowling pins and a (plastic) bowling ball, and she turned our kitchen into a bowling alley - how fun! She taught the kids how to set up the pins (in a nice 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 triangle that would make Maria Montessori proud ;)...

...she taught them how to hold the ball...

...and then she taught them how to roll:

A spare!

We closed with the "L" Bible verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Let your light so shine before men that they will see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." Matthew 5:16

Geometric Solids Matching Cards

2008-11-14T00:43:00.016-05:00

OK, I think I've finally figured out how to use box.net to upload files, and I'm going to give it a shot. I created a series of images to go along with the geometric solids - you can download the file by clicking here. I printed these out, cut them up, and then laminated them using a Scotch Thermal Laminator I bought brand-spankin' new for $10 (!!) off craigslist.

To use these, the child lays the geometric solids across the top of a mat, and then matches the pictures underneath the appropriate solid:

I didn't have any kind of reference to go by when making these cards - I simply looked around Google for things that were the correct shape. I tried to find six images for each solid, but I had trouble finding that many for the triangle-based pyramid (only found two) and the ovoid (only found four). If you have any ideas for those solids, please let me know and I'll update the file and upload it again.

I hope this is useful - I'd love to hear any comments anyone has!

More Fun with Fall Leaves

2008-11-12T15:19:00.030-05:00

On Monday, the kids wrote a Fall poem with Miss K's help. I didn't manage to write it down that day, but the poem was an integral part of Circle Time again on Wednesday:

An Ode to Fall :)

Fall is a time for long-sleeved shirts,
Fall is a time for falling leaves,
Fall is a time for a pumpkin patch,
Fall is a time for jackets,
Fall is a time for Thanksgiving,
Fall is a time for warm hats.

Miss K came back to class armed with pictures that matched the words in the poem, and the kids took turns reading each line and matching the pictures to the words:

Next, Miss K led the kids in a sorting and counting activity. She and the kids sorted a big pile of leaves by color...

...and then counted how many they had in each category and graphed the results into a bar graph:

Independent Work time was more chaotic than usual, because the two-year-olds came in right away, before everyone else was settled. In the future, I'll definitely make sure to have the older kids focused on their own work before the 2yos come into the room, because they definitely require management. One new item of note, though: Miss D's daughter worked with this beautiful Thanksgiving-themed matching activity that I downloaded for free from Montessori for Everyone (thanks!):

For Arts & Crafts, Miss K led the kids outside to collect a few more leaves, as well as a mum flower for each child. Then, using paper plates with the middle cut out, the kids glued the leaves all around the edges to make pretty Fall wreaths. I have to say that I thought the results were just lovely:

We ended the days with the "K" verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Keep your tongue from evil," Psalm 34:13.

A Fall Poem

2008-11-10T16:17:00.025-05:00

Miss K's Circle Time theme for this week is Fall. She asked the kids to come to class with some leaves, and then they spent a long time looking at their leaves, comparing and contrasting them, counting the number of points on each leaf, etc. Then she taught the kids a little more about Fall and about why leaves change colors and fall off. Finally, she and the kids talked about some of the characteristics of Fall, and they all worked together to write a Fall poem. Miss K hand-wrote the poem on large sheets of paper, and she used the exercise as an opportunity to review the connection between letters and their sounds. It was a really nice activity for the readers and pre-readers alike, because it was a creative writing exercise for the readers as well as a lesson on the connection between letters/words/sentences for the pre-readers. Unfortunately, I didn't hear the final poem, but I'll try to get a copy from Miss K and update the post.

New in the classroom this week? Pin-punching:

Miss K's daughter worked so diligently on this! She also built "towers" with the golden bead material:

I was able to give her a three-part lesson on the beads before she moved on to building more towers:

My daughter did the sandpaper numerals and cornmeal tray...

...pin-punching...

...and the 3-D Feel & Find puzzle with Miss D's son:

Miss D's son also did bead sequencing and domino math:

Miss C's son did the pink tower/brown stair extension...

...and the sandpaper letters and cornmeal tray:

Miss D led the kids in PE (they stretched and did some warm-up exercises, and then they had some fun with the parachute before kicking soccer balls through cones and into a net), and then we did the "K" verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Keep your tongue from evil," Psalm 34:13.

Tuesday is Veteran's Day, and we don't plan to meet. We'll be back on Wednesday!

Counting up the Votes

2008-11-05T20:53:00.043-05:00

Today I revealed the results of our class election for president. I showed the kids how many votes each candidate got, and then we discussed whom our class had "elected." Then I showed the kids how many votes the candidates got in the country-wide election, and we discussed the results.

I gave the kids a very basic lesson on a few different forms of government (democracy, dictatorship, monarchy) and explained that the United States is not actually a democracy but a constitutional republic (yup, had to consult the hubby on that one - gotta love it when you're learning right along with your preschooler! :), and then I gave a very brief explanation of the electoral college. I showed the kids a map of the US and explained that a majority of the people in the blue states had voted for Sen. Obama, and that a majority of the people in the red states had voted for Sen. McCain.

Then I explained that Sen. Obama is not actually our president yet, but that he's our president-elect and will be inaugurated in a special ceremony on Jan. 20, 2009. Next, Miss K (who couldn't be with us again today because her 9-month-old has been very sick :( ) sent me a very nice activity called "Meet Our New President-Elect," and we learned more about Sen. Obama, his wife and family, where he grew up, etc. We also learned about our new vice president-elect, and we talked about what a vice president does. Then we had a little fun looking at pretty pictures of the White House, where our new president and his family will live.

