Today my girls and I got invited to go ice skating with my parents! Boy were they excited! Plus they both kind of held onto the idea that it would be easy and they could skate perfectly! Let’s just say they had to rethink that a bit! 😉 Bunny was more then happy to hang onto the side and with a quick bit of instruction from a nice lady, she was gliding pretty well while she hung on. It took me a while to convince her to skate without holding on to anything, but she did for a bit and she did an amazing job! Pup however took a wee bit more help! She was SO determined to skate on her own and with a lot of falling, she managed to skate around a bit herself. It went a bit like this: step, step, glide, stop and rebalance. She was SOOOO proud of herself for being able to do that without holding on! We got to skate for an hour and a half and after that we were DONE! Poor Pup’s legs were shaking and I had blisters! The girls were so tired they could hardly keep their eyes open the rest of the evening!
The other day, after we talked about simple machines, we hit the hardware store. While we were there, Bunny saw some wheels and wanted them so badly! So I got them for her! Today she pulled them out to make something. It took a few minutes for me to show her how to pre-drill the holes and how to screw in the screws, but she really got into it! She was able to attach the wheels all by herself and was really proud of her rolling board! (That is what she made) Even Pup wanted to try using the screw gun to screw some screws into a board!
I love learning new things with the girls! Do you have plans to do new things with your kids this summer? How about a Bucket List? Share your ideas below!
Goodness, I dont know where to begin with pictures of the week! The girls have done alot of work and I am really proud of them! Bunny has written alot of stories since she found some paper doll stencils I had! Pup has done alot of math. She did the spindle boxes and the binomial cube! Well….I will just show you! 🙂
Yes we worked on the verb! Bunny loves it and totally understand it!
Pup has been working on sandpaper numbers. She set these up herself. She almost has those last three numbers!
Pup gave Bunny a book she made! Their hug was too sweet!
Here is another book that Bunny made all on her own! She asks me how to spell things before she write it on the paper. I always ask her how she thinks it is spelled! She is doing a pretty good job, and I can t wait to get the All About Spelling Book I ordered!
We also got to our lesson on the seasons! Bunny really got it and Pup was interested in hearing the names of the seasons. I wanted to find a little song, but I couldn’t find a good one. Does anyone have a season song they use?
Bunny has also been loving the bead chains! This work was pulled out all on her own and she skip counted all the chains! I dont have the cubing chains, but she adds some of our other beads to get to the longer one!
Pup did the binomial cube all on her own! She was so proud and excited!
She also did the spindle boxes! She really enjoyed it and seemed to figure out the number just fine.
She wanted to show me to take a picture! 🙂
Snake game work! We worked on combinations of 10!
Bunny and I also talked about time…again. It seems like maybe this clock is not the best one for learning. Hmmm…I think I need to make the one on What DID We Do All Day.
So there you have it! Busy as aways! We have an AWESOME craft planned for tomorrow! So be sure to stop on back. The girls have no idea and they are going to LOVE this! 🙂 Happy Schooling!
Well I have taken a ton of pictures this week and we have gotten alot done with 5 days of school! So I have decided that I will post them in one good LONG post! 🙂 So kick back and have a cup of coffee (tea, water,soda…whatever)! Here is what we have been up to discovering this week!
Pup is working SUPER hard with her letters. She has mastered two new ones this week and I even started stringing some of the letters together and sounding them out. She is loving it! Plus we have been playing lots of work games too! She calls it her “Spy” game! 🙂
She has also been working really hard to master those numbers! It seems like we have been trying to remember 6,7,8,9 forever! But she is still loving working together with them, so we will just keep tracing them! She also pulled out the spindle boxes and did the 0-4 perfectly on her own. She tried the 5-9, but she needed some help which she asked for.
Pup also pulled the globe off the shelf and did some geography work on her own! She set up the globe and a battery powered candle to be the sun! She then got the continent puzzle and I helped her with the names.
Pup also did a bunch of playdough work and practical life trays.
Now, Bunny has been doing great work too! She has been doing lots of geometry and work with angles and you have all seen. We also have have been getting into more of the operations work! We sat down the other day and pulled out the golden beads. I needed to find out where she was at, what she remembered and what she had mastered. I was really surprised by what she knew! She did a multiplication problem with three exchanged and no problems! So I pulled out a divison card for her to do. She needed a little refresher on it, but she loved it and after one problem, we switched over to the stamp game. She did great and loved thinking about dividing things up between different people at at party! 🙂 She also worked with the division board and we played addition board bingo!
Bunny has also been doing her own research. She has decided that she wanted to know about penguins. She I have been reading what she wants to know and she is writing about what she is hearing. She has also expressed an issue with her inability to spell properly. So I am looking into getting All About Spelling. Anyone have thoughts about that? Right now I am correcting her spelling after she writes it out. Then she writes out the proper spelling on her finished picture. It actually is increasing her confidence knowing that I will give her the right spelling. We also got to do the verb presentation. I didnt get to any of this in the primary work, so we are more or less getting to an introduction of the grammar symbol, we will go much deeper next year! She has also been reading more! Hooray! She read Dr. Suess’s Foot Book several times!
