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Category : Language Arts
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Quick catch up!
Next Montessori post coming soon, in the mean time here's a quick round up of what we did over the last week.
Firstly, a good science link since we couldn't use Sid the Science Kid anymore! I found a series of videos on Teachers TV called The Blue Dragon - aimed at 5-7 year olds. Here is a link to the videos and here are the programme notes from Channel 4. April REALLY loves this and said she wanted to make a lapbook - such a good idea! Actually, given the number of programmes, I think we're going to have to make several! Anyway, so far, we've covered a bit about food and done some life cycle and animal sorting activities.
In maths (we're still happily using Aha! Math from Learning.com along with hands on work), she has been practicing addition/subtraction facts and working on geometry.
A Little Dicey!
Shapes that become other shapes
Shapes all around us - we dug out the Montessori shapes for this
April's also been doing the writing exercises from Ladybird keywords 1c:
Rosie's been doing well with her more independent work schedule - she's keeping up with it (although the last few days she's been ill with a cold) and is actually doing MORE work than when I had her on a stricter timetable!
Here's just one thing she's been working on - renewable/non-renewable/flow energy sources. After completing the relevant learning activity on Aha! Science, she used the sorting cards from Montessori Print shop and then created a page in her project book.
Here, she's working in her bedroom! :)
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Pictures
Just can't blog properly at the moment - suffering from a bit of blog-writers-block. I have plenty to say but can't seem to put it into words! Ah well, until I get my groove back, here are some pics.
Categories: Crafts, Cultural, Language Arts, Maths
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Thursday, September 02, 2010
First day back!
What a lovely, gentle start to the new school year we had :)
April first - she did her MEP maths and then we moved onto a lesson that I got from PBS about herbivores. She watched a short video about comparing dinosaur herbivores with modern day herbivores (she liked that very much!) and then she had to think about her favourite plants that she likes to eat. Then we made a poster showing the 3 categories - dinos, modern animals and plants she likes. She sorted the pictures I'd got from Word and glued them on her poster.
After that, we moved onto language arts - she's doing a study of Madeline and we're making a lapbook. She started today by first decorating the cover (a colouring page that she collaged with tissue paper) and then we looked up France on a map and she coloured it in on an outline map.
Now Rosie :) Again, she did her MEP maths (logic puzzles) and then a simple physics experiment to make an indoor rainbow (which I totally failed to get any pictures of!). Then she started on her lapbook - she's doing Operation English Grammar which we got from Hands of a Child. First she made the cover and did it to look like a sort of spy-gadget briefcase - very clever!
Then she did the first "mission" which was to find different types of nouns in a paragraph of one of her favourite books (she, naturally, chose a Harry Potter one!) She then filled in a chart which we put in the lapbook.
That was about it for this first day - the kids went off and did their own thing while I finished up making some crabapple and cinnamon jelly!
Friday, June 25, 2010
Work pics and a download!
I'm a bad homeschool blogger to be sure!
Anyway, here are a few pics from today:
April built words with some phonogram cards I got from a Yahoo group I'm on. She then wrote them in her book and drew a little picture to go with them. She was sat on the floor in a very strange yoga-y type position here!
She also did some addition using dice to get the numbers and dried beans to help her
She also made a little book with some drawings she did
Rosie did loads of stuff but the only thing I got a photo of was when we played a fractions game. We had to throw 3 fractions dice and then take the right "pie" pieces and add them together. The first person to build a "whole" was the winner. We're going to do this in reverse tomorrow and start with wholes and subtract fractions.
Now for my download! Some while ago I made a set of types of sentence cards (which are going to be offered as a freebie on my shop ONCE it gets finished .....). Well, I'm going to put them here again because I've now made a set of mini books to go with them. I'm intending to make a few more grammar related mini books and, hopefully, there will be enough in the end that you could put them together in a lapbook.
Anyway, here are the sentence type sorting cards.
.... and here are the mini books. Once made, you can write examples of the different types of sentences inside (perhaps some of the ones from the exercise above).
When making the cards, you need to glue the coloured dots (at the end) on to the backs of the sentence strips. The dots match the dots on the heading cards and can be used for self checking when all the strips have been sorted. For the mini books, simply cut out and fold in half - the coloured cover obviously goes on the front and you should be able to see where to fold - here's a piccie of the completed books anyway.....
