Friday, April 22, 2011

Plant Care

We added this "Misty Rose" plant to our classroom last month.  This is a typical montessori addition, one that covers a lot of subject areas from "practical life" to "botany"!  I have zero knowledge on plants, so I just picked up what looked pretty at the store!  The tag on the plant said the name was "Misty Rose" and that it helps purify the surrounding air.  It does look pretty in the room and the room smells nice and fresh!



D loves her plant and never forgets to water it.  She uses the towel in the basket to cover the spout while carrying the watering can from the nearby bathroom to the room.  She also gently cleans the leaves with a wet paper towel once every week!  The plant receives a lot of TLC from D!



Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Infant/Toddler Montessori

I realized that I don't post much about anything I did/do with M.  Ever since her birth I've tried to incorporate as much Montessori as possible with M.  There is no separate room for D or M, because we co-sleep.  With M it is so much easier because she nurses at night and co-sleeping is the only way I will get some sleep.  Our mattress is on the floor, we have a king and queen size one next to each other on the floor.  This works perfect for us, as during the day M naps here and is totally content.

Our montessori mirror is in the play/family room as this is where we spend all of our waking hours.  I got this mirror a bit late when M was around 4-5 months old (sitting up well) and M has enjoyed it a lot.  D loves it too when playing dress up.  The mirror I got is from here.  Its acrylic and has stood up well to all the banging from M!



I used to have little baskets of play/interesting things right below the mirror on the floor for M to play with.  Now, she just plays with D's stuff, and I have a shelf in our school room for M with her Montessori items.  M is going to turn a year old in less than a week and loves doing all the activities I put out for her.  I will post about some of these activities in the coming days.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Glitter glue letters!

I've been teaching D the alphabets from our native language.  The twelve vowel like letters are taught first. I was trying to find a way to teach it the montessori way, but just too lazy to cut and create sandpaper ones!  I was browsing through the stationery isles and there it was, glitter glue!  I got the set ready in 10 minutes using card stock and glitter glue.  D loves the texture and can identify all these now!


Here is a close-up of one of the letters.....


We were watching a movie (native) the other day and D could identify some of these letters when the credits were on!  That was exciting!

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Classroom calendar

Understanding history helps a child locate their space in time.  This is difficult though, as the child is always aware of only the present.  Helping children understand the passage of time is difficult because of the abstract nature of the process.  One way to start the process is to have a classroom calendar and involve the child in changing dates daily while talking about what events happened previous day and the activities to look forward to the current day and the rest of the week.

I made our classroom calendar in February and D has been involved in changing the date every morning.  I just created the months, days of the week and numbers, printed, laminated and mounted that on a poster board that I bought in wal-mart.  Mine is nothing fancy, just plain, simple and easy to use for D.  All I do the beginning of each month is to lay out the dates in the right order under the days.  Less work for me!  To change the date, D hangs here black and gold bangle on the right date.  She needs help in fixing (velcro) the right day under the yesterday/today/tomorrow feature, as she cannot read the days of the week fluently yet.  She is getting better at it though!


I also added a store bought weather chart that I already had on hand.  D loves to look outside the window and change the dial every morning!



The only extra thing that I added was our address and contact numbers that D has already memorized.

There you go, our calendar, simple and straight forward, serving our purposes!  

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Spring and Flowers at our kingdom

Made my first batch of play-doh dirt using the recipe here.  Added some rocks, pots, buckets, tools and colorful flowers for hours of fun!




Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Happy April!

We are still here and moving slowly along the homeschooling path!  We had a few initial great weeks and the past few have been a bit slow, but mostly due to my engagement in various other things.  I work part time from home and work has been busy.  Also I've been re-organizing and putting in new works for D, just not photographing them for the blog.  I am serious about blogging though, this would be the only journal for our homeschooling and I do want to keep at it.  I will definitely be updating with new pictures, so be a little more patient with us!