Homemade Homeschool

Scientific Method

2012-01-28T20:40:00.004-05:00

Nugget has decided that she wants to enter the science fair that one of our homeschool co-ops is putting on next month. You have to format your entry around the scientific method, so we studied that today.

I put 2 cups in front of Nugget, one blue and one purple. I said that I was going to put water in both, and that the question we were going to try to answer was which cup had hot water and which had cold water.

Nugget formed a hypothesis (that the blue cup had the cold water). We talked over the method we'd use -- I asked Nugget how she might test it, and what senses she could use. She came up with:

1. Feel the cups.
2. Feel the water in the cups.
3. Look at the water in the cups.

We then did the experiment. We felt the cups, felt the water, and looked at the water (and saw ice in one).

We recorded our observations, then came up with a conclusion. Her hypothesis turned out to be wrong -- the purple cup had cold water!

Nugget got a huge kick out of this, and asked to do more. So we did an experiment using the scientific method to see what happened when you mixed the hot and cold water.

And then she spent the rest of the day laying out experiments.

As I was in the bathroom, I hear, "I wonder what will happen if I leave this red block outside the door..... my hypothesis is that Mommy will step right over it! (....) My hypothesis was wrong! Mommy picked the block up!"

As I'm cleaning the dining room -- "My question is, what will happen if I lay in the middle of the floor when Mommy is cleaning? .... My hypothesis was right! Mommy stepped right over me!"

I made sure to emphasize to Nugget that scientists are ok with it if their hypothesis is wrong. I wanted her to know that it's not a sign of anything bad to come to a different conclusion; in fact, that's an important part of science!

Not-so-home schooling

2011-11-05T21:44:00.003-04:00

It's fall in Florida! We've left the smotheringly hot, tourist-filled days of summer behind. Finally it's cool enough to be out all day, the theme parks aren't bursting at the seams with crowds, and there are festivals every weekend.

And with this change, we've also significantly slowed our at-home homeschooling. Sure, every once in a while we're home long enough for Nugget to ask to do school. But most days we're out and about and learning through experience.

Our homeschool co-op is meeting every week again, and Nugget is actually enjoying it this year. Most of it is just a weekly park day, a chance for homeschoolers to play and interact, but there are also neat little additions like some activities based around a theme.

It's the time of year for Epcot's Food and Wine Festival, with booths from all around the world. Nugget has been exploring those with us, trying something at each one and collecting stamps in the provided "passport" to track the countries whose cuisine she's tried.

SeaWorld is lovely right now, with no waits for anything and plenty of seats at the shows. One of Nugget's aspirations for when she's grown up is to do "aquatic animal rescue" or veterinary work, so SeaWorld is a real treat for her. I think we need to start digging a bit deeper in animal knowledge, though, because she's mastered a lot about the animals there.

Oh, and the festivals! This weekend we went to a local Renaissance Faire where Nugget was immersed in a time period she's quite interested in right now. She learned how to shoot a bow and arrow, watched a joust, learned about medieval occupations, helped solve a murder mystery, and generally had a great time. Next weekend is the Owl Fest at a local avian rescue center; we've gone to this every year since we moved here, and we look forward to it all year.

We're buried in books about Native Americans and various periods of early American life. The story of Sacagawea is retold frequently, Thanksgiving books about the Pilgrims get pulled out every day, and we're still working through Little House books. (I'm so sad that the yearly Pow-Wow was the same weekend as the Renaissance Faire!)

We've just been busy busy busy. It's a bit overwhelming sometimes, and there are times I wish we had a quieter, more rhythmic life like I see in some of the blogs I follow. But I can't bring myself to give up any of these great experiences! Plus, as my husband reminds me, soon enough this time of year will be over and we'll be forced into that quieter life. For now, we're just embracing it and letting ourselves be carried along.

Little House

2011-10-23T21:35:00.002-04:00

It seems like nearly every girl around the age of 4, 5, or 6 goes through a "Little House" stage, and we are firmly into one ourselves! I think I was one of the exceptions growing up; at least, I don't remember anything about the books. So this has been a neat discovery for me, too!

We raided the local library system for every Little House picture book that they had and blew through all of them in one sitting. That kick-started Nugget's interest, and since then we've been working through "Little House in the Big Woods" as our bathtime chapter book.

I'm working on putting together a casual Little House unit to go along with our reading. Do you Pinterest? If so, check out my Little House idea board.

Merit badges

2011-09-13T20:15:00.003-04:00

I got a great idea from a homeschooling friend. She was looking for a way for her son to see evidence of the progress he'd made and what he'd learned, but she didn't want to use grades. The solution came to her from an email list -- merit badges! I loved this idea, and immediately made it our own.

I've worked up a number of badges, some of which Nugget has already earned and some of which she's in progress on.

Some are based on curriculum we're using, like levels of Hooked on Phonics, Handwriting Without Tears, RightStart, and Ready2Read. The SeaWorld camp one is for her camp experience this past summer.

The "Dolphin Tale" one she'll earn when we work through the curriculum from Homeschool Movie Club and we see the movie.

The others are my own creations:

Calendar:

Recite days of the week in order.
Recite months of the year in order.
Recite seasons in order.
Know today's date, including year.
Know what day is tomorrow and what day was yesterday.
Know the months of major holidays or celebrations (New Year's, Valentine's, her birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas).

Aesop's Fables:

Read and do coloring sheets for all fables.
Summarize the story and moral of 5 fables.

Trees:

Know the difference between deciduous and evergreen trees.
Identify major tree parts.
On a walk, identify 5 neighborhood trees (magnolia, palm, pine, oak, orange).

Nugget is quite taken with this idea, especially after seeing her (Eagle Scout) daddy's badge sash. Unfortunately, I have no way of making woven patches; instead, I'm just printing them on cardstock and hanging them in her homeschool corner in the dining room.

We'll see how this goes!

Homeschool annex

2011-08-26T13:19:00.002-04:00

Here's a peek at our homeschool annex. Our Montessori works are in the master bedroom, but we haven't been able to get into there lately because Sprout has taken to screaming when I leave his sight (we're on the last 2 teeth, so I'm hoping this calms down soon!). Instead, we've taken over a corner of the dining room.

This has slowly grown and is working well for right now. The table and chairs are a set from Ikea that's moved around our house as the needs have changed. I love them!

Next to it is a set of plastic drawers. Each drawer holds the materials for one subject (and one drawer for trash). I turn this around when we're not doing work so Sprout can't pull them all out.

On the back wall is our calendar. It reads:

Today is
Friday
August 26 2011
The weather is sunny
High temperature 92 degrees
Tomorrow is Saturday

We change this every morning and color in the weather graph (above the calendar). We're going to do a weather graph for each month, so we can see how things change during the year. Next month I might incorporate a line graph for the high temperature.

On the wall facing Nugget is a bulletin board. Across the top (barely visible) are some Aesop's Fables coloring pages. Below that, our Handwriting Without Tears letters. The major focus on the board is the materials from the Moffatt Girls' Ready2Read program. The caterpillar is made up of the sight words we've done, and below that is a garden of word families.

I really love this small, unobtrusive corner. Of course, other materials are spread throughout the house.... globes on the sideboard, books throughout the living room shelves, art supplies in the kitchen.... I'm so excited for a time when Sprout is less destructive and homeschooling can take over the whole house!

Happy Not-Going-to-School Day!!

2011-08-22T10:22:00.004-04:00

Today is the first day back to school in our county. Nugget is 4, not old enough for Kindergarten. But in our state, we have Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten (VPK). It's offered through preschools and private schools and is free if you want to do it. Every 4 year old we know who will be going into the school system goes to VPK; anyone who's left plans to homeschool for the early years.

So the questions have started -- we went to the (quiet) grocery store this morning and the cashier asked, "Your kids aren't ready for school yet?". I passed it off to Nugget ("Nugget, do you go to school?"), because I've found those questions are best defused by an extremely verbal child expressing her excitement at homeschooling.

Here's how our "first day of VPK" is going to go.

1. Calendar and weather at breakfast (including graphing how many days of each weather per month).

2. Fine motor skills through dressing and undressing stuffed friends.

3. Library storytime for listening to and following directions from someone other than a parent as well as paying attention in a group setting.

4. Baking cupcakes for practical life (measuring, mixing, following directions).

5. Arts and crafts through decorating for our Not-Back-to-School Party.

6. Academics:

a. Writing -- finishing up our preschool handwriting workbook and preparing to move into the Kindergarten one.

b. Reading -- done with Kindergarten level Hooked on Phonics and moving into first grade level phonics, reviewing sight words and word families, reading lots of early reader books.

c. Math -- halfway through Kindergarten level RightStart (level A), working on mental math such as breaking a number into parts (what are all the parts of 4? 5? 8?) and the concept of getting change for a purchase.

I know that homeschooling isn't for everyone. I know that logistics or finances or simple preference mean that we're in a small minority. But I feel very lucky and oh so happy that we've been able to make this work. It really feels like the right choice for our family, and as Nugget gets older and into real school age, I'm more and more sure that I want her home with our family.

Convenience!

2011-08-19T19:50:00.002-04:00

I love the ability to "do school" anywhere. We had about a 45 minute drive home from a playdate the other day. Just a few minutes into the drive, Nugget started figuring out and talking about various addition facts (up to 5). So I picked the thread up and we chatted about those for a while. Then we moved on to the 5+x facts that RightStart Math emphasizes. We made a little game out of both. Then we reviewed odds and evens, then Nugget decided to count to 100. THREE TIMES. By the time she'd finished that, we were almost home -- and math was done for the day!

In a rhythm

2011-08-08T18:54:00.002-04:00

We've settled into a really nice rhythm for the last month or so. I've been quiet because, although this is working really well for us, it isn't the creative sort of homeschooling that makes for good blogging. I thought I'd share where we are right now, anyway.

The way we've worked homeschool time into our schedule is during Sprout's nap. He goes down just before lunch these days; Nugget and I eat together and usually start working toward the end of our meal. We get homeschool time in nearly every day; I'd say we miss 1-2 days a week because of being out-and-about or deciding to curl up with a chapter book instead. But we don't take official days off -- if we're home and in the mood, we do work, even on the weekends.

We're still focusing on the three main subjects. In reading, we're at lesson 60 or so in "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons", and we're about to start Unit 4 of the Moffat Girls' phonics program. Nugget reads through the stories in "TYCtR" without difficulty, and when encouraged, can read through beginning reader books. But, oddly enough, she still hasn't taken off into reading. She still LOVES to be read to and loves to sit and look at books to herself, but she has to be encouraged to actually read something. I figure things will just click someday, and we'll keep going through these programs as long as she's enjoying them and they aren't stressing her out.

In math, we're chugging through Level A of RightStart Math. I'm loving how this is done, and Nugget is picking it up really, really well. She's having a bit of a hard time with the geometry, strangely enough, but the number work is falling into place really quickly.

And Handwriting Without Tears is always a favorite. We're nearly done with that, in fact -- another week or so to go. I'm not sure what we'll do when that's done; whether we'll move into the Kindergarten version or take some more time to refine her fine motor. She's doing a LOT of writing in her daily life now -- labeling her drawings, writing cards to people -- and I love seeing her practice reflected in her play.

Supplementing math

2011-07-18T19:23:00.004-04:00

Math has been going ok with Nugget. She's got the golden beads down pat, we've done an introduction to golden bead addition, worked with the hundred board a few times, used the number rods to find the various combinations that made numbers from 1-10, and formed teens with beads. She did the work readily enough... asked to "do math" during homeschool time... but wasn't really taken with it.

The other day, a post by Laura (formerly of My Montessori Journey, now of Walnut Hill Homeschool) got me looking at Right Start Mathematics. It's a math program written by a Montessori teacher, but not a traditional Montessori progression. It emphasizes understanding over memorization and working problems mentally (using an abacus as an aide in the beginning). I was really taken with it because it teaches solving problems the way I've learned to do it but NOT how I was taught. Things like "seeing" the numbers up to 5 instead of counting them, learning 6-10 as 5 plus something else, and adding larger numbers by "making 10".

I fell so in love with it that I bought levels A and B (used). We're going to combine it with elements of Montessori to make something that works for Nugget -- and really engages her. I want her to see math as puzzles and patterns instead of just columns of numbers. Yes, memorization of basic facts has its place. But a lot of that comes free with practice (and with the math games that are included with Right Start). I want to make sure she sees the fun and beauty and usefulness in math first.

To that end, I've made sure to watch some of Vi Hart's mathematical doodling videos with Nugget peeking over my shoulder. It's worked -- we've spent the last couple of days drawing "math pictures" on a huge sheet of paper and playing "math games" to color them in.

This is the math that I love!

Our reading program is clicking!

2011-07-09T13:02:00.004-04:00

It's been a little over a month since we started using "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons". It was a slow slog in the beginning, but Nugget was happy to do it every day because it was really just a review of the letter sounds she already knew. When we started to move more into actually reading words, it got harder and she wasn't as enthusiastic. But we stuck with it. And she was doing great! Sounding out words really well. Then the book started emphasizing reading things "the fast way" to start with, and it got tougher. I could tell she was bumping up against her limit.... but I could also see that she almost had it. She resisted pretty strongly for a couple days, we had to repeat one lesson because we stopped in the middle of it.... but then something clicked. And now she really is reading!

It's still pretty basic stories ("We see a duck. We can sit in the sun with that duck. It is fun in the sun."). But she finally seems to be realizing that she can do it. We've worked our way through "Hop on Pop" (with her reading or remembering most of the words, and me helping as necessary), and she's showing an interest in the words around her.

I've decided to start adding in some other reading work to bolster what she's gotten from "Teach Your Child to Read....". Today we started in on the first unit from The Moffatt Girls. I like that it gives her more practice with the sight words that we're already seeing in our phonics book. It's also a nice change -- where "Teach Your Child to Read...." is black-and-white, lesson-on-lesson, this is more like a program you'd see in school with coloring, pasting, singing, etc. Nugget gets a kick out of that sort of thing (although it also distracts her, which is one reason why "Teach Your Child to Read...." has been so effective, if not the most exciting thing).

Can I just say how happy I am that camp is over? She's so much more interested and engaged today, instead of being so drained. We did a ton of homeschool while Sprout was napping, and she's still going strong! In fact, right now she's writing and illustrating her first story!!

"I see a cat."

(Boy, do we need to get moving on that handwriting program! LOL)

Handwriting

2011-07-03T19:36:00.004-04:00

I've started incorporating another non-Montessori material into our curriculum -- Handwriting Without Tears. Nugget has recently developed an obsession with a wipe-off tracing book that we got her that shows letter formation, and she's been writing her name on her art projects. I love the jump, but I noticed that she wasn't getting very good direction from the tracing book -- for instance, she was making her "X" out of 2 'v's (one right-side up, one upside-down). So I picked up the preschool and kindergarten curriculums of Handwriting Without Tears. We've just started -- doing some crayon grip & scribble exercises as well as playing around with the letter shapes (I didn't buy the wooden ones; the teacher's guide has a pattern and I used craft foam).

This makes 3 core subjects for us. Phonics (via "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons"), we do every day FIRM. We're up to lesson 30-something and she's reading two sentence stories in the book. Handwriting I'll be trying to get to every day or every other day, depending on how things are going. Math (following the Montessori progression, currently working on teens formation, the hundred board, and addition with the golden beads and number rods) I try to get to 3-5 times a week.

Last week and this week, Nugget has been attending an art camp at a local Montessori school. It's from 9am-1pm, and she comes home pretty drained emotionally. Because of that, I've backed us off to _just_ phonics on camp days.

We did math today, but it's the first time in a week. She did the hundred board solo (well, with Buzz Lightyear's help). She's been wanting me to "count to the speed limit" or "count to 100" in the car all the time lately, so I figured the hundred board would hit her right in the sensitive period. :) There was quite a push there at the end to make it all the way through, but she did it! (Just in time, too -- Sprout woke up from his nap not a minute later.)

Teen bead worksheet

2011-07-03T09:25:00.002-04:00

I added a file to my Box.net (accessible from the side of this page). We're working on making teens, so I made this coloring/stamping worksheet for Nugget. There are 2 styles; in each, you build the teen from a 10 bar and the bead stair, color the bead stair bar, then stamp (or write) the resulting teen. Hope it's helpful to someone!

Facebook group established

2011-06-26T16:37:00.004-04:00

Please join me! On Facebook, search "[redacted -- see below]" and request to join the group. Please post a comment here if you have any trouble! Also, feel free to invite anyone else who's doing Montessori methods in the home environment.

Edited to add: Since a couple of groups came up when searching that name, I changed the name to "Montessorian Moms". Give that a shot!

Facebook group?

