I realized that I havent updated much on what we have been doing in our school work lately! I think that we really havent been up to much. We basically are just moving forward in the work we have been doing! Bunny has worked really hard with fractions more then anything. She is also reading everyday and working on her project. We were able to sketch out a pattern plan for her skirt and it allowed some real life math practice. Pup has been really interested in coloring and writing letters in “words”. She is still not able to isolate the sounds in words to write them out, but we are starting to put the sounds she knows into words and she thinks this is exciting! Another new thing for her this week is the moveable alphabet! She knows almost all the alphabet sounds and I thought it was time to pull it out. She LOVED it! So we will start working with that! Pup is also coloring and creating things endlessly with all the craft supplies. But enough talk. Here is what we did this week!
Pup and learned about living and non living and the needs of living things!
All in all it was a good week! I love that they are interested and have been mostly good at working right along! I hope that you all had a great week! Happy Schooling Everyone!
Well despite my wandering mind and need to mix things up a bit, we have done some good work this week! One thing that has amazed me is that Pup has almost mastered the number rods! It all happened so quickly! She finally mastered her numbers last week and this week she started laying the rods out, counting them, and matching them to the number tiles! It was all on her own and she was so happy with her work!She even made sure that she organized them in numerical order! I was so proud of her and of what she has learned!
While Pup was working away, Bunny also has been working with her math! She is loving her fractions. I know that they have really made an impression since she is frequently using fraction words in her day to day conversations! She loves them! We have been working on equivalencies. I have held back a bit in moving forward to adding the fractions since I want her to know the equivalencies. But she is dying to learn more. Now I will admit that I have been a little lazy in getting my Fractions Charts done. I just havent gotten it done. Well yesterday, I told Bunny about them and she wanted to make them herself! So I said why not? I explained them to her and showed her a way to set it up. She was super excited! I tried to show her the ones that My Boys Teacher made at What Did We Do All Day, and she told me not to show her because that would be like cheating! 🙂 She did the 1/2 equivalencies and today she did the 1/3!
So there you have what my little mathematicians work so far this week! I love that they are liking math! As a former math hater, this makes me happy! How is your week? Is there an amazing things happening at your house?
The past few days have been full and busy. But we still have had time for school, and fun new discoveries! Bunny has been working with fractions and her math boards to memorize addition! What has been fun to see is, is that she is having fun with it! She keeps finding new connections and patterns and this is making her super excited! In fact at one point she was working while I sat next to her, and she was so excited about a pattern she discovered, she jumped up and almost ran to find me! 🙂
We started our fractions work off with some simple equivalencies, but it soon turned into some interested math as she thought about what could equal a third. Her thought process quickly found the sixths, but then she realized that 3+3=6. She then told me that 6+6=12 so maybe twelfths would be a good one to try. We of course didnt have the twelfths, so we had to visualize it, but decided that it was really equivalent. She was so excited and told me that fractions were actually math! I helped her write the work down so we would remember what we learned!
Today she was doing some addition board problems (we use a printed off board and she writes the answer in from the problems slips. Its like having number tiles, but easier for me!). As she worked on some problems, she found a pattern in the 10s! Then she wanted to know if there were any other patterns and she discovered that there was a line of 11s, 13s, 9s, 15s, and 16s. She told me “I didn’t know that my math board could be fun!”
I love it when learning becomes a discovery and a joy! For Pup, we have had a hard time still trying to keep working. She seems to have mastered everything, so I guess we move forward in the albums even though she is only three! But she did do some fun things today and I think that her favorite was showing her baby doll Lucy how to do work! 🙂 It was my attempt to try and get her interested in working with some materials instead of dragging all our toys downstairs! It worked for a bit! She had Lucy to the brown stair and pink tower! After that, she thought to stack the brown stair on its end! Here is her working and sharing her work with Lucy! 😉
So that is what we have been up to here! Learning is fun and I just know that it is the perfect way to be! Now I just need to be prepared enough to help keep it that way! 🙂 I hope you have had a great school week too! Happy Schooling Everyone!
Well..it wasnt really in the dark, but the electricity went out first thing this morning. I wasnt sure if we were going to do any school work today since we do our work in the basement and without lights its just a black hole! So, we improvised! School work was relocated to our playroom! It worked out pretty well. For Bunny I grabbed the fraction circles, and the geometry sticks. For Pup I grabbed some practical life trays and cylinder blocks! We have been really busy this week and that combined with the cold I caught the other day, we really havent gotten to any school work. So this was our day! I presented the next geometry work and the next fraction work! Bunny loved them and worked for a really long time! She is really understanding the fraction work and I know I she is going to keep running with it! I think we will be doing alot with them in the near future! She also LOVES the geometry sticks! We worked on building different shapes from the geometry cabinet (I dont have the cabinet, but I have the cards so we used those to learn some of the names). She didnt love trying to learn the names, but she enjoyed the challenge of trying to build them! 🙂
After that, we played go fetch with the fractions. I wrote a fraction on our chalk board and she went a got it for me! She did a perfect job and was almost board with it! So I asked her to pick some pieces out and then write the fraction she got. She thought that was fun and did a lot of silly ones like 3/3. So we reviewed the numerator and denominator and then moved on to the next presentation! Bunny and I talked about equivalency! We worked together to figure out which fraction families could replace each other. For example, 1/2, is the same as 2/4, 3/6, 4/8, and 5/10. She loved this so much! I think we will do it again and I want to encourage her make some fraction books, and the other extensions in my albums!
