Our reading program is clicking!

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)

Small steps

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

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?

Progressive Phonics

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.

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

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.

Sept wk 2, day 5: Touch

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 3: Taste

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

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 1 day 4: Staying healthy

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!!

Details later....

Sept wk 1 day 2: Brain, heart, lungs

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

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.

Parts of a flower

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

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

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!

Turtles!

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.

Week 9, day 1: Slowly getting back on track

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!

Week 8, day 3: Just a few minutes

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 6, day 3: Desert animal activity

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

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.