Montessori Monday September 19, 2011

Bitty Bug is 2 years 8 months old.  Monkey is 4 years 7 months old

Here is a review of Bug & Monkey’s week in the Montessori room.

Bug working with her rainbow stacker

 

Bug working with a screwdriver

 

Bug building the pink tower

 

Jedi giving Monkey a geography lesson. Monkey wanted to know where Ohio, Vietnam, Russia, and Antarctica were.

 

Bug working on the natural objects & cards matching

 

Bug using toaster tongs to transfer pom poms to a mini muffin tin

 

Bug using a spoon to transfer shells from one bowl to the other

 

Pouring sand from one pitcher to the other

 

Monkey polishing shoes. To do this work, I laid out several different brushes (a soft tooth brush, a stiffer brush, and then a very stiff nail brush).

 

Bug polishing shoes. Because regular shoe polish is highly toxic, I wanted an all natural solution that is safe for skin and in case a little one accidentally got some in her mouth. I mixed 2 parts lemon juice with one part olive oil for a super safe shoe polish.

 

Pouring the water in the little bowl to rinse the dirt off the shoes. The girls *loved* the shoe polishing work. They now have some very clean looking shoes. 🙂 I think they worked on just that one work for hours!

 

The basket of geometric solids--we worked on cylinder, pyramid, and prism

 

Using toaster tongs to build a tower of cubes

 

Bug using a funnel to pour water into a small necked jar

 

Monkey using the spindle box

 

Monkey was on a big counting kick last week...here she is with the numerals & counters

Toddler Tuesday March 1, 2011

Bitty Bug is 2 years 1 month old

Bitty Bug has been trying to do more work with Monkey in the school room this week.  As a result, the school room usually looks like a tornado hit.  So, we’ve also been working with Bug on putting things back on the shelf.  This is a slow-going process for sure, but I think she’s starting to finally get it!  At first, she resisted a lot, as toddlers tend to do.  But slowly, she’s starting to come around and at least make an attempt to put things back on the shelf!

While Monkey was working on sorting coins this week, Bug wanted to work on dry pouring the coins.

Using a spoon to transfer little glass pebbles into the ice cube tray.

Pinning clothes pins to the rim of the basket.

Working with her wooden rainbow. She was naming colors and attempting to sort by size.

In size order.

As always, Bug loves playing the musical instruments!

Bug had a lot of interest in exploring the geometric solids this week as well. She liked to feel which ones were smooth & round, and which ones were pointy.

Montessori Monday January 12, 2011

Monkey is 3 years 11 months old

This was our first week back in the schoolroom since before the holidays, and Monkey was able to jump right back into things with no problem at all!  I didn’t bring out many new works this week because I wanted her to be able to review some of the things we did over the past few months.  It’s actually kind of amazing how much she was into the basics when I took away all of the “special” holiday-themed lessons!  She didn’t seem to miss them at all (I’m not sure if I should be happy that she can easily go back to the basic works, or sad because those special lessons take so long to develop! LOL!)

Here are a few pictures from the past week (please remember that I’m no longer posting pictures of the children that make them easily identifiable due to this blog being so public.  )

We started a unit on the solar system this week. The first lesson was on the sun. Because my universe set doesn't have a sun in it, I had to make this one out of a foam craft ball.

One of the girls' new puzzles. This one sorts by color and shape! It's actually fairly difficult for all three of the kids (although Jedi obviously gets it after a little work!)

Working with the locks & keys

Working with the screwdriver boards

I found these neat sequencing cards at T@rget. There are quite a few of them in the box, with each set having 3 pieces (beginning, middle, & end)

Exploring minerals with a magnifying glass, and matching them with the control card

Reviewing the three sandpaper letters she was working on before break

Matching the geometric solids with their bases

Working with matching textures, while blindfolded!

Tot School Tuesday October 12, 2010

Bitty Bug is 20.5 months old

For a while this past week, we actually thought autumn might arrive.  The temperatures were nice and cool, the leaves started changing, the pumpkin farms are crowded, the fields around us began to be harvested.  And then, it got right back up to 90 degrees again.  Gotta love central Ohio!  Regardless of summer’s refusal to let go, Bug enjoyed working with a lot of autumn themed work this week.  She also loved going on walks almost every day since the weather has been so warm again…and she even decided to do a little exploring of the edge of a newly harvested field.  It’s amazing how long some empty corn cobs can entertain a toddler! 😉

This toy is a really good one--you have to sort by color and number. She gets the sorting by number part really well, but usually the colors end up mixed up by the end. She loves this toy!

Putting clothes pins on the rim of a basket. At first, she had a really hard time lining up the gap in the clothespin with the rim of the basket, but after a few minutes she got it. You could tell she was so proud of herself once she did!

Using her fingers to pick up dried corn kernals and put them in the bowl. She stuck with this for a surprisingly long time. Or maybe it's not so surprising considering her love for tiny objects. LOL!

Monkey was using the geometric solids, and Bug decided that they were pretty interesting. She enjoyed trying to figure out which ones could roll.

And apparently she had time to dye her hair this week... 😉 Just kidding of course...she has been playing in the dress-up trunk a lot. Monkey and Bug spend most of their day in various costumes now.

Our autumn sensory bin--Indian corn, corn kernals, some tweezers for pulling off the corn kernals, silk leaves, corn silk, corn leaves, fall colored pipe cleaners, various scoops (and later, we added some corn cobs we found on our nature walk)

There are also some spider rings and spider toys in there too. Bug really liked the spiders. For some reason, she also loves real spiders and picks them up by the legs to carry them around. Such a sweet and curious kid!

Bug's treasures. All of these had been flung out of the nearby field during the harvest. There are some leaves, a stalk, some corn plant roots, a couple empty corncobs, and a full one. All of these went down to the sensory bin.

Montessori Monday September 26, 2010

Monkey is 3  years 7 months old

Monkey had a fantastic time in her Montessori room this week.  I’m thinking it had a lot to do with the heavy focus on Vietnamese culture, and specifically Tet Trung Thu, that captured her interest.  She loves learning about her birth culture, and to have it highlighted in her homeschooling just drew her in.  We also added a new computer program we just bought called Let’s Learn Vietnamese by VNI, and now she is really interested in learning the Vietnamese language as well.  It’s a really difficult language to learn, but she’s always been fascinated with her Xuan Mai videos and her Vietnamese music CDs, so I think she’ll pick up on at least some of it rather easily.

And there are a ton of pictures for this week….

Looking at the inspiration book for the basket mask craft

This was the selection of books we used to learn about the Harvest festival traditions

Monkey painting her mask

Cutting on the lines to make paper lanterns

Whisking sand

Pouring water using a teapot

Using chopsticks to transfer wooden harvest veggies from one basket to the other

Working with a compass to determine which direction is north.

Looking through the Asian continent box

Still looking at the continent box

Working with the geometric solids. This was her first introduction to them, so she was feeling the surface and shape of each solid and then figuring out which ones roll

Using a sake set to pour sand

"Numerals and Fish". Monkey took a basket of cards and separated numerals from fish. This is to help her learn to recognize what a numeral is by using something really obvious (she knows what a fish is and knows when something is not a fish)

Scrubbing a rock

Making a dragon dance puppet

Monkey's so pleased with her puppet!

The second type of lantern. This one actually held a mini flashlight. Tissue paper is glued over the shaped holes, and monkey poked more holes using a paper punch

Monkey gluing her tissue paper

Jedi was home sick this week, and he decided to join us one day. Here, he's making a noisemaker out of beads.

Putting together her alphabet dragon