School This Week: The Tomten

I mentioned previously that we are trying something a bit different with our school time now.  Instead of being really strict with our Montessori time, I am branching out a little bit.  I looked through the Winter Wonderland curriculum over at Wee Folk Art, and I really like what I saw!  Wee Folk Art has a 12 week seasonal curriculum that is based in literature.  So we are trying bits and pieces of that along with our Montessori time, and so far it seems to be working well.

This week's picture book is The Tomten by Astrid Lindgren.  This was a new book to me and I loved it.  We read the book several times on Monday, and talked about the seasons and how the Tomten made tracks in the snow.  This would be great to do a couple of activities from Montessori for Everyone; I'm thinking the four seasons matching or the animal tracks activity.  Since I am planning on repeating this curriculum next year in the winter as well, I think I'll plan on using those then. 

On Wednesday, when we read through the story again, I pulled out some props and we acted out the story as I read.  I had made a set of rainbow gnomes for E for Christmas, so the red gnome was drafted to play the Tomten, and some of our Little People farm animals got in on the fun as well.  The purple parrot is pretending to be a chicken.  The white playsilk was for the snow, and the Tomten walked through the "snow" to check in on each animal.

After our story, we went upstairs to do some Montessori work.  I had a mat rolled out for E already with the pink tower cubes set up.  At first she did not want to work on that, but I told her she needed to do the pink tower first, and then she could choose a different thing to work on.  She built the tower correctly by herself and then I showed her how the smallest cube could "walk" along the edge of each bigger cube.  E thought that was pretty cool!

When she was finished with the pink tower, she did some good work with the brown stair and red rods before deciding it was time to go downstairs and do some music time.

I'm trying to incorporate some music into our school time each week.  You'd think that would be easy for me, after being an elementary music teacher, but somehow it's always the thing I forget about.  I'm going to save our music time for another post.  I'd like to get some good photos first, so you can see what we did with it.

We did several art projects for our first week of Winter Wonderland.  The curriculum suggests watercolor painting with salt, and I think we'll be doing that tomorrow.  We had a friend over for art and craft time and made the glittery window clings from Family Fun.  Ours did not turn out as expected, they're still beautiful, but I'm going to have to cut them out of the waxed paper and hang them with string. 

The other project we did was something I saw on Art Projects for Kids.  I drew snowflakes with white crayon on white paper and wrote E's name.  Then I cut the paper into quarters and had her paint each piece a different color with watercolors.  This turned out beautifully, and E was so excited to see her name revealed in the white crayon as she painted! (The picture is from Art Projects for Kids, so you could see what it looks like.  I didn't want to post ours since it has E's name all over the front of it)

I'm linking up to Montessori Monday and Preschool Corner.  Please take time to visit some of the other blogs linked up!  :)

What's on the Shelf?

As promised, here are the new activities out for E on her practical life shelf right now.

I switched up her pouring and used some of the red (orange) lentils and black beans from last month's sensory box.  I'm sure she's ready to try water pouring, but until she starts really paying attention to what she's doing with it, I'm not ready to try it on the school shelves.

Next to dry pouring is her spooning work: glass pebbles into a butterfly-shaped candy mold.  Which E, often as not, chooses to use her fingers instead of the spoon.

I pulled out an old activity that we haven't used for quite a while: sponging water!  E loves this activity, and will work happily with it for 20 minutes or so.  And she's gotten much better about not dripping water everywhere, so I'm happy.

On the bottom shelf, I FINALLY found a cheap appetizer tray with four sections to use for sorting.  Seriously, I don't know why this was so hard for me to find!  Last week, we dyed four different shapes of pasta into four different colors.  So her sorting can be done by color or by shape.

Next to the sorting work are our pumpkin life cycle three part cards.  I saw a neat tray/box for three part cards at Montessori Services - it had separate sections for the three sizes of cards.  I'm wondering if there is a way I could DIY it at home, it would be helpful to not have them sliding all over the tray all the time.

I also changed up our language shelf.  Nothing big over here, I just swap the letters out every week or so.  On the top shelf, we have our begining sound sort.  Right now E is working with /n/ and /k/. 

Our BOB alphabet books are on the top shelf as well, and I have the specific books with /n/ and /k/ out on top of the box.  E is always welcome to  take more books out of the box, but I like to put the letters we are working with on top for easy access.

Our Laurie CVC puzzles are on the middle shelf.  E loves these things!  I have eight different puzzles.  Right now, I try to put out ones that have no letters in common.  We talk about begining and ending sounds and she has to match the word to the picture.

Not pictured, but next to the CVC puzzles is our sand tray.  Right now, I will write a letter, and I have E trace it after me.  She wants so badly to learn to write her name, I thought this was a good first step.
On the bottom shelf is our alphabet puzzle.  I have a couple of different puzzles that deal with alphabetical order, and I rotate them to keep up her interest. 

