Starting into math

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!

Opinions on geometric items

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?

Remainder of the Montessori Outlet order

This is the box for the movable alphabet....


and here's the box, filled with the Movable Alphabet. The box is a nice, solid wood, and the letters are thin, painted wood. Some of them were stuck together (like they'd been piled up while the paint was still tacky), but they came apart relatively easily and I don't see any damage to the finish.


Sandpaper letters in their box. Some of the letters are oriented horizontally, some vertically. This means that when they're right-side up, the box looks pretty messy. But... *shrug*.


Metal Inserts. How much of a dork am I that the "metal" part of Metal Inserts never really registered, and I was surprised to find that they were, in fact, metal? *lol*


Large number cards.


Spindle box. The spindles fit 3-across in each bin, so it's easy to glance and verify that the number in each is correct.


Sandpaper numerals in box.


Introduction to Decimal Tray. I love this. A single bead, a 10 bar, a 100 square, and a 1000 cube. I love staring at the 1000 cube. One of the circles on the end of a bar in the 1000 cube had fallen off, but it doesn't seem to affect the integrity of the cube or individual beads. I just stuck it back in -- if it keeps falling out, I'll put in a dab of glue.


The rest of the bead material. I got the extra units, 10 bars, and the wooden squares and cubes (there are more of the cubes, I just left them in the box). I think this combination will take us pretty far.


Colored bead stair.


USA map and...


control chart for USA map. I realize now that I forgot to photograph the continents puzzle and control! Anyway, these are huge. And very precisely cut. The pieces are relatively thin wood, but they feel solid enough. And the cuts are just so tight and neat... it's just very cool.


Botany puzzles with cabinet and....


animal puzzles with cabinet. Same as the map puzzles, very precisely cut.

And, finally... my homeschooling closet!


I took the idea from another blogger to leave everything in its boxes, but label all sides. I still haven't admitted to myself that all of this is mine, so I've stuck with labeling painters tape and putting that on all sides.

I've dedicated a shelf to each area. The top is culture and science, then math, language, sensorial, and practical life on the bottom shelf. At the very bottom I'm keeping my albums and books that Nugget hasn't grown into yet.

Oh, a note for unpacking. Each white box from Montessori Outlet contains one item and a small slip of paper with a manufacturing lot. If there's a problem with the quality, they want you to call them with that number. When you're in the excitement of unpacking, those tiny slips fly everywhere before you even realize what they are. Once I caught on, I started taping them to the label of each box. But I've got a couple that fell out early on that I can't match back to the material. So, learn from my mistake -- catch those slips!

Supplies arrive; pics of Sensorial

Our Montessori supplies arrived a day early!


I've gotten everything out of its shipping boxes and done a basic verification that the shipping list is correct and everything is in one piece. There were 3 things backordered -- small number rods, color tablets #3, and the stand for the red rods.

After the big unpacking, I started going through everything individually. I decided to start with the Sensorial materials, first labeling the box on all four sides with the name of the material (the provided labels are quite small) and then carefully examining each material and running through an exercise.


The pink tower. I was impressed with this material -- it's very solid and pretty heavy. It feels very substantial.


The brown stair was also very substantial. I love the look of the natural finish; I'm really glad I put the extra few dollars into that option.


The red rods don't feel quite as heavy as the pink tower or brown stair, but still feel solid.


The knobbed cylinders are fabulous. They're beautiful! A few cylinders fit a bit more loosely than the others, but not so much that anyone else will notice. :)


The smelling bottles are plastic bottles with a perforated top and lid.


The sound cylinders are pre-loaded with material. The far ends are easy to tell apart, but the middle ones are tricky! I think I'm going to have my husband try them with me and make sure we agree on the pairings. The cylinders don't come with a control of error, so we'll have to pair them and then mark the bottoms so that Nugget can check her own work.


The knobless cylinders are perfect. And so inviting! I wanted to sit down and arrange them all right away.


This is the mystery bag with geometric shapes. I didn't really expect it to include two bags, but there you go.

I realize now that I didn't photograph the baric tablets. Now those are tricky! I might actually have to resort to a very sensitive scale to mark them for control of error.

After going through all of the Sensorial material, it was too late in the evening to dig into the rest of the shipment. So I packed everything into our newly-dedicated homeschooling closet, and I'll start going through everything else tomorrow night!

