School Days - Updates for March 2015

Ok, so continuing to catch everyone up!

Here is what we worked on for March:

So Swiper has been observing us with the bells. So much so that he requires no presentation. He goes straight to the shelf to get a mallet, then picks a bell and *gently* strikes it with the mallet. He then proceeds to move across the shelf and strike a different mallet on the other end. It's too cute! He never choses two bells right next to each other. He will even strike one bell on one end and then lean over as much as he can without falling over to strike a bell 4 or 5 down the line, while holding onto the edge of the shelf for dear life :).

I was finally able to present the large bead frame paper to Cat. Here she was writing down each bead value without the zeroes. She just filled in the digit that represents the bead she was counting. She started with the first bead and moved it over, and wrote down "1". She proceeded on with "2" and then "3" and so on. When she got to 10, she moved them all back to the left and then slid a "10" bead over to the right. She then wrote "1" in the tens column on the paper, no zeroes. Under that she wrote a "2" in the tens column for 2 tens, etc. 

When she was done, she taped all the pages together and created a scroll!

I think Tes had pulled out the land and water forms. I asked her if she remembered the names of them and she had. I believe it was the gulf and the peninsula. I showed her that we had maps to color and how to find the different landforms. In primary, the land and water forms are peninsula/gulf, island/lake and ishtmus/strait.

And here she is bored, I guess.

MJ working with some clay. I can't remember what he was making. I know it had nothing to do with anything school related or anything he was "researching", which is nothing at this point. I have since declared that all clay work must be created in conjunction with some sort of study. I plan to get some books for learning how to sculpt before I let go of that new rule. It's on my list!

And Tes started reading!

This is the beginning of reading. This presentation is the Phonetic Object Box. Or "basket" in our case. It is a container that has several objects that are spelled phonetically. It is introduced with the adult writing out an item on a slip of paper and the child finding the item from the box (basket). After they have matched all the items to the labels, they are free to work with "prepared" labels that have been created with print, as opposed to the handwritten ones in cursive for the presentation. The items in the basket are switched out daily with different ones. At this point she's completed all the levels of the Sound Games and sand paper letters. The sound games help the child to hear all the sounds within a word. You start with the beginning sounds, then move to ending sounds, then finish off with sounds in the middle of the words. This is started very early on with primary children. From there they move on to the sand paper letters, then to the moveable alphabet. As the child writes his/her thoughts with the moveable alphabet, they start to read what they've written. This is a sign they are ready for reading. 

"Officer Cutie" playing with sharp pointy objects. Someone should arrest him! Or me!

MJ working on a spelling list. This isn't official spelling practice, as far as spelling rules go. I just simply picked a puzzle packet and had him go over the words so we could make sure he knew how to spell them. The ones he messed up on, he looked over and then did again. We basically continued this until he got the last one right.

I think this was a presentation on congruency, similarity and equivalence with one of the hexagonal boxes. These are constructive triangles that were used in primary and carry over into elementary. When we finished up Cat wanted to work on her own designs.

I finally gave MJ the presentation on compound words. He should have had this last year but I never got there. He didn't like reading (still doesn't) and so I did't want to push the work with reading and then writing out words from a list. He's doing fine finishing up all the word study work this year though. It includes suffixes, prefixes and compound words.

Swiper waking from a nap! Awesome hair! He gets this awesome wake-up head from his Great Grandpa!

Someone does not want to get started with school! That, or he's conceiving an evil plan to destroy everyone's school work.

I suggested to Tes that we work on the seed puzzle since Spring was arriving, or maybe it had already arrived at this point, can't remember. Anyway, we went over the parts and the names. Then we read this book. There are other books by this author and they are all LOVELY! The illustrations are beautiful and the kids really like them. The statue and the book are there because we had just gone over adjectives orally. It is a game where you ask the child to bring you things without using the adjective like "bring me the book". They keep bringing you books while you keep saying "that's not the one I wanted". They are supposed to ask you "which book?" You finally give them some adjective to describe the book. "The honeybee book." You don't go into the name "adjective" but you just want to draw their attention to the role adjectives play for future study with grammar.

Cat and Tes had been wanting to make a pillow for the longest time. I'm so bad at getting things ready on the shelf for them when they are interested. My prioritizing is beyond bad. It's just something that I have a hard time with and am really starting to face as I try to implement Montessori to the best of my ability. Anyway, here is Cat ironing away per instructions in the Keys of the Universe albums for sewing a pillow. First we have to hem the edges that will create the opening for the stuffing. The iron is just a small traveling iron and the ironing board is a small table top one.

One edge for Tes!

I don't know how Dr. Montessori taught young children to knot the thread. It does not seem simple When I'm trying to show it. I showed her several times and it was just a bit complex for her. She can make a simple knot with a shoe string, or on the bow tie frame, but it seems harder with a tiny piece of thread for some reason. I guess because of the lack of the other "end". You are working with one string and one "end". Hmm...sounds like something we can practice with a shoe string! Mental note: put a shoe string in the classroom on the shelf (five years from now). Regardless, we got the knot tied so we could move on.

Here is Tes threading the needle. She's good at this part!

Cat making stitches.

Tes making stitches.

Now that Cat's pillow is hemmed along the short edges, she had to sew the long edges together to close the sides up.

Tes pinned her sides for stitching! They both did this really well. 

Ok so this basically took FOREVER. I think it took our school period to something like 5 hours! We were exhausted and hungry and cranky by this point. And I didn't even get a picture of the finished product. I'll post one soon!

While all the pillow work was going on MJ was placing the images onto the blank Timeline of Life. Swiper was sleeping at this point, thank goodness.

Here, Tes is working on the Phonogram Shadow Box. This box comes after some work with several phonetic works. This presentation is a box of small phonetic objects and only one object that has a phonogram in the spelling. I write out on labels each item, saving the phonogram object for last. When we get to the phonogram object, I point out the phonogram in the word and then we use the phonogram alphabets to spell out the word along with several other words using that same phonogram. The phonogram is spelled out using red letters while the rest of the word is in black.

Prior to this we worked on the Phonetic Object Box over a couple of weeks changing out objects every other day or so. Then we worked on Phonetic Cards which are just phonetic word cards that are used to practice putting in sentences. Then we worked on Phonetic Booklets, stage 1. These booklets are just homemade booklets with a picture on the left page and a phonetic word on the right page. She has read through a few of them, but I'm not keeping track of which ones. She's also done Phonetic Commands, which are little cards with commands on them using phonetic words like "get a map". The only non-phonetic words are "a" and "the". She enjoys doing those command cards while Cat does the phonogram commands. This way they are both doing silly things and both reading!

That is all I captured for the month of March, although there was plenty of other works going on. I forget to pull the camera out some days and then other days the battery isn't charged, while other days Swiper just keeps me on my toes with no free hands for a camera! 

March was also the month for Swiper's first birthday! Happy Birthday cutie patootie! Hopefully I'll be able to post soon on some of the stuff I am able to work on with Swiper. He is growing so fast and working on all his practical life skills!

We're Back!

So we took a looooong break. Things got really hectic as I tried to organize school and life kept happening! We are back now and we have a school room and a new baby! Well he's actually already 10 months old but I've just now finally gotten organized enough to get going again. That plus we got a new camera, so the pictures won't be so horrible.

So here's a peek at what we did today:

Cat and Tes working independently.

Tes working on the beginner sewing basket. It's just a piece of vinyl in an embroidery hoop with holes punched in it. She is using a very large needle with a piece of string that is similar to a shoelace. The string is knotted at the end with a pony bead attached to avoid pulling it all the way through.

Here is her work journal. She is only in primary (so she doesn't need to use one yet) but she likes to do what her brother and sister in elementary do. So she has her own journal. She says she writes what she is doing. That says "sewing". :)

Here is her finished work. She then takes the lace out one hole at a time and puts everything back in the basket ready for the next person, or in our case, the next time SHE wants to do this work. There are no other primary students in our class to do this work.

Cat worked on the trinomial cube today. She is already in elementary, which doesn't include this work, but I let her chose it because I'm happier with her doing something than rolling around on the floor saying she has nothing to do. She picks this from time to time. Especially when we've come off of a long break. This work is the physical representation of the equation (a + b + c)^3. She doesn't know this, of course, but it helps build a solid foundation for understanding and working with this equation when the time comes. She had a little trouble today, but she was able to finish it up once I pointed out that two of her layers were switched.

The finished cube!

This is the first thing MJ worked on. It is the equation (2 + 4)(5 + 7). The first set of parenthesis are the "2" and the "4", which are represented by vertical dots. This is because the initial work was done with bead bars: a 2-bar and a 4-bar. He multiplies those bars 5 times, then 7 times and gets his answer. He is now able to do it completely on paper without having to use the beads. The boxes of dots on the paper are his way of working the problem out. Then he counts up all the dots (we're still working on multiplication facts) and gets his final answer. Notice his final answer is written backwards. It should be "72" but he wrote "27". It happens.

Here he is fixing his answer.

Today I also showed him how to work similar problems with the golden bead material. Those beads differ from the ones he's been using for multiplication. Golden beads include single beads (units), ten bars (10 units joined on a wire), hundred squares (100 beads joined) and thousand cubes (1000 beads joined). I didn't get any pictures of that work. I kept forgetting to take pictures here and there.

Here is Tes again, working on the lined chalkboard. Today she worked on writing the letters "n", "e", "o" and "c". This chalkboard is only for writing letters that have no tail or high back. I'm sure there is a term for those things but that's what I call them. Basically letters that only stay within one line space. She has a few other letters to practice this week and then we'll move onto the next chalkboard with 3 line spaces for the rest of the letters.

Here Tes was working with the moveable alphabet. Up to today she had only been composing single words. If you'r trying to read the words, yes, that is "poop" and "peepee" that you see there. Cat helped her compose those yesterday. Thank you Cat. Today I introduced her to the next stage which is writing short phrases like "the pink tower" or "the red box". I had to ask her a question which would lead to an answer that we'd then compose on the rug. This work is not for spelling. That will come later. Right now we just want her to be able to sound out words that come from her own head so she is able to express her thoughts. I do, however, show her how to spell "puzzle" words when we write things together. Puzzle words are the words that do not follow phonetic rules, like "the". And that is Swiper (this is what youngest munchkin shall be called) at the bottom of the pic destroying her work so I can take a picture. I got to him just in time. He only swiped off two letters!

Here is Swiper manipulating a glass pitcher, after knocking over all of color tablet box 3 (behind him).

He's checking to see if the pitcher has water in it. Darn, no water.

Here is Cat working on her phonogram commands. We have a box of small cards that contain short (3-5 words) commands on them using words that have phonetic spelling containing phonograms (sets of letters that make a sound together). I'm fairly certain there is a better way to articulate what a phonogram is but that's what it is to me. Anyway, this is basically for reading practice. She has to do whatever the command is to show that she was able to read it.

Her command was to "get sixteen sticks". She went outside to go collect the sticks.

I also gave her the presentation with the hierarchical material and the cards today. It is material that shows the relationship between quantity of 1 all the way up to 1 million. And I forgot to take pictures of that :(.

Here is MJ practicing reading. He is reading out loud to me so I can help him with the words. He is not a fluent reader yet. In Montessori, children will start reading at about 4-5 years old, maybe even sooner. It comes easy at that age and they enjoy doing it. I missed that window because we had just found Montessori and I had not gone through the Language part of it yet. By the time I got there, MJ was into elementary Montessori. At that point, we are not focused on just reading anymore. He is supposed to pick it up on his own as long as I give him short lessons frequently and he is doing work that requires some bit of reading. Well with having a baby and 2 other kids to work with, I have neglected this area. So he is behind. And it is discouraging for him. And I don't want to push it because I don't want him to hate reading like I did when I was a kid. I wouldn't pick up a book unless there was some sort of negative repercussion involved if I didn't. So currently what my plan is, is for him to read one page of this book everyday. It is for children so the spacing is very wide and the chapters are very short. We're talking 2-5 pages here and there are a few pictures. Some are longer though. At this age, in order to build confidence, you want to give them something that they can handle while also challenging them a bit. This way they see that they can do it, and they are not overwhelmed. I'll add more pages as he gets better and faster. I chose this book because I knew it would interest him. It is called Wild Boy: The Real Life of the Savage of Aveyron by Mary Losure. Maria Montessori's teaching methods stemmed from the studies of this boy. He was found living in a forest at a young age by himself. He is seriously Mogli from the Jungle Book! Anyway, Maria Montessori talks about this boy and the man who studied him A LOT. 

Here is Swiper testing out the functions of a bookmark. Not edible. He had just been brushing up on his Spanish reading as well as object permanence, as you can see to the right. :)

Here is MJ and Swiper having a table slap contest.

Swiper picking up his mess, after he dumped out all the puzzle word packets onto the floor. He's picking them up one by one and giving them to MJ.

About 4 down and 13 more to go. 

Ok so he's not so good at finishing a task that he starts. Packets are still on the floor. It actually looks like there are more now. He moved onto some measurement work and is finishing up his Spanish practice.

Swiper working with the wipey bag. He tasted it multiple times to make absolute sure it was not edible. But only after he got some page turning practice in with Goodnight Moon, which is not Montessori approved for his age. No talking rabbits allowed.

This did not happen during school hours. I had to squeeze it in while dinner cooked on the stove. I presented the different ways things combine. Today we looked at solutions and suspensions.

Marble and hydrochloric acid

Water and cupric sulphate.

Water and sugar.

Test tubes: sand, water, water, chalk powder.

The first 3 combinations combined (solutions). The last 2 did not (suspensions). It took the hydrochloric acid FOREVER to dissolve the marble chips. I must not have put enough, not sure. Either way, it finally dissolved by the time we went to bed. 

I was also able to give the black strip presentation. It is a very long strip of black material that represents the amount of time (or work) that went into creation of the world up to the point humans arrived. It is meant to give an impression of all the work done to prepare the earth for our coming. We sure are special :). Wind blew the strip all over the place (yes I forgot to put rocks on it), but the kids brought bricks to the rescue and we were able to resume the presentation. And I couldn't take pictures of that since I had too much stuff in my hands and daddy was helping me out with Swiper!

That's all I have for today.

Jenn