While Bunny was working, Pup and I did some fun games with the cylinder blocks. I know that she likes them, but since they were presented early on, she really loosed a little interest because she thinks there is nothing new to do! So I pulled out some extensions for her to play with! The first thing we did was add the nomenclature that goes with the block, thick, thin, tall, short, etc. She really loves the idea of the different words and loved pulling the cylinders out and using the words to describe them! After we did that for a bit, I put two blocks together for her to work with! She liked that too! She told me that she really wanted to sit and make some discoveries! So we sat looked. I started to pull out a couple of the cylinders and lined them up. Pup thought that was the coolest idea ever and finished what I started. She told me it was a great discovery! 😉
She did a lot of other little thing too! She asked that I take pictures for her, so I will make sure to post them all! She likes to sit and look at the blog sometimes! I think that it makes her happy to see pictures of what she has done and what we do as a family!
So that this what we did while there was no power in the house today! On a side note, the girls had a great time watching the repair men climb the pole in the back yard to fix the problem. While they were working, Bunny wanted to know what electricity was, how much of it there was, how does it get in the wires, etc. I wasnt feeling well enough for a trip to the library to help her with the questions, so I guess I will try to get there tomorrow! It looks like maybe we will be learning about that!
What is always amazing to me is how kids will find something that is interesting to them and then will learn whatever they can about it, no matter what you do! The things Maria Montessori observed so long ago are still things that are observable today! Kids have an inner drive to learn and they want to do it! They are curious about life, how it work, and what happens! Just like the early humans, kids are using the unique gifts given to humans to learn, grow, and find new ways to do things!It is amazing to think that thousands, even millions of year have not changed the intelligence, the love, and the creativity of man! Kids are no different! They are born ready to learn, grow, and use their gifts. All you need to do it prepare a place for them to find the information. The thing is that this place doesnt need to look like a Montessori classroom, it just needs to work for you and your kids. The beauty is that you work with them to find the best way! Then the learning that happens can go as deep as you let it! So here is to learning! Happy Schooling Everyone!
Yes, here again is another school day post! I hope that you all enjoy reading them! I know it is alot, but this is my way of recording what each girl has done and where they are at! Today was fun! Bunny wanted to do fraction work, so I gave her the next presentation! We talked about denominators and numerators. She really got it and loved the presentation.
Pup wanted to work on sandpaper letters, so I introduced a couple more letters. After we did that, I pulled out the farm animals and played eye spy. I have tried this with her a few times before, but she really didnt get it. Today she did! She was able to pick out most of the beginning sounds between two objects. She loved it and we are going to keep playing this with her! Later on, she was playing with her zebra and she was sounding the sound out. She told me that the sound was “zzzz”! I was shocked! She was very excited about her discovery and I asked if she wanted to see the letter that made that sound. She told me yes, so I went and got the “z”. She traced it and said it over and over. Then she asked if she could have the letter in her room! 🙂 Awwww…what a Montessori child!
So that was our excitement today! We did a few other things too. Bunny made a book about baby mammals, we talked about where conifer trees grow in forests and about the northern and southern hemisphere, and she also read a book! I hope that you all had a great school week! Happy Schooling!
Well last night Bunny asked me something about fractions and I offered to pull out my fraction circles if she wanted me to. Well she was SUPER excited about this and begged me to pull them out and leave them on the table for her! So after she went to bed, I pulled them out a brushed up on my fraction presentation! By morning she was downstairs and ready have a presentation before we even got dressed! I was happy that after my initial presentation of the names, she worked with the circles for about a half hour! First she built them all, then she stacked them all up. I guess we are going to be doing a little work this summer after all! 😉
Later on this afternoon I let the girls play with their ocean animals in some water! We had a wonderful time filling the bottom of the buckets with sand and adding blue water and ocean animals! They had a blast! Bunny had the Ocean Toob that she bought with her own money! I bought the Coral Reef Toob for the kids since we had no fish for our continent boxes! These are what we used for our fun! After the sand fun, I filled up the kiddo pool and the kids played ocean there too! Learning with play is awesome!
So our day was fun filled and simple, yet it was a great learning day! Summer has been great! I hope your summer is going great too! Happy Learning with Play!
Recently we got a book out at the library called Tina Cocolina. This book is about a cupcake who is trying to find her topping. I must admit that it is not well written, nor is the content particularly good, but for some reason it captured Bunny’s imagination! She has thought about all the details of this book. She has even drawn a picture of Tina and made up a story with both of them in it! 🙂
So I told her that she could earn a cupcake badge! She was SO excited about it. The goals to earn the badge were that she needed to read a book (or I read it to her), make cupcakes, and write a report. She did all of these things really well and I think that there was alot of good learning that happened! I was happy about that because this was a test to see if my idea for next years school will work. Here is what we did for our cupcake badge:
Bunny did almost all of the work of making cupcakes alone!
After that we learned about the 1 cup, 1/2 cup, 1/4 cup, and the 1/3 cup!
I also taught her about a teaspoon and tablespoon!
We also experimented with the different measures in some beans!
She frosted them by herself too. This was tricky for her. I think I see a work in this! 🙂
Here is the finished cupcake, topping and all!
The frosting was a strawberry buttercream and was amazing!
And here is her report!
I am really proud of her! I think she did a great job, and now we are both really excited to start our year with this new plan! I cant wait share it with you all, but you will have to wait a day or two till I get it all together! Stay tuned!
