Lessons on the Earth's Seasons

We've been learning about the seasons and the reasons for seasons at our house lately.  Here are some pictures taken during the last few days.

Using a flashlight to show how the sunlight is more direct at the equator than at the poles.

D trying out the months around the sun and using the globe to go around it to see how the different months would be in the different seasons because of the Earth's tilted axis.

Visualizing 365 and 1/4 days using the golden beads and the fraction inset.

Sorting out the seasons cards from Montessori for Everyone.

Doing the birthday walk as some one recently turned 6!

The sisters being the earth, are rotating and revolving around the sun!  

We also loved reading this book that explains beautifully the seasons cycle and how any disruption affects the other Earth cycles.

How we researched on Volcanoes...

I wanted to post about how we are proceeding with research after our Great Lesson Last week.  I did not have a definite plan on how to go about this, but we eventually found our groove.  At first D wanted to research about a ton of things.  I don't think she understood exactly what research meant, but she was just excited after the great lesson.  So I asked her to write down all that she wanted to know more about and she made a list.

Obviously (!) "Volcanoes" made it to the top of the list!  When we did our Great Lesson, I made our Volcano using newspaper, but I had ordered this one for the kids to use.

D used this a lot for eruptions.  We own two Volcano books, one is below and the other I can't find a link for.  I had purchased these at various library book sales long long ago.  The prizes on amazon are ridiculous though!

We read through these, but I still wasn't sure how to go about the research.  Then I read through the notes on MissBarbara.net and figured out I could give simple questions to D that she could find answers for in the books, then I could help her summarize and record it.

I gave her the question and wrote down what D summarized in her own words (with prompting) on our white board for her to copy down.  At this point, she can copy as much as she wants and can work through copying over a few days.  I am happy to say that (may be a little brag!) D loves writing and she often wants to copy the whole thing in one sitting!

As you can see I've written the summary in cursive and D writes it down in cursive too! Thanks to Handwriting without Tears!

After a few days we wanted to find out the parts of a volcano and this time D choose to draw and color.  She gave up drawing after a few tries and wanted me to draw an outline for her which she choose to color and label.

On another day, D cut and drew a volcano and used glitter glue to decorate her picture.  Yea! Art for the week was covered too!

D wants to research on rocks next as most of the texts on volcanoes talk about Igneous Rocks.  I have a few books Rocks and Minerals that D is reading through.  I want to order a few of the rock and minerals kit so she actually see the rocks and properly understand what minerals are.  So I am planning to work on the Earth's layers till my purchase arrives.

Hope this post helps some of you see how work after the Great Lessons proceed based on your child's interests.  Each child is different and it is wonderful to see how learning happens at this level at different home schools!

Making a Compass

The biggest selling point these days at our house for school work is to say, "Lets do an experiment!"  So this tray was a huge hit!  This is another one from Karen's pages.

This tray has a need attached to the cork, a small piece of magnet, water in a bowl and our compass.

A close-up of the first cup.

All you do to make a compass is to rub the magnet on the needle for a looooong time to magnetize it and drop it in the bowl of water, as accurately as possible in the center of the bowl.  Wait and watch the needle slowly turn to point North.  Verify using your compass!

Where is North?

I presented the "Where is North?" tray a few days ago to D from Karen's album.  Part of this presentation also includes a lesson on how to use the compass.  This is a simple work where you find the North wall of the room and label it.  I hand-wrote the label using an index card and did not bother to  laminate it.

Luckily for us the school room orients with the Cardinal Directions, so we successfully labelled our "North" Wall.

On another day we labelled the rest of the walls with labels matching E, S and W.

Primitive Maps

Since this will be the last year of primary for D, I am trying to present the lessons that I have not yet touched in the Karen Tyler Albums.  Last year we briefly worked on maps, so this year we started again.  One of the first presentations on maps is the primitive map presentation.

This tray shows a primitive map with some basic symbols showing the moon, mountains, water and tepee.

Here D is tracing the map on our salt tray.

Cosmic Nesting Boxes

Ever since I saw the Cosmic Nesting Boxes here I've been in love! What a great way to emphasize each person's place in the Cosmic World!  We cannot afford to buy it though so I began looking for alternate options.  I saw some awesome alternates at various blogs sites, but I just could not find enough nesting boxes!  Then while Garage Sale-ing this summer I saw this toddler nesting box and it was priced at .50 cents!  Even if you were to buy a new set of this it would cost you less than $20!

I then googled images of the internet and pasted it on the box.  I did not bother to cover up the rest of the designs on the box, though it would have been nice to!  I removed the 10th piece that this set comes with and replaced it with two "Pawns" (it you look closely at the picture below you should be able to see it on top!) from an un-used chess set to represent D and M!

On our culture shelf ready to be explored!

Summary: South America Unit

D had tremendous interest in learning about South America sometime during the month of June and we explored our continent box, worked on maps and read a ton of books on South America.  I had snapped these pictures then, but have managed to write a post only now!