Friday, April 23, 2010
Things we've done ... and a file :)
Just a quick blog today as I'm not feeling too good - got a nasty sore throat that may or may not turn into something more horrible :(
Anyway, here's some stuff we've been doing:
April has been practicing her reading by matching phrases - got this set from Montessori for Everyone - she's been having great fun making silly sentences :)
We've played with the Cuisenaire Rods and made cubed numbers
and April has been doing some money activities. Here is a really basic one working with pennies up to 10p. She reads the amount, counts out the right numbers of pennies and turns the card over to check. There's a little booklet to go with these that she hasn't done yet and ..oh... she's not actually DOING the activity in this picture. Ahem. Just playing with the money!
I've been tidying shelves (they were hideously messy!) and cleared up a bit of space on our geography shelf for .... something .. not decided yet! We're lacking in space here - have to cram a lot of materials into a very small area!
I also put out a couple of spring science activities for the kids - on the left April's basket for put a white flower into food colouring to change it's colour (no flower there yet!) and Rosie's - she's going to test various flowers and leaves from the garden using universal indicator paper. The spring nature table looks cute too :)
Oh, and the file? It's the money counting cards in the above picture :) There are 2 ways you can make these - as per the picture OR (as detailed in the file) by making them separate cards and matching them. If you do our method then you'll need to supply a whole bunch of pennies and if you do the other way you'll have to put coloured dots on the backs of the cards for checking afterwards. Obviously UK money so probably not much use to anyone anywhere else - sorry!
Here's the file:
Monday, April 19, 2010
Still working!
Website still under construction - really hoping to get it unveiled soon!
In the meantime, we've been carrying on with the homeschooling - done lots of nature study (collecting feathers, sprouting seeds, pressing flowers and so on) and April has been working her way through the Starfall readers and workbooks.
April has also got on to using the addition and subtraction strip boards - she was very excited about these new materials! :)
Here she is doing addition (oh, and I know that sometimes our pics show the materials maybe not being used in EXACTLY the way they "should" but that's ok isn't it? :) ) This board is one of my own pdf files (which will be available in the shop ONCE it's done!)
And here is the subtraction strip board (we made a version of the Teaching Montessori in the Home ones) I will be doing a pdf of this but this one is made from cardboard with hadwritten numbers. Look at that concentration! :)
Now Rosie - working on grammar - we're currently reviewing adverbs and prepositions. The grammar Montessori materials are some of my favourites - I just love how those symbols help you remember the different parts of speech! Again, I do sell the printables for the grammar (they're still currently in the Lulu store - see link at top of page - until I get them in the new shop). At home we use the printables AND these craft foam ones.
Apart from this sort of work we've been outside lots enjoying the absolutely gorgeous weather we've been having - can't be indoors too much when there's blue sky and sunshine outside! :)
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Tidy!
Made a start on some spring cleaning today so the homeschool area got a good going over (more on that in a second!) Meanwhile, April and Rosie got on with work as usual including:
Flags of Europe
Rosie working on grammar. My grammar boxes are not exactly the same as the proper Montessori ones but it works for us :)
So, for the cleaning - I did loads! I pulled out all the shelves and cleaned behind them and then reorganised all our materials and put some away that weren't being used.
Here's our much loved nature table with winter slowly retreating and spring moving in :)
One of our thoroughly re-tidied shelf units - geography stuff at the top, followed by April's maths materials, then April's English materials and finally Rosie's English materials
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
A post of few words
.... and quite a few pictures! Just some things we (April mostly) have been doing - collage giraffe, addition tables with gnomes (no, we don't do Waldorf but she loves the gnomes so I sort of adapted it for Montessori), picture card writing, map work .... and so on!
April chose a picture card from the basket, dictated a sentence to me which described it, I wrote it on the story paper and then she copied it and drew a picture.
Rosie - working with my common/proper/abstract/collective noun cards
These are Alphablocks - April adores the Alphablocks which are on the Cbeebies website so I printed off the colouring pages they have REALLY small and she coloured them in. Then I laminated and cut them out to use as a kind of moveable alphabet. I think I printed 2 sets.
Always save your sweetie wrappers - come in very handy for collage! We've got HUNDREDS from Christmas!
I made these happy chappies - cute no? :) I put them in a basket with a bag of "jewels" (beads!) to work out sums with
Put the beads to the left and right of the addition gnome (in this case 1 + 5) and then collect them up and move them to the other side of the equals king to get the answer.
Categories: Crafts, Cultural, Language Arts, Maths
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