Well I realized that I have not posted much about our school days! Well to be honest, the pictures look about the same day after day. It is pretty same old, same old here! In fact it has been kind of nice to have things working on a simple work plan. Bunny does her math every day, grammar three days a week, and spelling twice a week. We are going to be adding some chemistry in soon, but for the most part, it is simple and predictable. However there is some fun learning going on here too. Pup has decided that she wants to learn everything about foxes. I don’t know why, or where this came from, but we are going at it. She does so well with the project based homeschooling. We are reading books, constructing foxes, and watching videos on the internet. She loves to study the things that she finds and we have been using that to learn other things too. We have been spelling fox and other CVC words. We have also been rhyming words with fox. She is working hard and I love to see her working on her own!
As you can see, Pup is working really hard! I love seeing her working so hard! I see this work happening for a while! I hope you are having fun learning with your kids. There is something so fun about fostering a passion in your school room!
Well Pup completely surprised me today by showing me she can read a little bit! We were reading a story the other night and she looked at the sign on one of the pictures and read “jail”! I was shocked. She said she knew it from a show. But today I pulled out the sandpaper letters and we were making words together. She was sounding them out pretty easily! So I pulled out some Pink Series word cards. She read the words and then found the picture that went with it. I was shocked! She is really starting to read I think that she is still working on some of the letter sounds, but she wants to figure them out! I can see this moving along fast, so I guess its time to read up and get ready! I am really proud of her! Here are some pictures of her working and READING!
Bunny read some stories to Pup this morning before school!
Playing Go Fetch with the letters
She felt that the word mit, should be mitten! She helped me figure out the sounds!
So that is what is new and exciting here! I am proud of her! She seems pretty proud of herself, but at the same time she seems like it is something that she has always been able to do! I hope that you are having a good week! Happy Schooling Everyone!
I have been thinking a lot about the grammar lessons and I came up with a plan that I think that Bunny is going to love! As you know I didn’t make the traditional grammar boxes because they are a lot of work and bunny wouldn’t use them anyway. However, she does love to play with the grammar farm. My only problem with the farm is that it takes so much time to set up, that she is done with it before she gets to making many sentences. So I thought that she really needed something that was simpler, but something that still is fun! After all, you don’t have to have a farm. It can be anything so long as you get a chance to practice grammar! So I decided that I could combine her grammar, writing, and geography all in one. I started by pulling all of the animals out of the continent boxes and put them all in a basket. The I made 6 different boards depicting different biomes made of felt. Finally I typed out different word cards for the different parts of speech using animals, biome words, and places. My goal is for Bunny to use these like the grammar farm to build sentence and understand how the different parts work together! Here is what our new work looks like!
So that is our plan for right now. I think she is going to love playing with her grammar! Plus this is going to help with our vocabulary and our copy work! What do you think? Do you think this is a good plan? What are your favorite grammar works?
Well I am excited to tell you that Lori over at Montessori Moments is starting a new link up called Friday Five! Each Friday, she is sharing her favorite things from a section of the Montessori classroom! Today she shared her five favorite things in the Language area! Here are mine:
1. Sandpaper Letters: I love these, the kids love these, and they are an amazing way for kids to learn the letter sounds simply! Pup has learned her letter sounds so quickly with these and I have had other kiddos over to my house and they have learned too! Who knew learning to read, write, and spell could be as simple as sand covered letters? I use the D’neialian script since its a bit like cursive and print at the same time!
2. Metal Insets: We LOVE these here! When I first started doing Montessori work, I was confused about why these were considered a language materials. When I found out it was about learning to use and control a pencil, I could instantly see it working! Both of my girls used these a lot! In fact we used them to make pictures. Snowmen, houses, even people have been made using the insets!
3.Grammar Farm: Grammar farm is actually not something we have used as much as I thought we would but we still love it! 🙂 Honestly, you don’t need to have use a farm, any play scape set up would work just as well. Use a doll house, a construction scene, or a train set. The make some tags with words for each part of a sentence (Noun, Adjective, Verb, etc). The child sets up the piece and uses the work tags to build sentence about the objects. Its fun and game like! A perfect way to play with sentence parts! Bunny didn’t get to use it too much because she was still trying to read! But I think this year she will still have fun with it!