2011-06-25T20:22:00.003-04:00

Here's a crazy thought. Would anyone be interested in joining a Facebook group for those of us doing Montessori at home? I know there are days when I have a question but don't have anyone else doing what I am who I could ask.

I'd be happy to set up the group if there's any interest!

Homemade materials

2011-06-12T12:11:00.005-04:00

Hundred board:

I'd been wanting to make a homemade hundred board for a long time, but had been putting it off. I couldn't figure out in my head how to make it good enough. Finally, one of my endless Google searches turned up a reference to using tiles from the home improvement store. Lightbulb! I went to Lowe's and bought a sheet of 144 small glass tiles. They peeled easily off the backing, and I used a Sharpie to write the numbers on each.

For the board, I took a leftover piece of flannel and sewed straight lines to delineate where the tiles should be placed. This turned out to be a fabulous solution, because I can roll or fold up the board for storage, and the tiles don't slip at all when on the board.

I'm storing the tiles in an old silicon muffin tin that fits perfectly into one of my trays.

Of note is that I decided, instead of going from 1-100, to go from 0-99. I think it makes more sense to start each row with the next 10 group. However, Nugget was disappointed not to have a "100" tile at the end.... so I made one up for her quickly, and told her that her reward for counting to 100 was that she got to put this 100 tile into a small cup on the shelf. Every time she gets to 100, she can put a new 100 tile into the cup. That way, she can see how many times she's completed the hundred board.

Now, this was probably presented to her a bit early. We hadn't worked yet with making 11-99 with the bead stair. But I had the material sitting out, and she found it.... Even though it was a bit early, she was able to complete it with some encouragement from me. It's a lot of work!

Hundred squares:

When I purchased our materials, I only bought 10 hundred squares. I figured I could make that work, but I had forgotten that I needed enough to do regrouping of hundred squares into thousand cubes. I thought about putting in an order, but ended up needing the extra hundred squares before I made up my mind.

I did a lot of thinking about how to make homemade hundred squares, but once I thought to use foam core for the material, I knew that was the right answer. It's lightweight like the squares that I have and easy to cut to the right size.

Figuring out how to make the dots was the hard part. I tried using paint and applying it different ways (eraser, brush, q-tip, etc), but it blobbed and didn't look good. Plus -- painting hundreds and hundreds of small dots?! No thank you. I finally decided to just print out some sheets of dots and spray glue them on. It wasn't the look I was going for in the beginning, but it worked out well enough.

Bead stair tray:

This is a pretty simple one. I had a bead stair but no tray. Another thing I thought I could do without, but once we started to use it, I realized we really needed to be able to lay out the stair in order and not have it roll away. This is just foam core again, one sheet on the bottom and one with a triangle cut out glued on top of it.

Taxonomy:

Nugget has a strong interest in animals, and it's been a common topic of discussion around our house if an animal is a mammal, reptile, bird, etc. I decided to show her a bit more formally how we classify things and where these divisions came from.

To start with, I printed off some pictures. Four each of non-living, plant, invertebrate, mammal, fish, bird, amphibian, and reptile. I took a bit piece of felt and drew a graph on it.

At the top, we separate living from non-living.

We take the living and separate plant from animal.

Then the animals are split into invertebrate and vertebrates.

And, finally, the vertebrates are split into bird, fish, reptile, amphibian, and mammal.

For even more interest, I also put out a selection from our Safari Toobs.

Some of these animals end up "helping" with the rest of the Montessori work. :)

Slowly easing back in

2011-06-11T19:40:00.008-04:00

Four months ago: I was feeling lost. Sprout had drained all of my mental resources. We'd dropped formal school time for Nugget a while back, but I was still trying to work out themes or units of study. Things were feeling scattered, I wasn't dealing well with the demand it placed on my time and energy, and the thought that I had to write something good up for the blog was stressing me out. So I closed up shop for a while, we dropped any pretense of "doing school", and just ... played. Asked and answered questions. Did experiments. Went places. Joined a laid-back homeschool group.

Now: Nugget is 4, Sprout is 14 months. I'm still drained by the demands of having a toddler, but at least I'm sleeping better (maybe not through the night, but better!) and my husband can whisk him off for an hour or so to give Nugget and I some one-on-one time.

With the end-of-year curriculum sales and conversations, my husband and I had been doing a lot of talking about the direction we're going to take when Nugget reaches kindergarten age (officially, fall 2012). We looked over the standards for our state, wrote out our own ideal curriculum, and reviewed boxed curricula.

At the same time, we were looking for a summer camp opportunity for Nugget. We found a fabulous program at the local Montessori school, offering a half-day art history camp for a few weeks. When Nugget and I went in after the school day to drop off the paperwork, her eyes lit up. When the guide heard that we did Montessori-inspired homeschooling, she invited Nugget to take a look at and work with a material or two. Nugget was in heaven. In fact, she didn't want to leave. There were tears!!

I was feeling inspired by our homeschool discussions and research, and motivated by Nugget's overwhelming desire to "do homeschool". However, I was wary of getting in too deep again. I feel strongly that we homeschool for the flexibility and the chance to experience things in the real world, not the classroom. So we decided to come at things a bit differently this time. We're using a mix of methods. I have no expectation of a "work cycle", how long we "should" be in the room, or of Nugget doing her work independently. I even incorporate her stuffed animals in some of the work. Homeschool time is a chance for us to have one-on-one time together -- and ENJOY it.

Here's our areas of concentration:

1. Reading. This is the only thing I make sure we do every day, but it only takes a couple of minutes. I'm not a fan of the traditional pink/green/blue Montessori program, and a try of Hooked on Phonics didn't work for us. Right now, we've settled on "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons". It's not the most interesting thing in the world, but the lessons go quickly and it seems to be clicking with her.

2. Math. I love Montessori math. Love love love. Nugget is blowing through the early golden bead material, including the bank game; we're about to start addition. Today, she completed the hundred board!

3. Science. My husband and I love science. Science comes up every day around here -- weather, dinosaurs, habitats, health.... We're going to be following Nugget's interests, answering questions and finding things in everyday life to notice and study. Most of our focus will be on earth science and animal studies, though. We have done a few things in the school setting -- a discussion of natural selection and some work on taxonomy.

4. History and culture. These will come later, but we have some ideas for areas we want to cover in the next 2 years.

5. Sensorial. Nugget has never had the most interest in the Sensorial activities. I'm putting a few out on the shelves, and she does them because she hasn't seen them in a while. But they don't hold a lot of interest for her. The most interesting thing for her was building the red rod maze. But she hasn't even touched her previous favorites, the cylinder blocks.

Now Nugget? She's THRILLED. I haven't asked her to do homeschool a single day -- she's always the one who brings it up. She works through all the materials I ask her to do and chooses a bunch more. She's very much developmentally ready for the work we've been doing, so she's interested in it and finds it easy to handle.

I'm keeping our classroom area small -- just 2 shelves. I'm rotating a lot more and just keeping less out. We spend 10-45 minutes a day in the room, varying a lot depending on what our day is like and how into things Nugget is. I do a phonics lesson every day and some sort of math (these days it's golden beads, teens and tens nomenclature, or number rod addition). Anything else is up to her to chose (she's really into the metal insets right now; in fact, she's been in there for 20 minutes after I left, doing more).

As for the blog.... I don't think I'll go away for this long again. But I won't be as regular as I was before, either. I'll probably pop over here to mention any new homemade materials or if things are going particularly well or particularly poorly. It's nice to have a place to write things out and work them through in my head.

Wait, what can this be?.....

2011-06-11T18:10:00.003-04:00

I'm feeling like I might want to pop in here with an update in a bit.

Long-term hiatus

2011-02-02T13:19:00.003-05:00

This has been in the making for a while, but I'm officially putting this blog on long-term hiatus. Good luck in your homeschooling journey!

Studying ocean layers

2011-01-24T07:47:00.003-05:00

We've been really laid-back about the current space and ocean studies. I make up some material whenever I'm inspired, and we fit the conversations into our day. I decided to put together some stuff for Sprout's nap time on Sunday, so we did an alphabetical order activity (train cars), some work with golden beads and tens, and an ocean layer activity. (When I asked Nugget what she wanted to do during Sprout's nap -- "read books, play alone, do homeschool" -- she jumped up and down and said, "homeschool! homeschool!". Poor kid! I wish I had more energy/motivation to make up more schooling stuff.)

To make the ocean layer activity, I painted a piece of posterboard with 4 shades of blue (in theory, there should be one more for the trenches, but I skipped that for now). Then I printed off pictures of some of the animals that can be found in each layer. The backs of the pictures have a brushstroke of the same color as their layer, so that Nugget can check her work.

Top: Sunlit layer with dolphins, penguins, tuna, etc.

Second down: Twilight layer with laternfish, bristlemouth, and jellyfish

Third down: Midnight layer with anglerfish

Bottom: Abyss with tube worms, sea pig, and basket star

This was an excellent activity. She was really interested, we had some great conversations, and she was able to place everyone accurately after one demonstration. This hit her interest perfectly, because she's fascinated with/terrified of the anglerfish from Finding Nemo (she's never seen most of the movie, but we've read the book and gone on the ride at Disney).

Where am I?

2011-01-15T21:20:00.002-05:00

I disappeared for longer than a traditional winter break, huh?

Things are kind of up in the air here. I'm in a period of reevaluation for our homeschooling in the short term.

I now have a 9 month old who has three non-crying states -- attached to Mommy, into anything he can reach, or attached to Mommy AND into everything he can reach. His naps are unpredictable and short. All this to say that sitting down for dedicated school time with Nugget just isn't happening, not even considering the preparation time that goes into it. I'm feeling a fair amount of guilt about it.

So here's what I'm doing:

1. I'm working on telling myself that it's just a season, that soon enough he'll be in a place to spend more one-on-one time with Daddy or to participate without destruction.

2. I'm working on changing my curriculum perspective -- instead of thinking about all those things I think Nugget could handle at this point (landforms, bank game, etc), I'm thinking instead about what things I feel are important for a 3 year old to know. Those are more whole-person things -- playing outside, lots of free time with craft materials, early chapter books, lots of exposure to navigating the adult world (post office, grocery store, etc), and -- of course -- trying my best to patiently answer the endless endless questions.

3. I'm temporarily switching from Montessori lessons to being Montessori-inspired. For instance, the Sensorial materials are away, but I try to incorporate the three-part lesson in daily life.

4. I'm trying out some more pre-packaged curriculum options. I have to fight my nature to tweak and change -- but I need to recognize that an imperfect solution that's easy enough to implement that we actually DO it is better than a perfect one that overwhelms me and we can never use. This week we're trying out Five in a Row. Each day for 5 days you read a classic storybook (we're doing "Owl Moon") and do suggested activities for one of the focus areas -- social studies, language, art, math, science.

Writing all this out makes me feel a bit better. I still feel like a slacker, but I'm pretty convinced that I'm not damaging Nugget for life. :)

Winter Break

2010-12-05T19:20:00.001-05:00

I just couldn't keep up with personal stuff, holiday projects, AND homeschooling. So we're on winter break!

Wrapping up, moving on

2010-11-24T19:05:00.002-05:00

Been quite here on the blog because it's been quiet in the homeschool area. We pretty much exhausted our Australia studies and I decided to wrap up insects. We're just starting to move into space and, after that, to ocean life.

Things have been busy around here, but Nugget is begging to study space. So I've got to get moving and give her some materials....

Australia, insects, and golden beads

2010-11-05T12:32:00.006-04:00

I'm really loving how "school" is flowing around here these days. We don't have sit-down time; instead, the materials are out for us to pick up at any time and I have a few topics in mind that I try to emphasize throughout our day. Some days we do nothing, some days we do a lot. But it's so much easier and more enjoyable than what I was trying to do before.

We're slowly moving along the math progression. I put the golden bead material out a few weeks ago, and we worked on terminology for a while. She mixed up "hundred" and "thousand" quite a bit, but when she seemed to have them straight, I brought out the 1, 10, 100, and 1000 number cards. We've worked with those for a few days, but now she's mixing up "hundred" and "thousand" again. So we're going to slow down and I'm going to try to come up with ways to bring those terms up a lot more.

We've spent a couple days on each of a number of insects -- butterflies, ants, and ladybugs. My choices have been driven by what life cycle models I have. :) Nugget LOVES the life cycle models. Sometimes she'll choose one to take to the store with her. I have a pile of library books about different insects, and when we've hit a lull, I just pull out the next one that seems interesting. I'm thinking about maybe going with bees next.... or maybe I'll wait until we can get to the local farmer's market and taste samples from the local honey producer!

Our main focus has been on Australia. Once Nugget was able to name all of the continents on the continents puzzle, I let her choose which one to learn about first. Her choice of Australia was a surprise to no one.

I've been worried about doing continent studies because I don't have many items or materials. But we just jumped into it and I started making things to stay one day ahead of her. Over the last 2 weeks or so, we've covered a lot and accumulated quite a collection.

This is our continent/science/language shelf. The top shelf is Australia, the bottom has sandpaper letters and Progressive Phonics readers (we're not doing much language these days) and insect books and life cycle models.

The Australia shelf. The "artwork" is our versions of Aboriginal dot paintings (there's an outline of a wombat somewhere under Nugget's) and coloring book pages of Australian kids. I put out some of Nugget's stuffed animals from Australia, a couple of our MANY Australia books (the rest are with the rest of our books), and figures from the Coral Reef and Australian animal Safari Toobs.

This is a felt map of Australia that I cut out. The pictures are of Australian landmarks; they're attached with velcro, so next year she can remove them and figure out where they go.

Nugget's obsession, as always, is with the animals. So that's where we've done most of our focus. And Australia has some of the most interesting animals, ones that my husband and I have always been fascinated with!

Her main interest is the Safari Toob animals. She talks about them and carries them everywhere, which provides opportunity for all sorts of interesting discussions. Like when she's burrowing under blankets with her wombat, my husband can talk to her about how wombats dig their burrows and what they're like.

I've made some activities for with the animals. I printed out pictures of habitats and food, so that she can match the figures to the appropriate picture (answers are on the back).

I also made cards for her to sort by how the animals have their babies (egg, pouch, or live).

In the past few days we've also listened to didgeridoo music and decorated a paper towel tube like one. Today we started to touch on the Great Barrier Reef.

This has been really interesting and fun for both of us. I've learned a lot, too!

I am a bit worried about the other continents.... Australia is so easy because continent == country. Those continents that are so much more diverse -- like Africa, which she expressed interest in doing next -- are going to be much more difficult.

Ant experiment

2010-10-26T20:46:00.002-04:00

We moved from butterflies to ants -- mostly because I have life cycle models for those two. :) We talked about the life cycle, read a book, and watched some videos the other day.

Today we did a fun experiment. I divided a paper plate into sections and Nugget raided the kitchen to find foods she thought the ants might like. Each food went into a section, and we put the plate between 3 anthills.

We went out a few times during the day to check on it. I thought about counting and charting how many ants appear, but I think that's a bit complex. Maybe next year!

Instead, we just observed. I was actually surprised! I had expected the fruits to be the big draw, but instead, it was the Honey Nut Cheerios and the pizza! The raisins drew a few visitors, none for the fruit or bread.

Tomorrow, we may gather some ants in a glass jar and watch them dig tunnels!

In geography, Nugget's got the continents down. We looked at some pictures from the various continents (thanks, Jo!) as well as a bunch of the postcards I've gotten from Postcrossing.

I let her choose which continent we'd study next and, of course, she chose Australia! We'll start in on that once the many, many books I've reserved from the library come in....

Small steps

2010-10-23T20:21:00.004-04:00

Yeah, I'm liking this new way so far! We managed to grab a few minutes again during Sprout's afternoon nap. We went over the terminology for the golden beads again, and I demonstrated that there were 10 in each (10 units in a ten bar, etc). Nugget decided to build a house with them -- which I allowed because I was subtly bringing in the terminology as she built. Ha, tricky me!

Later, we reviewed the continents again. She picked them up a lot faster than I expected! I did the orange-peel demonstration to show how a globe turns into a flat map, and then I brought out the continents puzzle. A hit, of course. It's a puzzle! Nugget *loves* puzzles.

We continued to talk about butterflies a bit. We watched some videos of their life cycle, Nugget brought the caterpillar model to Target, and I mixed up some "nectar" for her to taste (water, a bit of orange juice, sugar). She used a curly straw to be her proboscis. So fun!

We read through the Progressive Phonics books that she's had and moved on to a new one. She's mostly memorized them, not so much reading them. But sometimes she has to, and it's small steps, at least. They're there when she's ready to start to read.

Trying another approach

2010-10-22T11:24:00.003-04:00

I'm still working out the best way to make homeschooling work for us. Today was my first shot at another approach -- more of a traditional homeschool situation with Montessori materials than Montessori at home. I didn't try to set everything out the night before for Nugget to work independently. When Sprout went down for his nap, Nugget and I settled into the nook to work together.