During our "Meet the President" activity, I pulled out the map of the United States, and we found Hawaii (where Sen. Obama was born), Kansas (where he grew up), Illinois (where he served as Senator), and Delaware (home of Sen. Biden). Both my daughter and Miss D's son wanted to work on the map when we started independent work:

Having the map of the US out encouraged Miss C's son to do the map of North America again, which he finished before moving on to the constructive triangles. I presented them to him, and then he said he wanted to do something else. He put them away all by himself, which in and of itself was completing the activity - love it!

Miss D's son worked with the addition strip board again...

...and then he did Sound Box 3 from Laura's system. He got the box out, which is labeled on top, and then he pulled out the corresponding sandpaper letters himself (I don't have my letters organized next to each box like Laura does because I don't have the room right now). Even though he used upper- and lowercase letters, I really admire the initiative he took here:

The two-year-olds joined us again today. Miss D's daughter did bead sequencing (she was able to follow a pattern card - I was amazed!), bear sorting, and water transfer:

My daughter did the nuts and bolts activity, the 3D Feel & Find puzzle, water transfer, and the sound boxes:

For Arts & Crafts, I gave the older kids a copy of the electoral map, and they used it to color their own maps of the United States red, blue, or gray (if a state was still undecided):

This was a great extension of the United States puzzle they had just completed, and although I didn't plan for the day to go this way, all of our activities flowed extremely well from one thing to the next.

We closed with the "J" verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life,'" John 14:6.

Election Day!

2008-11-04T23:06:00.048-05:00

Today during Circle Time our class held its own version of the presidential election. Miss K (who couldn't be with us today but who still sent me a lesson plan - thanks!) created ballots for the kids, and I used a sheet to turn our Learning Tower into a private "voting booth":

We all stood in line, and everyone (moms included) took a turn voting for their choice for president. I explained that voting is a very private right and responsibility, and that, while we are free to discuss our choice with other people, we have the right to keep it secret as well. We all cast our ballots into a very sophisticated ballot box...

...and tomorrow during Circle Time I will reveal the class's choice for president, as well as the country's choice. The kids loved voting, and Miss K even thought to create "I Voted" stickers for everyone!

Today Miss C's son worked with the sorting bears, a new nuts and bolts activity that I saw on itty bitty love (thanks so much for this simple yet appealing activity! Everyone chose this today)...

...color box 4...

...and bead sequencing:

My daughter worked with the Healthy/Not Healthy sort that Miss K created last week, the nuts and bolts activity, and the addition strip board:

Miss D's son did bead sequencing, metal insets, the nuts and bolts activity...

...and the addition strip board:

He was reluctant to do this at first because he didn't want to have to write down his answers, but the draw of doing addition (he loves math) helped him overcome his pencil-shyness.

Miss D's daughter chose the nuts and bolts activity, wooden cylinders...

...and water transfer with a medicine dropper and funnel:

My 2-yo chose the wooden cylinders, water transfer...

...spooning/pouring split peas...

...and the nuts and bolts activity (did I mention this was popular?):

Miss D led everyone in Music today (including a song she made up about voting, to the tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat": Vote, vote, go and vote, go and vote today; Cast your vote, do your job, it's the American Way!).

We closed with the "J" verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life,'" John 14:6.

George Washington and the Cherry Tree

2008-11-03T17:43:00.044-05:00

Tomorrow is Election Day, of course, so our Circle Time theme for this week is the President of the United States. Miss K couldn't be with us today, which left me in charge of Circle Time (eek!).

We read the story of George Washington and the Cherry Tree from The Children's Book of Virtues. I'm not all that crazy about this book, but it has an extremely compelling version of this story (when we got to the part where George Washington's father discovers that his beloved cherry tree has been chopped down and confronts young George about it, Miss D's son's eyes were very wide and he was covering his mouth with his hands - so sweet!). We talked about how this honest young man grew up to be our very first president, that there have been 43 presidents in our country's history, and that tomorrow we will elect a new president. We talked about the candidates, and we discussed voting (I reminded the kids about Miss K's lesson in which we all voted for our favorite apple, either red or green, and that the apple with the most votes won).

During Independent Work time, my daughter and Miss D's son spent a lot of time with the geometric solids and matching cards (I made these myself and will try to upload them tonight):

Miss C's son worked with the constructive blue triangles, and he and Miss C played "I Spy" with the phonetic objects:

Miss D's son did the entire color box 3:

Color box 3 is a nice bridge between color box 2 (in which you pair 11 different colors) and color box 4 (in which you grade 7 different shades of the same color from darkest to lightest). Color box 3 is made up of 8 different colors broken into 4 pairs that are graded from darkest to lightest. Today Miss D's son and I worked together one color at a time to grade one of each pair from darkest to lightest, and then he matched them:

As for the 2-year-olds, surprisingly, they haven't been all that eager to get back into the Montessori classroom. Today my daughter wandered over and asked to do the pink tower. She got the whole thing out but wouldn't actually build it. As with all things Montessori - so amazing in their simplicity - at least she had to build it to put it away :)

For PE, we headed outside, and Miss D led the kids with the parachute and kicking soccer balls through cones.

We closed with the "J" verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life,'" John 14:6.

