This week we are wrapping up for the summer! We have a couple of more waseca things to do, but I have a plan to cover things in a simple way. That way Bunny can study what she wants when she wants to. So this week we will be covering animals and some classifications of animals! Bunny and I combined several presentations today! Pup joined us for the vertebrate and invertebrate talk and then she left for other work! Bunny and I continued to talk and got into the 5 classification of vertebrate. I cant seem to find any good information about the classifications of invertebrate though. Does anyone have a good source that is simple and understandable? Anyway, we did that and I made a follow up work of making her own chart of the animal kingdom. It didn’t go as well as I thought it would, so we are saving it for another day. Here are some pictures of out work!
Today I also made some new trays for Pup to use! These will be my last themed trays for the summer (at least I think so)! They are animal themed and some of them are a redo from our zoo theme last year (you can see that post under my theme tab at the top of the page)!
Bunny traced each inset on a piece of paper and taped them together. She then proceeded to color them, but it was a LOT harder then she thought! To be honest, she really never really figured out how to color in the lines very well so this was really hard for her. I hope she finishes it. She did three of them, and got tired.
Another thing that Bunny and I did today was try and talk about the plan for the summer. She and I have been having a really hard time together and, while this weekend was really great, today she relapsed into the an angry defiant girl. 🙁 I’m not sure why or how to deal with this. She starts to throw a fit and will scream at me. I have tried punishment and I have tried problem solving, and I have tried sending her to her room to be alone till she clams down. She just gets worked up and doesn’t calm down easily. This usually happens when she is working, either reading or math. All of it is stuff she can do, but when something is trickier she gets really upset. Does anyone have any experience with a situation like this? Right now we are going to take it easy this summer. Together we agreed that she does one (or tow) math works each day, and that she reads a book. Other then that, she can learn what she wants, how she wants. It sounds like a good easy summer plan! So that is what is going on here! I hope that all of you are having a great beginning of summer! I am linking over at Montessori Monday! Happy Schooling!
*** Dont forget to enter my giveaway here! The more you enter, the better chance to win!***
Today we got right into out plant work this morning! Breakfast was a little earlier today and I really needed to make material for my presentation today (yes you hear me right, I made the material right before I presented)! Our presentation today was about flowering and non flowering plants. I was panicking because I really had no idea what was a non flowering plant (I learned alot as I research this morning)! I thought I needed to find pictures, but then I looked in the waseca masters and I realized that they were all there! I just needed to color them! Whew! I was so happy about that! So while I colored, the girls popped by and wanted to color too! So I printed off the parts of the flower cards for them to color! Pup just colored hers in, Bunny made a book with all the parts! The parts of a flower are something we have gone over a million times, so she knew what she needed. I did add Stomata though, so she learned something! 🙂 After she made her book, we wrote out the work plan for the day. Like I said before, this is working REALLY well for her. We sit down each morning for a meeting and talk through what she needs to do, then off she goes! She started with handwriting and then I gave her the plant presentation! Finally we did the stamp game and she read a book. Pup worked on a little bit of this and that. Here are some pictures!
Later this afternoon I took the kids outside and Bunny found some maple seeds she planted and grew. I was surprised to know that for the past couple of weeks, she has been planting maple seed in the garden, watching them grow, then pulling them out since we don’t want to grow trees! She knew so much about the seeds and how they have a seed coat, they start with a root and two leaves. She knew that they leaves start out looking like the big ones and when we talked about the dicot and monocot leaves, she knew exactly what I was talking about! I was SHOCKED! She knew so much and it was all self led in the backyard by herself! I guess letting her dig in the garden was a good idea! It was Montessori all the way! She she was telling me this, I was thinking about the Montessori Theory album I have been reading. The elementary child is capable of great intellectual feats and as a Montessori teacher, you need to make sure that they have BIG projects to work on. They need it, they want it, and this looked just like a perfect way to help her have a project! So I told her where we had some carrot seeds if she wanted to try and plant something for real! She thought it was a great idea and after helping read the package direction, she planted some of the carrot seeds. She was very proud of them and I hope to do some more talking about plant needs as we go! The planting let to making some seed makers for the plant we have growing! Bunny thought of the design and she made all the pictures herself! I helped her do some of the spelling after she sounded them out! She did her best work she told me! I think she is right!