The last few days, I made a list of the big subject areas and the next 2-3 topics I want to cover. That way, when we had a few minutes to sit down together, I knew what we could cover.

In Math, I spent the last few days verifying that she can count out items from 0-9 and that she can identify the written numbers (she has to think extra about [and sometimes mixes up] 6 & 9, but everything else she has down). So we're going to move into the golden bead material -- I brought out the decimal tray and we've been looking at and playing games to become familiar with "one unit", "ten bar", "hundred square", and "thousand cube".

In Language, I have out the Progressive Phonics books (which she hasn't touched in a while) and we're going to talk about the double letters ('ee', 'sh', 'th', etc). I've come around to seeing reading as very much something she will step up to herself. I'm not really pushing a progression toward reading at this point (she's not even 3.5 yet!), just giving her pieces of the puzzle and waiting until she's reached the developmental point where it starts to click.

For Science, I put away the plant and seed materials and we'll start into insects. Today we read a book about butterflies, played around with butterfly life cycle models, and glued down pictures of the life cycle. Later, we hit the library and stocked up on books about different insects, so we'll pick our way through those over the next few weeks.

In Geography, Nugget really wants to learn about Australia. But today we started in the beginning, looking at the sandpaper and continents globe. We talked about the continents globe for quite a while, learning the names and talking about where we live, where penguins live, etc.

Practical Life, I'm just going to let happen in daily life. If I'm particularly inspired by something in a blog, I might put it out. But I'm not going to try to keep that stocked daily. And Sensorial I'm going to follow her lead. She doesn't really seem to want to do much Sensorial, but I'll keep a shelf or two of it out, in case she comes back to it (which she did today, after our other topics -- she played around with the Pink Tower and Brown Stair).

We had a nice time. We didn't cover a ton, but she seemed really "present" while we worked together. She showed a lot of interest and was very cooperative. It was a nice touch-base time for the two of us without the little Sprout sticking his nose (well, fingers) into everything.

And can I just say how much I LOVE the three period lesson?

Antsy

2010-10-19T20:15:00.003-04:00

So I'm starting to get antsy to start up some homeschooling again. But I'm still feeling so overwhelmed and burned out on the preparation work. I was working for hours each night, making materials and setting up activities, and I can't do that long-term. But I do want to do some work with her.

How do you do it? How much time do you put in to your prep work? How do you keep from being overwhelmed?

Getting our hands dirty

2010-10-09T20:27:00.003-04:00

Our square foot garden is in!

I know it doesn't look like much, but that's 2, 2x6 foot gardens that should give us a good amount of tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, peas, and broccoli. It's a place to start, given my historic black thumb.

Nugget worked really hard on the garden, mixing, moving, and shoveling. We talked a lot about compost, where it comes from, and why plants need it.

I've made up a seed matching game, inspired by My Montessori Journey.

And we're still loving the various plant books by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace!

The next experiment we'll do is to sprout some seeds and then see how they react with and without sunlight, with and without water, and with and without soil.

Puzzle-acolypse

2010-10-07T16:09:00.002-04:00

Geometric solids!

2010-10-04T14:54:00.004-04:00

I'm so excited! I just rounded out our collection of geometric solids!

I've been wanting them for a while, but wasn't happy with any of the sets I found on the various Montessori sites. I really bought Margaret Homfray's guidance and wanted smaller shapes with more variety.

What I ended up doing was getting was the set of 19 solids from Learning Resources which covered a lot of the list. The big gap was the Platonic solids, which I just couldn't find anywhere! Thank goodness for playschool6, where someone pointed me to the Gallery of Wooden Polyhedra in Japan. I paid $35 for the small set of solids and shipping and got them in about 2 weeks. They're gorgeous and exactly the right size to match up with the rest of my solids. I'm so excited!

I'm going to try to hold off working on them with Nugget until we do some 2D geometric work. But.... maybe I won't be able to!

Leaf walk!

2010-10-03T22:18:00.002-04:00

This evening, between dinner and bath, Nugget requested that we go on a leaf walk. I'd mentioned last post about not seeing much variety in the trees in our neighborhood, but I thought we'd give it a shot.

It turned out we had a really good time! Sure enough, the great great majority of the trees we saw were Live Oaks. But we found a few other ones along the way, about 8-10 types of leaves. By the time we got home it was nearly bath so we only got to look at them briefly. But they're pressing under some of my husband's nursing textbooks tonight, so we can take more time with them tomorrow.

I'm having a lot of fun having this undercurrent of plants running through this month. It gives me a consistent angle to look for in our daily lives.

Life and time are great teachers

2010-10-01T19:20:00.002-04:00

I've been feeling conflicted lately on backing off of formal Montessori time. I really, really admire the bloggers out there who are doing a couple of hours of at-home preschool, and that was what I wanted for us. It's hard to give up that vision, even when I can see that it's not fitting in to our life right now. I've been doing a lot of second- and third-guessing.

So it's nice to have a moment to see that something is working. This evening, for instance. A few weeks ago, I posted about doing patterns with Nugget, and how it was just out of her grasp. She's mentioned patterns a few other times since then, but we haven't "worked" on them.

She had some foam puzzles out after dinner and she started lining them up. She called me over and asked if they were patterns -- she'd arranged them by background color in groupings like yellow-orange-yellow-orange and pink-purple-pink-purple.

So many times now, I've seen that it's often much more about time for her to grow and develop rather than anything I directly teach her.

And in the realm of life-as-teacher -- we've started a square foot garden! We've been sprouting seeds inside (or were, until the cat hopped up to munch them all), and we built the frames the other day. Nugget got lots of counting practice bringing me "4 screws and 4 washers".

Since we're focusing on plants this month, I'd wanted to go on a leaf walk. But our neighborhood in Florida has nothing but oaks and pines, oaks and pines, pines and oaks. I'm hoping to get out to a local nature preserve when it's a bit cooler.

On that topic, I found a fabulous book at our library. "Leaves! Leaves! Leaves!" is written for young kids but covers things like photosynthesis. Nugget loved it and has been bringing up parts of it at random times for days now. I really want to check out some of her other books.

Continent swap

2010-10-01T14:01:00.002-04:00

I'm totally drooling over the results of the continent swap on Mondorfment . Nugget is starting to ask about different parts of the world, so I need to start thinking about getting things in gear. I'm sure I'll get a ton of inspiration from the blog hop, but finding time to make and buy materials.... that's the hard part!

How THAT is what I'm talking about

2010-09-26T16:06:00.002-04:00

After we moved the Montessori materials out to the nook on Thursday night, Nugget didn't touch them. We got a new seed and root puzzle on Saturday and she did each once, but really didn't engage (a surprise to me, since the puzzles are her favorite part). But I just let it ride.

She spent most of this morning working on a 100 piece Hello Kitty puzzle. When she finally finished, she turned to the new seed puzzle. After doing it a few times, she started asking what the parts where. It took me a while to research it, and by then she was asking about the root puzzle. So we talked about both for a while, as well as the tree puzzle. I pulled some lima beans out of her sensory tub and we soaked and dissected one.

After that, she started counting various Sensorial materials (counting has become a favorite activity in the last few days). So she counted and we labeled things -- the texture balloons and weighted cylinders (with a pause for her to match them up, as well), the sound eggs, the Pink Tower and Brown Stair, and all 40 cylinders from the Cylinder Blocks (which she then dismantled and replaced).

I'm really happy with how smoothly that time fit into our day and enjoyable it was for both of us. This next week we're going to be building and planting a square foot garden, so she'll get lots of hands-on with plants and gardening, and we'll be doing a few experiments, as well. We've also moved to book #2 in Progressive Phonics and have been playing sounds games in the car.

This is more what I had in mind for our homeschooling. I'm excited to see how it plays out over the next few weeks.

Progressive Phonics

2010-09-25T19:10:00.002-04:00

We're giving Progressive Phonics a try over here. The thing I like about it is that Nugget is reading words right off the bat -- a nice way to contradict her insistence that she can't read. I also like that the words she can read are mixed into a story that I read, so the stories are more interesting than your basic phonics starter. And, of course, having the main character be an animal is a big plus for my animal-lover. :)

Although she's sounding out the words in the first 2 books, she's definitely got a developmental leap or two to go before she's really reading. In the meantime, I think this is a nice, low-key way to keep the letter sounds fresh for her and keep her from getting stuck in the "I can't" rut.

And now for something a little different

2010-09-23T21:01:00.003-04:00

We took a little hiatus over here. Turns out Wednesday was Elephant Appreciation Day at Disney's Animal Kingdom, and what good is homeschooling if you can't scrap all previous plans and go to Elephant Day? :) Then Thursday, my husband had a class for work and couldn't be here to watch Sprout while Nugget and I worked in the room.

During our little break, though, I did a bit of re-evaluating. We're 3 weeks into our new routine, and I felt like we'd established a baseline from which I could look for improvement. Here's the problems I'm seeing:

#1 -- I'm totally overwhelmed by making topical materials for the current focus, keeping the foundation areas fresh (PL, Sensorial), keeping up with her level in Language and Math, and planning ahead to the next few topics (book selections, experiments, etc).
#2 -- She's not learning as much about the topical areas through the materials I make (matching, 3 part, etc) as she does through talking and experiencing.
#3 -- On days when our time in the Montessori room doesn't go well, it's stressful for both of us and I don't want that affecting the rest of our day.
#4 -- I see more concentration from her when she gets involved in other things through the day (puzzles, bean sensorial box, projects only a preschooler would understand) than in the Montessori room.

On the other side, some things are working well. She really enjoys the materials when they hit her at the right time. She's made definite strides in math in just the last week or two. And she loves the changing topics.

So we're going to try something a little different. My husband and I moved a number of shelves and materials from the Montessori area into the nook between our living room and kitchen -- this is where her thoughtful and creative materials are kept (puzzles, art supplies).

I'm hoping this will make the materials more visible and encourage her to work with them when she's having a sensitive moment.

There are possible problems, too. She might turn the materials into toys -- but I think she has enough experience with them at this point not to do that. When Sprout is mobile, we've got lots of problems.

As for the topical focuses, I'm going to incorporate that into our days with more experiential work -- the best thing for a preschooler seeing so many things for the first time. Oh, and books. LOTS of books. Some of her favorite things.

So I think we'll try this new way for a bit. I have no idea how it'll work.

Sept wk 3, day 2: Clothing (human needs)

2010-09-21T12:48:00.001-04:00

Wow. Nearly 2 hours today! And a very fun time.

The topic was clothing. We read a book with clothing from around the world, then Nugget headed straight to the activity that had caught her eye when she came in -- the dressing doll.

I got the pictures from about.com's family crafts section, colored them, glued them to felt, and cut them out. Then I made the body out of felt so the clothes wouldn't slide around.

Nugget loved this. She dressed the doll for all different climates and events. And she came back to this throughout her work time; it seemed to give her a break, re-energize her, help her concentrate more on the next thing.

She worked on table setting, using a placemat I made up.

I wanted to work on letter recognition of some the trickier letters, so I printed out some worksheets. I know, I know, so not Montessori. But she loves them, and that's what matters.

She chose the Pink Tower!

Then I showed her that she could make a tower with the Brown Stair.

And that she could build them together.

That really caught her attention. She built and rebuilt those towers multiple times -- sometimes she was WAL-E stacking trash cubes, sometimes she was building a house for Cooper, the teddy bear that joined us today.

Thanks to dressing-doll induced concentration, she also counted buttons into the spindle box - correctly - twice! And then she tried to count them all -- got as far as 17 (skipping 15) before stalling out. She's definitely had a developmental leap with respect to counting.

This is something we didn't get to -- her alphabet book, ready to get pictures of food and clothing items.

This is the current state of the PL shelves -- sock pairing, scooping to a line, flower arranging, place setting, and containers.

Tomorrow -- shelter!

Discussion question -- what do you do during Montessori time?

2010-09-20T23:11:00.002-04:00

I'm still trying to figure out what works best for Nugget and I, and I'm curious about how other moms handle this. What do you do during your little one's dedicated Montessori time?

Do you sit with them, maybe have some activities to do together, talk with them through works, etc?

Or do you distance yourself, have your own work (a book or something), encourage them to work independently?

Comments encouraged!!

Sept wk 3, day 1: Food and water (human needs)

2010-09-20T09:56:00.002-04:00

Argh. Aaaaargh.

We spent 45 minutes in the room, but Nugget only did about 10-15 minutes worth of work. She would do one small piece of something, then spend ages hanging over me asking questions and talking. I'd respond briefly, then after a while ask if she was done and wanted to leave the room. No! She wanted to work! So she'd do one or two small pieces of something. And then stop again.

Aaaaaaaaaaaargh.

Oh, and her little Hulk action figure joined us. He rode around on the trays as she carried them.

So. What did we do? Well, we read books about food. She traced two metal insets with her fingers (I saw her tracing the puzzle pieces last week and wanted to give her an outlet for that, since I don't have the geometric cabinet.... although I'm thinking about making some 2D shapes). She set a place setting (PL work).

Most of her time was spent doing -- or, really, not doing -- an alphabet book. I put together a blank book with a letter on each page, then cut out pictures of various types of food for her to glue on the appropriate page for the beginning sound. She was doing fine hearing the sounds, although she mixes up some letters (h and n, b and d). She would glue one.... then talk.... and talk.... and talk.... glue one.... talk.....

Anyway. She did that for a while. Then tried the trapdoor readers again. And lastly, counted Cheerios into the spindle box.

I'm not too disappointed with our day in there. Mondays are always hard, because we're getting back in the swing of things. So it wasn't unexpected. It was frustrating at the time, but she did get a little bit of decent work done. If I could do it over again, I'd probably try to engage her in a more physical work, like moving the Brown Stair, or a work that she could get into imaginatively (like the Cylinder Blocks). That might have kicked her into more of a concentration mode.

Topic overview: Human needs (Sept wk 3)

2010-09-19T19:06:00.004-04:00

Monday: Food

Books: "Bread Bread Bread", Ann Morris; "Eating the Alphabet", Lois Ehlert
Topical activity: plant to food matching cards
Practical life: place setting
Language: initial sound book - foods
Math: TBD

Tuesday: Clothing

Book: "Clothes from Many Lands", Mike Jackson
Topical: dress-up paper bear
Practical life: dressing frames
Language: initial sound book - clothing
Math: TBD

Wednesday: Shelter

Books: "Houses and Homes", Ann Morris; "How a House is Built", Gail Gibbons
Topical: types of homes classification
Practical life: TBD
Language: initial sound book - household
Math: counting around the house

Thursday or Friday: Communication or Family/Friends/Love (undecided)

Books (communication): "Communication", Aliki; "What is Your Language", Debra Leventhal
Book (family/friends/love): "Big Brother Little Brother", Penny Dale
Topical (family/friends/love): family tree
Practical life: TBD
Language (family/friends/love): initial sound book - family members
Math: TBD

Sept wk 2, day 5: Touch

2010-09-17T20:48:00.002-04:00

We had a really nice day in the room today. I think it was about an hour we were in there, but I'm not really sure where the time went. I can't point to any one thing that occupied her time, but we had fun.

We do one fiction book to kick off the theme, and today's was a favorite from the library -- "Tickle the Duck". So it started out on a fun note. I made up some touch tablets from textured scrapbook paper, and we talked about how they felt and did a blind matching. I put out the texture balloons from a few months ago, and those are always a hit.

In the rest of the room, she successfully filled the spindle box with counting bears, did a very little bit of practical life, went back to the hearing game, and worked with me on the Pink Tower and Brown Stair.

I printed out and set out 4 of the trap door readers. I LOVE these. I'm not sure how she did with them -- she had trouble holding them without pinching the slider and just wanted to see the pictures. I intervened a bit to make them work correctly, and she did seem to be blending.... but it's hard to tell.

Now, a weekend of preparations for next week -- human needs!

Sept wk 2 day 4: Smell

2010-09-16T15:29:00.005-04:00

Another quick, 30 minute day. Our topic was smell -- I had some nice, smelly flowers in the room and I had three smelling bottles with orange, pine, and cinnamon for her to match to those items. I don't think she matched, just smelled, but it was fun anyway. Here's our topical shelf -- smells on top; hearing, sight, and taste on the bottom.

In math, she had no problems setting out 0-5 counting bears. Her counting has advanced a lot in the last month or two, and I can't take any of the credit for it. It's just a developmental thing, I think -- before, she just got too excited and jumped ahead of her one-to-one. We'll see if she can stay on track long enough to count out 6-9 bears. :)

In language, she sequenced the story "Curious George Rides a Bike". And she matched the words "web", "fox", and "egg" to their pictures.

In sensorial, she worked on a height-shape puzzle and partially corrected her mistakes. She really just doesn't seem to see the problem when some of them are swapped.