The Food Pyramid

2008-10-30T22:58:00.040-04:00

On Wednesday, Miss K wrapped up Nutrition & Wellness week by focusing on healthy eating habits. She introduced the kids to the Food Pyramid and explained each of the different food groups. She went into a lot of depth here, including how many servings kids should eat from each food group every day. She also explained that within each food group there are healthy foods and unhealthy ones (within the vegetable group, for example, orange- and green-colored vegetables are better choices than yellow or white ones). She set up a healthy/unhealthy sort for the kids (grilled chicken vs. fried chicken) and talked to them about the importance of making good food choices. She put the sort on the shelves for the kids to work with at their own discretion (the tool/toy sort from Fire Safety and Prevention week was really popular).

I didn't get a lot of pictures during Independent Work time, because, for some reason, the kids needed a little more managing than normal. Typically they choose their work and get to it. Today? Not so much.

Miss D's son chose Laura from My Montessori Journey's syllable counting activity, as well as the first five "blue" sounds from Laura's system: d/e/q/x/y. He also reviewed Sound Box 4: h/u/s/c.

My daughter worked with the lacing frame (she now knows how to tie shoes!), as well as an extension I made for the constructive blue triangles. I'll try to upload it once I get all of that figured out.

Miss C's son worked with color box 2, water transfer using a funnel, and the map of the world.

Miss K's daughter chose metal insets, sorting bears, and the map of the United States.

For Arts & Crafts, Miss K gave the kids an assortment of pictures she had clipped from magazines showing foods from the different food groups. The kids got to choose one item from each food group and make a plate:

We closed with the "I" verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," Philippians 4:13.

Enter the Two-Year-Olds!

2008-10-28T18:47:00.051-04:00

Miss K and her crew couldn't be with us on Tuesday, so Miss D led Circle Time instead (thanks, Miss K, for leaving us so well prepared!). Miss D talked to the kids about all the things we need to do to keep our bodies healthy, and then she focused on exercise. She asked the kids about different kinds of exercise and what kinds of exercise they like to do, and then she led the kids in some calisthenics (Have I mentioned that Miss D is about 23 weeks pregnant? Thanks again Miss D!)

Miss D's son came excited to work with the sandpaper letters and sand tray, which was the final item on the long list we had made for him the previous week. He worked with about 15 letters...

...and then we made a new list. He chose metal insets, bead sequencing, the fabric box, and the feel and find puzzle. He also did water transfer and cutting practice:

Miss C's son, who is quite the puzzle guy, chose a horse puzzle...

...a fish puzzle...

...the 3-D Feel & Find puzzle...

...and then he went big-time and did North America:

He also worked with the pumpkin lifecycle 3-part cards that I downloaded for free (thanks!!) from Montessori for Everyone.

My daughter chose cutting practice, the teen bead hanger, the fabric box, and the map of the United States:

One very exciting development in our classroom was the introduction of the 2-year-olds! Typically, my 2yo and Miss D's 2yo stay in the playroom, and Miss D leads them in crafts, play-dough, stickering, etc. My daughter gets a lot of time in the Montessori classroom outside of "preschool," though, and she does pretty well depending on how well-fed and -napped she is. On this particular day, she was feeling pretty sad on the other side of the baby gate, and - I don't know, call me a softie - I took pity on her and invited her and Miss D's daughter over to the Montessori side. I don't know if this will be a daily thing (can I get this toothpaste back in the tube?), but it went pretty well!

My daughter chose water transfer with a medicine dropper, the wooden cylinders...

...and then my 4yo daughter presented the geometric solids to her:

To me, this is one of the most appealing aspects of the Montessori method. My daughters worked so nicely together, and it was great to see my older daughter's command of the subject and obvious delight in teaching her younger sister.

Miss D's daughter chose a one-to-one correspondence activity with tongs...

...pouring...

...and bear sorting:

For Music Time, Miss D led the kids in lots of movement songs to go with the day's exercise theme, and she also introduced a tooth-brushing song to reinforce the healthy habits we're discussing this week.

We closed with the "I" verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," Philippians 4:13.

Germ Warfare

2008-10-27T13:47:00.000-04:00

Miss K's Circle Time theme for this week is Nutrition & Wellness. She read the kids 1 Corinthians 6:20, "Honor God with your body," and then she explained that God wants us to take care of ourselves by eating good food, drinking only water and milk, exercising, dressing appropriately for the weather, and keeping ourselves clean.

With cold and flu season looming large on the horizon, Miss K delved deeper into the "keeping ourselves clean" part of being healthy. She talked about germs, that we can't see them, that some are good and some are bad, and then she talked about how bad germs can be spread from person to person and make us sick. Then she led the kids through a very simple but very effective exercise: She pulled out a wet paper towel that she had prepared ahead of time; she had one of the kids touch the paper towel and then touch a table top, a chair, and another kid's hands. Then they all inspected the table, chair, and hand and discovered that all three were wet. She explained that we spread germs in exactly the same way, so we all have to be very careful to wash our hands after we go to the bathroom, cough, sneeze, blow our nose, etc. She also reminded the kids to sneeze and cough into the crook of their arm, rather than into their hands, as another way to prevent spreading germs.

Finally, Miss K led the kids in some exercises:

For her day, Miss K's daughter chose metal insets...

...spooning split peas...

...as well as the wooden cylinders, and color box 3, which I promise to post about soon.

Miss C's son chose metal insets...

...water transfer with the medicine dropper...