Also on the bottom shelf, we have our geometric tile pictures.  These are another favorite and right now they get used almost every day.


I'll try to remember to post pictures again when I change out the shelf activities in a few weeks!

School this past week . . . or two . . . or three

Whew!  I took a bit of a break there!  Life has been getting a bit hectic, trying to fit in my work, E's school, housecleaning, and holiday crafting!!  I'm still feeling the pressure, so I probably won't be posting quite as much as we head into the holidays, but I'm going to try to get some school posts in here and there.  We ARE doing school time - 2 to 3 days a week.  I'm trying hard to keep 2 days with our Montessori work, the third day is often baking, nature walks, and art projects.  Another day in the week we have MOPS, our moppettes program is awesome, they really do some good "bible school" type work with the kiddos.

Anyhow, last week we had "pajama school!"  Every morning E woke up and wanted to do school work but would not get out of her jammies.  Isn't it great to be home and not have to put on real clothes until you want to?

Tuesday was an awesome day all around. I went to take a shower and when I came out, E was already hard at work with the continents map.

She also made up her own extension for the shape stacker.

 
I finally got around to printing out the pumpkin life cycle three part cards.  And I thought I would give it a go using the words as well as the pictures this time.  E really enjoyed the work.  I was pleasantly surprised that she was able to match most of the words on her own.  She got triped up on "seed" and "seedling" - I think that one was the only one she didn't self-correct. 

We also put together a pumpkin life cycle on a paper plate.  I got this printable from  A to Z teacher stuff, it includes a lesson plan (more for older kids) and these lift-the-flap type coloring pictures.  I had E match the words on this as well, first I wrote the word on the paper plate, then I had her find the coloring picture that matched and glue it on top of the word I wrote.

Other work E did this week included the sandpaper numbers (she traced them all and helped me put them back in the correct order), and the brown stair.  After she built the stair correctly on her own, I showed her how to match the pink tower cubes up to it.  E thought this was the coolest thing ever!  I just love the enthusiasm of the preschool set!

I'm currently (well as soon as I get off the computer) switching out practical life and language activities in the school room.  I'll have a post up on what's out as soon as I finish. 

Linking this post up to Montessori Monday at One Hook Wonder.

More Letter L

We had so much fun with our letter L activities last week, we decided to continue with them this week.  We went for a nature walk and collected the first fall leaves of the season.  You have to grab them fast around here!  One day they're green, the next they're yellow, and the third day the wind has been blowing and they're all gone from the tree!

E helped me press the leaves (very carefully) with the iron, and then we strung them up into buntings for our windows.

We also did a falling leaves craft a la No Time for Flashcards (can you tell what my favorite go-to website for kids crafts is??)  I traced some of our fall cookie cutters for the leaves and let E paint them. 

Once the paint was dry, I cut them out and we glued them on a construction paper spiral.  It looks so neat hanging in our dining room, and it spins around when the wind blows throught the window.

I wanted to get to a couple more leaf activities, but there weren't enough leaves yet.  Perhaps this week we'll be able to get a few purple ash and maybe our maple tree will start turning!

As far as Montessori activities go, this was not an outstanding week.  E did not have much interest in doing work in the schoolroom.  She did decide to do some work with the geometric tiles and geometric solids.  I think one day she spent 40 minutes on one picture, putting tiles on and taking them off again.

She also figured out how to make the tiles stand up on the table, very exciting!

Linking up to Toddler Tuesday and Tot School.

Our Week in School

We are finally settling down into a routine!  Hopefully that means I will find a bit more time to blog about what we've been up to.  Right now, we are doing school time Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings.  I am trying to make at least two of those days work time in the school room, Fridays are sometimes work time in the school room, and sometimes other projects to go with our theme. 

I have dubbed this week "the week of towers."  E chose to work with all the sensorial materials that she has been avoiding.  She built stairs and towers with the pink tower, brown stair, and yellow and green knobbless cylinders.  First, she built each material as a staircase, and then she stacked them up to make a tower.

Other sensorial work she chose this week included the geometric solids - doing a card sort of sphere and cylinder, shape tiles, and the sound jars.

E is still into all the language works I have put out.  This week, I changed up her begining sound sort.  Now she's working on /t/ and /f/.  She gets it in three ways: our alphabet box (if she asks to do the alphabet box, those are the drawers I pull for her), the sound sort cards, and our alphabet BOB books (I leave STU and EF out for her on top of the box).  I also changed out the Laurie CVC puzzles, now she's working on car and pig.

E also learned to put together the whole continent puzzle on her own this week!  That's quite an accomplishment for her - puzzles on the whole are not her strong suit.

As far as practical life activities go, E has been helping me in the kitchen quite a bit.  This week she helped me make Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Muffins.  No pictures of that, cooking with a 2 1/2 year old is enough - I don't need the camera, too!