And in practical life, she did some spooning. I also have out tonging into small, plastic "champagne" goblets, spooning coffee beans, and flower arranging and containers.

Like I said, a quick day and nothing really grabbed her interest. I didn't push it, because Thursday is daddy-daughter day and there were much more interesting things to do with the rest of her day. Usually we don't do work time on Thursday, but I really wanted one day for each sense.

Tomorrow -- touch!

Sept wk 2 day 3: Taste

2010-09-15T10:44:00.003-04:00

Another hour in the room. I delayed taking us in because Nugget was so involved in a 100 piece puzzle and I didn't want to disturb that. In fact, she's back to doing it again after we got out of the room. :)

We started out with some books on taste and then went on to tasting. Last night, I made 4 different flavors -- salt water, sugar water, instant coffee, and lemon juice. Nugget tasted each and I told her the names. She only wanted to do it once in the beginning, but she returned to it at the end (and ended up spooning lots of sugar water into her mouth :) ).

The rest of our time alternated between nice, productive work and near-breakdowns. She did a little of everything -- PL, puzzles, sequencing, sensorial, etc.

I set out some pictures of pink series words ending in 'g' and 'n' and she sorted those very well. This provided an interesting example about being very careful about making materials. When I'm making materials, I hardly every re-use ones that other people have designed because I want to make sure that the picture shows exactly what I'm aiming for and that I think Nugget will understand it. In this case, I made a picture for "egg", but chose an image with multiple eggs (I thought it would be easier for her to see what it was). Of course, then she didn't hear the 'g' at the end of the word -- she heard an 's'. So I dashed into the closet and quickly pulled out a Sandpaper 's'.

The ending-sound activity was pretty easy for her. She looked to me for verification each time, but got all of them right. So ending sounds are too easy, middle sounds are too hard. Guess I'll just give it more time.

I tried the Moveable Alphabet again and she helped me find the sounds as I sounded out a short grocery list. But then she wanted to write "grocery store" and somehow working to do this led to a breakdown. I think the MA is just out of her reach, and so it's easily frustrating. I'm going to tuck it away for a while and might step outside of the usual Montessori sequence and see how she does at reading some simple CVC.

At the end of our work time, I had one more taste experiment. The night before, I made 3 yogurt smoothies -- one banana, one strawberry, one vanilla. I put them in opaque containers and had her see if she could tell which was which. She couldn't, but it was tasty anyway!

Sept wk 2, day 2: Hearing

2010-09-14T20:40:00.003-04:00

Just under an hour in the room today. We did a game where I played various sounds and she chose the picture of its source. I think you can find the sound files online if you search for sound bingo.

We tried to work on identifying middle sounds (sorting CVC words for e vs u), but she just wasn't hearing them. I put out and she worked on opening and closing containers, as well as more sequencing. I think most of our time was spent on the Pink Tower and Brown Stair -- she initially built the BS incorrectly, but eventually corrected it. It's still just on the edge of her grasp, I think.

Sorry these are getting short -- I'm feeling pretty swamped by getting things set out for the next day, prepping materials for the next week or two, and planning topics further out.

Tomorrow -- taste!

Sept wk 2, day 1: Sight

2010-09-13T21:48:00.002-04:00

Tired. Long day. Been working on materials since the kids went to bed. But I want to get down some quick notes about how the day went.

Nugget wasn't very taken with the materials today. We only spent 30 minutes in there, which included reading some books about sight. She tried the patterning activity using counting bears -- this is just every so slightly out of her reach. Sometimes she gets it, sometimes she doesn't. She did story sequencing (easy for her, but a way to practice left-to-right). She used both whole-hand and tongs to transfer some plastic pompoms (and counted them with a very distinct touch-count; usually she skims over but gets the right number). I managed to get her to try the color 3-part cards (using our family's favorite colors), which she did well at. And she finished up with color shade matching, still not at all a favorite.

After we left the Montessori room, we had a few sight-related experiments to do. For night-vision, I taped up a picture of a cat in a dark room, had her look at a light for a while, then brought her into the room. It took a few minutes for her eyes to adjust to be able to see the cat. And for color-mixing, I used food coloring to color vanilla pudding red, yellow, and blue, and then mixed to get the secondary colors. And then she got to eat it!

Topic overview: Senses (September, wk 2)

2010-09-12T19:49:00.004-04:00

Going for 5 days this week to give one day to each sense.

In addition to our topical activities, I'll be swapping out the oldest Practical Life almost every day (aiming to have one whole hand, one wrist turning, and one three finger grasp out). The week will start with last week's pouring lentils into two small cups and moving water with a sponge. The first day will add transferring with tongs.

We'll also be moving forward in Language Arts with rhymes, story sequencing, and the Moveable Alphabet.

In Math, I still have out tanagrams and will introduce a pattern activity (which she started asking about last week).

Sensorial will grow a lot this week as I bring out materials that relate to each sense. I also added the Brown Stair.

Each day will have the appropriate book from the series "Exploring our Senses" and "Rookie Read-About Health" in addition to the fiction book listed.

Day 1: Sight

Color shade matching (homemade material using paintchips and clothespins; never been a big hit with Nugget)
Color 3 part cards (no real interest so far in 3 part cards, but I chose our family members' favorite colors as a hopeful point of interest)
Night vision experiment
Color mixing with food-colored pudding
"Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What do you See?", Eric Carle

Day 2: Hearing

Silence game
Listening walk
Bell/no bell sorting
Sound eggs
Sound bingo
"Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?", Dr. Seuss

Day 3: Smell

Smelling bottles w/ cards
Salt dough or play dough w/ scents
Herb & spice 3 part cards (maybe)
"A Very Good Smell" (Peep and the Big Wide World), Laura Gates Galvin

Day 4: Taste

Tasting bottles w/ cards (sweet, salty, sour, bitter)
Mystery flavored yogurt smoothies (strawberry, banana, vanilla)
"Pie in the Sky", Lois Ehlert

Day 5: Touch

Touch tray (various textures: sponge, spoon, feather, etc)
Mystery bag
Texture balloons
Art project w/ friend: textured paint
"Tickle the Duck!", Ethan Long

Sept wk 1 experiment: Calcium in bones

2010-09-10T19:04:00.002-04:00

Well, it took all week, but our experiment finally finished up! On Sunday we ate fried chicken drumsticks for lunch and saved the bones. One bone we let dry out. The other, we put in vinegar. Vinegar dissolves calcium. As the week passed, the bone got softer and softer. Finally, on Friday, it was flexible enough to bend!

Nugget was fascinated by this, and carried the bones around the house for a while this afternoon.

Sept wk 1 day 4: Staying healthy

2010-09-10T16:37:00.002-04:00

An hour and a half in the room today. We might have been able to stay more, but she was starting to tire out and we had visitors coming for messy preschool art fun.

Today's topic was keeping your body healthy. We talked about healthy foods and exercise. The topical activity was sorting food cards into sometimes foods and all the time foods, which was no problem for her -- we talk about that sort of thing all the time.

There was a new Practical Life activity -- transferring water with a sponge. I also had a semi-Sensorial activity to sort by size -- the cheaper version of this. She got two of the middle sizes mixed up, oddly enough. She also worked on tanagrams and was starting to show signs of tiring out. So she moved on to a new language activity, matching rhymes. It took a few cards for her to remember how rhyming worked (I realize now that we haven't done it in a while), but she was hitting all of them by the end.

Then, Nugget chose another language -- the Melissa and Doug See & Spell. We were hanging out together, working on this and chatting... I spelled a word off of the cards and we started talking about how you can lay out sounds in a word to write it. I knew she was starting to be able to hear sounds inside of words.... so I took a chance and pulled out the Moveable Alphabet.

We worked together on the first word, "mom". Then "dad", which she wanted to turn into "daddy". Then she just wanted to keep going. We ended up spelling out all of our family names.

Here you can see her working on "Liz". She insisted that she heard lots of "z"s.

Column 1: Miles ("miz"), Gramme ("grm"), Aunt Heidi ("iet hd"), Ken ("cn")
Column 2: Mom, Daddy ("dade"), "atle"
Column 3: Nana ("nen"), Pop-pop ("pppp"), Liz ("lzzzz"), Grandpa (I helped with this) Johnny ("jn")
Not seen: Pap Webb ("p wb")

She was definitely getting tired by the end (you can tell from her efforts), but she really wanted to write everyone's name. You can also tell that hearing vowels is still tricky for her. But what an amazing step! I'm just blown away! You could have knocked me over with a feather.

We've got a few day break before we start the Five Senses on Monday, but I'll probably pull out the Moveable Alphabet over the weekend to give her some more exposure to it.

Oh my goodness!!

2010-09-10T12:44:00.002-04:00

Details later....

Sept wk 1 day 3: Digestion

2010-09-08T09:39:00.002-04:00

Not as great a day today. Nugget wasn't in quite the right mood and Sprout was exhausted and wouldn't stop crying and go to sleep for DH (so my mind wasn't on the task at hand). Still, we covered everything I wanted to for digestion (books and experiment), did the organ location exercises, and got in a few Montessori and Montessori-like materials (pouring into 2 too-small containers, tanagrams) in the 45 minutes we spent.

Sept wk 1 day 2: Brain, heart, lungs

2010-09-07T20:04:00.002-04:00

Another great day! We studied the brain, heart, and lungs, and spent an hour twenty in the room.

Again, we started out by reading books. Then we did a version of "Simon Says" (we used "my brain says") and the felt body organs. We blowed bubbles (well, I did, Nugget tried to) and listened to her heart with a stethoscope before and after she ran around. I demoed some three (well, four) part cards about the organs but it was way over her head and she blew it off. I'm not surprised; I'm going to simplify the cards a bit and try again tomorrow.

Then Nugget moved on to the typical Montessori work. I put out a lentil pouring activity which she dug in to, then tried the bead sorting (I simplified from yesterday) but didn't do it right.

She did puzzles, and when she started looking around, I suggested a Pink Tower game (she looks away, I remove one block and ask her where it was). Through our work with the Pink Tower, I'm certain she CAN do it, she just has more fun not doing it (the sly smile and "is that right?" when she put them in the wrong order).

She went back to the pouring and, for the first time, poured into two containers (tomorrow, I'm going to set out containers that are too small to fit all of the lentils). Then she sorted -- correctly, when I suggested that she was putting the animals (the beads are shaped like sea life) into their homes. She noticed that they were beads, and asked about threading them. The beads and holes are so small, the only way to do that was with a needle and thread. She worked so hard and so carefully! She threaded all 36 beads. I was very impressed with her work.

She finished up doing some sequencing work. Interesting note -- she'd been sequencing one of the stories -- a dad lifting a girl -- incorrectly. I'd thought last night to put stickers on the back so that she could check her work, but didn't. Today, in order to help her see her error, I asked her to tell me the story of each group she sequenced. And she wasn't wrong! Instead of seeing the story as "girl runs toward dad, dad starts to pick up girl, girl is in the air", she saw it as "girl runs toward dad, girl is up in the air, dad puts girl down". I'll totally give her credit for that answer -- it could be read that way! Another reason to love homeschooling. :)

Tomorrow -- digestion!

Sept wk 1 day 1: Bones and muscles

2010-09-06T20:38:00.008-04:00

Our first day went well! We got started at 8:30am and stayed in the room for an hour. That's a great length, I think -- my eventual goal is 2 hours, but right now an hour is just fine. Today, I would have been happy with anything over 30 minutes. My husband was home to be able to hold on to Sprout, so I just had to leave once to nurse him.

I'm not taking many pictures while Nugget is working -- it's a big distraction for her. But I've got some pictures of our environment and materials.

This is our set-up. It's part of our master bedroom. I have one shelf for Practical Life, a couple for Sensorial, and one each for Language, Math, and the current topic. The shelves are pretty bare because I don't want to swamp her with a ton of stuff right off the bat.

This is our Practical Life. I have a sorting activity and flower arranging (a perpetual favorite). I spent a lot of time setting out an assortment of beads so that she could sort by either color or form -- I was interested to see which she would pick. But she poked at it, didn't find any matching pairs (nothing matches in both color and shape), and turned it into a straight transferring activity.

Current Sensorial materials. This will slowly grow as the days and weeks go on. She completely ignored them today, as is usual.

New Sensorial material to go along with "muscles" -- weighted containers. There are pairs of 3 different weights. Nugget did a great job with these -- she was able to pair, grade, and name (heavier, lighter).

Language. On the bottom is a Melissa and Doug activity, on the top are sequencing cards available for free from Montessori for Everyone. I chose to start with these because Nugget seems to have a hard time with picking the "first" letter when looking at a word. She often picks the last letter instead.

Our topical shelves. I have out some things to pick up and look at -- a paper mache skull and a remarkably nicely done skeleton from a Dollar Tree garland. (I'd like to highly recommend doing a unit on skulls around Halloween.) Behind those are the skeleton matching cards, and on the bottom is a skeleton puzzle she's had for a while but I tucked away so that it would feel new for this unit.

Here's a fun craft project -- my version is on the left, hers on the right.

We started out our time in the room with a silly song ("Dem Bones", and Nugget looked embarrassed for me) and then read some books about bones. Nugget then went right for the animal skeleton matching and did it perfectly -- even recognizing some skeletons without seeing the animal picture. I introduced the idea of "checking your work" for the first time, with stickers on the back, and she used it (before, she'd just matched the backs without attempting the activity).

She proceeded to do the craft, investigate the hands-on bones, try the sorting, and assemble the skeleton puzzle. Then there was a break to look through the "Visual Dictionary of the Skeleton" together (she loves books like this). Then back into the room for sequencing, flower arranging (and unarranging), and weighted containers. BACK to the "Visual Dictionary of the Skeleton", then she started to "play Pixar" on the bed, so I got her to straighten up the room and we called it a day at 9:30am.

Outside of the room, we've been soaking a chicken bone in vinegar (to dissolve the calcium and make it bendable) and looking at an x-ray of her metal-skeletoned Bullseye stuffed friend (gotta love having a family member in the health care industry!).

Back tomorrow for heart, lungs, and brain. I won't do such a detailed review every day; I've got enough on my plate just preparing for the next days! But I do want to track what she's up to, so there'll be SOMETHING here.

Topic overview: Human body (September, wk 1)

2010-09-04T20:06:00.005-04:00

Here's what I have planned, created, or checked out for this week. It's a lot; I don't know how much we'll get through, but we'll use what we can. In addition to this, I'll have a couple of Practical Life activities out, the basic Sensorial (Pink Tower, Cylinder Blocks), and some early literacy (sequencing).

Day 1: Bones and muscles

Skeleton puzzle
Weighted containers to pair/sort (yogurt smoothie containers filled with sand & glue)
Cards to match animal to skeleton (available on my Box -- see sidebar)
Dissolve chicken bone in vinegar
Glue uncooked pasta onto body outline to form "skeleton"
(hopefully) an x-ray of her stuffed Bullseye with metal skeleton
"Jessica's X-Ray", Pat Zonta
"The Skeleton Inside You", Philip Balestrino
"The Visual Dictionary of the Skeleton"
"Funnybones", Janet and Allan Ahlberg
"My Muscles", "My Bones", Carol Lindeen

Day 2: Heart, lungs, brain

Appropriate felt organs on body cut-out
Appropriate cards to match organ to location in body
Blowing bubbles
Simon says
"My Brain", "My Heart", Carol Lindeen

Day 3: Digestion

Digestion demonstration
Appropriate felt organs
Appropriate organ cards
"My Stomach", Carol Lindeen
"What Happens to a Hamburger", Paul Showers

Day 4: Staying healthy (food, exercise, cleanliness)

Hand washing demonstration (cover hands in cinnamon, demonstrate washing)
Healthy/not healthy food cards
Vegetable printing
"My Amazing Body", Pat Thomas
"The Very Hungry Caterpillar", Eric Carle
"You Are What You Eat", Melvin Berger

Our start-up plan

2010-09-01T14:43:00.002-04:00

Here's our plan for the first month. I'm planning to do mostly 4-day weeks.

September, week 1: Our body

Bones and muscles
Heart, lungs, brain
Digestive system
Staying healthy (eating, exercise)

September, week 2: Senses

Sight
Sound
Smell
Taste
Touch

September, week 3: Human needs

Food and water
Clothing
Shelter
Family, friends, love

September, week 4: Our local area

Our yard
Our neighborhood
Our village
Our nearest town

We'll have to see how that amount of things to cover works out for us. I'm thinking it might be moving a bit fast. Things will slow down after this first month -- we'll spend a number of weeks (possibly a whole month) on plants, then do more 2-week focuses.