Another thing that we were able to do this week was to talk about the tilt of the earth a little bit more. We discussed how the tilt creates the solstices and longer days or shorter days! Plus about how the sun’s heat isnt hitting the earth in a straight line. I didnt get any pictures of our one presentation because I was too busy talking and moving the globe around the “sun”! 🙂
Ok…so that I think is a majority of what we have done this week! I have been pleasantly with all the work they have done and to be honest, there have been alot of moments where I have been sitting and just…well sitting! They seem to have needed to get back to work and once I get them down there, they are super happy. They have been pretty tired in the afternoons, but I think that all that work is wearing them out! I really hope this week will be just as good! Happy Schooling Everyone!
The last couple of days I have been trying to find ways to get Pup interested in the sensorial work again. I dont think that she is done with it yet, and I just needed to find something that will add a spark to this! So I found a great post on some Pink Tower and Brown Stair extensions! So I showed Pup some ideas and we picked one to do together! She loved it! We have done a quite a few of them the last few days! Even Bunny got interested! I see alot more of this in our future!
This week has been a great one for work time, but I have realized that we need to get back to making sure that work time is fun, interesting and challenging too! For Bunny, she needs to get back to having fun while she learns! Its not just about a to do list. This week has been a great start so far. Pup I think needs to be challenged more. So I have been trying really hard to pull out the extensions that I never have with her so that she can start to find new work on her own with the materials we have! It is so easy to get into a rut and not move out of it. How do you make learning fun and refresh old work?
Today our work took a decidedly different turn then I was expecting! I had planned on doing a new grammar presentation for Bunny and also the next geography presentation, but Bunny had other ideas! She and Pup started off the day drawing (pretty common) and Bunny pulled out the triangle inset. She found that if she drew two next to each other that there was a third in the middle of each other! This took us off on an exploration of angles and triangles! First she used the geometry sticks to make the triangles from the geometry cabinet, then we talked about the names. However, she just didnt understand the names, so I pulled out my albums and did the next geometry presentation!It was about angles and their names. We learned what a straight angle was, a right angle, an acute angle, and an obtuse angle was. She was super interested and she made a booklet of triangles with different angles to them!
We also worked with fractions again and Bunny did a great job working out some of the equivalencies. She really loves it!
It seems like the girls have just taken off with this school thing! Pup worked right along while I was working with Bunny and Bunny worked really hard while I was working with Pup! In fact it all seems like it was a little too easy! It is really interesting to see how Bunny is choosing research work in a different way and I feel like I am scrambling sometime last minute! However, it is such a relief to have all my teaching albums on a tablet when I need them! Sometimes I will be able to rad up on a lesson and them present it 5 minutes later. It is a tricky, but it is really the only way I can seem to get it all to work! What about you? How to you managed these last second interests of your older ones? Do you make them wait, or do you got with the flow? Here we go with the flow! In fact we I will make the material I need while Bunny works on something else next to me!
With Pup it is different. I think that she is a little more independent with her work, but she still needs me to work with her. So I am. Yesterday we did some sandpaper letters and today we were working on sandpaper numbers again. I am also showing her some of the extensions with the pink tower and brown stairs. She loved that so much! In fact she was so focused and concentrated!
It has been a great start to a great year! I really cant wait to see how it keeps going! I hope your week is going well too! Stop by and let me know what you are up to! Happy Schooling!
Well as promised I have officially made us some winter trays! The girls love them, even Bunny! I seriously love theme planning but I had thought that my life would be easier if I stuck to only traditional Montessori trays instead of changing them out all the time. It would be easier, but not nearly as much fun! So we are back to planning new trays monthly or so! So, I know that you are dying to see what I have made up! My goal was to try and find new and interesting exercises since Pup has mastered so many of the primary Practical Life presentations (that is a hazard of starting early and have a big sister to watch all the time). Here is what is on our shelves this month!
As you can see we are all set for winter, but we are not just stopping there! I also have plans to start talking about the seasons of the year with the girls this week! Bunny has been learning about the earth and its tilt, so this will follow up nicely to it! Plus Pup is interested too! I will be using the presentations from my Elemetary Albums for Bunny and adapting them for Pup to hear too! If you want another great resource for this work in the elementary (and older primary), you can visit Waseca Biome Study. They have an amazing presentation as well and its free!
Finally I have some of the Montessori For Everyone work out as well! The one we did today is a seasonal clothing sort! This was a little tricky for Pup, but I think that if I take out the spring and fall sets, and just sort winter and summer for a start, it will be easier! They also have a matching game for each season, and that’s all free material! Be sure to check it out! Do you need more amazing Montessori fun? Check out Montessori Monday for TONS of links to great Montessori work! I am linking up there too! Happy Schooling Everyone!
