Australia, insects, and golden beads

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

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

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?