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!

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.

Artist in focus: Paul Klee

 It has been a long time wish of mine to study some of the works of great artists with my kiddos.  We kept postponing this for some reason or the other.  So finally this month I decided to start.  We started with Paul Klee.  He shares a December Birthday with D and so we decided to start with him.  We used the following three books, to study about the artist, his style and some of his works.

So, this afternoon we worked on the projects in the Mary Ann Kohl book, that focused on lines.  The technique was simple.  We use a black sharpie to create a work with just one single continuous line.  Then we used water colors to color it in.  We did one real and one abstract painting.  We also did a sculpture.  We used pipe cleaners instead of floral wires as suggested in the book and that is what I had on hand.  After doing our pictures we wanted to provide interesting names for the paintings and sculpture just like Paul Klee!  Here are the finished products.

M called hers Fireworks Blue!

Beach Day by  D

Tchaikovsky's Ballet by D

Xmas Day sculpture using pipe cleaners by D and M.

D's Latest Art/Geometry Obsessions

I mentioned D's latest obsession with Geometric Patterns in my last post.  I wanted to post a few of her art works from recent days.  She has free handed some of these, used the shapes from the Geometric Cabinet or just used a ruler and paper.  She meticulously works for hours on each of these and would rather be doing only this than anything else all day!

She awarded me with this the other day appreciating me for helping her with something!

You should be able to see some curvilinear triangles in the above design.  She hand drew some of this.

We also have this Mandala Designer and this provides with hours of drawing time.

She is obsessed with creating patterns and tessellating with Pattern Blocks.

She creates such elaborate designs that I am thinking it would be good to get more geometric shapes and may be another set of the same shapes so she will have enough for her designs!

D's School Days

We've  been on an unannounced blog break! The truth is that life has been so busy this past month that I have had no time to update this blog.  Schooling and interesting learning has been happening in spite of our busy schedules.

We've been running around for rehearsals and end of the year performances and concerts.  D has been practicing all year for the play "The Nutcracker".  This cast, tech, set and direction has been a creation of our local home schooled kids!  We also had an amazing lady who knows so much about direction help us.  She is a homeschooling mom too! This was such a learning experience for us.  D loves to be on stage and aspires to be an actress, so this was perfect for her.  We had two performance shows just before D's birthday!

D had also been participating in an elementary chorus class conducted especially for home schoolers in our local city.  This class has focussed on music awareness and singing and we just finished with the Christmas Concert! Such an amazing group of kids and an amazing teacher too!

In between all this, D turned 6! My baby is now a little girl, I can't believe it!

Here are some snapshots of some of the work that has been happening around here.  As a follow up on our Volcano research, we got into layers of the earth and some plate tectonics too.

D examining the play-doh model of the layers of the earth.

Testing out our cast iron pan to see how heavy it is!

We used the three part cards from Cultivating Dharma.

D used the Circles drawer from the Geometric cabinet to make her Layers of the Earth Chart.

Trying out how mountains can be formed when plates push against each other.

The Spheres chart that I made to learn how plates move in the Lithosphere.

We watched a ton of youtube videos on Earthquakes and Tsunamis.  We also love the "Bill Nye" videos on the same topics.

We also worked with magnets a lot.  We have a couple of kits that I bought off Amazon and the kids have been playing and discovering the various laws and rules of Magnetism.

Trying a boat race with pins taped onto cork.

Freely suspending a magnet to see whether it points to earth's North.

We've also been working on our Grammar.  We've had  presentations on every part of speech except Interjections.

Trying some prepositions using an apple and a plate.

She used the grammar farm labels (Montessori Print Shop) ones to create her own sentences and labeling those.

We've also been writing and diagramming sentences.

D had been working on the Construction Triangles a lot.  She is right now in a Geometric Obsession!  Here is her work on the Sensorial Decanomial.  Anything to do with geometry and patterns is a huge hit with her right now!

In Math, the Subtraction Strip Board is not of much interest to her at all.  May be because we worked on Addition so much that she knows most of the answers for the Subtraction equation slips and hates using the work to find her answers out.  Instead she has been focussing on Equivalences in Fractions.

I feel that we have spent enough time researching based on the First Great Lesson.  D's interest has waned and she has been asking for the next book in the Jennifer Morgan series.  So last week we started on the second book and read through it.  She loved the drama of the origin of life.  So this week, I would be presenting the clock of eras and we would go through each period with as much drama as we can!

Hope all of you are having a great holiday season!