Thoughts on New Child Montessori

2010-09-01T14:28:00.002-04:00

I've had some people ask what I think of New Child Montessori. Here's my initial thoughts, keeping in mind that we haven't started Montessori time yet. :)

I think it's a fabulous purchase if you're looking for a bit more structure than traditional Montessori; it strikes me as a Montessori way of doing unit studies. I like that it brings in topics that don't fall into the core areas -- like animals and plants, history, space, etc.

We're not following it page by page. First off, there's too many things to do in just one year! Secondly, there are some things I want to focus on and others I want to drop until Nugget is a bit older. Thirdly, I needed to change the timing of things -- in Florida, it's best to do animals and plants in the fall and winter when we can be outside, and save the continent studies for when we're stuck inside in the summer.

I started by writing out the New Child plan for a year, then moving and altering as necessary to get a personalized overview of what I'd like to cover. I use the book lists and activity ideas, and may pick up on some of the songs/rhymes/etc.

So for me, it's more of a reference set than a day-by-day plan. I think it would work equally well either way.

I don't have any experience with the Supplement, Art Guides, or Yoga (although I totally covet the Art :) -- maybe another year!). But the seasonal guides are well-written, well organized, and generally an amazing amount of material for the price. I highly recommend them, and wish I'd gotten them sooner.

Just around the corner

2010-09-01T07:00:00.001-04:00

Things have been quiet on this blog, which feels weird with everyone else gearing up or starting! I've just been busy with preparations and other things (making 36 fabric matching games for an activity bag swap, for instance).

We're starting in earnest next week, so I'll have lots more to say then. I'm also hoping to get a few posts up before that about the preparations I've done, how this year is going to be different from last, and what I think of New Child Montessori.

Approaching PL

2010-08-22T21:11:00.003-04:00

I think my big problem with putting together PL is that I don't have a overarching plan and I always find myself digging around at the last minute for materials.

So I've been reading over some lists of PL activities online, consolidating and grouping them. I'm going to try to come up with a good progression and then gather up the necessary materials. I'll assemble little PL "kits" with the basics where I can then swap out pieces (for instance, put together two bowls and a spoon, but leave the material as something that I can change out depending on my mood, the season, or our theme).

Are there any favorites in your house that I should give a try with Nugget?

PL follow-up

2010-08-22T07:18:00.004-04:00

Ok, I'm totally following you guys who choose fine motor refinement activities to put out. Makes sense to me. And I love the idea of a progression or other organization of activities.

But my manual (from NAMC) doesn't have that progression or categorization (I thought the PL one was pretty worthless). Can anyone point me in the direction of a list or resource for that?

Edited to add: Found one list....

ETA #2: And this one....

A question

2010-08-21T20:49:00.003-04:00

I'm looking for advice from the other Montessori moms out there.

So, the Sensorial, Language, and Math parts of Montessori have a nicely planned out flow. I know what to start with and what to move to when Nugget demonstrates that she's ready.

For more thematic study, I have the curriculum from New Child that I'm kind of following.

But Practical Life.

...

Okay, confession time. I really don't like thinking of and assembling Practical Life activities. I kind of feel like I'd like to focus more on Sensorial and other "harder" areas than PL during the small amount of time we tend to be in the room. And it seems like there's opportunities during the day outside of the room to work on PL sort of things (dressing herself, pouring in the sandbox, spooning in the beans, cooking with me, etc).

So I'm pondering dropping PL activities from the room.

But I'm torn about it. She is of the age when you usually focus on PL. I'm slightly worried that without PL, she won't have as much to do (on the other hand, maybe it'll lead her to choose more of the Sensorial).

On the other hand, isn't the household environment the absolute best place to learn the skills of daily life?

So what do you do with Practical Life in your Montessori homeschool?

Deep in preparations

2010-08-19T14:41:00.002-04:00

We're due to start up in 2 1/2 weeks! I'm spending most of my evenings working on various materials. I'm not really sure what materials are going to strike her this year, and I know they'll be used another year, so I've been doing more than is probably strictly necessary. But I'm starting to burn out, and I'm happy to start using the stuff and seeing how it's received soon.

I've been taking the time to find free images for some of the materials so that I can share them. I've put a link on the side to my box.net account that has a few things in it -- animal/skeleton matching, tablewear 3 part cards, and sorting types of houses (apartment, townhouse, house). I hope someone finds them useful!

You know you're a homeschooler when...,

2010-08-04T07:49:00.001-04:00

You spend your evening making a life-sized felt cutout of your daughter complete with removeable felt organs.

This was a blast to make. I traced Nugget onto some butcher paper during the day -- difficult, with all the giggling it caused! Then I taped the paper up on the sliding glass door, taped felt over it, and traced my original. Cut out the felt and -- voilà -- a felt preschooler!

My nurse husband and his textbooks came in quite useful for the organs. They helped me get the right size and shape as I freehanded.

This is part of my preparations for the first week of our new start in September, which will have a My Body theme (not arms, legs, face; instead we'll do heart, lungs, digestion, etc). I've also made up organ 3 part cards, sometimes/anytime food sorting, and animal skeleton matching. I used free images from Wikimedia for the animal skeleton cards, so I'll figure out how to share those with you guys soon.

Inspiring

2010-07-29T18:16:00.002-04:00

I know this is mostly Montessori-oriented stuff, but I wanted to share a blog that I've been obsessed with the last few days and find so inspiring.

It's called let the children play, and it's a blog about a play-based preschool in Australia.

But this is a DREAM play-based preschool. They trucked in dirt and made a dirt/mud hole for the kids to play in. They take walks into the bush and jump off logs. They set up an environment with tons of scrap items and let the kids have at it.

This has really inspired me to think more about giving Nugget more very-free free play. Right now she has lots of time to play in her playroom or art area, but the materials there have a fairly conventional use (Lego, animal figures, puzzles, etc). I would love to provide her a mud puddle and a bunch of logs and step back.

In that vein, my husband and I have decided to turn the one shady area of our yard into a more child-friendly-yet-still-wild place this fall (when the Florida summer has let up). I'm not sure how much Nugget will take to it -- she doesn't really like to be dirty -- but Sprout is definitely showing signs of being into messier pursuits.

Scavenger hunt: Antarctic snacks

2010-07-27T08:46:00.002-04:00

Here's my bonus post. :) Snacks in Antarctica!

At the Australian base, "expeditioners live mostly on frozen and canned food, supplemented to a small degree with hydroponically grown salad vegetables. At the beginning of the season, or following the arrival of a ship, some fresh food becomes available. ... With such a wide variety of frozen and canned food available today, expeditioners enjoy a mixed and interesting diet, very similar to what they would eat back home. The stations are stocked with about 700 different varieties of foods each year." But when going out into the field, even on short trips, researchers have to bring emergency ration packs. These include "freeze dried meat and vegetables, rice, pasta, biscuits, dried fruit, soups, muesli bars, desserts, chocolate, tea and coffee."

Thanks to the Australian Antarctic Division whose website (http://www.aad.gov.au) is totally amazing!

Scavenger hunt: New Asian snack

2010-07-27T08:40:00.003-04:00

While we were buying ingredients for our big cooking bash this weekend, Nugget and I found and had to have these Thai fortune cookies.

I love coconut. I love fortunes. I love cookies!

Individually wrapped.

Nugget was pretty confused about the piece of paper wrapped in the middle of her cookie.

The fortunes were all pretty deep.

These were Delicious! Very crispy, toasted-coconut-y.... Vaguely reminiscent of a traditional fortune cookie but with much more flavor. I highly recommend them. And we found them at Target!

Scavenger hunt: Asian snack rainbow

2010-07-26T20:07:00.003-04:00

Red: Japanese Hello, Panda biscuits with creamy chocolate inside. These are our FAVORITE snacks! You can find them at Borders sometimes!

Orange: Indian mango lassi. A favorite of my husband and Nugget. We have some fresh mangos to make lassis tomorrow for dinner!

Yellow: Indian samosa. Filled with potato and peas and spices.... delicious! This was my first taste of Indian food (at a cheap cheap vegetarian joint just off Shattuck in Berkeley) and had me hooked.

Green: Edamame (soy beans). Japanese restaurants often serve these in a bowl before meals, often drizzled with soy sauce. Squeeze the beans out using your teeth and set aside the shell.

Blue: Japanese Coconut Pocky. Biscuit sticks dipped in coconut and chocolate. One of MANY varieties of Pocky.

Purple: Plum. Seen across Asian, also eaten as a prune.

Pink: Japanese Strawberry Pocky. Find some at Target!

Scavenger hunt: Asian snack recipes

2010-07-24T14:36:00.012-04:00

This is linked up to the "Continents.... Sweet!" scavenger hunt at Sunrise Learning Lab.

Since I chose to represent Asia and we don't live in Asia or have access to a lot of snacks from there, I kind of took liberties with the scavenger list and went my own direction. :) I'm pretty sure I'll cover all the items, just with some of them mixed into others.

This post will be about three snacks from various countries in Asia that Nugget and I made and tried today.

1. India -- Masala chips
2. Thailand -- Spicy corn cakes
3. Iran -- Apple Cinnamon Raisin Oatmeal cookies

Masala chips (fries) from India

This seems to be a fairly common snack in parts of Asia, with a lot of variations. I followed a recipe that seemed similar to most, with a twist of my own. Here's the original recipe I started with; what follows is what I ended up making.

2 lb frozen french fries
4 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp garlic powder
2 Tbsp tomato paste
1 tsp salt
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp garam masala
touch of turmeric
2 Tbsp lemon juice

Bake fries as directed on the package.

Meanwhile, mix oil, tomato paste, and spices. Heat oil mixture in a skillet to bloom the spices. Let mix cool slightly, mix in lemon juice.

Toss cooked fries with spices in a large bowl until coated.

Although she wasn't sure at first bite....

These were a HUGE hit with Nugget.

And, I have to say, they were pretty darn tasty. The original recipe called for more heat (with some chiles), but I thought that the heat might turn Nugget off. It also didn't call for garam masala, but adding that brought the taste a little closer to what I was expecting, gave it a touch of sweetness and more complexity. But you could totally leave that out.

Spicy corn cakes from Thailand

As soon as I saw these, I HAD to make them! Go look, and tell me that's not delicious!

1 cup sweet corn kernels
1 Tbsp red curry paste
1/4 cup flour
1 egg
1/2 tsp white sugar
Zest of 1 lime
About 1/2" of vegetable oil in the pan, for frying

Mix the corn, flour, egg, curry paste, sugar and lime zest in a bowl.

We took a break for Nugget to try a lime.

She ended up liking it and sucking on it for quite a while!

Drop by rounded spoonful (and smush a bit once in the pan to flatten) into hot oil.

Cook on medium-high heat until golden brown, flipping once. It should take about one minute per side.

I thought these were the YUM. Nugget wasn't a huge fan. She had barely a bite.

Apple Cinnamon Raisin Oatmeal Cookies from Iran

You don't get much healthier for a "cookie" than these.

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup rolled oats (oatmeal), ground in a blender or food processor
1.5 cups raisins
2 apples
1 Tbsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix flour, ground oats, cinnamon, and 1 cup raisins in a bowl. Make sure the raisins aren't clumping and each is coated with flour.

Peel, core, and chop the apples; add to a food processor with 1/2 cup raisins.

Process until applesauce-like.

Mix applesauce and dry ingredients together, add water or apple juice if needed to thin the batter.

Drop onto cookie sheet.

Bake 15-25 minutes until firm.

Nugget is currently devouring hers.

But I'm not a fan at all. The "cookie" is gummy and has little flavor. I stopped baking these after the first pan came out.

Hiatus and continents

2010-07-23T18:06:00.003-04:00

I've taken a hiatus from blogging because we've taken a hiatus from Montessori. Nugget has done a few activities, but I haven't suggested or encouraged any time in there.

I've been working through the New Child Montessori guides, setting up a plan for our fall. I'll be putting the materials away over the next week, giving us a clean slate for starting up again in September.

We just need a do-over after these months with Sprout have ruined our routine and her habits. The other day, she spread all the smelling bottles out on the bed and started throwing them around; later, she stood on the cylinder blocks.

In the meantime, I'm working pretty hard on gathering things up to start continent studies in the winter. Part of that is participating in a scavenger hunt put on by Sunrise Learning Lab, so there'll be some posts up relating to that over the next few days!

Parts of a flower

2010-06-22T20:30:00.003-04:00

I finally ordered the guides from New Child Montessori. I'm really looking forward to looking over it and having a bit more structure. I know there's a whole big debate about a "curriculum" versus "follow the child". And I have a whole rant in my head about it. But I'm just too tired to get it out now. Suffice to say that I don't think homeschooling can HELP but be "follow the child". If we're "studying" the five senses in our Montessori time, and Nugget asks about spiders later in the day, that doesn't mean we're not going to look at pictures of spiders online, talk about what's neat about spiders, and go look for them outside. The "curriculum" is just a way for me to keep things moving in the school area in a reasonably organized fashion and keep me from totally giving up because one day I think I want to focus on swamp animals and the next day I think we should learn about magnets and it all seems too overwhelming.

Okay. Maybe that was a rant, anyway.

In other news, we continue to go into the school room for a bit every other day or so. Nugget still wants to do lots of counting, which is fun. She's had a huge leap in number recognition, and can now identify numbers and count out items for them. Still in a holding pattern on assembling words -- she knows the sounds, but can't seem to make the jump to laying them out in order. I have a few ideas for intermediary activities that might help. And, as should be of no surprise, sink and float is back out.

The other day, while I was nursing Sprout, Nugget pulled out the tree puzzle. We hadn't really talked about any of the puzzles before, but I took the opportunity to make a game of having her identify and pull out various pieces -- the roots, trunk, branches, and leaves. She had all of those down flat. She went to the flower next, and this gave me the chance to introduce the parts of a flower vocabulary. She got a real kick out of it, and asked me to repeat it numerous times.

Since she was so taken with it, I proposed that we go to a florist and find a real flower for her to examine. She loves the florist, so this was pretty exciting. They had a beautiful yellow lily that we bought, and she got to look in the flower cooler while there. We got home and matched all of the parts of the lily to the puzzle.

The next day, I noticed that one of the buds had fallen off. So I got a knife and dissected the bud with her, pulling out the immature parts (which were still identifiable). She's gotten a kick out of looking at those all day today, and when her Pop-pop and Nana came over, she brought the pistil over to show them. :)

And in other, other news, I've started slowly assembling infant materials for Sprout. He can't sit up or even hold things consistently yet, but I'm slowly gathering things as I see them. I found a couple of baskets on sale that seemed perfect -- not too tall, no pointy pieces, and flexible enough that he won't damage them by smooshing. My first order of business, I think, is some beanbags made with different fabrics. I've already raided my scrap boxes and chosen some that I think will work great!

Starting into math

2010-06-11T20:21:00.003-04:00

Nugget's been into numbers more lately. She's counting things and counting on her own, just for fun. In the car the other day she started counting to herself. We started to hear her in the 30s... "thirty-eight, thirty-nine, thirty-ten". We corrected her "thirty-ten" to forty and she kept going. So we helped her with the names for each of the ten increments and she just kept counting, up to 100.

The sticker number line is still out, and she does that nearly every day. I also put out the spindle box, but I'm not expecting that to be used much quite yet.

My husband and her had a discussion the other day about his iPod holding 1000 songs. He was trying to explain a thousand to her, relatively unsuccessfully. When I heard this, I was thrilled! I went into the homeschooling closet and pulled out the decimal tray. I was able to show her one bead, a ten bar, a hundred square, and a thousand cube. Man, those thousand cubes are gorgeous! Montessori math materials are just great.

Nugget also spent some time tracing the sandpaper letters and we matched lower case to upper case. I wasn't sure where she was in her knowledge of upper case, since we've never explicitly taught them to her. But she knew them all! It's amazing what kids pick up.

And, it's not typically Montessori, but Nugget likes it -- I've put out pages from the Kumon tracing workbook. I have them in sheet protectors and have a wet-erase marker so that we can just wipe off the pages and use them again. When workbooks cost as much as Kumon ones do, you don't want to get just one use out of them!

Finding more time

2010-06-05T21:58:00.003-04:00

Nugget has been asking to go into the Montessori room every day for the past few days. We've been able to get about 30 minutes at a time in there, which is a nice balance for right now.

I've refreshed a few things in the room. I'd love to show you pictures, but Sprout is asleep and I'm not going to turn on the light for that. :)

For Practical Life, I put out a marble-placing activity again. This time I put tongs out as an option; she tried that once, then went back to using her fingers.

In Sensorial, I made sound shakers out of plastic Easter eggs. The ones from Montessori Outlet are really difficult to tell apart, even for me. The eggs are filled with coins, rice, and other household things. They're much more appropriate at her level.

I also found another way to display the color shade matching activity. Nugget helped me change it around, and also matched the colors so that I could write control of error symbols on the back.

