Here is a little list of the things that we have going on this month on our shelves. Each month we have a few trays of activities that we change to keep with our theme. This month we are talking about winter. Later in the month we will start working on time and calendars. Bunny loves the changing trays and she will even go down to our school room to work on her own now! 🙂 I really encourage that. Once she knows what each tray is for, she can do them whenever she wants. Pup is starting to get into work time and it is so cute to see her try to concentrate!

Practical Life:

Winter Sorting

This idea I found on a blog ( I cant remember which one…sorry). They suggested playing snow in the house! We tried it 2 weeks ago when we got a little snow and it was too cold to go outside (it was -15 wind chill). The girls loved it! We did it in the kitchen and I had plenty of towels on hand! I suggest you try it! They really got a chance to explore the snow and see the different textures as it got warmer and started to melt!

And finally, here is one our first attempts at a sensory tub. I need to work on this. Inside of it is:
Cotton Balls (snow)
Peppermint Sent jar
Cinnamon Sent Jar
Almond Sent Jar
White twigs
Spoon for scooping “snow”
Snowman
Wooden Snowflake
Jar of “ice crystals”
Box for open and close work
Wooden twig Reindeer that Pup LOVES

Math:

Bunny has mastered the sandpaper numbers and even counted to 20 without skipping any numbers! We are so proud of her. We are moving on to the golden bead material. I introduced her the unit, the 10 bar, the 100 square, and the 1000 cube. She love it so much she begged for more material! I think that we might be entering a math sensorial phase. Today Pup showed me an eight number tile and she told me it was eight! I was shocked when she did the same for a nine and a seven! So I guess that we are going to work some math stuff with her too!

Snowflake counting

(Bunny has to count the “snowflakes” and clip the clothes pin on the right section)

Golden Bead Introduction

Language:

Bunny has mastered the sandpaper letters and I have introduced her to the moveable alphabet. She has no interest in it at all. I have tried a bunch of ways to get her to have fun with it, but no luck. Today I realized that she cant isolate the sounds in a word, so I need to make an object box and get her to practice the beginning sounds. That seems to be the place to start. I really had a hard time starting the language work when we began doing Montessori  because she learned all the letter names and was already writing alot. So now I am kind of going backward with her so that I can teach her to read the Montessori way. She does however LOVE the metal inserts. She is paper crafting like crazy and it writing and copying everything. So she is learning, just not the way I think she should. 🙂 Pup is wanting to be just like her sister and she is starting to repeat the letter sounds after I say them!

Geography:

We are still working with our continent boxes and puzzle maps! Bunny loves to work with them. She is learning alot. We are still trying to collect more objects for the different continents, so if anyone has something that they would like to pass on please let me know! 🙂 Pup loves to play with all the things in the boxes and she LOVES to play with the globe.

So I think that we are going to have a great month! Feel free to use these ideas in your own school! 🙂 Let me know if you have ideas to go with my theme. I love to new ideas! Happy Schooling!