Some Practical Life

Last week, when we were stuck inside the house while the kids were getting better, we indulged in some practical life - old fashioned cleaning!

Their tables were really dirty with all the painting and artwork that they do.  We used one scotch brite, that I cut in half to fit their hands, added some soapy water and the action began.

Hard at work!

Shiny and clean

Before - Really dirty table

After - Squeaky clean!

We also used a Duster to dust out shelves and puzzles.  The kids took turns alternating, with one incharge of removing items and putting them back and the other dusting.

Result: One really clean school room!

More Recent Artwork

The time that D is not spending reading or doing school work is fully consumed by the art and sketching that she does.  She is obsessed with creating little abstract sketches, and we go through one 100 page sketchbook every 2-3 days!  So here are some of the works that she has approved to be posted online!

She calls this "Close up of Flowers and Leaves".  After she created this, I told her that there was another American Artist called Georgia O'Keeffe who did draw flower close ups.  Since then she has been obsessed with researching about her!

Here is another WIP!

After our recent African studies, D has also been tracing the outline of her hands and been creating different kinds of artwork.  Here she using black marker to draw her hands and designs, then used tempera paint, q-tips and fingers(!) to make it colorful!

She calls this "Tribal Art"

Another one, but this time she used paint and made the text on the paint using finger prints and folding paper.  The texture is amazing to look at in person than in picture.  She then traced her hand, then some valentines and of course a couple of girl faces!

While I had no input on the artworks above, the following couple were initiated by me.  The first one is a "City by the River".  We used the techniques described here.

City by the river.

This next one, was created using oil pastels.  D created the daytime one and I did the night time one.

Oil pastel - City at Day (by D) and City at Night (by me).

Weekly Wrap-up

Sorry for the late update on our week.  I took a break and really relaxed this weekend after being on nurse duty with sick kids the past two weeks!  I did take tons of pictures and this week I would be posting a series of posts on the various topics we covered.  This post is just a general wrap up of our school week.  M was better but D was not quite herself this week.  We stayed home all week from all the various classes and co-ops, so the kids spent a lot of time in the school room and we worked on a lot of things.

This was little M proud after she build the tower using knobless cylinders.  She is so attracted to this work now!

Diagramming some sentences from First Language Lessons.  We often combine the lessons from that with our Montessori work and D loves to do this work.  It is always the first choice in the school room.

D worked on a lot of Noun cards.  The picture above is gender, but she also worked on Singular and plurals.  I created these cards a long time ago, but I recently switched around the organization and that made all the difference in the renewed interest!

D alternates between the bead chain and the Multiplication board to learn her facts.

She finished the last of the Subtraction Equations last week.  

Some Fraction Equivalences.

She worked on the Power of 2 Cube, Binomial Cube and Trinomial Cube together !

Later this week I will post about some recent artwork, our Microbes study and practical life work.

Ancient China and Africa: SOTW

We had taken a break from SOTW since we changed gears last year and began the great lessons.  But D always asks for SOTW as she loves the stories and the activities!  Here are some of what we did when we covered Ancient China and Ancient Africa.

Chinese Ming Bowl

Here D is painting her Chinese Ming Bowl.  She made it using air dry clay and a kitchen bowl for mould.

The finished bowl!

 African Paper Beads Necklace

Here D is tracing and cutting triangles on the back of a scrapbook paper for her beads.  We should have used a smaller  triangle though!

The paper triangle rolled up and glued.

All threaded and ready to be worn!

African Hand Art

We do a lot of henna based mehendi at home, so we decided to do the hand art on paper and make a garland instead.

The hands we traced using construction paper.

We used sharpies to make the designs.

Some late Toddler/Early Primary Montessori

I realized that I have not updated this blog with any of the work that my 2 year old is doing.  She has had a bout of growth and now independently doing some early Montessori Primary work.  She is so interested in counting numbers that I introduced the number rods and some counter work to her.  She can count up to 10, but I have her working only till 5.  In language will play a lot of sound games informally, but a few months a ago I introduced some objects from our alphabet box for the sounds of "f" and "m".  She still does not know the symbols, but she can easily sort the objects using the beginning sounds.