In Math, I put out a number line and some stickers marked with numbers for Nugget to place in order. She really enjoyed this and did it two days in a row. She recognizes maybe half the numbers right now, and I'm trying to work on this lately. She learned her letters so fast, I'm not sure why the numbers aren't sticking as easily.

For Language, I put out a few new things. I bought a pack of small wooden hearts and wrote the letters on those, and stored them in a wooden treasure chest. We made a game of pulling out one letter at a time and saying its sound.

I also put out a beginning sounds game from a workbook, where you match ants with letters on them to the picnic food that starts with that letter. Because this involves animals that she can narrate, this is a big hit, of course.

Lastly, I set out 3 of the Controlled Word Building Cards from Montessori by Ayashy. I'm a bit disappointed in the images on these -- instead of photographs of real things, they're very cartoony clip art. But Nugget got the idea, so they work fine. She struggled a bit with this activity. She identified the sounds in the word and knew the sounds the letters made, but couldn't put the letters in that order. I'm wondering if it's a problem grasping the sounds -> words idea, or if it's simply a problem of not understanding left to right/first to last. Definitely something for me to try to tease out, and an activity for us to revisit later.

In Science, I put out Sink/Float. I didn't plan to, but Nugget begged for it. That is such a huge hit. I'm curious if a magnetic/non-magnetic one would be as engrossing for her.

Although I'm happy that we've gotten back in the room, I've been unhappy with how scattershot my approach has been lately. I'm not upset with myself about it; a 2 month old is a valid excuse, in my book. But I would like to be more organized and have more of an overarching plan.

So I've been considering buying the New Child Montessori curriculum. I like that it's designed to work with the Montessori materials, but provides a framework for studying other subjects that are outside of the traditional materials. I like that it can be reused each year, just at a deeper level.

If anyone else out there has used it, I'd love to hear your opinions!

New source of Montessori downloadable, printable materials

2010-05-29T20:08:00.004-04:00

I got a message on playschool6 (a Yahoo group for Montessori homeschoolers) that there was a new store online with downloadable, printable Montessori materials -- Montessori By Ayashy.

Places like this and Montessori for Everyone are great for me right now. It's stuff I could make myself, but never seem to find time to actually do.

I found a problem with the site while I was browsing around, and Yana sent me a sample of her materials after I emailed her about it. I liked it enough to download a number of the materials -- I ended up with some of the samples of Sensorial extensions as well as the baby animals matching and controlled word building. The baby animals will be perfect for my animal-obsessed daughter, and I think the controlled word building hits right about her ability level in language these days.

I'm happy with the materials, and I like having another option in addition to Montessori for Everyone. Hopefully there will be more materials popping up there soon!

Turtles!

2010-05-21T19:56:00.005-04:00

Nugget has really wanted to get back into the Montessori room recently. Luckily, she hit an interested period at the same time that my husband could take Sprout for a walk to get him a nap. So Nugget and I were able to have a relatively long work period -- less than an hour, but still good for having a 7 week old in the house!

I've been slowly working on some turtle-related materials for our new theme. In a burst of luck, May 23 is World Turtle Day -- and Disney's Animal Kingdom celebrated Turtle Day on Wednesday. We HAD to visit for that (we're local to the parks, and visit pretty often). Nugget had a blast there, seeing vets doing check-ups of Egyptian Tortioses, wearing a pretend turtle shell, playing turtle-related games, etc.

I only had 2 turtle activities for her today -- a life cycle and a sorting work. For the sorting, I printed out pictures of various turtles -- 4 pond turtles, 4 tortoises, and 4 sea turtles. Then she sorted them by type by putting them in their appropriate home (kindergarden-level drawings I did of the ocean, a pond, and a grassy hill). This was a hit, and she did it at least 3 times today.

She also worked with the animal name sound activity, but with a twist. We changed out the beginning sound letters for ending sound letters. The last time I set this up (2 months ago, maybe?), she had a really hard time hearing anything but the beginning sound. This time, she was identifying sounds in the middle of the word and at the end. I think she might be getting ready for some Trap Door Readers....

After that, she did a bunch of Sensorial. The mystery bag, sandpaper tablets, texture balloons, and even some work with the Pink Tower and Brown Stair. We finished up with the Knobbed Cylinders. That was extra amusing, because she talked while she did it. She's always talking to herself while playing, but in a low voice that we can't hear. This time, she was speaking to herself, but loudly. So I got to hear the strange train of thought that went along with working with the cylinders. First they were a family, baby to great-grandparents. They got in and out of a car and tried to find their places. Then the big one was a mommy pushing out a baby. It was a water birth. Then the baby had tongue tie that had to be clipped. I find it amazing the ways that she processes the world around her.

Intermittent

2010-05-13T19:39:00.002-04:00

Well, I made a good go of it. But I've found we're just not at the point yet where we can get back into the room on a regular basis. It didn't help that the week I tried to get us back there was the busiest week in a while, with Nugget's birthday and a visit from distant family.

Even after that all cleared up, though, we just aren't running on enough of a schedule for me to be able to know when we'll have a stretch of time to work in the room. Nugget's been grabbing herself some time in the room, a few minutes here and there, but except for the one day we haven't really had a work period.

That wouldn't be quite so hard to overcome or work around except for the fact that I have no time to keep things updated. I used to work on new materials and refreshing and organizing the room in the evenings. That time is now taken up with Sprout's witching hours -- when we're alternating walks outside (the only place he stops crying in the evening) with nursing sessions on the couch. Even those times that my husband is holding him, I'm just too drained to get my brain moving enough to do what needs to be done.

As I said, the room hasn't been completely abandoned. Nugget will grab a few minutes in there for herself sometimes, and we spent about 20 minutes in it together one morning. She actually chose Sensorial works, which is very different. But it shows that we've been away for a while -- she put the Pink Tower together incorrectly! Her mind just wasn't into it.

We're all distracted and out of sorts. Perfectly normal for having a 6 week old in the house. But I am a little sad and definitely starting to miss our time together in the room.

Week 9, day 1: Slowly getting back on track

2010-05-04T20:53:00.005-04:00

Nugget had been showing a growing interest in getting back to the Montessori room. She was going in their on her own (just for a few minutes) and talking about it again. So I decided to try to get us back in the room a bit.

To give me a framework for developing new activities, I'd decided to try incorporating some aspects of unit studies. I'm going to focus on swamp animals for a few weeks, since we live near some swamps and she's been interested in them recently. This week I chose frogs, and developed variations on some basic activities using frogs.

Her biggest request was a new animal beginning sounds activity. So I made her a swamp with all kinds of animals and insects. The sounds were easy, but she was quite taken with all the animals (as expected).

I used some of our Safari frogs for her to match to pictures of their real-life counterparts.

She put the appropriate number of frogs on each lily pad (this was difficult -- she's not quite ready for this yet).

I put out the pieces to a frog craft and an example that I made. I let her figure out on her own how to put it together. She did great!

She used her new magnifying glass to match tiny pictures to big pictures.

As a gross-motor activity, I cut lily pads out of felt for her to jump between.

The only old activity she chose (at my suggestion) was the knobbed cylinders, which she pretended were frog daddies and babies who needed to get back to their houses.

(Is anyone surprised to hear that Nugget is obsessed with being a vet when she grows up? This kid LOVES animals. Nearly all of her play is animal-based, and anything can be made more interesting by throwing animals into the mix.)

All of this was accomplished with Sprout asleep in the sling on my chest. I felt like super-mom!

Quick moments 1

2010-04-09T10:44:00.001-04:00

New baby hiatus!

2010-04-06T19:17:00.002-04:00

Sprout arrived on Wednesday, March 31 at 10am in a beautiful home water birth!

We're still working on adjusting to being a family of 4, so Montessori time has gone out the window for the moment. I'll put up posts if Nugget chooses to use the room, but for now, this blog will be a lot quieter.

Back soon!

Week 8, day 3: Just a few minutes

2010-03-27T16:31:00.003-04:00

This doesn't really even count as a day, but Nugget grabbed some time in the room while I got ready for the morning and DH got ready for bed (he works night shifts). She chose to do the counting activity and then pulled out the Sandpaper Letters for the first time in a while! She told DH what their sounds were and traced them (I wasn't hovering, so I don't know if she traced them correctly). I didn't really think kids would choose the Sandpaper Letters just to trace them, but... there you go!

Week 8, day 2: Super-Mom

2010-03-26T14:10:00.001-04:00

We got into the room today, but I can't say I'm on top of my game. I've been having mild to moderate contractions for a few days now because Sprout's head is tilted to one side. So I'm trying to pay attention to Nugget's Montessori, do the positioning exercises the midwives recommended, and encourage/work through the contractions.

Nugget's been interested in counting, so I added the 0-5 Sandpaper Numbers to her Small Number Rods. I'm not sure I love the idea behind the Number Rods, and Nugget didn't seem to be making the connection. I know she can count, I just don't think the idea of the Rods resonates with her. So I set out counters to associate with the numbers. This interested her a lot more, but she wasn't able to set the numbers out in the correct order when she worked with them on her own.

My solution was a sheet of paper with the 0-5 numbers written on it. As a control of error in this introductory phase, I put dots for her to place the counters onto.

She enjoyed this a lot and did it multiple times in a row.

The other stuff she did today is a bit fuzzy. They were brief stops; I think the puzzles, I Spy book, marbles, flower arranging, Sandpaper Globe, Sound Bottles, and Smelling Bottles. I could have stretched out her interactions with each of these except for the afore-mentioned distractions.

Week 8: Her choice

2010-03-24T12:21:00.002-04:00

As I mentioned before, I haven't pushed or even suggested going into the Montessori room lately. Nugget has just been too scattered and I've been too wiped to spend my evenings making new materials (39 weeks, 3 days today!). She's been spending lots of time playing on our bed lately, usually being a worm or a snake or a bird or serving up picnics. Our Montessori materials are in our master bedroom, so she's been seeing the materials; she just hasn't chosen to use them.

This morning, I left Nugget playing on my husband and I's bed while I took a shower . When I came out, she had settled at the little table in the Montessori area and was doing puzzles. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to see if she wanted to do some work. So I removed the turtle pin punching and put out a Stegosaurus suction shape with marbles. I've wanted to have one of these out for Practical Life for ages, but I've had no luck finding the shapes at a store! I was finally able to pick up a set of 3 from the Montessori Swap Yahoo group. I just put out the marbles for Nugget to place with her fingers; I'll have to see if I can dig up an appropriately sized set of tongs or some such later today. As I expected, Nugget got a kick out of the silliness of "decorating" her Stegosaurus.

While she did the marbles, I unrolled a rug and worked on changing her food chain activity a bit. Setting out the entire chain in order to sort the herbivore/carnivore/omnivore cards was too much for her to manage on her own, so I put out three pieces of construction paper -- one with a leaf, one with a drumstick, and one with both. I showed her how to lay out the sorting areas and then place each card in its appropriate spot. She did perfectly on this, and still really enjoys seeing what each animal eats.

I thought, since there were no more new materials, that Nugget might disengage at this point. But she pulled out the texture balloons and we played with those for a while. Then she wanted to do the Mystery Bag, which she's gotten so much better at! She uses it appropriately and always finds the right object.

I decided to put out one more new activity -- the Small Number Rods. I just put out 1-5, and showed Nugget how to arrange them from smallest at the top to biggest at the bottom. In a few days I'll pull out the Sandpaper Letters and start associating the rods with the numbers. She's into a counting phase these days, so I think this might be a good time to introduce this.

After the Number Rods, she did the marbles again and some more puzzles. Then she went to the animal beginning sounds activity and ran through that with no problem at all (expect needing to be reminded of the names of a couple of the more unfamiliar animals).

She now wanted to pretend to be a duck in a pond (our blue striped rug often is her pond; the brown striped one is a mud puddle). I suggested we pull out the Knobbed Cylinders and do all 4 so that when they were done, she could jump into the middle and pretend it was her pond. I was shocked that she thought that was a great idea! She brought out the Cylinder Blocks (counting each one as she did so) and we disassembled and reassembled them (I made a show of helping, but she really did nearly all of it herself). Then she jumped into the middle, jumped out, and removed all the cylinders AGAIN! My husband was really getting a kick out of listening to this because she pretends each cylinder is a baby looking for its home or its mommy. I think he said Maria Montessori would be spinning in her grave. :) But I'm happy, because Nugget was doing the activity on her own and enjoying it!

The last item she chose was tonging Easter eggs, and she did that quite a few times. We finally finished up about 90 minutes after we started! We had a great time in the room, and I'm feeling so much more positive about the whole thing. I'm so glad that she chose to start working on her own. I might even have a bit more motivation to get a few more materials made before Sprout comes.

Week 7 review

2010-03-21T19:55:00.002-04:00

No, I haven't had the baby or dropped off the face of the earth. But I am 39 weeks today and have totally lost steam. My idea of a good morning with Nugget is being able to lay on her toddler bed with my eyes closed while she pretends to be a fish next to me.

So between the end-of-pregnancy blahs and Nugget being in a very imaginative, scattered phase, getting into the Montessori room requires more effort and energy than I have available.

I think, from now until things are settled after Sprout's arrival, I'm just going to let any time in the room happen on its own. Since I'll be spending some time in bed after he comes and the Montessori stuff is in that room, she may get into it more for a while.

On another note, have you seen Postcrossing? I think this is a great way to get some additions for our future continent boxes! So far I've just sent off my initial 5 postcards -- to England, France, Brazil, Russia, and China. I put in my profile that we were a homeschooling family looking for insight into daily life, and asked for day-in-the-life info or a favorite recipe. I'm excited to see what we get -- and from where!

Week 7, day 2: New animal cards

2010-03-19T14:31:00.001-04:00

Well, Nugget and I worked with the new animal food cards today, but nothing else. I'd make these a few nights ago to compliment the food chain activity but hadn't pulled them out until now.

There are 4 cards for each herbivore, carnivore, and omnivore. The top picture is the animal; the bottom pictures are the sorts of foods the animal eats (I owe a great debt to Wikipedia).

We laid out the food chain, then worked to identify where each animal fit. Nugget is still working on terminology, but she really enjoys learning what the animals eat!

Spring break

2010-03-19T09:29:00.001-04:00

We've ended up pretty much taking the week off -- not by any overarching plan, but just on the basis of how each day has gone. I'm thinking we might get into the room later this afternoon, but I'm going to play it by ear.

I got nothin'

2010-03-16T19:00:00.003-04:00

Today is a complete miss. My husband has come down with food poisoning or something like it, so he's been a mess all day. I'm having all kinds of (relatively) painless but annoying contractions that mean I'm moving slowly and awkwardly and not sleeping well. Nugget is fine, but spent the day in total imagination-land, jumping from one subject to another every 30 seconds.

It wasn't a good day to try to get into the room, so we didn't.

And it's a bit of a shame, because I worked for over 2 hours last night putting together some food chain cards -- a picture of an animal, and then 3-4 pictures of the type of foods it eats. I made 4 each of herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores, and was planning an activity for Nugget to determine which was which.

I have no idea what tomorrow holds.

Realization

2010-03-15T22:02:00.001-04:00

I spend way more time making materials than she spends using them.

As long as she gets something out of them, it's not a bad trade-off. Just... strange.

Week 7, day 1: Food chain

2010-03-15T10:27:00.006-04:00

Back into the swing of things... for a while, at least. :)

Nugget worked exclusively with the new materials today, so I'll just show pictures of those.

In Practical Life, as always she got new flowers and new yoga cards. I also went back to basics with a tonging activity. Nugget chose to both use her hands

and the tongs.

I also put out pin-punching with some pieces of foam as the backing, some construction paper with a picture of a turtle, and a push pin. The goal is to poke enough holes along the lines to punch out the shape. My understanding is that this is done a lot with maps in Montessori schools.

Nugget isn't quite old enough to grasp the idea that a lot of little holes will add up to punching the entire thing out. She just wanted the turtle out NOW. I got her to do some punching (some on the line, some not), and I did some while she was working on another activity. My hope is that each of us will work on this a bit throughout the week, and at the end, we'll have gotten far enough that the turtle will be punched out for her.

After a while, though, she just wanted to push the pin into the backing. That was just fine with me.

I put out two (semi-)new Sensorial works. I added two new texture balloons -- popcorn kernels (which are very similar in feel to the barley, so it's a bit tricky) and pompoms. I also put out a Stereognostic Bag filled with household items, because I figured the wooden shapes I have would be too similar to work well as an introduction to the idea. I managed to find a number of distinct, paired items, and put one of each in the bag and one in the bowl.

I picked one at a time from the bowl and asked her to find its match in the bag. It took her about half the items to get the hang of this -- first she wanted to pull all of them out, then she wanted to look in the bag to find them. But by the time we were half through (and it probably helps that the number of items was greatly reduced by this time), she understood the concept. The second time she did it, though, she pulled the items from the bag, THEN found the matching one in the bowl. *lol* Oh, well.