While Bunny was making her garden markers, Pup wanted to do something too. I gave her a butterfly and some markers and she got to work too! What surprised me wasn’t that she liked doing this, but how long she concentrated on this! For about 30 minutes, she colored with so much focus. Each part of this butterfly, both sides, even the edges were all colored! She even outlined the butterfly shape! It was really awesome to watch her concentration !!!
So that is what we were up to today!!! 🙂 Lots of fun and I think that we are getting to a place where the learning is happening naturally! It is such a beautiful thing to witness. Bunny is really starting to think more like an elementary kid and reading my albums has helped me to change how I think and teach! This has made her feel better and this is good for everyone! Don’t forget to enter my giveaway with Montessori at Home! You can enter here. Happy Schooling!!!!!
********Winners have been announced here! Congrats to Ajar and Tanya M! ***********
Well today I am happy to say we are learning all about plants this week!!!!! I have been crazy busy, so I haven’t had a ton of time this week to get everything together. However, I did manage to get a few new tray out for the week and I think we are going to have some fun!!!! Here is a look at what is out on the the shelves this week!
Spooning Seeds
Serving salad
Pouring water with a watering can
Clothes pins on flower pot
I am really trying to get Pup interested in her work. She really isn’t all that interested in much other then math (which she needs my help for). So I am trying a few new ideas to get her to work more independently while I help Bunny.
Pouring ans serving water!
Serving Salad.
(This is really hard to do!)
Counting
Sandpaper numbers
Sound Cylinders
Plant or Animal
Today, Bunny and I made our work plan and that was really successful! She know what she needs to do and I can make sure she is getting it all in. It is so interesting to see the next plane of development happening with her and I am really excited about it. I thought I would be sad to see it change, but there is so much happening that is so cool! I will have to write a post about that later! 🙂
Our first task on the work plan was to do our plant food presentation! This was the first plant presentation in the waseca study and it is defiantly a 6-12 presentation. In the lesson, it is meant to be done in a class so that it can be almost a play of sorts. I didn’t have 8-10 friends, so we used pompoms! 🙂 The first this we did was talk about how all living things are made of atoms and they are the smallest bit of life. Atoms make up the plant cell. Interesting enough, Bunny went to get the smallest pink tower cube and said that it was like that! It is always so cool when they kids see the other material in the classroom in connection with what they are learning!!!! Next we talked about the atoms that make up carbon dioxide and water. We made a carbon dioxide atom with 1 Carbon (brown pompom) and 2 Oxygen (blue pompoms). We also made water with 1 oxygen (blue pompoms again) and 2 Hydrogen (pink pompoms). She thought that this was very cool! Then we talked about how a plant cell contains chloroplast (here I spread out a green piece of felt). We talked about how there are holes there that allow the carbon dioxide to come in. The roots pull the water molecules up to the plant as well. Next I explained the sunshine comes in and breaks up the water. The hydrogen from the water hooks up to the carbon dioxide and makes a new molecule. However, the oxygen from the water needs a buddy, so it takes one from the new molecule, and these two go out into the air! The new molecule is a carb that is food for the plant!!!! It is a hard concept to learn, but Bunny loved it and we did it over and over! She also wrote a report!
It was a pretty good work day here! Now as much as you all love reading about what we have been doing here, I’m sure you’re a wondering what the “GIVEAWAY” in the title was all about about! Well I will tell you! John Bowman, the amazing author of Montessori at Home, is offering 2…yes 2…of my readers the Montessori at Home Bundle!!!!! This includes the complete Montessori at Home e-book, the Mom Blogger Talk Montessori e-book, the Montessori Print Shop bundle of 21 printable, AND a $20 gift card to a Montessori Supplier!!!!!! That’s AWESOME isn’t it?!!! Now that you want it, I will tell you how to get it!!!!! Here are the entries you can get:
1. Leave a comment telling me all about why you hope to win this
2. Follow me on Google Friend Connect
3. Follow me on Facebook
4. Follow me on Twitter
5. Follow Montessori At Home Book on Facebook
6. Follow Montessori At Home Book on Twitter
7. Stop by each day and leave a comment
8. Blog about this giveaway! (Worth 3 comments, be sure to leave separate comments)
All you need to do is leave a comment for each entry and wait till the end!!!! I would love to have you all win, but we can only give it away to 2 of you! So be sure to enter now!!!!! This giveaway will last until next Monday 21, 2012!!!!! Good Luck to all of you!!!!!