Some magnetic numbers and counts for cards and counters work

Tracing sand paper numbers 

Number rods

Here are objects from our "f" and "m" box, mixed up that she is sorting

She loves her bambino luk!  I love that this is so Montessori like and there is self checking too!  Although right now I need to help her check her work.

Weekly Wrap Up: Montessori Elementary

Last week was a light week. It was short to begin with and during the later part of the week my little one fell sick.  So  I just don't have many pictures.  

Sorry for the bad lighting, but here D is sorting the geo solids by the number of vertices.  She was influenced by one of the recent Sir Cumference books that we read.

We also had an impromptu lesson on points, lines, surfaces and solids that was triggered by the Vertex Sorting work.

 We also started work on the grammar box.  We were done with all the grammar presentations for primary and D was ready for this.  I created this grammar box using matt board.  I roughly created each slot to be 3 x 3 inch.  The slanting boards are foam covered in construction paper.  For the bigger slot where the word strips go, I have construction paper cut to size and ready to go, when we get to that part of the work.

The grammar box cards are from Montessori Print Shop and I have stored in a tool box.

D worked on the first couple last week.  They were pretty easy for her as she had already completed these in primary.

Here she is discovering the rule to using "a" and "an"

 She loved writing out the rule in her grammar notebook!

Weekly Wrap Up: Montessori Elementary

Just before the holidays we started reading the second book in the Jennifer Morgan trilogy.  This roughly covers the Second Great Lesson - The Coming of Life.

We started working on the "Clock of Eras" and D is very interested and intrigued by the origins of life. As I was looking through various albums, books and websites I found great explanations and lesson plans for the clock of eras at http://www.fossils-facts-and-finds.com/.  The lessons here provide just enough information, some activities and leaves D with curiosity to learn more.

Here D is creating the "Thinkers" 

Thinkers are multiplying inside the bubbles

We've been doing a lot of Science around here.  Here is a picture of a tiny bug that we found and looked in our microscope.  This was a great review and pretty hands-on review of the parts of an insect.  We also could clearly see the compound eyes and tiny hairs of the insect.

I am encouraging D to write down in her science journal.  This activity is perfect for my writing loving girl!

As you can see we've been working a lot with Magnets!

In case you are interested we own the following two kits.  The Lauri one came highly recommended by MyBoysTeacher and we love the other one too!

As I have mentioned before D is not interested a least bit in using the Subtraction Strip Board.  She works on her Subtraction equations, by figuring out the missing part in the equation.  For example, if the equation is 17-9, she calculates that 9+8 is 17 and figures out that 8 is the difference.  For differences that she is not sure, she uses all kinds of strategies!  For example, if she does not know what 13-4 is she breaks the 13 into 10 and 3, subtracts the 4 from the 10 and adds the 3!  It is so interesting to see how her mind works!

She is writing down her subtraction problems in her math journal.

 We occasionally work on the RightStart workbook, mostly just to change things up.  D never goes in order, she browses the book and works on whatever catches her fancy.  Last week she was working on some money problems and this week she was doing 4-digit addition using the abacus.

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We also are working on memorizing the multiplication facts by skip counting.  We play some of the RightStart games.  Right now she has the 2,3,5,9 and 10 facts down!  We are currently working on the 6 facts!  We alternate between playing games and using the Multiplication bead boards.

She also pulled out the North America puzzle map this week after a long time and enjoyed putting the puzzle together and labeling the countries.

In Language, we've covered all the parts of speech.  I need to work on putting out writing mechanics and words study presentations, but I have been lagging behind.  I should also get started on the grammar boxes as D is so ready for it.  I've been taking it easy and we have just been doing First Language Lessons level 2 and Writing with Ease Level 2.  The lessons are short and easy and perfect to just pull out and go for us.  D completed First Language Lessons Level 1 a couple of months ago.  There is a lot of repetition, so we do 4-5 lessons in one sitting, given that we have covered all the grammar already in the Montessori Sequence.  D enjoys the poetry, stories and summarizing activities that we do as part of the lessons though!

Now that I am looking back, this was a lot of work accomplished for the week, given that we were out on a field trip to a farm on Tuesday and had our weekly Co-op day today!