The last new item was in Science, the food chain I'd mentioned. The tray contains a sun, some arrows, and piles of cards (plants, herbivores, carnivores, omnivores).

When Nugget chose this, I pulled out a rug and we talked as I laid out the chain.

I had planned to leave the omnivores for another time, but I knew she'd be curious about what people are. And although her Dad is an herbivore, she and I are definite omnivores. So, at the last minute, I pulled out the omnivore cards and included them.

She was very interested in this as we talked about it, and loved pretending to be various animals and eating different things. We've talked about it a few more times throughout the day, and she's got an amazingly good grasp on the idea (for example, she knew that a jellyfish was a carnivore). The terminology sometimes slips away (or she "forgets" it), but the concept seems solid in her head.

I'm thinking about doing an activity where I have a picture of an animal as well as pictures of what it eats, and having her sort based on that. Maybe after that we can add in some more complexity -- scavengers, decomposers, etc. I also think she'd get a kick out of learning about the various biomes and what lives in them.

Ah, my animal-obsessed daughter. She could spend all day pretending to be animals, learning about animals, watching animals... I bet if I put pictures of animals on the Pink Tower, I could even get her to do that activity! *lol*

Week 6 review, week 7 preview

2010-03-14T21:50:00.004-04:00

Remember how I said I was going to be more prepared for the next week and not leave all my preparations for the last evening?

Yeah.... that didn't happen.

I think I've been expecting that Sprout will arrive before we get back into the room, so my exhaustion and evening contractions took priority in my brain over new activities.

Well, he's got one more night, but it looks likely that we'll be headed into the room tomorrow. So I spent this evening pulling some new stuff together.

I'm still planning on trying my best to ignore the Sensorial material unless she heads there herself. I added two new textures to the texture balloons, which I bet she'll notice. And I know she'll notice the mystery bag, filled with fairly distinct items.

I haven't done much in the Language area, just moved all the Sandpaper Letters out.

Practical Life is getting new flowers for arranging, new yoga cards, a pin-punching activity (she LOVES making holes in cardboard with a pen, so I think this will be up her alley), and Easter egg tonging.

I'm still waiting on the Small Number Rods from Montessori Outlet (supposed to ship Wednesday, then supposed to ship Friday, now... who knows?) to start Math.

Science-wise, I'd thought to continue with animal classification. But I don't think that will mean too much to her yet. However, she does constantly ask what animals like to eat. So I'm going to try a food chain activity.

I'll try to get pictures tomorrow, when there's some more light in the room. But I'm feeling pretty positive about most areas (wish I had more Language out, but I also want to get to bed at some point :) ).

Week 6, day 3: Desert animal activity

2010-03-12T14:19:00.005-05:00

Nugget has been begging and begging and begging for another animal activity, so I whipped one together last night even though I was exhausted. I had hit Joann's yesterday with a big pile of coupons and totally stocked up on Safari Toobs, so I pulled out the Desert set since that was the easiest environment I could figure to create (just brown paint and a few brown construction paper rocks). I also bought a small wooden box to store the animals in as an extra point of interest (she loves finding things hidden in little containers).

I didn't have time to make the beginning sound letters, so when Nugget found the activity, that was our first order of business. We pulled out each animal, identified it, and determined what letter it started with (I had removed an animal or two whose sound was difficult to figure out). I then made small stickers of each of those letters and let Nugget choose where to put the sticker (i.e., where the animal would live).

We set all that up (no problems for her identifying sounds and letters) and then spent some time talking about the different animals. Her favorite question is what they eat. Thank goodness for Wikipedia!

When we were done, we scrubbed the sea shell a bit again (vague interest on her part), then she pulled out the animals again while I chose to do the shape puzzles. Nugget helped me with that and did one on her own. I really don't like this set -- the cards and the shapes are both slippery, so any little bump on her part disturbs everything she's already set out. I wonder if I should glue some nonskid mat pieces to one side of each piece.

Nugget moved over to the bed to pretend to be a scorpion while I pulled out some I Spy Phonics books. I haven't had a chance to look at these closely, but we made up our own I Spy for each page. Nugget doesn't quite get the idea -- she'll take a turn saying, "I spy something that starts with the letter.... duh." But then when I can't find anything and ask her what it is, she'll come up with something that starts with D but isn't in the picture at all. And then she tries to fudge it. For instance, she said she spied a ... um .... doll. I asked her where the doll was, and she looked around for a while... then claimed the toy horse was a horse doll. *lol* We did this for a little while, but she wasn't so interested.

She took a quick break while I played with the Red Rods. I'd put those out the other day, but hadn't had a chance to look at them closely. Nugget was intrigued by this, and helped me align the bottoms of all the rods. Then we stood the tallest up to see if it or she was taller (it was!), and, after a demonstration, she moved the smallest up and down the line to see that the difference between the rods was constant.

She turned to a puzzle while I built towers with the Knobless Cylinders. Her contribution to this was to knock them down and then help me return them to their boxes. :)

Finally, Nugget wanted to work with the texture balloons again. And she actually chose to use the blindfold! We matched and did same/different.

All together, about an hour in the room today. I hadn't really been looking forward to it -- it seemed like all she wanted was new materials, and I was still a bit frustrated by the Sensorial issue (although I was trying not to be). But today went pretty well, and I think I'm making progress on letting go of my expectations re: her reduced interest in Sensorial and Practical Life and increased interest in Language and Science. I'm really anxious for my backordered Small Number Rods to arrive (they were supposed to ship on Wednesday, but I haven't heard anything from Montessori Outlet -- so annoying!) to see if she's ready for moving into Mathematics. She's been doing more unprompted counting these days, so I'm just waiting waiting waiting for the material to arrive to see what she thinks of it.

Week 6, day 2: A wash

2010-03-11T11:49:00.004-05:00

Well, this week isn't our best. We had school time on Monday, but Tuesday we had a bunch of appointments and Wednesday we took advantage of a nice day squeezed in between cold days and rainy days to make a trip to the Magic Kingdom. We got into the room for a bit this morning, but Nugget's sniffles were on their way to turning into a full-blown fever and she only spent about 15 minutes working.

She's made a half-hearted attempt or two at scrubbing the sea shell (I rubbed it with dirt the other night to make her efforts at cleaning it more purposeful), but she's really not interested.

The texture balloons are still a hit. Last night, I added plastic baggies filled with the same materials as is in the balloons. That way, she could match what she could see to what she could feel.

She also chose to do the new letters. I had out all of the vowels and their noun cards, and she did as well as I expected -- got most of them, but had more trouble than with the consonants.

Her final choice was living/non-living cards. We defined living as "grows, eats food, has babies". She added "goes away" to that, which I think is the result of a conversation we had a few months ago about plants dying once they're picked. There were a couple that we had to talk about, but she seems to have the concept down pretty well.

I've been taking notes on supplies I need and ideas for the next step in different areas, so I'm feeling better about being more prepared for next week. I'm just going to let this week be a wash -- try to get some more time in, but not worry too much about it -- and move forward more in language, science, and maybe even math in the next week or two.

Week 6, day 1: Textures

2010-03-08T19:05:00.004-05:00

New material: texture balloons, flower arranging, scrubbing, Knobless Cylinder extensions, new Sandpaper Letters (the last of the consonants!).

I spent way too long getting ready for this week last night. I hadn't done any preparation the other evenings during our break, and I had to rush to put things together. I don't want to end up in that position again -- I was totally wiped and burned out, and I don't think I did a great job of choosing materials. I really need to keep a list through the week of what I might want to put out the next, and spread the preparation out over a few evenings.

In any case, things got done. For Practical Life, I swapped the yoga cards, removed the funnel pouring, and added flower arranging and scrubbing.

Flower arranging is one of the activities from way back in the day, before I had official Montessori materials or work time. She's always loved it. I took advantage of a sale at Joanns to pick up some new flower bunches and set those out today. It's simple but enjoyable for her -- she puts a stem in each small vase and then scatters the vases around the Montessori area.

Now that she's done funnel work with the sugar, I'm looking forward to extending her skill to using liquid and adding in pouring to a line. Then she'll be able to fill the small vases with water, and we can use real flowers! Of course, then I have to worry about the cats eating them....

I also put out our first scrubbing activity. It's simple -- toothbrush, soapy water, big seashell, and cloth.

I'd expected this to be a bigger hit, but Nugget tried it once, briefly, and was done. Maybe if I got the shell visibly dirty, so that there was some point to cleaning it?

I also added some Knobless Cylinder extensions available from A Bit of This and A Bit of That. Unfortunately, her cylinders must be a slightly different size than mine, because although the smaller cylinders fit just right, the bigger circles are different enough to be noticeable. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that. I really like her patterns, and I don't really have the time/energy to go making my own.

Of course, this is kind of a moot point -- I tried to interest Nugget in these (both by offering them and by working on them myself), and although she half-heartedly added a few, she really didn't want to do it.

I really just need to give up on these spatial Sensorial activities. I tried three times to interest her in other ways. First, a Pink Tower extension where I built the tower, had her close her eyes, and removed one of the cubes. The idea was that she would show me where it was missing from. Did it once, wanted nothing else to do with it. I tried showing her that the small block was the difference between the sizes of other blocks. She moved the block up and down the tower but showed no real interest. And then I tried building a Pink Tower + Brown Stair extension, which she first tried to get me to stop doing, then half heartedly added the top one or two.

It's just not her thing. I think that finally got through to me today. The problem is, I hate having these core Montessori activities staring at me day after day. I feel like I have to try to get her involved in them. But that's my vow for today -- I will drop my pushing of the Sensorial materials. I will pretend that they aren't even there.

Well... except that I'll set out the Red Rods soon. We're short on space, so I've been waiting for the back-ordered stand from Montessori Outlet. I called them (again!) today, to hear that Color Tablet box 4 and the Small Numerical Rods should ship this week, but the stand isn't expected until late April. Guess it's time to start asking other Montessori suppliers if they think their stand will work for these rods. In the meantime, maybe I can find the space for them somewhere.

The Sensorial activity she really enjoyed was the texture balloons.

I filled 4 pairs of red and blue balloons with flour, oatmeal, dry barley, and beads. Nugget chose to do this activity multiple times today, and we did it a bunch of different ways. We matched, held two and said if they were the same or different, ranked them by "bumpiness", and identified their contents by feel. Sometimes I was the "teacher", sometimes she was the "teacher", so we both did all these activities multiple times. She got quite a kick of of this!

Nugget also chose to do yoga, Sandpaper Letters, and some puzzles.

We spent about an hour in the room, and it was getting close to time to go to storytime at the library. She was starting to get antsy, but we could have extended our time a bit. But when I was taking down the Pink Tower + Brown Stair build, one of the larger Pink Tower cubes fell out of my hand and smacked her in the back. Those things are HEAVY! The poor girl was rightfully upset, and that ended our Montessori day then and there.

We probably won't have any time in the room tomorrow. Later in the week I want to put out some vowel Sandpaper Letters and noun cards. She's also asking for another animal activity, so I want to come up with something for that. I have the Desert Toob that I could do in the same vein as the Arctic and North American, but I'm not really feeling it. I'd like to think up something new.

Since she loves Loves LOVES animals so much, I think I really should move into living/non-living and then further into animal studies. I think she'd get a real kick out of trying to identify the various types of frogs and turtles in the Toob or sorting animals by where they live. I think that's much more up her alley than playing with blocks -- no matter how traditionally Montessori they might be.

Week 5 review, week 6 preview

2010-03-07T20:31:00.003-05:00

I think last week went well for getting back on track for more stability! I'm going to keep that up this week. I've got some new items to put out for tomorrow, but then things will stay stable (except for the language materials).

Most of what I'm adding is Sensorial -- some Knobless Cylinder extensions, texture balloon matching, and a mystery bag. I also did a swap of the main Practical Life activity -- funnel pouring to scrubbing a seashell -- and new yoga cards.

In Language, we've got one more day's worth of consonant Sandpaper Letters and noun cards. After that, I think I'll put out the vowels and associated cards. At that point, I can be sure that she can recognize all the letters and their sounds and that she can hear those sounds at the beginning of words.

So I guess, after that, I'll need to work on some activities for ending and middle sounds. There's I Spy, of course (a constant through our day), but I'd like to have some activities for her to work through.

I think Nugget will be kind of disappointed that I don't have another animal sound activity out, but I'm really burned out tonight. I've been working on the room for 90 minutes, and I'm not sure where the time went! I don't feel like I've made that many changes!

Part of it is that I just tonight decided that we'd try to grab some time in the room tomorrow. We won't be around Tuesday morning (various appointments), so I need to get in there when I can this week.

Week 5, day 5: A few minutes here, a few minutes there

2010-03-06T10:48:00.005-05:00

Again, I didn't plan to get into the room today. But I was cleaning the kitchen and Nugget was playing with some stuffed animals, and suddenly I realized that I hadn't heard her in a while. I checked her room and the playroom, but finally found her in the Montessori room!

She'd pulled out the new Sandpaper Letters I set out and the noun cards, and was busily matching by beginning sound. How fabulous!

She did those just fine and then did a few puzzles. We didn't have time to go any further because my husband got home from work and needed to head to bed.

I had been a bit torn about her recent jaunts into the room to do the puzzles. We purposefully separated the Montessori area from the rest of the house to keep it special. That she was going in there more frequently but for shorter bursts only for the puzzles -- even though I love what the recentering does for her -- causes me some concern that I won't be able to get the longer work cycles out of her when we do "school time".

But seeing her chose another activity besides the puzzles (the letters, in this case) gives me hope that she's choosing to use the room when she's in a receptive state for a particular skill.

If things worked out that we spent 1-2 hours a day, 2-4 times a week in the Montessori room together and that she felt free to choose to work in there independently for short bursts, I think that would be just perfect.

There've been some interesting posts up on other Montessori blogs recently about length and frequency of work time (for instance, this one from Walk Beside Me and this one from What DID We Do All Day), so this is a topic that's been on my mind. I'm trying to figure out how to balance the benefits that I believe come from a consistent and extended work period (one of the reasons I chose Montessori) with the flexibility that our family wants in our day to day life (one of the reasons we chose homeschooling). Add into that that we're just beginning all this, so I lean toward being less flexible in order to establish a good pattern and work habits... and, on the flip side, that we've got a newborn due any day now which will, of necessity, disrupt things for a while.

All that to say... I have no idea what I'm doing. *lol*

Week 5, day 4: Recentering

2010-03-05T15:54:00.002-05:00

Although I hadn't scheduled any official Montessori time for a few days, Nugget has gone into the room on her own a few times recently. It seems the animal and botany puzzles have become her recentering activity of the moment.

This changes frequently -- for a while it was jigsaw puzzles or stamps or books. Right now it's telling stories to herself while doing the same puzzles over and over again. It's interesting to watch. She goes into the activity scattered and easily aggravated. Then she becomes totally involved in what she's going and starts to talk to herself. Occasionally, she'll pop out with a question for one of us. If you listen to what she's muttering and asking, you'll sometimes notice that she's kind of reviewing the day. Questions about things from earlier will come out of nowhere.

She worked on this for nearly an hour, distracted only when her Dad woke up from his nap.

After a break for some play time, I made up a game using some beanbags she was throwing around. I wrote all the letters on a huge sheet of packing paper, then handed her a bag and gave it a name ("This is a mommy bag. This is a bunny bag.") Her job was to take the beanbag to the letter sound that the word started with. We did this for quite a while, and I was able to nail down the few letters she needs help with (hearing a/e, i/e, and r/w, recognizing b/d/p). This'll be a great help for the next few weeks; I can feel like we're making progress in the language area instead of just review.

Week 5, day 3: Stability

2010-03-03T10:37:00.004-05:00

I didn't change a thing last night. When I woke up, I realized that I hadn't swapped the Sandpaper Letters, and started to do that... but then I remembered that she hadn't chosen the Letters yesterday, so I didn't need to change them.

Nugget ran for the room early this morning -- she and her Daddy made chocolate chip pancakes and as soon as she'd had her fill of those, she dashed into our bedroom asking to do Montessori.

Of course, she chose the animals first. I got smart this time and used my sticker maker to make the letter labels repositionable (I'd glued them down last time), so I moved those around on her before she started. She, of course, did just fine. Again, igloo is a bit of a sticking point, but if she thinks about it for a second, she gets it.

Next, the Sandpaper Letters. We did g, j, n, and v. And because the noun pictures are in a small, wooden treasure chest, she told a story about a pirate while she was doing it. Again, no problem with any of those letters or sounds.

I suggested she do all 4 Cylinder Blocks so that she could crawl into the middle of them when she'd finished. She chose our blue striped rug so that it would be a pond (when she choses the brown striped rug, it's a muddy pit). I pulled the cylinders out, she put them all back. This time, the story started out being about heffalumps and woozles looking for their houses, but turned into mommy and daddy and baby cylinders finding where they lived. She did all four without any help from me.

