School Days - Monday and Tuesday (1/26-27/15)

So Tes and Swiper both had fevers this past weekend. They are both better now but have moved into the runny nose stage. Swiper is still clingy and not completely his 100% self yet. So school has been on the back burner for the last two days. We still gave it our best shot though!

Here is Swiper making a mess! He pulled down the cd box and is trying to open a case! Don't mind the junk in front of him. That is the landing spot for all things needing to exit the classroom :).

Cat worked on labeling some bead chains yesterday. Cyndiquil (might have spelled that wrong) helped out. He's a Pokemon, in case you were wondering. The bead chains are used for lots of different things. In this work she is practicing multiplication facts as well as setting a foundation for cubing and squaring work later on.

Tes practiced her "m" on the big blackboard.

Swiper getting stuck in the easel.

Like I said, Swiper has been icky the passed few days. I spent most of Monday trying to put him down for a nap. He was fussy and didn't want to nap nor be awake. Not sure how that works but it is what it is. This is what I came back to. Cat and Tes sorting through shape and color flashcards. I guess easy work is the choice when mommy can't present much. I need to get some workplans going with Cat and MJ so these kids of activities happen less.

MJ waiting patiently for me to present something to him after the 4th interruption from Swiper! I ended up giving him the lesson but we were both so worn out that I'm not sure he retained any of it.  I'll likely have to do it again to see what he remembers.

And that was all we had for yesterday. Today was only slightly more productive.

Tes worked on more letters. We started a new board with lines for ascenders and descenders but I had her practice the letters on a blank board first. She likes to put happy faced in all the spaces just like her big sis :).

Cat giving Swiper a walking lesson. 

Yay for "p"!

MJ working on more gems with clay. He could do this all day long! He just about did.

Thirsty?

Cat worked on forming more numbers on the large bead frame. We did numbers in the millions today! She enjoys this, which is good because she needs lots of practice in order to move onto the next phase...writing them on paper.

Oh my gosh, please ignore that nasty dirty totally undusted vent back there. Ick! Dusting is on the list for school chores tomorrow. We don't even have a school chore list but we will tomorrow!

Tes wanted to play the hide and seek game with the sand paper letters. She hid them all over the room and I told her which one to go fetch. In Montessori, children learn the letters by their sounds, not by their names. It is less confusing when they learn to read and write. When they see the letter, they automatically think of the sound it makes. So when I ask for a letter I ask for "the letter that makes the sound 'p'". When she brings the letter back to me, I have her trace it and she puts it back into the box.

Found "uh".

Tracing "uh". :)

I introduced Cat to the grammar boxes today. This is grammar box 2. She thought she was going to hate it but ended up liking it. She very specifically said "I like this work", when we were done.

For this work she reads the phrase/sentence on the large/long card. Then she finds the corresponding words that make up the phrase/sentence and places the symbol for that part of speech for each word. 

Ok, so I took another crying pic! :( I didn't mean for him to look at me when I took it. He was throwing a huge fit because we took the grammar symbols away from him. He tried to swipe a little blue triangle and stick it in his mouth. They sure are pretty and oh so colorful! He threw himself on the floor. After I snapped this shot, he screamed! Like breaking-glass screamed. He was frustrated :(. He moved on fairly quickly though. He's easily distracted at this age.

MJ also got some grammar box work in. I introduced grammar box 5. This one introduces prepositions. He enjoys doing the commands, but not sorting out all the word cards. This work is supposed to be done by age 8. MJ turned 8 in December. I'm just trying to finish these up quickly so we can get going on logical analysis. Then we can revisit this stuff and go deeper. And yes, that is a chair lying on the floor to the right. Swiper push it over so he could use it as a walker to get to the other side of the room.

Here is one of his completed sentences. There are 2 or 3 sentences on the card. The only difference in each sentence is the preposition. He replaced "with" with "without". Huh?

Doing one of the commands from a sentence.

Looking for a card. See the "prism under the cylinder". Montessori subjects are integrated into each other very nicely. The prism and cylinder are from primary work he did a while back. The sentences use commands to pull lots of things the children are familiar with that are elsewhere in the classroom.

This is what our schoolroom floor looked like when we were done. Just so you know. It's not nice and purrty in here very often. I think most of this was Swiper, but some of it was Tes. The kids like to pull things from the school room to play with afterwards. And NOT in the way Maria Montessori intended. Hopefully some of the materials purposes are being absorbed through their play. Hopefully :).

Jenn