Working with the puzzle pieces

Labeling the countries

One of our favorite books

We happened to find a sugarcane around this time in one of our local stores and integrated tasting it as part of this unit!

This is her replica of the Machu Pichu ruins using the Cubes

We tasted the goodies we received from Argentina as part of the cultural exchange

We summarized what we learnt.  D drew the pictures and I wrote what she dictated from memory.

We worked with out South America Toob and D's favorite is the poison dart frog!

This is her version of the Amazon river flowing through the rainforest

We received this set as part of the exchange, which include the tea and the special mate cup and the bombilla

We tried drinking the tea from the mate and it was horribly bitter!  I don't know whether it was supposed to be that way or may be I should have done something different.

So then we switched to our regular cup and used the bombilla to sip the tea and read some poetry!

Our Continent Boxes - South America

It has been long since I posted on our Continent Box Series.  So up next is our South America Box.

The Montessori Color for South America is pink.  I cut some pink scrapbook paper and decorated our South America Box.  As mentioned before in this post, these are IKEA cardboard boxes.

Here is a map of South America that I printed of Google and laminated.

I made some images of foods and kids of South America.  Again, I know these would interest D, that is why I made these.

Foods

South American Kids

Also in the box are included some South American Rainforest Animals.  I also printed off these cards from somebody's blog.  Can't remember where, would love to link if someone can help!

Important Landmark cards.

Landmark

A Paper doll from Brazil.  So far D loves these paper dolls, one of the best purchases for the continent boxes.

The next group of items are from Argentina.  If not for the generous exchange with this family in Argentina our South America Box would have been kind of empty!

Some interesting plant samples

Beach Shells

Figurine and clay pottery

Currency

Yerba Mate Tea with the Mate and Bombilla

Argentinian Flag.

I still need to make a Flag pin map for South America.  We also have tons of books on South America and the Amazon that D really enjoys, I will post about that soon.

Hope you enjoyed looking through the contents of our South America Box!  To see more posts in this series click here!

Re-cap of our work week - May 7-14

How do you come up with really interesting titles for your posts ? I am running out of ideas!

Anyway, here are some glimpses of our Math work last week.  One new thing we started last week is for D to record what she works with, where applicable, in her Math notebook.  I got this notebook from India, this is kind of the standard Math notebook that elementary kids back home use.  It is nice, since you can write one digit in each square.  You can also use graph sheets with appropriate sized squares for this purpose.

As you can see we've been working on skip counting by 2s or figuring out the even numbers up to 30.  We used the RightStart Abacus initially to do this, since the bead chains only go up to 4 and 8.  Then we used this hundred chart to count and stamp by 2's, 5's and 10's using our dot markers.

After D was done counting by 2's, 5's and 10's she wanted to cross out all the odd numbers!

Other than this we also reviewed the types of Quadrilaterals and Triangles.  We also reviewed the value for different coins and played with coins to find out how to use different denominations to arrive at the same sum.

In Language, we've been working our way through Grammar and D sorted the different types of nouns.

I just wrote these out using silver marker on black construction paper

D drew and labelled "things" she found in our kitchen as part of finding out how things are named using nouns.

One day we did this while playing, basically D marking using the Montessori symbols the articles, adjectives and nouns.  Now I can't seem to find this one paper!

Since D hates handwriting worksheets, we are practicing good writing and punctuation by doing copy work.  D would never like or be interested in copying random stuff, so most of our writing relates to the work we've been doing that week.  D does 3-4 pages per week and I can already see a tremendous improvement in her handwriting!  Here is a sample.

D has been reading about butterflies, frogs and bean plants from various books that I borrowed from our local library.

We just started back on All About Spelling.  With the weather being so nice we haven't had much time to continue the lessons.  My goal is to do at least 2 lessons per week.  We are going to start from the beginning of Level 2 since we took a break earlier this year.

We tried some wet chalk drawing on black construction paper and D enjoyed it.

We focussed on Mexico last week. I basically pulled out all our Mexico stuff from the North America Box and let D explore and ask questions.

D is slowly by surely entering into the second plane of development!  Part of this is exciting, but part of this is also that she will not choose works that challenge her.  She would be happily peeling off and dressing up the different paper dolls she has in her continent boxes all through school time, without ever touching any other single work.  Now with a 2 year old distracting me, it is very easy for D to slip off into only doing whatever she wants and not any work that provides the next level of development.  So we tried something new this week.  I created a task list/work contract that D is responsible for finishing.  Nothing fancy, I just wrote whatever were the next logical step to whatever she was already doing.  Of course there are things on there that I need to help present or give directions, but the onus is on her to get her list checked off.

So far this has been working ok.  D likes the idea of checking off, so she knows exactly what she needs to do instead of just going into the school room and trying to choose what she wants.  Right now, she still needs to be reminded that there is a task list that she is responsible for, but we working towards it!