She took a small break to hop on the bed, while I pulled out double sets of the Knobless Cylinders to make into various patterns. She helped a bit, but doesn't really have any interest in this. She's never been the sort of kid to be interested in blocks, and that seems to extend to the Sensorial block-like items.

Nugget tried the color shade matching, choosing to do the purple. (Note: although the display looks great on the shelf, the picture frames holding the clothespins all fall over when she carries it.) She mixed up a few, and wasn't really interested.

She chose to pour with the funnel next. She does it perfectly nearly every time -- except once, when she makes a terrific mess. Well, it means she gets to push the sugar around with her little broom and dustpan. She still can't sweep it into a pile, but she enjoys trying.

Her Daddy did some yoga with her next, and then it was back to the animals. Then we did puzzles -- she would pick one for her and one for me. These are significantly easier for her than they were yesterday. She did nearly all of them, then gave a cursory effort at the dressing items.

And, by then, it had been an hour and 15 minutes and she was done. So we snuggled and huggled for a while to give her a chance to recharge. There's been a few days when she's seemed pretty drained at the end of our Montessori time, and she's spent the rest of the morning easily frustrated and irritable. I'm not sure how much of that is just having a bad day and how much is the mental drain, but I'm going to put an effort into a wind-down time at the end of our work. It's a small sample size, but she's doing much better today -- even after our work time, she's choosing to play independently and working things out on her own (except I just jinxed it, and now she's having a small breakdown).

All in all, a good day. If we finish the week on this note, I'd be happy. We probably won't get any time in tomorrow because of Daddy-Daughter Day, and Friday is a midwife visit during our usual Montessori time. We might get some afternoon work time, or we might not.

Week 5, day 2: Arctic animals

2010-03-02T10:41:00.005-05:00

New material: new Sandpaper Letters and noun cards, arctic beginning sound matching

Today went pretty much as I expected. Nugget was drawn immediately to the new arctic animals, and she did them just fine. There was a slight confusion with igloo (e or i), but we got that straightened out and all the rest went without problem.

Since this was the first time these animals were out, we spent a while talking about each, looking at photographs, and watching videos (like building an igloo and dog sledding).

After she disengaged with that activity, she wandered for a bit, asking what was new and looking at the Sandpaper Letters, yoga cards, and color shades. She settled on the Knobless Cylinders, doing the remaining 3 boxes. We built towers of the green and red, then worked to arrange the blue in height order (identical diameters, differing heights). That wasn't easy for her, plus she was starting to disengage.

She went back to the animals, but was starting to break down. I sat down at a distance and tried to stay uninvolved, but she started to remove the animals from the activity and I had to step in and get her to put it away.

She took about a 10 minute break to wear her cardboard wings and pretend to be a bee in a honey tree (that's the theme for today, apparently) while I stepped back. After that, she funnel poured for about 5 minutes, then spent some time digging in the orange sugar. Then my husband came home from his run and I had to get her hands cleaned up. Nugget tried to show her daddy the animal activity, but she just wanted to play with them. Her concentration was shot; that was the end of our work time.

As I'd expected, she only really wanted to work with new materials. Like I said, I think it's going to take a while for her to readjust to the idea that things are more stable.

Week 5, day 1: Putting it all on the table (or shelves, as the case may be)

2010-03-01T15:10:00.006-05:00

I feel like a lot has changed since the last pictures of our Montessori environment, so I took some overview shots today.

This is our little corner of the master bedroom. (Yes, I know the last picture like this had the cat in it, too. He's the into-everything type.)

The Practical Life shelf is to the left on the picture. It has a funnel-pouring activity and yoga cards on the top shelf, dressing items and containers on the bottom shelf.

The funnel pouring has some orange sugar. I wanted to use dry barley, which would be a lot easier to clean up. But my funnel kept clogging on it (a great reminder to always test activities before setting them out). The orange sugar looks neat and pours well, but is definitely harder to clean up.

The yoga cards are from Montessori by Hand, as mentioned previously. I only have the 6 easiest of the 25 total cards out right now.

This is the Sensorial area, against the back in the overview picture. I have a small Ikea shelf to hold all the Cylinder Blocks and the Pink Tower extension sheets next to it. The first plastic shelf holds the Pink Tower, Knobless Cylinders, and Brown Stair. The top of the second plastic shelf has color matching; the bottom has rough and smooth, a blindfold, Smelling Bottles, and Sound Cylinders.

This is a close-up of the color shade matching. I'm happier with how it's presented now, although it's still not perfect.

Here's 3 of my homemade rough and smooth boards. This is the smooth, roughest, and middle grade. I have two other in-between grades tucked away.

This is the Language shelf. It's pretty empty today because I wanted to review some letters before putting out the next animal activity; that will go on the bottom. The top has 4 Sandpaper Letters and a treasure chest filled with coordinating noun cards. You can kinda-sorta see our rugs, rolled up in the corner space between the Sensorial and Language shelves.

These are the Math and Science shelves. Right now, the top has a shape puzzle and the bottom has our animal and botany puzzles.

I bought the shape puzzle set on sale at some discount store recently.

And finally, just a shot of our little table that Nugget does most of her work at. You can see my notebook on it; I take notes during each session about what she chooses and anything that strikes me (if something seems too easy or too hard, if the environment isn't working for her).

So, how did Nugget do with all this new stuff to go through? Much better than I expected, actually! I thought we'd have one of those days when she bounces from one thing to the next without spending any time on them. She checked out everything new, of course, but actually worked through everything.

I think the colorful box lids of the Knobless Cylinders grabbed her attention. That was what she pulled out first; the yellow box. I showed her how to line them up biggest to smallest and how to build a tower. Like the other size-based Sensorial items (Pink Tower, Brown Stair), she did them well but without much interest.

She did the funnel pouring once. That vase is way too tall, but I don't really have another option.

Then she spent 20 minutes working through each puzzle in order. She sat at her table, I sat on the bed and worked on the week's grocery list. She'd ask for help ("Mommy, can you help me with this? I need some help...."), but if I gave her an extra 5 seconds, she'd get it herself. That's just the phase she's in -- in Montessori and in daily life. The tree puzzle was by far the most difficult, but she finally got it. I was a little worried a few times -- she's got awkward and over-enthusiastic toddler hands, and those puzzles are made of pretty thin wood. But no damage so far....

Nugget spent some time wandering after the puzzles. She poked at the Sound Cylinders and the Sandpaper Letters before trying the shape puzzle. She tried the bird shape first, but got frustrated pretty quickly. I encouraged her to flip the sheet over and try the train, and I sat with her while she worked through it. Then we went back to the bird and completed that with some encouragement.

She went back to the Sandpaper Letters; I'd set out c, f, p, and s. She recognized each one and had no problem matching the noun cards. She did them all perfectly the first time.

Then she poured a few times -- cleanly for a while, then things got a bit messy. Next, we did the yoga cards together. That was pretty fun, and I was really happy with her body awareness. She's pretty slow on gross motor in general, but she enjoys things like gymnastics and yoga.

The wandering started again... poking at the Knobless Cylinders... wandering... looking at the color shade matching... wandering....

She settled in with the Sound Cylinders briefly. I reduced the number from 6 to 3, but two of them still sound too much alike. I might make our own, more distinct version and move to these laster. We at least talked a bit about loud and quiet.

Nugget started to wander again, and I pulled out Cylinder Block #4. She worked on some containers while I did that -- and it is tough! In Cylinder Block #4, all of the cylinders are the same diameter, but different heights. If you put a too-short cylinder in a too-deep hole, you have to turn the whole thing over and dump all of them out.

When I finished with Cylinder Block #4, I put all four out in a square and worked with them all at the same time. Nugget wasn't happy with me when I started out, but she finally settled in to watch... and then started to help... and then took over. And she did it just fine. She had to tell a story during it, of course. :) Something about an animal digging a hole? Her "reward" for finishing all four was to be able to climb in the middle of them and pretend it was a muddy hole.

And that pretty much ended our day. All together, about an hour and fifteen minutes. As I said, I was happy with her level of concentration given all of the new material.

Tomorrow, most of what's out will stay constant. I'll put out some new letters and, hopefully, another animal beginning sound activity (this depends on my energy level tonight which, so far, is pretty low). I think I'll set out another shape pattern card, as well.

We'll see how she reacts to a day in a nearly-identical set-up. I think it'll take at least a week or two for her to get used to this idea, so I'm going to go into it not expecting too much.

Exhausted

2010-02-28T21:27:00.002-05:00

I spent 2 hours tonight pulling together the materials for this week... and I'm not even sure we'll head into the room tomorrow!

*keels over*

Week 4 review, week 5 preview

2010-02-27T19:27:00.004-05:00

We had one really good day this week, the others were mediocre. I definitely felt like we needed this weekend break, though. We have the choice of getting back into the room on Monday, but I'm going to have to ponder whether I'd rather delay until Tuesday.

Nugget is very much looking for what's new these days, and I think it's preventing her from going back to things she's seen once. So now that I've tried it both ways, I think I prefer making most changes over our break. I imagine I'll need to swap out the language material more often (like rotating letters every day), but I'm going to aim to make practical life and science changes weekly and sensorial changes even less often.

So over this weekend, I'll get the sensorial to a place that I'd like it to stay for a while. I'll add Cylinder Block #4. I think I'll reduce the 6 Sound Cylinders to 3 (I'd had it at 6 because I didn't expect her to try matching). I still have in reserve the Red Rods (STILL waiting for the back ordered stand for them), the Baric Cylinders (those are HARD), a mystery bag (not sure if she'd get the concept), and the Knobless Cylinders. I also need to finish the color shade matching, although she's not terribly interested in that right now. I wish I could think of a better way to display it. And I'm thinking about making sensorial balloons (deflated balloons filled with different textured items to feel and match, like beans and popcorn kernels and flour).

I'm a bit torn about introducing the Red Rods; I'm not sure she'd grasp lining them up with their bottoms even, and I don't really have space for them without the stand. So I guess those will stay back. I'm also unsure about the Knobless Cylinders, mostly because they seem like a nice, easy thing to be able to add in once Sprout comes... but I guess, if I'm following the idea that she should be allowed to pick her own direction, that they should go out.

Practical life.... I think I want to keep a weekly rotation going here. I have one shelf to dedicate to practical life, so I can have out 2-4 activities. She's been completely ignoring the dressing items, so I'll probably remove those. She also completely ignored wet pouring all week, so that'll be gone. Maybe folding? Oooh, maybe a funnel for solids. I've also received prints of the yoga cards from Montessori by Hand and have a nice little basket for them, so I'll start by putting about 3 out and slowly add cards. Nugget LOVES her gymnastics class, and I think she'll really love the yoga. I'm also hoping it'll provide the opportunity to take a more physical break during our work time.

Language. I guess I'll keep working through Sandpaper Letters and beginning sound cards until I've verified that she remembers all the letter shapes and their sounds (since it's been a few months since we've worked on them officially). Of course, we're still doing language work outside of the classroom, like I Spy, rhymes, and recognizing beginning and ending sounds in random words. She so loved that animal set-up that I think I'll do another one. I've got a bunch of arctic animals, and that's easy to make -- white for ice, blue for water.

Science! Well, I've got the animal and botany puzzles tucked back. She's been into puzzles lately. I guess, if I'm putting it all on the table... those should come out. More experimental-type activities, I'd like to rotate weekly. I'll put sink and float away, but maybe something where I have a "boat" that floats and she adds weights (coins, etc) one-by-one until it sinks?

Geography, I'm going to continue holding back on even though I have a nearly-completed sandpaper globe and the continents puzzle. That's definitely something that can wait; it's still pretty abstract for her at this stage.

This next week will be the start of our second month doing this! Amazing!

Week 4, day 4: Sick day

2010-02-26T13:46:00.007-05:00

New materials: green shade matching, rough & smooth matching, Sound Cylinders, Cylinder Block #3, picture cards for beginning sounds. (I'll put pictures up later today.)

Nugget caught my husband's sniffles, so we only spent about 30 minutes in the room today. Once again, she spent most of her time asking what was new. I'm hoping to get most all of the Sensorial material that I'm going to have out for the medium-term out by next week, so that the work available will be more stable.

Nugget went right to the Sandpaper Letters. A few evenings ago, I bought the picture set for beginning consonant sounds from Montessori for Everyone. It's the sort of thing that I could have made on my own, but I don't have the time and energy to sink into that right now. It's really nice to have another option. The PDF arrived soon after my order, and it was easy to print and use. We won't use the sounds for X -- they aren't the true "cks" sound. But nothing starts with that anyway, so... what're you going to do? It is a little frustrating that the vowel set is nearly as expensive as the much-larger consonant set, though -- I probably won't spring for that.

I'm thinking about using the Pink material from Montessori for Everyone, too -- Nugget will probably be getting into that around when I've got an infant, so I really doubt I'll have the energy for it then, either. :) They also have some really nice free materials on their website. And if you fan them on Facebook, they have pretty interesting Montessori-related updates.

I set out 4 letters for Nugget -- b, m, r, and w. These are letters she's worked with on the animal beginning sounds activity, and I thought they sounded fairly different. I didn't realize until we started working that she pronounces 'r' and 'w' very similarly. But, with one exception ('watermelon', which went under 'r'), she matched everything correctly and without difficulty. I want to work through all the letters, to make sure she knows all of them... I'm trying to figure out a way to do that faster than working with a couple letters at a time. The Sandpaper Letters are so huge, I can't see having them all out.... maybe I break out the Moveable Alphabet and have her choose the appropriate starting sound?

After the letters, she chose the 3 rough and smooth tablets I set out (smooth, roughest, middle). She didn't want to use the blindfold, though, so this didn't work out very well. She felt and matched, but by look, not feel. I tried putting the tablets under our second rug and having her reach under, but I couldn't get the concept across to her. Another case of just a tad too young.

Next, Nugget pulled out the Sound Cylinders. I set out one full set of 6, intending for her to just shake and listen. But some of them sound very similar, and she started matching them up on her own. I didn't want her matching things that aren't actually the same, so I pulled out the second box of Sound Cylinders. We matched (close enough, at least -- even I can't tell the difference between some, but I have tin ears) and we talked about softer and louder.

She moved to the Smelling Bottles (just sniffing them) and Cylinder Block #3 (which she did once with no difficulty). She poked at one container and did the animal beginning sounds once. But she was really done, so we moved on to some arts & crafts.

I've got some thinking to do about the frequency of introducing new materials and how to keep her engaged in materials that she's seen before. She's a neophile -- takes after her mom. :)

Opinions on geometric items

2010-02-26T10:12:00.005-05:00

Now that we're almost a month into our Montessori work, I'm considering filling in our supplies a bit. I'm pretty sure I want to get some Geometric Solids, but the prices for them on the Montessori sites are pretty high. I've found some sets of wooden solids online which include nearly all of the typical Montessori solids and more (except for the egg shape, strangely, but I think that would be pretty easy to find in a craft store, especially around Easter). My only real concern is that I think these are smaller than the Montessori solids -- they're about 2-3 inches.

If you have the Geometric Solids, do you like them? What size are they, and what do you think about that size?

I'm also pondering the Geometric Cabinet. Buying one is likely out of our price range, but I'm considering making a version. It would take quite a bit of effort, though, and I want to make sure we'd get a fair amount of use out of it. Do you have one? Does it get used regularly and for a variety of activities?

Any other materials you use and love in your homeschooling?

Adding capacity

2010-02-26T08:12:00.002-05:00

We didn't have any Montessori time on Thursday because it was Daddy-Daughter Day. While they were out shopping, though, they picked up some more shelves for the room. Since I've made the decision to keep more of the Sensorial materials out, we needed some extra space. I'm amazed at how fast the shelves fill up!

We're still using the plastic shelving from Target, built 2-high instead of 4-high. That makes the top shelf a great height for my short kid. We figure that, down the line, when we've got 2 kids' worth of stuff in there and Nugget is taller, we can cut the legs of the shelves down and stack them 3-high: top for Nugget, bottom for Sprout, and middle for both.

I'm loving the wooden trays from Michaels. What I didn't realize at first was that they have two sizes, and I had to go back yesterday to buy more smaller ones. I use the smaller ones for most things, and the bigger ones for especially large activities (cutting and gluing needed a large tray). I also have some of the plastic finger painting trays. Those are nearly too big for Nugget to move on her own, but they're great for very large activities (animal beginning/ending sounds) or wet/messy activities (like sink and float).

There's still more room-arranging to be done; I only got one set of shelves in, and I need to put in a second. But that's going to require moving the (rarely used) computer desk. And baby stuff is going to need to start claiming room in there, too...