Yesterday we did the plant or animal lesson from the waseca study! Bunny did a great job talking about the difference between a plant or animal. I think that this was a good exercise for her to do because, although she can tell the difference between a plant and animal, she had a harder time putting it into words! I think that she had to think a bit more about what the actual difference is. She did a great job though once we got going. Pup love the little animals and she did a great job placing them under the right labels! Here are a few pictures of the work we did!
That is what we have been to! I hope that your week has gone well for you! Happy Schooling!!!!
{ Oh and….Pssst….I have a giveaway a coming up soon!}
Well I really wanted to make some pretty landforms that were all ready for the classroom but right now, it just isn’t happening!!!!! I had a plan and it didn’t quite work! 🙁 So….since we are working on soil this week, I needed them today! So it was on to plan B! The next part of our Waseca Study was to talk about soil and water. After the soil and water presentation, we were supposed to head into landforms. So I used what we had to make the landforms and I think it was actually a success! I took a plastic container and some rocks, and the girls and I used the rock to make the different landforms. Then we poured blue water into the container! It was fun and it really made the girls look at the difference between the different landforms!
This presentation was about how soil and water feel. It was for nomenclature purposes and Pup thought it was great!
After that we moved into landforms! Bunny made hers all on her own. Pup needed alot of help. This is a work that is better for older kids, but it was fun!
Lake
Island
Isthmus
Strait
Archipelago
Cape
Bay
System of Lakes
Peninsula
Gulf
When we were finished I made it a tray! I hope that this is a work that the girls repeat. I think that they will! Maybe soon I will get the landforms trays done, but until then this is going to have to cover it!
Today is also my dearest Mom’s birthday!!!! After all of our work we got to go have a lovely afternoon at her house! It was great to spend a nice relaxing day with family! I hope your week is going well! Happy Schooling Everyone!
Well today we started off with some school work! It went well. Bunny wanted to work with the homemade lizard 3 part cards, and Pup wanted to do her math problems! So Pup and I got to work while Bunny worked on her own! Pup has been doing really well working with the sandpaper numbers and I am really proud of her. I have been starting to introduce her to letters as well since she has been asking and pretending to sound things out! 😉 She likes to know the sounds. I wanted to use the Dwyer Method with her in the reading, but it looks like we will be doing more PBG instead. I think ti will most likely be a combination of sorts. We’ll see!
Here is the 2ond period where I asked her to “poof” the number. She did pretty well. We still have a few we need to work on!
Pup loves to trace the letters with her fingers. I know that is how its supposed to be, but I didnt have Montessori when Bunny was at this age, so its been fun to see the different sensitive periods with Pup! I will just embrace this now while she is loving it!
I also asked for her recall, but there are a few we will need to redo later! But we had fun and that is what matters!
Another thing that I presented to Pup today was filling in the metal insets with lines. She has been in a crazy intense phase of filling things in when she is coloring. She always hands me her work and tell me that it was really hard. She is satisfied with her work when she gets it all filled in with color. So this work was right up her alley! She did 4 of them on her own!
While Pup and I were working, Bunny did all the three part cards for the lizard and then made her won book (I forgot to get some pictures). She did a great job though and it inspired me to look into getting us to the zoo to really see the lizards that Bunny wanted to know about!