On the shelf, she worked with the clothespin color wheel, as well as tonging apple buttons into an ice cube tray (she ended up using her fingers instead), and our spooning material.

This week was one without art projects!  I know, I know, how could I let the week go by!!  We've been playing a lot of games instead.  E's favorites right now are from our Leap Frog game box: Alphabet Go Fish and Dominoes.  She's getting pretty good!

Outdoors time this week was a visit to a farm.  This was such a fun trip!  I'll have to do a separate post on that, because I used the film camera and the pictures are all still being developed.

Linking up to Tot School and Toddler Tuesday.

Tot School

We had a busy week of school and other activities last week.  So busy, I couldn't get to the computer to write about it!  So busy, in fact, I forgot to take a lot of pictures.  But I guess that's how you know we've been working hard!

This week I presented part of the "metal insets" to E.  We don't actually have metal insets, we are just using our geometric cabinet.  I discovered a few weeks ago that she could trace the inside of a stencil, so I wanted to pull this out for her.  She was so excited about it!  Right now, we are only working on the first step, tracing the inside of the frame. 

E also really likes the new language works I've put out this fall.  The Laurie word puzzles are her favorites right now.

She has also done some beginning sound sorting with our alphabet box and the alphabet cards from Montessori for Everyone.

She does not choose sensorial work very often.  I certainly hope that changes as she gets a bit older!  But this week she did choose to work with the matrushka dolls.  (Ours are from the Simpsons - ha!)

Practical life work this week included things like sweeping pom poms off the floor and helping to clear the table and load the dishwasher after dinner.

We started our apple unit this week, and did a couple of art projects.  E painted green leaves onto a tree trunk, and then glued red pom poms down for apples. 

Later in the week, we did some apple printing (though the final product doesn't really look like it!) and made a letter A for Apple Prints to hang on our alphabet wall.

You may remember one of my goals for school this year is to get outside more.  We had planned to go on a short hike in the mountians this week, but then there was this fire.  So we settled for taking a walk around a pond near our house and playing at the park.  Still lots of fun, and hopefully the fires (yes, now there are more than one!) will be calmed down by the end of this week and we can go to the mountians then.

I'll be linking this post up to Toddler Tuesday and Tot School.

First Day of School!

Today was the day!  I've been preparing materials, organizing shelves, and talking up "school time" with E for the last couple of weeks, and we finally started school today.  She was so excited to start!

E did great work today.  I am AMAZED at the change in just two months.  She is truely ready for these materials.  When we were working with our friend K, there was a lot of whining and "You [I] can't do that."  Today, E eagerly chose materials off the shelves and would have worked much longer than the hour and a half I had allotted, if we didn't have other places to be this morning!

We started our day with our Morning Song.  Really, we start every day with this song, singing as we get dressed. 

Morning has come, rise with the sun.

Come, now, and sing, everyone.

Morning has come, rise with the sun.

Give good cheer.

After our morning song, we talked about the weather using our chart from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

The first work E chose was her shape stacker.  She just played with it for a little while, and eventually we worked on fitting together the square shapes, and sorting the shapes into their correct piles.  We didn't work on biggest to smallest so much today.

After that, E chose to work with a new material - some CVC Laurie puzzles.  I have "cat" and "dog" out on the shelf so far.  We worked with one puzzle at a time and talked about beginning and ending sounds.  She's good with beginning sounds, but I don't think she really understands what I'm talking about when I ask about the ending sounds.

Then we did some geometry work - both the geometric cabinet and the geometric solids.  She chose the rectangle drawer and just did it like a puzzle.  We reviewed the names of the geometric solids, and I showed her the cards I made with pictures of other objects that match the solids.  Right now I have out rectangular prisms and spheres.  Together, we sorted the cards to fit with the correct solid.  Rectangular prisms were things like a tissue box and a train car.  Spheres were things like an orange and a soccer ball.

Some more sensory work followed, as we built a tower with the green knobless cylinders.  This required a lot of help from me, constantly reminding her what she was looking for (the largest cylinder).

Her best work of the morning was pouring lentils.  She must have poured for 15 minutes!  We also got to have a lesson (or three) with the broom and dustpan.  She was so proud of herself that she cleaned up her own mess!

While E was pouring, I pulled out a tweezing work - apple buttons into a flower ice cube tray.  Of course, she had to do the work after me.

To end our morning, we put together our giant Alphabet Train floor puzzle.  I helped with alphabetical order, but she found all the pieces and put them together.  And then had great fun pushing it along the carpet!

What a morning!  After all THAT, we went for craft time at church, and then out to lunch to celebrate our first day of school.  Now I think I need a nap.  :)

Linking up to Toddler Tuesday at One Hook Wonder