...color box 2...

...as well as puzzles.

My daughter chose cutting practice...

...handwriting practice, the teen bead hanger, and the golden beads/number cards, which she and Miss D's son did together. They worked very nicely (can you get me 4 tens, can you get me 3 hundreds...), and Miss K's daughter also did this with them for a little bit.

Miss D's son came to school very eager to get to work on the list we had created for him last week, and he started with the sandpaper numerals and sand (rice) tray...

...as well as handwriting practice, transferring water through a funnel, and the golden beads and number cards.

For PE, Miss D led the kids in tossing/catching bean bags, kicking soccer balls through cones, and walking on a line.

We ended the day by reading the "I" verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," Philippians 4:13

Velveeta as Montessori Lesson

2008-10-26T14:17:00.015-04:00

What are the chances that those words have ever been put together in the same phrase before?

Sunday afternoons in the fall mean one thing in our house: football. My father-in-law comes over, and he and my husband cheer on their team. And of course, nothing says "football" like the pasteurized, processed-cheesy goodness of Velveeta.

Slicing bananas is a very familiar Practical Life activity, but I've discovered that Velveeta works beautifully, as well. It can be cut with a butter knife, it gives just the right amount of resistance to make it somewhat of a challenge, and for a 4-year-old, nothing is quite as satisfying as cutting up an entire 2-lb block of Velveeta yourself (that's right - 2 pounds!).

My daughter loves the cutting part in and of itself, but what she really enjoys is helping me make food for her dad and grandpa.

Let me know if you want my Cheesy Sausage Dip recipe - it really is good. :)

The Pumpkin Parable

2008-10-23T10:29:00.037-04:00

On Wednesday Miss K finished her Circle Time lesson on pumpkins by cutting open a pumpkin and letting the kids examine the insides.

As she cut open the pumpkin, she read them this pumpkin parable. She set the seeds aside to be used later during Arts & Crafts, and I popped the pumpkin in the freezer to keep until next week, when Miss K plans to carve it with the kids (keeping my fingers crossed that putting it in the freezer works - anyone have any experience with a frozen pumpkin?).

When we started Independent Work, Miss D's son got right to work on the hundred board, which he hadn't finished the day before. He worked very hard on it and breezed right through it:

Afterward, he was thrilled to check it off of his list from the day before and then make a new list. He chose sandpaper numerals and letters with the sand tray, cutting out shapes, handwriting practice, water transfer with a medicine dropper, and the golden beads and number cards (we acknowledged ahead of time that this was a long list that he would finish next week).

Miss K presented the golden bead material to her daughter and Miss C's son:

Then Miss C's son did the bead stair...

...while Miss K's daughter worked with the constructive blue triangles...

...and Miss D's son practiced his tracing skills:

(This worksheet is a cutting activity I created at this website - what a great site! I also created a bunch of handwriting practice sheets here.)

Miss K played I Spy with Miss C's son...

My daughter chose scissors practice, handwriting practice, and Word Drawers 14, 15, and 16:

For Arts & Crafts, Miss K led the kids in making these cute little pumpkin books...

...which open up to reveal "strings" and seeds (from the pumpkin she cut open during Circle Time):

How cute!

We closed with the "H" verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Honor your father and your mother."

Fun with Water

2008-10-21T15:57:00.032-04:00

Today Miss K continued her Circle Time lesson on pumpkins. She reviewed a pumpkin's lifecycle and sang this song with the kids (to the tune of Ten Little Indians):

Seed, flower, growth, and harvest,
Seed, flower, growth, and harvest,
Seed, flower, growth, and harvest,
that's how a pumpkin grows.

She also showed the kids a book she had made explaining the different stages of a pumpkin's life, and then she showed them pictures of different lifecycle stages, which the kids put in order. And although no one ended up using it today, I made a beautiful 3-part card series on the lifecycle of a pumpkin that Lori at Montessori for Everyone made available for download for free (thanks!)

When Independent Work started, Miss D's son immediately asked to do his Sound Book, which was the final thing he needed to do to finish the previous day's Daily Plan. He finished that up, and then we made a new plan for his day: water transfer with a medicine dropper, bead sequencing, metal insets, and the hundred board. He got to work right away:

I was very glad that we had started using the nameplate/placeholder system the day before, because the water transfer activity was very popular (it's the first time I've been brave enough to use water in the classroom - it went well!). For her day, my daughter picked water transfer, a number-matching puzzle, a horse puzzle, bead sequencing, a picture/sentence matching game that I downloaded for free from Montessori for Everyone, a syllable counting activity that I downloaded from Laura at My Montessori Journey, and the sandpaper numerals and sand (cornmeal) tray.

Picture-sentence matching:

Sandpaper numerals:

The syllable counting activity didn't really hold my daughter's attention, but Miss K's daughter loved it...

...and of course the water activity was a big hit...

...with everyone in the classroom:

Miss D's son really seemed to enjoy the metal insets...

...and he got to 20 with the hundred board before it was time to put everything away. He set it aside to finish tomorrow.

Miss D led Music Time, and she included lots of pumpkin songs and incorporated movement and tambourines, shakers, and rhythm sticks.

We finished up with the "H" verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Honor your father and your mother."

