Capitalization

D LOVES to write! Our house is littered with little hearts everywhere with love notes written on it!  It is funny how I even found one that said "I love myself"!  On days when there is non stop chaos at our house and I ask everybody to be quiet for a while D often writes out what she wants to say in a letter form and hands it over to me!  So anyways, it was time to work on some capitalization rules.  

We've already learnt to capitalize the beginning of sentences during the course of our All About Spelling lessons.  So we started to work on the other rules. I had read about these ideas on a few elementary albums.  The first is a set of command cards that emphasize proper capitalization of names.  I simply wrote these out on pieces of index cards.  D wrote down the answers using correct capitalization rules in her composition book.

The other fun idea was to combine the capitalization of pronoun "I" with proper names.  To work on this, I wrote down riddles based on familiar nursery rhymes.  The answers were on the back of the index cards.  D loved this!  Again, this idea was taken from one of the elementary albums I have.

I am linking this post up Language Linky @ God who has no hands  and and to Montessori Monday @ Living Montessori Now.

Addition Snake Game Extension

Addition Snake Game has been a favorite here for some time.  D loves writing her own long addition problems and solving those with the snake game.  The other day while I was looking through the Karen Tyler's albums I found this cool extension.  She even provides the printable needed for this activity!

This was a big hit and D worked through all of the cards in one sitting!

Halloween/Fall themed trays

I don't do themed trays often, but Halloween and Christmas are too good to pass up. So here are some of our Halloween/Fall themed trays.  I prepared them Sunday evening and both the kids loved it!

Threading Halloween Spiders

Pumpkin Tonging

Sifting Bugs

Spooning Ghosts

Googly Eyes Pouring

Fall Leaves Sweeping

Halloween Stamping

Cutting Orange and Black Strips

Making Halloween Candy with pattern blocks

Planets

D attends a Space class for kids taught by a very creative mom at our co-op.  They made this cool project on one of the days.  This has various size beads, pom-poms and glass jewel stones to show the relative size of the planets.  I think this turned out so cool!

They also went outside and planted sticks on the ground to give the children a sense of how far apart the planets are from the sun.  We are fortunate to  belong to such a wonderful co-op!

I am linking this post to

World Space Week 2012 Blog Hop

Toddler Montessori

M is 2 years and 5 months old and is slowly moving into the primary stage of Montessori. She can already start and work successfully with some of the starter materials like the Pink Tower, Color Box 1 and 2, Power of 2 cube, etc.  I love that she understands that the work trays have to be put away and the mat rolled and put away after every work cycle, most days! I am still working with my 5 year old on that!  My 5 year old needs constant reminders, could be because we started Montessori at home with her only after she turned 5, while M has it since birth.  I just love working with my kids at home and glad that we found and are using Montessori principles for that!

I don't post often about the work that M does.  She in fact works with us everyday, usually by herself.  Some days she will just go in and out of the school room doing her own thing.  She has mostly learned to leave D alone with her work and mind her business!  Here are some pictures of her work on a day from last week.

We love to build the pink tower vertically.

Horizontally, not so much!

We love the power of two cube!

Spooning lentils

Pouring Pasta

Tonging Stones!

Matching Rainforest animals to pictures in the book,  an all time favorite work!

Matching some wild animals using cards I purchased from Montessori Services

Old fashioned hammering.

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!

Pink Tower Perfection!

Look who can build the pink tower to perfection at 2 years and 5 months!

Please ignore the mess in the background, I was re-organizing!