Bunny also did a few math problems today using the stamps. She did a pretty good job and I was happy that she seems to be working hard at it! While she did that, I check on the weather conditions here! With no rain on the radar for a few hours, I packed up the kids after they finished their work and we headed to the zoo! Bunny has been wanting to see the lizards and I wanted to be sure she had a chance to! We saw a bunch of things (the reptile house was closed for an hour and a half when we got there) and it was fun to check things out. While we were killing time, we came across a HUGE chunk of coal that was on display. This was a HUGE opportunity for me to talk to Bunny a bit about the Carbon Cycle. This was a presentation in the Waseca study on soil. I wasnt sure if Bunny was really ready for it since it was aged 6-12. I think that it was a little more then she was ready for yet this year. However, the grammar presentation and the great lessons talk about coal and in the albums I was reading they suggest making sure that the child has some idea of how coal is formed. So I did a impromptu presentation using the coal at the zoo! It turned out well. I dont think that Bunny is going to be writing an essay on the carbon cycle, but she has been exposed to it, so I am happy! After that, we hit the reptile house! Bunny really loved seeing all the different types of lizards that there were. We learned about how lizards are cold blooded and how they lay eggs. We also learned about the different names for lizards~ gecko, iguanas, monitors, etc. Another things that I didnt know I was going to be talking about was salamanders! I really had no idea that they were different then lizards! Whew! I had to read quickly to figure out the difference and tell Bunny! I love that her interests allow me to learn too! Its great to learn together! 🙂 When we got home, Bunny and I hit the Internet to get some more information about lizards. Afterward Bunny and I filled out one of those animal discovery pages together! It was a good day and we both learned alot!
Here is coal that we used for our presentation!!! Cool Huh?
So that was our day! It was a good one! Stop on back tomorrow for some DIY landforms! That’s right, I made some and they were really easy!!!!! Don’t forget to check out the Montessori Guild Books I have for sale! I am linking up to Montessori Monday! Stop by there for some amazing Montessori fun! Happy Schooling!
As promised, I have pictures of our amazing soil exploration today! It turned out to be such a beautiful, very windy day! So after a bit of work time in the basement, we headed out to my husband’s construction yard. We have a bit of property that we use for our business and there is a ton of overgrown land. I thought that it would be the perfect place to dig a hole or two! So we loaded buckets, shovels, and containers in the car and off we went! On the way there, we talked about the different layers of the soil and about the different kinds of soil. We also talked about what makes up the soil. Bunny seemed to retain a great deal of the information! When we got there we looked around at all the different kinds of dirt that was around. There was topsoil, and lot of clay (which is the main type of soil here). After digging around a bit, we got to work making our own representation of the layers of the soil. We started with bedrock, then smaller stones, then subsoil (clay here), next we added some topsoil, and finally we added some organic matter (dead leaves that will add nutrients to the soil). It was pretty cool! Bunny made a small one in a cup. After we talked a bit about each layer and how the organic material turns into soil, we dumped out the big one and I offered to let Bunny make the big one again on her own! She did and she got all the layers just right! It was great fun! While we did this, Pup played in the dirt! She was SO dirty and so happy! She was running and grinning and scooping dirt the whole time! Here are a few pictures of our day! 🙂
Here we are looking at the different grains of the dirt and the clay.
Here is our layer of the soil container. The second one Bunny made was better, but my camera battery died before I could get a picture!
Bunny really love the clay we dug up! This is what a majority of the soil in our area looks like!
As you can see it was a good morning! All of these explorations came out of the waseca biome study! We learned alot and it has been so cool to see how what we learned about rocks in the fall ties in here! I wish you all Happy Schooling!
Well the last few days I have been working with the girls on a few of the water experiments in the waseca biome study! Yesterday we talked about how water always flows down hill, and today we reviewed the water cycle! Since we did a lot of water cycle work this year, I sort of just did a review. Bunny really understands this, so I didn’t get into it too much more. Both girls enjoyed this work, and I think that the water flowing downhill will really be a great work to leave out! Pup really loves it, I just needed to wait for it to dry before I could let them work with it!
This tray has Model Magic clay in it that I made into a steep hill. I let it dry (mostly) and used it to demonstrate how water flows!
The water cycle was easily done with some ice in the pan that we melted and when it started to boil, we noticed how the water vapor was like the water that evaporated to form clouds. Then we put the bowl over the top. The vapor collected and made “rain”!
Here are some pictures that Bunny drew to show how the water cycle worked!
Another thing that we did today was that we finally made it to the large library! Let me tell you what, the children’s library there is almost like an amazing museum filled with books! Bunny and Pup loved it! I think we may have to stop by there more often!