Pumpkins

2008-10-20T23:02:00.038-04:00

Miss K's Circle Time theme for this week is pumpkins. She showed the kids a little sugar pumpkin and read them a book she had made about the lifecycle of a pumpkin. She taught them all sorts of interesting stuff about pumpkins: they're fruits, not vegetables; they're actually the largest fruit, with some weighing more than 1,000 pounds; pumpkin flowers are edible; pumpkins are 90% water; and they take four months to grow from seed to mature pumpkin.

Much to my delight, Miss D's son came very eager to finish the daily plan we had made for him last week (also much to my delight, my daughter finished everything on her list over the weekend).

He and my daughter did the Tool/Toy sorting activity from Fire Safety week...

...while Miss K's daughter did a new bead sequencing activity I made over the weekend:

I had a feeling that the bead sequencing activity would be popular, so I followed some advice I read somewhere (can't find it now - sorry!) and made namecards/placeholders for each child. If another person is working with an activity, the child puts his or her namecard on the shelf where the work is kept to mark a turn in line. This system worked well with the bead sequencing activity, which everyone wanted to try.

Miss D's son carefully completed one of the two items left on his plan (the second set of four "yellow" letters, h/u/s/c)...

...but asked if he could finish the final thing (putting his new sounds in a Sound Book) tomorrow because he wanted to do the lacing cards and the bead sequencing activity, instead. We added those to his list so that he'd be able to check them off when he was finished (a great way to get him using a pencil!):

My daughter worked with the cutting activity that has been on the shelves since the first week of school. Interestingly, she didn't want to do this at first because she felt frustrated when she couldn't cut precisely on the line. I pointed out how well she had cut out the tires for the firetruck she made with Miss K last week, and she was encouraged to try the cutting activity again. She was excited to see her own progress as she cut each snip right on the line:

Next it was her turn to try the beads...

...while Miss D's son completed this 6-sided puzzle...

...and Miss K's daughter did the grass-cutting activity. Miss K asked her if she could decorate her picture with some things she might find outside during the fall, and she spontaneously drew this lovely apple:

Miss K and her daughter also played I Spy with the phonetic objects, and they spied for initial sounds and rhyming sounds.

Finally, we mixed red-, blue-, and yellow-colored water to make the primary colors:

I told the kids this color-mixing activity would be on the shelves tomorrow, but this experience showed me that they aren't quite ready for that. First, they need to get the hang of using a medicine dropper, so tomorrow I plan to put out a water-transferring activity.

For PE, Miss D led the kids outside, where they kicked soccer balls through and around little orange cones, and then they played with the parachute.

We closed with the letter H verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Honor your father and your mother," Exodus 20:12

Our Montessori Materials

2008-10-18T19:41:00.012-04:00

Susana at Montessori Candy asked me about the materials we're using in the classroom. I got them from Montessori Outlet, and so far I'm really pleased with everything.

My daughter's old school had all Nienhuis materials, and while Montessori Outlet doesn't carry "official" Nienhuis stuff, on their website they claim that they carry "premium-quality materials at outlet prices," and that "all of our products are made based on the authentic blueprints approved by Mr. Bert Nienhuis. All of our new premium materials are 100% compatible with Nienhuis materials."

Also, all of the materials are lead-free and non-toxic.

So far, I would say I'm totally satisfied with everything. I did a lot of research before choosing a supplier, and (at least for a package deal) their prices were the lowest to be found (I can't vouch for "a la carte" purchases). The materials are beautiful and feel very substantial in your hand, and they have an inherent appeal that makes them hard to resist - you just want to handle them.

Rollin', Rollin', Rollin'

2008-10-18T09:48:00.012-04:00

On Wednesday, Miss K continued her Circle Time lesson on Fire Safety with a very simple yet very effective activity. She printed out a large flame and used masking tape to stick the flame to her shirt. She reminded the kids that if their clothes ever caught fire, they should "Stop, Drop, and Roll."

Then they took turns stopping, dropping, and rolling:

For Independent Work time, I was hoping a Daily Plan would work again after having had so much success with it the day before. As with almost all things, it seems, the second day did not go as well as the first. For starters, when I asked my daughter what she wanted to work on for the day, she glanced at the Practical Life shelf and rattled off the first three things she saw: sorting 3D objects, lacing cards, and open/close boxes. I wrote them down on her list and added Word Drawers 2 and 4, which she still had on her list from the day before, as well as domino math.

She diligently got to work on the domino math while I asked Miss D's son if he would like to make a plan for his day - he said yes. He suggested the 3D Feel & Find Puzzle that he hadn't gotten to finish the day before, as well as the Tool or Toy sort game that Miss K had presented during her Fire Safety lesson and put out on the shelves as an activity. I suggested that we also add the next set of yellow letters, h/u/s/c, which he would sort according to their beginning sound. He agreed and got right to work on the Feel & Find game while Miss C's son and Miss K's daughter worked with the knobless cylinders:

Miss K played I Spy with Miss C's son...

...while my daughter and Miss D's son strayed from their Daily Plans and worked with the binomial and trinomial cubes instead. (My daughter completed her domino math work, and Miss D's son did the entire Feel & Find game, so each of them completed one item on their lists. I told them I would save their lists until Monday. I think the plan is a good idea and gives a great sense of satisfaction as each item is checked off, but it might also feel like something hanging over their heads if there is something on their list that they don't want to do. My own To Do list includes things I put off because I don't want to do them, and when I finally just suck it up and do the thing I'm avoiding, I find that it wasn't that big of a deal at all, and I think that experience is a good one for them to have too. I've gotten some helpful comments about using a plan (thanks!) and I'd love to hear any other opinions on keeping kids on task and also being flexible.)

