School Days - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday (2/2-4/15)

Last week we only had school 3 days. One day we had a playdate, which required a bit of cleaning and tidying up. Then we used another day to go visit my mother-in-law who recently had surgery.

Anyway, this is what we've been up to:

I sat down with MJ and finally created some sort of workplan. We had a conversation about what he had been doing the previous weeks (I have been recording everything everyone does in my planners).  I took some notes on things he likes that I had not prepared for him yet, so I could work on getting those on the shelves for school work. He REALLY wants to sew a pillow! He also mentioned how much he likes copy work! He said he enjoys practicing his handwriting when I give him words to practice. Anyway, in this picture he had already pulled out his first work which was watercolor painting, when I had to stop him so we could go over his workplan. From his workplan he made a short (3-4 item) list of the things he wanted to accomplish the following week. It was much easier than I had anticipated. If you want to know more about what we did, I followed this advice and this video source. If the video isn't on the front page, then you can search for it. It is called "Meetings and Conferences".

Swiper is up to his usual shenanigans! I sort this under practical life - practicing taking his clothes off. These are definitely not Montessori approved clothes, since he can't take them off himself. And if you happened to catch it in the picture above this one, his diaper is on the floor. He practices taking that off often as well. It is Montessori approved!

MJ working on his artistic expression.

Tes worked on fetching sand paper letters again. She really enjoys this although she is way past this stage. She could use the work so I don't mind her going back to it.

Swiper loves this little round box. He actually takes the lid off and puts it back on. I was surprised he could do it. He will sit and concentrate on it for a good 5 minutes or so. 

Tes loves posing for these pictures. She is fetching the letter I requested.

Swiper trying to help with the sand paper letters.

Swiper's help being rejected and the materials taken away :(. 

Another "hidden" letter. She puts these things everywhere.

Cat worked on equivalence this week.  The triangle and the square are equivalent pieces because they are both 1/4th of the whole. And of course, she had to build houses with them. I noticed Abbie's kids doing the same in her posts this particular week as well!

Tes worked on metal insets. I showed her how to use two shapes superimposed onto each other. This work is designed to help the hand with writing grip as well as nourish creativity with design work.

Here is her finished product. Her and her sister put happy faces on EVERYTHING.

Then she turned it into a book to give to her Momo (the one who had surgery). 

MJ worked on the commutative and distributive laws again with the multiplication bead bars. He was noting it in his journal.

This is a picture of Cat's journal. She loves writing that capital cursive "F".  I had recently showed her how to write the time and work on one line. I think I have a picture of her journal entries in another post where she puts everything in completely random places. She would use a whole page for one time and one work! Anyway, we fixed that. :)

As I had looked over the equivalence work, I noticed that follow up work included fractions. I'd gone over fraction with her probably a year ago and we haven't touched them since. So I pulled the fraction circles out for review. She immediately pulled out two pieces to show me they were congruent. She caught on really quickly with the fraction work and at one point exclaimed "Hey, I've done this before!" It was funny because we were on the third presentation before she realized it was familiar to her.

Here Cat is working with clay. She enjoys sculpting miniature creatures. 

Ok, this particular day was rough! Tes pulled out the land/water forms and filled the trays with water. This is fine but she hadn't done this yet since baby has been around. He went straight for it. 

At first it was ok. He just stood there playing with the vehicles.

Then moving his way to the other side of the table and becoming more excited...

...he did this. :( Dumped the tray over and water was everywhere. Good thing these things are shallow. I figured this would happen which is why I was just standing close by. 

But then it quickly got ugly and wet, and there was no moving past this to let anyone work in peace and quiet, so we had to move to another location...

Bathtime so Swiper can get his water needs met while I help Cat work on creating numbers with the large bead frame. Please ignore my disgusting bathtub caulk. It is yucky because we don't ever use this bathroom, so it's just not on my priority list right now :). I guess I better get to it though since this looks like a decent place to hold some schooling while Swiper is entertained!

I just like this picture :).

Here MJ was working on the grammar box. He had to put the cone "against" the cube. Prepositions!

And those grammar symbols are oh so inviting!

This is a picture of our "story basket". The foot is not included. I just introduced this to Tes and she really enjoyed it with Cat. I change the contents daily, or at least try to. They have used it every day since. It just includes little objects from our reading/writing object cabinet. We use those objects for sound games and phonetic and phonogram reading work. I'm trying to add more of this type of stuff onto our shelves that is not strictly "academic", so the kids can have more variety and not get burnt out. These things are included in the Keys of the Universe/World albums but given my lack of time, I tend to concentrate on the core academic materials (reading, writing, arithmetic). I'm breaking out of that habit :).

Jenn