Montessori Monday–Lesson Planning

As I mentioned last week, we’re taking a break from the Montessori room so that we can get ready to homeschool Monkey full time next Wednesday.  This week, instead, I’m going to post a little about the goals and planning for this coming year, and in particular, the first semester.  Next week, I’ll post pictures of our homeschooling space.

Monkey will be 3 1/2 years old this fall, and we’ll be starting the first year of the 3 year cycle.  Here is the curriculum we are going to be using:

Main Curriculum:

Click to go to Worldwide Montessori

Worldwide Montessori’s albums for sensorial, practical life, math, physical science, history, astronomy, geology, geography, ecology, botony, language, and zoology.  I also took Karen’s online training class to learn the basics for working with her albums.

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Nature:

Click to go to the Handbook of Nature Study blog

The Handbook of Nature Study–both the book by Anna Comstock and the Handbook of Nature Study blog.

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Art:

Click to view Child Size Masterpieces

Child-Size Masterpieces is an art curriculum for preschoolers and kindergartners where the focus is on postcard sized reproductions of actual fine art pieces. 

Click for Mary F. Kohl's list of publications

For the creative art applications, we are primarily using books from Mary F Kohl.  We have half a dozen of her art books, and they never disappoint.  Her books are less on the final product and more about the process, which is usually very messy and kid friendly!

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Piano:

Click for Alfred's All in One course

Alfred’s Basic All in One Course, book 1.  I learned to play piano as an adult using Alfred’s adult course, and I will be using the all in one child’s course for Monkey.  It’s for children 5 and up, but we’ll be breaking down each lesson into smaller parts for Monkey.  We’ve had a piano for 6 years–it’s about time I get around to teaching one of my kids how to play it!

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Foreign Language:

Click for rosetta stone's Vietnamese version

Monkey has been dying to learn as much about Vietnam as she can.  I’ve had this Rosetta Stone Vietnamese version for 4 years but haven’t pulled it out recently.  Monkey and I are going to use it together so we can both learn, and I’ll also be adding some 3 part cards for Monkey.  We have several Vietnamese children’s videos, and Vietnamese Sing and Learn children’s cd that we’re also going to add.

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Physical activity:  Monkey takes weekly gymnastics lessons and weekly Tang Soo Do lessons, so those will double as phys ed.

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It looks like a lot, but we are going to take 3 years to get through everything, when individually, each piece of curriculum would likely take a year.  Also, she’ll have access to each thing all day long to do as she wants to do, so it’s not like we’ll be spending 6 hours a day 5 days a week in the homeschool room. 

For our weekly presentation schedule, here is how I plan to introduce new presentations (each thing will stay on the shelves for as long as she needs them to be there…)

Monday: Sensorial, Zoology, Creative art, Geology

Tuesday: Practical Life, History

Wednesday: Language, Botany, Cooking or Astronomy

Thursday: Geography, Physical Science, Ecology, Foreign Language

Friday: Math, Piano, Music, Fine art

So, the first week looks like this (I still have a few more spots to fill out)…forgive my shorthand–each shorthand corresponds to the appropriate presentation in the album so I just wrote down abbreviated titles:

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23Sensorial 1: Knobbed Cylinders block 1 Sensorial 2: Pink cubes: horizontal & matching cards Zoology: General Art: Crayons Geology:  Rock hunting

24Practical Life 1: Transferring objects w/ hand Practical Life 2: Dry pouring pitcher-pitcher Practical Life 3: Spooning Practical Life 4: Sweeping broom Practical Life 5: Velcro dressing frame History: How many rings

25Language 1: Bead stringing Language 2: Cubes & cards Language 3 Sticker pattern card: Botany: General intro Cooking/Astronomy: Psychomotor:

26Geography 1: Geography concrete objects Geography 2: Abstract pictures Physical Science: Concrete flashlight Ecology: General intro Foreign Language: Rosetta Stone

27Math: Egg carton activity Piano: Fingers have numbers Music: Drums Art: Psychomotor: