Quote for the day

A quote from Maria:

“The Child who has felt a strong love for his surroundings and for all living creatures, who has discovered joy and enthusiasm in work, gives us reason to hope...hope for peace in the future.”

Dr. Maria Montessori

Homeschool moment Kids say the darndest things

Aaron decided to test Little-mans learning. He asked him if he wanted 1, 2, or 3 crackers. My sweet little son age two looked at Daddy and replied "three duh!" So Aaron decided to test Little-man again. Aaron only put 2 crackers on his tray. Little-man looked at the crackers, looked at Daddy, looked back at the crackers and said "One, One!" He knew he was missing one and need another to make three. I think the Montessori homeschooling is working. I couldn't stop laughing when Aaron told that story. "Three duh!"

Sequence of Montessori Work

 Sometimes you just need a check list to make sure you are staying on track. I try to have several activities on the shelf for each area and each level  We are teaching a 2 1/2 year old, 7 year old, and an 8 year old. I found this list and couldn't resist posting it here for my own check sheet.


SEQUENCE OF MONTESSORI WORK

PERIOD ONE
[Early Practical Activities, introductory, sensorial, Culture, and Language Activities, no Math]

Practical:
- Pouring beans between two jugs
- Opening and closing containers
- Buttoning
- Buckling
- Other simple dressing frames
- Carrying and laying floor mats and table mats
- Saying Thank You
- Other early grace and courtesy work
- Carrying a tray
- Lifting, carrying and putting down a chair at a table
- Climbing and descending stairs
- Walking on the line
- Folding
- Hanging clothes on a hook
- Brushing hair
- Dusting

Sensorial:
- Cylinder blocks
- Pink tower
- Color tablets, box 1
- Presentation tray of geometric cabinet
- Sensitizing the fingers
- Touch boards
- Presentation 1 of geometric solids
- Stereognostic bags

Language:
- Classified pictures, exercise 1
- Classified pictures, exercise 2
- Speech
- I Spy, Stage 1
- I Spy, Stage 2
- I Spy, Stage 3
- Book corner and library

Mathematics:
- None

Culture:
- Land and Water


PERIOD TWO[Building fundamental skills in all subject areas except Math, concentrating on sight and touch in Sensorial work]

Practical:
- Pouring water from a jug
- Medium difficulty dressing frames
- Simple braiding of rope or yarn
- Laying a table for a meal
- Polishing brass, glass surfaces, shoes or furniture
- Washing hands
- Washing cloths
- Scrubbing a table top
- Sweeping sawdust
- Brushing clothes
- Folding clothes
- Hanging clothes on a hanger
- Handling a book
- Asking for and receiving scissors
- Greeting people
- Kindness to visitors
- Being silent

Sensorial:
- Advanced cylinder block exercises
- Brown stair
- Red rods
- Color tablets, boxes 2 and 3
- Geometric cabinet, exercises 1 – 4
- Binomial cube
- Blindfold
- Tactile tablets
- Later geometric solids presentations
- Stereognostic bags
- Sorting grains
- Sound boxes
- Preliminary presentation of bells
- Three-stage lesson on the names of the sensorial qualities

Language:
- Classified pictures, exercises 3 and 4
- I Spy, stage 4
- Single-letter sandpaper letters, exercise 1
- Metal insets
- Speech “questioning”

Mathematics:
- None

Culture:
- Land and Water exercises
- First maps
- Places classified pictures
- Classification by leaf, preliminary work

PERIOD THREE[Developing more advance Practical skills, concentrating on other senses in Sensorial work, completing preparatory work in Language, fully entering Culture work, starting Math]

Practical:
- Pouring water from a jug
- Pouring water through a funnel
- Bows, laces, and other difficult dressing frames
- Advanced braiding, then plaiting hair
- Tying a tie
- Simple cooking chores
- Ironing
- Making beds

Sensorial:
- Geometric cabinet exercises 5 – 8
- Constructive triangles
- Square of Pythagoras
- Trinomial cube
- Fabrics
- Thermic bottles
- Baric tablets
- Presentations of bells

Language:
- Double-letter sandpaper letters, exercise 1
- I Spy, stages 5 and 6 frequently
- Exercise 2 with all sandpaper letters

Mathematics:
- Number rods, exercise 1

Culture:
- All maps
- Places picture folders
- Past and present
- Stories about the past
- Air
- Water
- Magnetism
- Classifying animals
- Classification by leaf
- Parts of animals
- Parts of plants


PERIOD FOUR
[Advanced Sensorial activities, early Language reading and writing, Mathematics Group 1 and starting Group 2]
Practical:
- Responsibility for certain daily Care of the Environment duties
- Helping and advising younger ones in a group

Sensorial:
- Geometric cabinet, exercises 9 and 10
- Thermic tablets
- Mystery bag
- Visual work with blindfold
- Bells exercises 1, 2, and 3
- Tasting cups
- Smelling boxes

Language:
- Movable alphabet
- Writing individual letters
- Writing families of letters
- Positioning letters on lines
- Sandpaper capitals
- Box 1 of object boxes
- Action cards
- Box 2 of object boxes
- Reading folders, exercise 1

Mathematics:
- Number rods, exercise 2
- Sandpaper numbers
- Number tablets (with the number rods)
- Spindles
- Numbers and counters
- Memory play
- Limited bead material
- Number cards
- Function of the decimal system
- Fractions

Culture:
- Gravity
- Sound
- Optics
- Places artifacts


PERIOD FIVE
[Further development in Language reading and writing, essence of counting, adding, subtracting, and multiplying in Math]

Practical:
- Assisting with group activities
- Attending to visitors
- Comforting other children

Sensorial:
- Knobless cylinders
- Bells, exercises 4, 5, and 6

Language:
- Matching and writing capitals
- The alphabetic sequence
- Writing copies
- Puzzle words
- Reading folders, exercise 2
- Classified reading
- Environment cards
- Articles
- Adjectives
- Conjunctions
- Prepositions
- Verbs

Mathematics:
- Formation of complex numbers
- Introduction to teens
- Introduction to tens
- Unlimited bead material (Addition, subtraction, and multiplication)
- Counting
- Stamps (Addition, subtraction, and multiplication)
- Dots
- Fractions exercises

Culture:
- Plant life cycles
- Timeline


PERIOD SIX
[Advanced Language work, basic division and arithmetic memory work in Mathematics]

Practical:
- Serving snacks and meals
- Subtle etiquette

Sensorial:
- Advanced bells work

Language:
- Margins
- Punctuation cards
- Reading folders, exercises 3 and 4
- Adjective matching
- Detective Adjective Game
- Adverbs
- Command cards
- Adverb matching
- Verb games
- Plurals
- Feminine and Masculine
- Root word charts

Mathematics:
- Unlimited bead material (Division)
- Stamps (Division)
- Addition and Subtraction Snake Games
- Addition and Subtraction Strip Boards
- Multiplication tables
- Multiplication bead board
- Addition, Subtraction and Multiplication charts
- Advanced work with fractions

Culture:
- Reading classified cards in Geography, Nature Studies and History
- Fact books from the library


PERIOD SEVEN
[Application activities in Language, abstraction in Mathematics]

Practical:

- Presenting practical activities to younger children

Sensorial:
- Presenting sensorial activities to younger children

Language:
- Written questioning
- Free writing
- Reading folders exercise 5
- Reading analysis

Mathematics:
- Unit Division Board
- Division Charts
- Short Bead Frame
- Hierarchies
- Long Bead Frame
- Simple Division

Culture:
- Definition stages of Classified Cards in Geography, Nature Studies and History
- Field nature observation work

hurray computer is back!

What's on our shelves this week?

Found these pompom balls in three colors on clearance at Dollar General's halloween bin for $0.50 They match his stacking cups for a color sort  but he just likes pouring them from one cup to another. Still need to work on color recognition.

Found these funky shaped golf tees at Dunhams couldn't resist buying them for this stick the tee in the foam square activity.

What's on our school shelves this week?

I like the style of posts about "what's on our shelves?" So, here is "What's on our school shelves this week?" I am setting up for the week late this time. Aaron and I spent the day up in T. C. for his birthday. I usually set up on Friday night or Saturday Morning because this is when I get organized and am home from work and so I am able to get the most done.

The kids alll love the apple sort-small, medium, and large--so that will stay a little longer. I found the basket for $0.50 at a garage sale this summer. The apples are from Walmart in the flower arrangement aisle.

I am also leaving the sand tray for tracing letters but have put a couple of shells and polished stones in with it.  In the style of a zen meditation garden for this week (for Pitty-pat).

Pumpkin pompom sort. The pumpkins were gifts filled with candy last week.

Clothes pin color match. The clothes pins are from Dollar tree. We already owned them. I saw this online here in a larger form and thought it would be good scaled down to teach little man his primary colors.

Little-man also has his orange and yellow leaf sort cups. The cups are from his stacking cup set.

We bought this book in T.C. this weekend. I am starting a rock collection for the kids and we also found an educational placemat to go along with this on our trip this weekend at the educational toy store.(everyone)

Rythym instruments (Little-man)

Tonight I made a big batch of no cook pumpkin play dough so I am setting up a basket with this(everyone).They played for an hour this morning with the play dough.

I found a mortar for grinding some popcorn.(Pitty-pat and Tippy-toe)

I made a basket of opening things for little-man.

The measuring square dowels and ruler are also new.(Tippy-toe is really into measuring)
.
And an opposites learning game I found at the dollar store.(Pitty-pat)

We are reading our FIAR book and reading aloud Little house in the Big Woods.

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” -- Henry David Thoreau

Practical life-penny polishing WARNING!!!!!

I have seen several penny polishing ideas on blogs showing people using vinegar to have kids polish pennies. Vinegar and copper makes chemically  a DEADLY POISON! My mother would put three or four pennies in a  jar with vinegar to make this. It was her home remedy for ring worm. It is absorable through the skin. This means using that seemingly harmless vinegar everyone is going green and cleaning with to clean pennies could POISON YOUR CHILD even if they never put anything in their mouth!!!!!! Please use caution do not do this. My mom always said it was a deadly poison. No I don't recomend putting it on ring worm either thank you.

Practical Life-Corn grinding

We found a pestle and mortar for grinding spices for $9.95 plus tax in a small shop this weekend. I can't wait to set up a corn grinding activity for the kids this week as we ease into Thanksgiving time and incorporate a few  American Indian activities. It is a solid white ceramic model which is just the right size for my 6 and 8 year old. I saw a miniature one in an antique shop across the street from where I bought this one for $18.00. It was smaller than a tea cup. It would've worked for spices but not the corn. I am also really looking for the nut cracker that is screw like not like a vise.  As soon as I order one from a Montessori catalog I know I will find a store with one.

what to do with those extra square dowels

I had those square dowels left over from our weather vane project and while cruising around the web I found this page from the packer family that cut the square dowels into 1, 2, 3, 4...8,.and 9 inch lengths for measuring. Tippy-toe is obsessed with the tape measure now so this is a perfect use for those extra pieces of dowel i have been saving. I love finding ways to use what I already have laying around.
I also liked her idea of spooning marbles on to an egg crate foam piece.

Fun with Sight Words

I saw this neat post and followed the link back to The Everyday Homeschool blog where I saw this neat game for sight words. It is a fun way to learn to spell and recognize sight words.
 I have also made 3 ring books for each level of sight words. I bought the 3 ring scrapbooks at the Dollar Tree and put one sight word in black ink on each page. This limits the distractions for my kids. There are no bright colors, pictures or doodads on the page so they can focus on what each word is and the spelling. Pitty-pat can recognize all of them this way but stumbles over them when reading in a book with other print like her Little House book.
Tippy-toe also is working with the phonics object box I made. He loves to get a drawer out and work with it. This is a very montessori thing.  Montesssori works well for kids with RAD.

continent boxes-just starting to gather ideas from all over

I found these white boxes on clearance sale at Walmart for $5.00 in the office supply section. I plan to leave them white but color code the labels when I can type them neatly.(Out of printer ink again and toner for the laser printer too)

Europe - red
South America - pink
Asia - Yellow
Antarctica - white
Australia (Australasia) - brown
North America - orange
Africa - green

Countries we'd studied so far: China (The Story About Ping,Mulan), America(Little House in the Big Woods),Spain,Guatemala,France(Madeline)

*Continent Cards from jojoebi 

*Animals
animals by continent cards I found here from sporschool
 animal list from montessori candy's blog that I have added more animals on to.I think we have alot of these already. I found our Desert Toob from Safari Ltd that I got on sale at Michael's. In it is an Explorer, Horned Lizard, Saguaro Cactus, Road Runner, Scorpion, Rattle Snake, Coyote, Big Horn Ram, Bobcat, Armadillo, Mountain Lion and Prairie Dog. Some of them have gone missing and I think the teenager's who played with them last are in trouble. The teens like the homeschool activities as much as the little-ones do.They seem to want to test all the activities out for the littles.
Animals of Africa:
Aardvark
African Adult Elephant
Camel
African Wild Dog
Giraffe
White Rhino
Cheetah
Warthog
Lowland Gorilla Male

Animals of Asia:
Brown Bear
Panda
Leopard
Praying Mantis
Hare
Orangutan
Siberian Tiger
Elephant
Red Panda
Arabian Camel

Arabian Wildcat and Turkish Van Kedi
Arabian Horse
Bengal Tiger/White Tiger
Asian Elephant
Leopard/Snow Leopard
Indian Rhinoceros
Caracal
Peacock
Cobra

Animals of Antarctica:
Chin Strap Penguin
Emperor Penguin
Giant Squid
Humboldt Penguin
Humpback Whale
Rockhopper Penguin
Sperm Whale
Walrus
Polar Bear
Octopus
Harp Seal
Dolphin
Sailfish

Animals of Australia:
Platypus
Cockatoo
Kangaroo
Koala
Blue Whale
Octopus
Crocodile
Humpback Whale
White Shark
Sperm Whale

Animals of Europe:
Owl
Hedgehog
Brown Bear
Wild Boar
German Shepherd
Border Collie
Dalmatian
Frog
Harp Seal
Ladybug
Hermit Crab

Animals of North America:
Squirrel
Beaver
Anteater
Deer
Bald Eagle
Wolf
Bison
Moose

Animals of South America:
Llama
Donkey
Armadillo
Alpaca
Iguana
Flamingo
Great Horned Owl
Honey Bee
Toucan
Macaw
Hermit Crab


*food lists
AFRICA
here is a list of commom african foods and spices I found that I thought would be good to include.
Common Ingredients for Traditional African Food
(where available)
Vegetables
Yams, Okra, Watermelon, Cassava, Groundnuts, Black-eyed Peas, Cabbage, Maize - corn,Sweet Potatoes Meats
Chicken,Pork,Beef and Fish of local varieties
Spices
Garlic
Melegueta pepper - West African (substitute use cardamon), cloves, black peppercorns, cardamom,nutmeg, turmeric, pilau mix , curry powder, Lemons,Rice

ASIA
middle eastern spices
cumin,nutmeg,cardamom,tumeric, sumac, caraway,aniseed,allspice,cinnamon
Indian Spices
Asofoetida,daal,coriander,curry,cumin,star anise,saffron,tamarind,tumeric

Other things to include:
* textiles such as a piece of silk for China, wool tartan plaid for Scotland, cotton and buckskin for North America, alpaca wool  for South America
* paperdolls showing tradional dress
*maps
*money
*flags
*stamps and postcards(I have been asking friends and co-workers going on vacation to send the kids postcards from flat stanley. Its my very own version of the flat stanley project! They love seeing where he is now.. but... "How does he know us?"... Pitty-pat asks every time a card comes to our house. I love it because it is the first time she showed stranger recognition and means she is growing out of her RAD (reactive attachment disorder) I love my two little RADishes. So far we have received postcards from South Dakota, Paris, St. Lucia, Arizona, Wyoming, Wisconsin and Minnesota--looking forward to many more soon who knows maybe someday I can afford a vacation and mail a card myself.

antartica
I found this great lifecyle of the penguin from Honey to print. It is a link I found at another website while searching for montessori continent box ideas.
North America
I got a wildflowers poster at the Michigan visitors center this summer. In fact I have and extra copy for the first person to comment on this blog page.

