Kingdom of the Pink Princesses

Friday, June 22, 2012

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!

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Fractions

We started formal work with the Montessori Fraction Materials last week! (Another new buy!). I had introduced fractions before using home-made foam circles, but then again, I had only made 1, 1/2, 1/3 and a 1/4th. The Montessori Fractions go all the way up to 1/10th. Another great thing is that they are accurate, so it is easier for the children to discover equivalencies, which D has already started!

So, here is the first presentation. Naming the different Fractions. You need black strips for the fraction bar and numbers 1 through 10 for the denominators.

Here is the next presentation where you match pre-written fractions like 1, 1/2, 1/3, etc. to the corresponding fraction circles.

Once the child understand the concepts, it is time to build fractions! I created this little tub with commands to build the fractions. The commands basically contain all possible commands to build the various fractions.

In the above picture you can see a 2/6, 3/7 and 3/4 built.

I also made these Nomenclature cards to quickly explain the various parts of the fractions.

I also created these definitions to go along with the above set.

As you can see from the above, all my labels, commands and nomenclature cards are hand made. I quickly wrote them on Index cards and cut to size. Nothing fancy! Once I am sure that D grasps the above concepts I will move on to introducing fractions of groups.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Field Trip: Farm

We visited a local farm last week with our local mom's group. It was perfect weather and the kids had a blast! We started with a hay ride through the woods that ended in a story trail. We then got to see the farm animals a pet a few of them.

Here are a few pictures from our trip:

Reading the Story through the trail. D loved reading it!

My little one enjoying the story!

Milking and petting the cow

Petting a kid

Petting a bunny

Petting a horse

Looking at the llama and sheep

Petting a hen

Holding a Fresh egg!

Another bunny

We had an awesome time. We ended the day having lunch with friends and playing in the lovely play area of the farm! The kids had a blast and were so tired that they fell asleep on the way home!

Monday, June 11, 2012

Montessori Monday

Here are some of the school things we did last week. I had ordered a ton of new materials from a few online retailers and those materials arrived last week! So there was a lot of action in the school room!

Some renewed interest in the knobless cylinders

Working on the first box of the newly ordered Constructive Triangles

Other than the above D also worked on our new set of Baric and Thermic Tablets.

Dynamic Subtraction using the Stamp Game

We are continuing our work using the Stamp Game. Currently D is working on dynamic subtraction. We mastered Addition and Multiplication, both static and dynamic previously. D is having a little trouble understanding the exchanging concept using the stamps, so we often use the golden beads and king of work out how to break up the higher category to exchange in getting the lower category. We are getting there with a lot of practice.

Addition Strip Board using the home made board and store bought strips!

D was so ready for this and with our new order in, we finally started work on the addition strip board! We've started filling in our Addition Tables. We are using D's Math Notebook (that has squares) to record the tables. Other than these, we are slowly working on memorizing the Skip Counting Facts. Last week D worked on the 4's. We have the 2's, 5's and 10's memorized already. I also introduced Fractions using our new(!) fraction insets over the weekend.

I finally got a map stand and map cabinet! So, we had a lot of map action last week. I need to make labels, a lot of them, ASAP!!!

Here are a couple of shots of my 2 year old in the school room.

Color Box 1

Stringing wooden spools using pipe cleaner

We ended the week by creating some henna tattoos! I made one Mermaid theme and another Egyptian princess theme.

Hope you all had a wonderful week too! Hop over to Montessori Monday to check out other Montessori inspired works!

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Montessori Monday - Recap of last week

We weren't really motivated to get into the schoolroom last week after the long weekend, so we began with a nature hike. Things picked up slowly from there. We got to discuss plants and read some botany booklets and did some of the botany puzzles.

On subsequent days we did get into the school room and began our routine works.

In Math, we worked quite a bit on the Stamp Game. We covered Addition and Multiplication both static and dynamic. D loves it when she creates her own problems for these!

Stamp game

We are very fortunate to have a friendly homeschooling neighbor! They were cleaning out and gave us these addition and subtraction worksheets. You can clip on a blank sheet and work on solving the problems on the front. Once you are finished, you just flip the worksheet and check your answers.

Front, where you solve problems

Back, where you verify answers

D likes these and I like these because D is ready for the Memorization work using the Strip Board and I am still waiting for it to arrive! I ordered it two weeks back and hopefully we should get it this week.

In Language D worked on writing a few nouns each in the Person, Place, Thing and Idea category. She loves writing right now and I am capitalizing on that!

D worked on the reading folders one day and started to write the "ay" sound words after reading the little booklet. She gave up after writing this page!

We are also slowly working on Compound words. I am using these Compound Word Puzzles that I purchased from Oriental Trading. They are not great quality, but they get the job done.

I put out 5 at a time. Once D assembles the words she copies it down in her Language Book.

We also worked on a few pages of Copy Work.

Of course M needs to copy whatever D does!

I found M one day working on the mystery bag while I was presenting some work to D. She basically uses this like a puzzle, but she is pretty good at it! After she is done, she picks it up and says - "Bye! See you tomorrow!" and walks away with the bag!