Weekly Wrap-up

This week was a very short week, given that we had my birthday, valentines day, a field trip, a party and co-op.  We still managed to keep up with some schooling.  We continued with FLL and that led to this Montessori work on Animals and their sounds.

Something new in Math this week.  We worked on the subtraction snake game.

D then decided to give me some very hard(!) addition problems.  She had to verify my answers, so we got her practice done anyway!

She worked on some logic type puzzles on her miniLuk.

D used glitter glue to paint some rocks for our Valentine Exchange with local friends.

We made some Mushroom Spore prints as part of our fungi study.

We made some Solid Gold Nubian Bracelets with Toilet paper roll and gold paint.

Georgia O'Keeffe 3D Flower

After our discussion on Georgia O'Keeffe, I searched around  ideas to do a project based on her art and found this.  I knew D would love it.  I also found a free video tutorial on this project at Home Art Studio.  We watched the video and got to work.  We used just regular paper and oil pastels, scissors and a glue stick.  Since I did the project together with D, I don't have pictures of the work in action.  Anyways, enjoy the finished product!

D decided to make her flower real colorful and used different colors

Mine is a copy of the work in the tutorial

Here is M's 3D Art.  We always include her in whatever we do and M colored her paper and decided to cut and glue and create this piece! Now it hangs proudly with our artwork!

Fraction Equivalences Chart - FREE Download

If you've been reading our weekly wrap-up posts, you will see that we are working on Fraction Equivalences.

While I hand-wrote our Fraction Problem tickets, I created a Fraction Chart for self-checking.  The idea is from here.  Similar to hers I've created this with the Montessori Bead Colors.  You can download it here.

As it is with all over the blog world, these downloads are for your personal use only and not for distribution or sale.  If you choose to share anything you've seen in this blog, please link back to here.  Thank you for your understanding!

$50 Montessori Services Giveway @ LivingMontessoriNow

Check out the $50 Montessori Services Giveway @ LivingMontessoriNow!

Weekly wrap-up

Here are some shots from our work this week.  In Language, we continued working on diagramming sentences.  We still continued with FLL and WWE.  Presently in FLL we are working on memorizing the list of pre-positions.  I find that this helps her a ton with diagramming sentences.  I like that we used Montessori to understand the different parts of speech and while that helps a lot when analyzing what words belong to what part of speech, memorizing helping verbs and preposition lists make the work go a lot faster!

In Math, D wanted to work on the Singapore Math Textbook.  While we are done with the 1A and 1B levels, D started the 2A one this week.  We don't do the workbooks.  D likes to switch things around and loves to work on some workbook style Math at times.  Given where she is at the Montessori Sequence, I suspect that most of the work in the 2A and 2B levels should be fairly easy to her.  It is in a different format and using pictures to solve problems challenges her differently.  One of the exercises was to order 2 digit numbers and D had difficulty doing those pages and I had to remind her to get the golden beads to see which ones where greater.  I realized that she clearly understood place value, but when confronted with a few numbers and ordering, she could not easily do that.  So as a way to practice I placed the number cards from the Place Value Cards from MPS in a basket and told her how to play this new game.  She basically picks up 4 cards at a time from the pile and orders them.  Since these are cards and easy to move around, she could easily arrange them.  This has given her a lot of confidence in figuring out the right order to the problems in the Singapore Math Textbook.

She continued to work on Fraction Equivalences.

Here she is figuring out what strategies she can use to find the answers without the use of manipulatives.  She has learnt a few strategies in RightStart and is practicing what she can use to solve these.  We do around 5 problems 2-3 days a week.

She got into measuring things with a tape measure she found. We briefly discussed measurement and standard vs non-standard measurements.

I had purchased a Brock Magiscope on eBay for $20!  We've been having fun looking at various things around the house.  I used my phone to get pictures of the items we were seeing.  This week I ordered the 10x wide eyepiece off eBay again!

Sea Salt Crystals 

Sugar Crystals

Here is a new work for M, that she repeats several times a day!  Placing Marbles on Golf Tees!

To finish this post off, here is a Master piece by D again!  She made a collage of her own drawings!

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).