Harvest Sort-Montessori tray

This was left over from our scale weights and measures activity so I recycled the corn and beans into a sorting activity. Tippy-toe had fun but he is old enough to not put things in his mouth like this. I wouldn't try this with my 2 year old.

Montessori Trays

Today I set up an apple sort game with small, medium, and large plastic apples to sort. Pitty-pat flew through it. So I put her to work helping Tippy-toe with the sand tray alphabet station I made for him. he was really frustrated he can't make his letters very well and needs practice. I thought this might be a great way to encourage him to practice. One of my co-worker's wives is a Montessori teacher and she suggested a few things I need to work on with him. I found the perfect tray last Saturday for $0.25 at a garage sale. The very white sand was $3.00 from Walmart in the vase and flower area. I saw a post this week about using salt but I know he will touch his eyes and salt will burn. The post this week was to tell me I really need to get on it and set up this activity. I will post pictures as soon as I can load them on the computer.

Sensory basket-fall theme

Inspired by a post at counting coconuts blog I decided to put together a fall sensory basket for the kids.So far from around the house I have added:
a felt letter A
a wooden red heart
2 red pipe cleaner circles
1 pipe cleaner apple (I made)
2 cinnamon sticks
2 pine cones
a is for apple card
1 magnifying glass
15 fuzzy red pompoms
4 large acorns
4 red-orange maple leaves form our tree
6 beechnut hulls from our beech tree

Ring toss board

Aaron made Little-man a ring toss game. I bought a small board and shaker peg for the center. Aaron drilled the center hole and put a screw in through the bottom. our local self-serve lumber also had wooden curtain rings on clearance for $0.99 better than the dollar store price. I took a little metal eye hook off each one. Two were already broken but there was 10 in a package and only four will fit on our peg at a time.

Homemade manipulatives

Thanks to an idea from "Pink and Green Mamma"'s blog I went out yesterday and found the screws and thingies to make her wooden block manipulatives. Pitty-pat loves to screw and bolt but kept taking apart his plastic work bench toy. This made it very dangerous for little-man who just wanted to climb it, so we got rid of it. I hope to dig around and find a block of wood today so I can drill the holes and get it finished.

Tot Activities

I have been trying to come up with ideas to keep little man busy at his high chair while Pitty-Pat and Tippy-Toe are working on their school projects. Here's my list so far:

*wonder-under" self liner--He likes the texture and watching the big kids sew with theirs. I cut a 4x4 inch square and will add more fabrics as I find some for a fabric sort. Little man is very tactile and may grow up to be a textile manufacturer-He could tell different kinds of fleece at 2 weeks of age it was amazing to me! He had one fleece blanket he liked and could tell it by feel.

*sorting cereal--I gave hime a lunchables tray with four irregular shaped areas for sorting breakfast cereals. Since he puts everything in his mouth yet beads, poms, or marbles didn't seem like a good idea.

*Bottle cap bank--I saved several milk caps, pop caps(caution these are small and child could choke-Pitty-pat likes to chew these at 6 years so all must be supervised!) and a clear plastic jar with a hole cut in the top like a piggy bank. Little man can sort by color and size, or count as he drops them in the jar.

*Tong sort--I have a large plastic tong and the same large caps to sort and move on his tray. He can't pick them up yet but likes trying.

*Felt ABC's--I cut out some large letters from felt. I plan to make an ABC's book with them later.

*Felt shapes--I cut some basic shapes out of felt in different colors.

From chasing cherios i got these ideas:
The best is to use cloth pencil cases instead of ziploc bags. I like the idea of organizing them on a key ring.

*I made the mini felt board out of a cereal box and piece of felt. I used the shape and alphabet pieces I cut out earlier. The big ones like this too.



*