4. Grammar Symbols: I love these for teaching grammar! There is a bit of a story behind each one and this really allows the child to “see” each part of the sentence when they see the symbol. Bunny loves them totally and always wants to know more about them. I think that one of the things she loves to do is to put the right symbol over the words in a sentence and use all the colors!
5. Object Boxes: I love these because there are about a million fun ways to use them! The set above is from Montessori Services and it really does have about everything! I am thinking about buying this for Pup this year because we are missing a lot of sounds and this has them all! You can make sound boxes with these, opposites, rhyming, eye spy, and well a bunch of other games! There is a lot learning packed into these little bits!
This weekend proved to be a bit one of all of us! On Friday the girls got their first prize for the reading program~ little My Little Pony figures! The girls were SO excited about them and loved picking them out at the store! They also had to write down a little bit about a book that they read this week! Bunny wrote a bit about Fancy Nancy Pajama Party, and Pup drew a picture of Rapunzel and wrote “Pumssl” at the top! They are loving all the reading and so am I!
Another exciting thing for the weekend was that Bunny was invited to her first sleepover with her friends! She was a little nervous, but so excited! She was ready to go by Thursday even though the party was on Saturday! Since Bunny was going to be off having fun, my mom invited Pup to stay the night with her! So Pup also got to go sleepover too! It was the first time that she has ever slept away without her sister there with her! All this fun for them, meant my hubbie and I were on our own! So we got to go out to dinner and have a date night! It was a lot of fun for everyone here!
Our weekend was so much fun and full of excitement! I hope that yours was too! What did you do this weekend?
Today the girls and I headed to the beach! It was a beautiful sunny 70 degrees here, so we packed a quick lunch and headed out! We played in the waves, ate sand ice cream creations, and told stories together. This last part is something that I have been doing with the girls and they are loving it! Who knew! I don’t think that I am a particularly gifted story teller, but the girls are always captivated. We have a little girl named Jane who goes on adventures! Sometimes she learns something like when she went up into a cloud and learned about the water cycle, and sometimes they are just made up like when Jane swam with her new mermaid friend! The girls love this little dark haired girl and the great thing is that a new story can happen any time no matter where we are! So today Jane built a sand castle that she shrunk to fit inside an met a princess. She climbed into a rock cave and met a hermit crab who took her to his secret beach spot. She met a seagull named Sandpiper who took her to see the ocean from the sky. And she took a ride on a dolphin with her mermaid friend! Jane had a very busy day and I had a perfect moment, laying on the beach, telling stories to my girls! I have a feeling that Jane will be with us for a while! She is connecting us through her adventures and inspiring us to greater creativity! When I tell the stories, the girls are engrossed yet offer up details to add about what is going on! We are building the story and memories together all at the same time!
Do you tell stories at home? What are they about? Do you find that it offers your family a way to connect and grow together? This is a new idea for me! I would love to hear your thoughts on this! I hope you take a moment to share in the comments!
Well today we did some school work since yesterday was a “holiday”. (One of the benefits of homeschooling is that we can have different days off then the school kids)! So we were back to work and did some interesting things. Bunny wrote a book and did some very detailed drawings. I tend to be rather resistant to Bunny working on drawing during school time since she will draw the WHOLE time. Today started to turn into that, but it seemed different somehow. She was really focused and the fact that she was drawing small and with great detail seemed to tell me that she was working on alot of pencil control (her pencil control is really lacking and we do need to work on it). She finished 4 pages and told me she was done. There was no words though, so I asked her to write her story and she did. She always asks me how to spell things and I usually just tell her right off since she is working so hard to get the words on paper, that spelling is not the goal here! The results were really good and I was surprised and proud of Bunny’s hard work.
Another thing that we finally did was The Fundamental Needs of Humans presentation. I have really been struggling with which direction to go with presentation and how to start working on where mail came from. I just dont know how to get that research going and where to start. So I thought that discussing the fundamental needs of all people could start us thinking about how people need to communicate and share their ideas with others. She seemed interested, so maybe this will work as a jumping off point! 🙂
Bunny and I also working on the subtraction snake game alot this week. I am not going to lie, of all the Montessori math materials, the snake game confuses me! It took me about 10 minutes of working with it all on my own to just figure out where the beads were supposed to go! Then Bunny and I must have repeated one problem 5 time before it worked out. Argh! This is leading her to be less interested. I thought it would be fun to figure out the multiplication snake game and help her start to work with some memorization. But I am rather at a loss of where to start! So here is my question to all of you Montessori Mamas out there, where would you continue on the math sequence with Bunny? She knows her operations well, but she still seems unsure on some division sometimes. She has memorized some addition facts, but that’s about it! I feel like there are SO many things that she can be doing, but I am not sure what will be the best thing to start first! I would love to hear your ideas about that!
Pup has been working along too! She and I have been working on alphabet sounds and rhyming games. She loves both! 🙂 She is also still doing a ton of puzzles and playdough. I showed her how to roll a snake with her playdough and she is doing that alot. I think that the highlight of her week though was trying to read with me. I put some of the sandpaper letters together and she was able to say the sounds and read the words! 🙂 I loved seeing her so excited about it!
I think that Pup and I are going to start working on some continents. She is interested and i think that maybe doing some study would be good for her. She is really uninterested in any of the Practical Life work, and I have been having a hard time getting into any of the sensorial extensions either. So maybe some geography, and some more math will be good for her. I am thinking that she will love some number go fetch games!
Anyway, there is our week all laid out! It was full of observations and some questions. I felt like I was floundering, but it looks like we did a pretty good job! Do you have weeks like that? I really hope that if you have thoughts on my questions I would really love to hear them! Happy Schooling Everyone!
Today Bunny asked me to read a book about Legos and how they were invented. It was a long book, but we read it. She thought it was really cool and when we finished I asked her what she thought was the most important and most interesting thing. She told me that she thought it was interesting how the first Legos failed. They wrapped, became discolored, and didnt stay together. Then they found a new plastic type and added the circles on the underside of the brick. She loved that idea. I am wondering if maybe it makes her feel good that something so awesome started off as something less then perfect. So I asked her to write down her thought and she did. She did a beautiful job. I was inspired by Anna over the The Broad Stair when she talked about how research is done. She said that one child can read the work, one writes the work, and one edits. So I read and edited, and she wrote! It is a system that is working out and she is getting her thoughts out on paper! Now I just need to remember to have her read it back to me! Pup also listened to the book and drew a picture of legos! It was pretty cute!
We also got a bunch of other things done today too! Bunny played with the multiplication board and we worked on the subtraction snake game. Plus we worked on the some All About Spelling and some handwriting. I read on Pintrest somewhere (sorry about not having a link) about how you can teach handwriting using a story. Each line is colored a different color, Yellow for the sun, blue for the sky, green for the grass, and brown for the dirt. Some letters sit in the grass and breath in the air. Some letters reach for the sun and keep their feet in the grass. And some letters like to sit in the grass and stick their toes in the mud! Bunny thought it was really cool and loved the idea. It was my hope that maybe she would start to understand lines!
Pup built a ton of puzzles, and she and I worked on some sandpaper letters. It is amazing to see how easily she picks those sounds up! I didnt do any Montessori work with Bunny at that age, so this is a new experience for me!
Here are the sounds she knows! 🙂
So that is our kick off to the week. It was pretty good! If you want to see more amazing Montessori fun, be sure to stop by Living Montessori now for Montessori Monday! Happy Schooling!
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!
As you can see, Pup is working really hard! I love seeing her working so hard! I see this work happening for a while! I hope you are having fun learning with your kids. There is something so fun about fostering a passion in your school room!