Well, we havent had a lot of time for extra schooling lately, but we have gotten the basics in each day! And what is the most amazing thing of it all is that Bunny is still doing really well! She has just exploded with her math! She is loving doing her golden bead math problems in her head, and after a couple of days of her doing the regrouping and borrowing, I think she really gets it! 🙂 We have been doing addition and subtraction problems and she loves that she doesnt need her materials to do it! 🙂 She still hasn’t memorized her math facts, but doing these big problems is going to help her do that! Its not traditional Montessori, but it is what is really reaching her at this moment! Follow the child right? She has also been…get this….reading! Its slow going, but she is motivated and trying to read on her own without me! She is really surprising me!
Pup has been just hanging around us. She has been a little harder to engage and with Bunny needing my attention, I think she managed to get away from the school room before I realize it! 🙂 She has however, been sewing alot, and stringing lots of beads! It is giving her some good moments of concentration! Plus her little dolls are also starting to get a good Montessori education too! 😉 She has been bringing them along and showing them how to work! We also played a go fetch game with numbers. She know almost all of them, but we still get 6,7,8,9 confused! I am hoping with the game she will get it!
I hope that in the next few days I will get things together for a Space unit! Both of the girl are really interested in figuring out more about how the earth and sun work together! I also want to make a few Christmas trays! So stop on back! I hope you are all having a lovely school week!
Today was one of those days if you know what I mean! I started out the day with grand plans for doing lots of school work and about half way through the morning I was about to give up on all of it! It is Thanksgiving week and we really only have a couple of days to do school work so I figured that if we didnt do anything, it would be ok. So I let then go off to playing in their own little world. And what a world it was. I heard a restaurant that served people and politely asked for orders! I heard about little babies that needed care and pets that needed fed too!
As they played, their interest slowly switched. Bunny pulled out her sewing machine and made a small pillow (with a tiny bit of help) and Pup found some stickers she wanted to make into a book. So they did!
Next thing I knew they WANTED to do school and dragged me downstairs! They went to work and did a great job! Pup tried the sewing work I put out. She was super frustrated because she couldnt get it, but after showing her a few time she got it! And when she did, the smile on her face and the swinging feet we a sure sign of her pride! 🙂 Bunny wrote a book about Ballet and said she was working really hard on the coloring since that was the hardest part (except the writing of course). She also went on to work with the snake game and she read a book with more then one sentence to a page! Wow! Who knew!
This led me to think a bit today about what was different. I let them go. They were really self motivated today. I didnt say “lets do school”, they chose to do it! Now, it is not practical to do that everyday! If it were up to them, they would only do things hit and miss. So what else was different? Practical Life! Bunny sewed, Pup sewed! They were working with their hands and maybe it helped to focus them. This has me thinking about what Maria Montessori said:
“We found individual activity is the one factor that stimulates and produces development” “Growth comes from activity, not from intellectual understanding”
They created, worked, and in turn were ready and excited to learn intellectually! So I am thinking that maybe we need practical life to start off our work day. I dont know about you, but I have a tendency to ask Bunny to do her “hard” work before she does the “fun or easy” work. I am thinking that this is something that I need to change! Maybe something easier is a good way to ease into harder work. I am sure that there is alot of research and expert knowledge all about this, but there is something about observing for yourself that makes it so much more real! Work….real work! Has anyone else found this out in their homes or classroom? Do you want to see more Montessori fun? Be sure to visit Montessori Monday! I am linking up over there! Happy Schooling!
Today was a good school day again. Bunny had her list and I was working hard to get Pup interested in some new work. She really wasnt getting into anything, so I pulled out my practical life album and saw a work I had totally forgotten about….pin punching! Bunny hated when I had shown it to her a long time ago, but Pup LOVED it! She did the whole shape and she colored it! We had a rather large temper tantrum afterward when she messed up the kitty’s face. 🙁 Poor kiddo. She was so upset that it didnt work out the way she thought it should!
She eventually got over it and we did a bunch of grace and courtesy type things that she thought were fun! We moved chairs and tables, pushed a chair in, greeted someone, shook hands, and talked about how to cough or sneeze in their arm! Both girls had such a great time with it!
While Pup worked, Bunny did some geometric stick work! She was amazed that a polygon only has straight sides! I love it when a small presentation makes her super amazed! She then worked for a long time making shapes. She showed me how she used all the same sticks to make a square and then it was fun to listen to her think about how to make a rectangle! She was really excited about the shapes she made! Plus she wrote a sentence about it in her journal today so it must have been a fun discovery!
So today we were all learning! Pup learned some new practical life work, Bunny learned about shapes, and I learned that I need to pick my albums again for the 3-6 age range! It is amazing how many ideas there are for learning and when you find them things are fun! I think things are going to work out if I keep things working consistently! If I can keep my attitude positive and joyful, then I think everything will fall into place! Thanks again to all of you for all the help and support you share! For those of you who comment and email and those of you who know me and chat on the phone, your help is amazing! Thanks to all of you and Happy Schooling!