For Arts & Crafts, Miss K led the kids in making their own fire trucks. Here is Miss D's daughter coloring hers:

For the older kids, Miss K used a white crayon to draw an outline of a tire on black paper, and the kids cut the tires out themselves.

We closed with the "G" story and verse from My ABC Bible Verses: "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature."

Stop, Drop, and Roll!

2008-10-14T13:53:00.058-04:00

October is National Fire Prevention Month, so Miss K's Circle Time theme for this week is Fire Safety. After saying the Pledge, singing the National Anthem, and reviewing the calendar/weather/season, Miss K talked to the kids about fire and that fire does good things (warms us, cooks our food, roasts our marshmallows :) and bad things (can hurt us, etc.).

She showed the kids pictures of matches and lighters and explained that they are tools, not toys, and that children should never touch them. She explained that, although their house likely would never be involved in a fire, they needed to know what to do just in case it ever were: First, they should never, ever hide from the fire. If they hear a smoke detector, they should "Get out and stay out." She had the kids repeat that phrase several times and explained that, even if their very favorite blankie in the whole wide world were inside the house, they should never, ever go back inside to get it. She asked the kids to identify exits from the classroom and explained that smoke rises, so if a room is filled with smoke, they should crawl on their hands and knees to an exit because the air is cleaner there.

Then Miss K lit a big jar candle and explained that, just like we breathe air, fire does too. She put the lid on the jar and the kids watched as the flame slowly burned itself out. She explained that if the kids' clothes ever were to catch fire, they shouldn't run around, because that would simply feed the fire lots of air, helping it to grow. Instead, they should "Stop, Drop, and Roll." She led the kids in this song (to the tune of "Hot Cross Buns"): "Stop, Drop, and Roll; Stop, Drop, and Roll; If your clothes ever catch on fire, Stop, Drop, and Roll." She also explained that the kids should call 9-1-1 if they were ever in a dangerous situation without an adult.

Next she reminded the kids that fire, matches, and lighters are tools adults use and that they are not safe for children to use. She had the kids take turns pulling pictures of various tools (oven, saw, lighter, matches) and toys (teddy bear, tricycle) out of a bag, and then they sorted them into the tool or toy category.

These kinds of lessons always give me a big lump in my throat, and I'm so grateful that Miss K is teaching the kids such important stuff.

We were very excited to have Miss C and her family back today. After Miss K finished Circle Time, the kids got right to work.

I recently read this post at The Learning Ark, and I knew a daily plan would totally appeal to my daughter. This morning before school, I asked her, "What work do you want to do today," and she immediately rattled off, "Word Drawers 2, 4, and 9; metal insets; and mystery bag." Well OK then! We wrote out her To Do List, and I drew a small square next to each item so that she could check off each thing as she went (right up her alley!). When we started our Independent Work time, she immediately got her list and got to work on the Word Drawers:

Miss K's daughter worked with the knobless cylinders, Miss D's son worked with the number cards (unfortunately, my flash stopped working right here, so I didn't get any good shots), and Miss C's son worked with the latches board:

Miss D's son wanted to do Word Drawers, too, so I asked him to get Word Drawer 1, which has words made up of the first 8 "red" letters, r/a/m/f/b/i/t/g. We laid out the pictures and then sounded out the words and matched them. We did the same thing with Word Drawer 2, which has words made up of the first 8 red letters, as well as the 8 "yellow" letters, p/o/n/l/h/u/s/c. To this point, though, I hadn't introduced h/u/s/c, so this was more of a challenge for him. Tomorrow I plan to introduce h/u/s/c, as well as review the previous 12 letters. I also will ask him if he would like to make a plan for his day.

At this point, my daughter had finished everything but the mystery bag (actually this sensorial game), which she and Miss D's son played together.

Miss K's daughter busied herself with dominoes and the latches board while Miss C's son worked with the knobless cylinders:

Miss K's daughter took a turn with the mystery bag game, as well. Here she is holding the bag as Miss D's son closes his eyes and tries to pull the proper piece out of the bag:

For Music Time, Miss D had many different songs prepared, including Stop, Drop, and Roll (only this time, we sang it to the tune of "Shake, Rattle, and Roll"), and she included movement with it. She also had the kids pretend they were trees, and they sang a song about leaves falling to the ground.

Finally, we read the "G" verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature," Mark 16:15. We discussed that "Gospel" means good news, and that the good news is: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life," John 3:16. Of course, that's the "F" verse we did last week, which is one thing I absolutely love about My ABC Bible Verses - the verses build on and reinforce the previous ones - it's a very well thought-out book, and I highly recommend it.

Sail, Sail, Sail Your Ship...

2008-10-10T15:13:00.025-04:00

(Sorry, that song has been stuck in my head all week!) Miss K wrapped up this week's Columbus Day lesson by having the kids make their own ships using a snack-size Pringles container, a popsicle stick, some playdough, and a white index card. Then they tried to sail their ships from Spain to North America:

Using only their breath, the kids tried blow their ships through water from one end of a tub to the other - it was harder than it looked!

The sails on Columbus's ships displayed various things Columbus felt loyal to, including a Y for Queen Isabella and an F for King Ferdinand, so Miss K had the kids decorate their ships' sails with things they wanted to tell the world about themselves: that they "came in peace," that they loved Christ, etc. They were really proud of their ships and loved this activity.