Initial Montessori order

The Montessori materials are scheduled to arrive on Thursday! It took nearly 2 weeks for them to ship from Montessori Outlet, but it's given me time to work on the environment and a few materials that I didn't order.

You might be curious as to what we're getting. I started with the Special Offer package #1, but made a number of changes. Some changes were influenced by what I thought Nugget would like, and some were areas I thought were lacking in the package. Keep in mind that although I'm open to creating my own materials, I'm 30 weeks pregnant. I don't have a lot of energy to put into creating the materials right now, and I won't have a lot of free time for it once Sprout arrives.

Here's my reasoning:

Practical Life:
- Nothing. Yup, nothing. The package included some basic dressing frames, but I feel like this is an area we can work on in day-to-day life because we're homeschooling. If I do think Nugget or Sprout could benefit from dressing practice, I think I lean toward sewing some dressing vests. For me, there's a big gulf between being able to do buttons or bows on something facing me versus an item of clothing that I'm wearing.

Sensorial:
- All the basics: Cylinder Blocks, Knobless Cylinders, Pink Tower, Brown Stair, Red Rods
- Color Tablets #3. The package included just Color Tablet #1, but Nugget is so far beyond red/yellow/blue. She can also identify all the colors in Color Tablet #2. She's probably not quite ready for Color Tablet #3, but it's something to grow into.
- Baric Tablets, Sound Boxes, Smelling Bottles, Mystery Bag with Geometric Shapes
- I did NOT purchase any of the Touch Boards or Touch Tablets. I've already made the Touch Tablets from sandpaper -- it took me just a few dollars and a few minutes. I think I'd still like to make a Touch Board or two, but I can just use the leftover sandpaper.

Language:
- I upgraded from a small Moveable Alphabet to a medium one. Nugget's already anxious to work on this, and I didn't want her fumbling with the tiny letters.
- Lowercase Sandpaper Letters, box for them.
- Metal Insets and Stand. I did NOT get the tray -- my understanding is that there's some disagreement about whether that nullifies part of the exercise (holding the inset steady while tracing).

Science and Culture:
- Botany Puzzle Cabinet and Leaf, Tree, Flower puzzles
- Animal Puzzle Cabinet and Horse, Frog, Fish, Turtle, Bird puzzles
- World and USA Puzzle Maps

Mathematics (here is where I made the most changes -- I feel the package was lacking a lot in this area, especially the bead material):
- Sandpaper Numerals and box
- Spindle Box with 45 Spindles
- Small Numerical Rods
- Large Wooden Number Cards with box
- Introduction to Decimal Quantity with Trays
- Colored Bead Stair
- 100 Golden Bead Units with box
- 45 Golden Bead Bars of 10 with box
- 10 Wooden Squares of 100
- 10 Wooden Cubes of 1000

I struggled over this list a lot. I was trying to hit as close to $1000 as possible, while getting the basics for early Montessori and anything I thought could grow with Nugget, even if we decided not to stick with Montessori after the first year or two.

The bead material was probably where I put most of my effort. The package included NO bead material in it. I understand they were probably trying to keep the cost down, but I feel the bead material is one place that the Montessori method shines. Plus, it's very flexible even when working in a non-Montessori fashion. Having those quantities to manipulate is very appealing to me.

So I did a lot of calculating to try to select bead material that would go as far as possible for the least cost. The more complex bead chains are far enough down the line for us that I can decide later if they're worth the investment of money (to buy) or time (to create).

A big area that I'm skipping is the Geometric Cabinet. To me, the cost seems so out of line with the benefit. If I start to feel like I'm really missing it, I think I'd rather put some time into creating something similar versus absorbing the cost.

One area I'm definitely going to put some time into is Geography. Montessori Outlet doesn't offer any globes, and I've always loved the Sandpaper Globe and the Continents Globe. Luckily, Target is currently selling small globes in their dollar section! I've been spending my evenings painting the first one -- blue oceans, brown land -- and am now experimenting with how best to adhere sand to the landforms. Once that's done, I'll move on to the Continents Globe. I'd really like to introduce those before I move to the Puzzle Maps, so they're first on my list.

Hopefully, I'll have boxes of fun Montessori material to photograph and share with you later this week!