We ended up with alot of fun and a we ended up with a lot of books! I love that in the children’s library there is not only a fictions sections full of picture books, but also a whole section of non fiction picture books as well! It is just perfect for finding great books to read for school work! I think I need to go with a list of my near future studies! 🙂 It was just a great place! Happy Schooling!
Today we jumped into our next theme~ Water!!!!! I of course made a few tray last night and we were all ready for school right away this morning! Here are a few pictures of the work the girls dug into today!
Counting, sorting and open close! 🙂
Pup sorts the beads into the right containers, then counts them and puts the lids on!
Pouring water with beads
Water Transfer
Bunny is still wanting to know everything about parrots, so I brought out the parts of a bird nomenclature cards!
More Puzzle Work!
Water Pouring
Counting the beads. Pup has been counting everything!!!! She really enjoyed counting the numbers. She is also starting to recognize her numbers!
Golden Bead! I made a small booklet with math problems in it and put a parrot on the front! Now its a super cool thing to do! I love using their passions to inspire more learning! 🙂
Speaking of parrots, Bunny has really been reading and looking at everything parrot she can find! Today her first work of the day was to make a parts of a parrot book! She used our Parts of a bird cards from Montessori Print Shop! She did a really great job!
We also did the first water experiment from the Waseca Biome Study that helped the girls see how much water there is on the earth. We also looked at how much of that is fresh water and how much of it is frozen! First we filled up a bowl of water with 100oz of water. Then we took 4 tablespoons of it out and out it into a cup. This represented how much of the water on earth is frozen ( had frozen another container with the 4 T of water last night so it would be ready). We also took out another 2T to represent the the fresh water in the world! Finally we talked about how all the water left is salt water that is mainly in the ocean! It was really interesting to “see” what water is in the world and what the percentages are! I of course took a few pics!
Adding salt.
We also tasted the salt water and talked about how we need to protect our fresh water since it is such a precious and limited resource. As you can see Bunny really thought it tasted BAD. Pup however told me it was ok! Silly Girl!
So that was what we were up to today! I hope that we have a great week and I hope you do too! If you want to see more fun Montessori work, be sure to stop by Living Montessori Now! I linked up to Montessori Monday there and there are a million of amazing ideas! Happy Schooling Everyone!
Today we had another work day and did another wonderful Waseca Presentation! This is one of the works that the they sell on their site, but I made mine using some nesting boxes that I had on hand. There is a story that goes along with the presentation that help the child see all the elements in a the universe and how they relate. It is simple and concise, and really cool! Bunny loved it, but is was too old for Pup. She worked on other stuff while I shared this with Bunny.
It starts with the Galaxy and we move into the solar system and then to our earth.
Next we talk about the biomes, and the ecosystem, and the plants and animals that live in an ecosystem.
We then talked about how the tissues and organs of the plant of animals is what allows them to adapt. We then saw that these tissues are made up of cells which are made up of an atom!!!
Whew! It was really cool to see how it all goes from really big to really small.
We also did some regular work too! Bunny made some parts of a biome cards, and she also labeled some of our Botany puzzles. I really encouraged her to read some of the labels I knew she could get! She also worked a bit with the stamp game. Pup worked really really hard on building some small Melissa and Doug jigsaw puzzles. This is a work that she has never been able to do before, but today she built all four of them and started them over again! She got it and was so proud of herself!!!! Here are a few pictures of our work day!
Biome Cards
Pup colored some pictures of the stations of the cross.
Puzzles
Reading the labels. She could do all of the ones for the parts of a tree.
See how proud they are?
Stamp Game Review.
Working
Here is the problem she did. I realized halfway through that the number was going to be higher then 9000! This was a bit confusing, but we talked a bit about it and she seemed to understand it!
Another thing that we did today was make bread from scratch! The girls and I mixed the dough and I kneaded it. We let it rise forever, but I dont think that my yeast was good. 🙁 So they were a little flat and hard when they cooked. I did make a second batch and it looked so much better! 🙂
Ready to rise.
Here it is risen. See…not too good.
This is the second batch. It was really good!
I hope you are all having a wonderful week! Happy Schooling everyone!!!!