After Circle Time, we reviewed the eight "red" letters (r, a, m, f, b, i, t, g), and then I introduced the first four "yellow" letters (p, o, n, l). First we played I Spy to get the kids listening for the sounds, then I showed them the actual letters and had them sort phonetic pictures for each letter. Laura at My Montessori Journey has spiffy pre-made letters for the kids to paste into their Sound Books once they've mastered a new letter, but of course I've been having to make my own. Up to this point, I had been printing out a sheet of letters and then cutting them out for the kids to paste in. On this day, I was running a bit behind and hadn't gotten a chance to cut out the letters. But it actually worked out really well, because my daughter wanted to use scissors to cut out the letters herself. I didn't get a picture of her work, but she did a really precise job, so that hardly any white paper could be seen along the edges of the black letters - it was very sweet to see her concentrating so hard, and the whole exercise ended up being a nice extension to the Sound Book. I haven't gotten around to uploading documents yet, but when I do, I plan to make the phonetic pictures and Sound Book letters available for download.

Miss D's son wanted to try the Sensorial puzzle I had introduced the day before, and he chose to make a ship:

My daughter chose to work with a drawer from the Geometric Cabinet:

She matched the circles to all three sets of cards. When Miss D's son was finished with his ship, I set the thin outline cards on one side of the room and the circles on another and asked each of them in turn to "find me this circle...," while pointing to one of the cards.

Miss K's daughter started with her current favorite activity...

...only today she made a "football game." ;)

All three kids had a nice time working together with the knobless cylinders:

Miss K's daughter worked with the fabric box, and then she and my daughter built the pink tower/brown stair extension:

For Arts & Crafts, the kids finished the calendars they started three weeks ago; they turned out great! Miss K put a lot of effort into this ambitious project, and it deserves its own post - be on the lookout.

Finally, we finished the day with jobs and the F verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." John 3:16

I have been so impressed with the kids' ability to learn these verses. Every day we go over all of the letters from the previous weeks, and with very little help, they can recall all of the verses. By the end of the week, they get a little antsy to move on to the next letter, but by doing one letter a week, the verses and stories seem to be sinking in.

Sadly, Miss C and her sons were absent all week due to illness. We'll be taking next Monday off for Columbus Day, but we're looking forward to having the whole group together when we meet again next Tuesday.

Sail On

2008-10-07T21:36:00.029-04:00

Today Miss K continued her Columbus Day lesson by showing the kids a globe and tracing Christopher Columbus's route from Spain to North America. She and the kids discussed how long it would take to sail such a route (5 weeks), what the explorers would have needed to take with them on their ships, etc. They reviewed yesterday's songs and played the explorer game again, in which they hid North America somewhere in the classroom and searched for "new land."

All of the geography talk inspired Miss K's daughter to take a crack at the puzzle of North America...

...and I was thrilled that Miss D's son wanted to try the "game" (love it!) where we match objects to letters by their beginning sound:

My daughter used the moveable alphabet to spell out the names of some consonant/vowel/consonant phonetic objects...

...and then Miss D's son used the moveable alphabet to spell out the names of the objects from Laura's word drawers 1 and 2, which are made up the first 8 red letters: r, a, m, f, b, i, t, g.

Miss K's daughter built her "barn" :)...

...and then (hooray!) finally discovered the knobless cylinders. This blog's followers will know that I've been trying to get her to work with these for weeks now, because she enjoys building things, but for some reason they never "took." I think Miss K might have mentioned something about making a birthday cake for Daddy, and that was all the hook she needed:

Miss D's son got in on the knobless cylinder action...

...while my daughter and Miss K used the blindfold and the fabric box:

Once Miss K's daughter saw Miss D's son using the red knobless cylinders, she wanted to try building with all four sets:

Can you tell that Miss K's daughter is rubbing off on the other students in the classroom :) ?

Today Miss K's daughter tried this Sensorial puzzle:

She chose to make the ship in honor of Columbus Day.

At this point, Miss D's son wanted to try the teens board, which he saw my daughter do yesterday. I've mentioned before that he has really big ~~paws~~ hands, and for the life of him, he could not thread the unit into the two grooves to cover up the zero in the ten - you know what I mean? Bless his heart, he tried so hard, but he could only get one side to go in at a time, so that the unit would end up lopsided over the zero. Does anyone out there have any suggestions for making this easier? I'd truly appreciate any input.

After our work cycle, Miss D led Music Time. The kids used rhythm sticks, shakers, tambourines, and movement in a bunch of different songs, including some fall-, Halloween-, and Columbus Day-inspired ones. They love this part of their Tuesday and totally look forward to it each week.

We closed with the F verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses, and another day was in the books!

Exploring Christopher Columbus

2008-10-06T20:14:00.066-04:00

In honor of Columbus Day (next Monday), Miss K's Circle Time theme for this week is Christopher Columbus. She asked the kids if they knew what an explorer was and if they could name one (Dora was mentioned, of course :). She told the kids who Christopher Columbus is; that he lived a long time ago, before there were planes, trains, etc.; that he was a sailor who sailed for the king and queen of Spain, etc. She taught them songs to help with the lesson, starting with the names of Columbus's ships (to the tune of "Three Little Indians"):

Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria,
Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria,
Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria,
These are Columbus's ships.

After reinforcing our current year and explaining when Columbus discovered North America, she taught the kids this song (to the tune of "The Ants Go Marching One by One"):

In fourteen-hundred and ninety-two,
Columbus sailed the ocean blue,
Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492.

Next she led the kids in a game. She removed the North America puzzle piece from the world puzzle and asked the kids to close their eyes while one of them hid the piece somewhere in the classroom. The kids took turns being "explorers," searching all through the classroom for land - so cute! As each kid searched for North America, the others sang (to the tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat"):

Sail, sail, sail your ship.
Sail it night and day.
Look for land, look for land,
All along the way.

It was a fun lesson that the kids really enjoyed! As soon as Circle Time was over, Miss D's son went straight for the bear sorting/tonging activity:

In the meantime, I pulled out the moveable alphabet and the pictures from word drawers 1 and 2, which Laura from My Montessori Journey graciously makes available on her blog. Word drawers 1 and 2 include words made up of the first 8 "red" letters: r, a, m, f, b, i, t, g. Miss K's daughter and my daughter explored the moveable alphabet and their Sound Books from last week a bit, and then my daughter set to work "writing" the names of the objects:

When Miss D's son finished up with the bears, Miss K's daughter took a turn:

This is one of her favorite activities, and one she often chooses. She always lines her bears up around the edge of the tray before she sorts them, but today Miss K pointed out that the bears along the outside of the tray are facing out, while the bears along the inside are facing in. Notice also that she starts with the purple bears right at 12:00, then works clockwise until she runs out of room and continues the pattern on the inside. So interesting!

Miss D's son and my daughter worked together to write the names of the word drawer objects:

After they had written out all of the words, I took the objects away and Miss D's son practiced "reading" the words - he was thrilled! We then matched the objects back to the words.

Miss D's son then moved on to - what else? :) - the hundred board. He loves this activity! Over the weekend, my daughter had done it up to about 40 but we never finished it - he gladly took over.

Check out the 84 - nice work!

My daughter worked on the teens boards...

...while I showed Miss K's daughter her very own "My Metal Insets Book" that I made her from the metal inset work she did a couple weeks ago. (I was hoping to reignite her interest in the metal insets as well as spark an interest in Miss D's son, who shies away from writing.)

It worked!

I noticed Miss D's son eyeing her work - I'm hoping he'll want to try this activity this week.

We had a great work cycle, and then it was time for PE! Miss D recently found a parachute at a consignment sale, and today the kids were eager to try it out:

They sang songs and did a bunch of activities with the parachute and balls - it was a definite workout for them!

Where is everyone?

After PE, everyone did their jobs, and it was time for our Bible verse and story for the week, the letter F from My ABC Bible Verses: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." John 3:16

Week 5 Wrap-Up

2008-10-03T06:59:00.045-04:00

On Wednesday, Miss K continued with her apple theme for Circle Time. She reviewed the Johnny Appleseed story from the previous day, as well as the lesson on seeds. She showed the kids a red apple and a green apple and explained that there are many different kinds of apples. Then she asked the kids which apple they thought would have more seeds and took a vote: would it be the red apple, the green apple, or would they have the same number of seeds? She cut through both apples at their "equators" and showed the kids that, even though the apples were different on the outside, they were identical on the inside (love the larger life lesson there, Miss K!). She showed them the apples' identical star-shaped cores, and then they counted the number of seeds from each apple:

Notice how she used the odd number format from the numbers and counters activity? Nice touch, Miss K! :)

After Circle Time, I introduced the next set of sounds from the red letter series Laura at My Montessori Journey uses: b, i, t, and g. We started the same way as we did with the first four letters: we played "I Spy" with laminated clipart objects beginning with each of the sounds, then I showed the kids the corresponding sandpaper letters and said, "This is what the sound /b/ looks like," or, "This is how we write the sound /b/." Once we had been through each of the four letters, we went through a big stack of phonetic object cards and sorted them according to their beginning sound.

All of the kids were familiar with these four sounds and letters, so we glued the letters into the red Sound Books they had made the day before.

During Independent Work time, my daughter asked to build the "super duper big maze" using the Long Red Rods and Number Rods (I had shown her how to do this once before after seeing it here), and Miss D's son wanted to try it too:

Here they are trying to navigate their labyrinth:

Miss K's daughter busied herself with the cutting activity, and then she wanted to try her hand at the hundred board:

Miss D's son can't pass up an opportunity to work on the Hundred Board, so he helped. In the meantime, my daughter was frustrated that her maze was so skinny, making it difficult to walk through, so she set to work constructing the maze using only the Number Rods.

Much easier:

Miss D's son and Miss K's daughter wanted to give it a try:

During Snack Time, the kids ate the red and green apples Miss K had shown them during Circle Time, and then they got to vote for which apple they liked better. Miss K made a chart with a red apple and green apple at the top, and the kids got to vote for their favorite apple by marking a tally under the appropriate column. After everyone had eaten, Miss K and the kids counted up all of the tallies (there were many once all the moms and 2yos had voted) and declared the green apple (actually a Golden Delicious rather than a Granny Smith) the winner. The concepts of voting and tallies and even ties (the apples "tied" for the number of seeds) were all new to the kids.

For Arts & Crafts, the kids continued painting the calenders they had started the week before. Last week they got through May, and this week they got through September; they'll finish up next week.

We closed with the "E" verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Even a child is known by his deeds."

It was a good week! Even though we were only in the classroom for two days (with a field trip on Monday), I really feel like we accomplished a lot.