Montessori Day - 8/8/11

I recently purchased an ebook called Montessori at Home by John Bowman to get some fresh ideas for preschool. I love the Montessori method and have a couple of books about it, but wanted a refresher. I am glad I got the ebook, because it had a lot of great links, ideas, pictures, things to copy, and just resources in general. So, inspired by all of that, we had a Montessori day today!
Here are some of the activities we did:

Placed the sticks in the tray in number order from 1 to 9.

Scooped and poured and measured lentils.

Counted pebbles.

 

Punched out triangles with a pin to work on pincher grasp.

Transferred colored water to an ice tray, also to work on strengthening the pincer grasp.

Worked on cutting with scissors.

Built with wood blocks.

Made patterns with frogs and logs.

Practiced pouring back and forth.

Did more finger exercising by hanging up "laundry" with clothespins.

 

 

 

 

Cut up their own fruit for snack.

And finally, did some number work at the table.

We also took and picked up Bella to and from work and picked up our pottery from the pottery store. And that was all before lunch time! The kids spent the afternoon playing Tag, and "Family,"  and occasional video games.  And I got caught up on this blog!

Fun Week Pt 1 - 8/1/11 to 8/5/11

Last week was Dill's last week before school started again so we decided to have a fun week. All of his summer school was done! He finished reading The Boxcar Children, finished his summer packet from school (phew!), worked on his times tables every day, did some writing and editing sentences every day, and learned about 7 or 8 states and capitols.
Jem finished his school too! He finished his math book, all his phonics books and his language arts program, did daily drawing and sentence writing throughout the summer, and learned the shapes and names of 12 states. And both boys listened to me read Mr. Poppers Penguins.

After all that hard work it was time for some fun!
On Monday we went bowling!

On Tuesday, we painted pottery at As You Wish. Dill stayed home. Guess he thought he was too cool to paint pottery. WHATEVER Dill!! :)  We had fun, and ate frozen yogurt afterwards.

 

 

 

 

 

On Wednesday the preschoolers stayed home and I took the boys to the rec center swimming pool where they also have a climbing wall. This was great because to climb the rock wall it was only $3. They had wanted to do indoor rock climbing but it is $15 to $20 at the actual place, so YAY!

On Thursday we went to we Mr. Popper's Penguins! Cute movie. We liked it. But it had almost nothing to do with the book other than the title and then penguins! I don't get why they do that. The story in the book was cute as is. Why re-write the entire thing? Weird. Anyway, the movie was good too and we enjoyed it. We were on a major budget, and smuggling in all our popcorn, candy, and water worked fine as usual.  :)  After the movie we went to take Dylan to her doctor. We ended up being a half hour early, so we went over to the mall to play in their indoor play area while we waited for her to be done.

On Friday we did our last summer movie, Alpha and Omega, and then went to Grammy and Papa's house for lunch and swimming. I have no pics of that day for some reason. I guess we were too busy having fun!

You'll notice Scout was missing from all of these pics. She was in her last week of theater camp. So that's why this post is called Fun Week Part 1.  I promised her a Fun Week  before we start back into our school year too. It will have to wait a week probably until my funds recover! So maybe next week we'll have Fun week part 2. Until then, it will be relaxed preschool week for us.

N is for Numbers - 7/25/11

We had a fairly quiet day today. Dill showed up not feeling well. I thought he was just tired at first, and then I thought he just was bummed about having to do his summer school. But then he said he felt sick, and when the tears welled up I believed him :(  He went and laid down on the couch and fell asleep, Poor Dill!

So guess who turned into a reader over the weekend?? 

After he finished all of his phonics books, Jem was all excited that he had become a reader now!  While I was gone to the homeschool conventio this weekend, he and Scout and Dad went to the library, and he came home with Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney - a great first chapter book, but I would have thought still too hard for Jem who had only just finished his first year phonics books. Well, he proceeded to read me the first line, and then the second, and then the next! It was a little slow going, and he had to ask a word or two here and there, but by the end of the evening he had read two pages - ALL BY HIMSELF!!  No WAY!!  He even took the book to bed with him and then next morning brought it out and started reading it again!  Woo Hoo!!  Go Jem!!

So once Scout was off to theater camp and Dill was fast asleep on the couch, it was just the preschoolers and Jem for school. Very quiet morning!  Jem had finished his phonics books, so he and I reviewed his states and then he tool his states test. He got 100%!  Then all he really needed to do was some reading ( no problem there  :)  ) and his math.  While the "babies" were busily doing free play I helped him finish a few math exercises and then he was off to video game land like every other red-blooded kid on summer break. Finally!!  

Once Jem was off, I had time to work with Freddie one-on-one. I had Flossie get her workbox out, which she was happy to do, and that kept her busy while Freddie and I worked on numbers and math. I introduced the numbers 11-15 to him and we talked about how they are made up of a group of 10 plus some extras. We will keep revisiting this idea until it makes sense. After he did the number cards and laid them out, we left them up because I knew those numbers would be coming up in his math book and he would need to refer to them to write them down. 

 After helping him with his math, he wanted to write a "book."  This was all his idea, so I just let him run with it. He spent about 20 minutes working on it. All he needed me for was figuring out how to connect the papers together.

While he was busy, I was able to catch a few shots of Flossie doing her work. She made some patterns with the color tiles, made a farm with the blocks and animals, practiced writing her letter N's, and then went on the computer to do Starfall for awhile.

After Freddie was done he wanted a turn on the computer so I got some one-one one time with Flossie. I had been wanting to check her on her numbers, and this was a great time to do it. Guess what?? She knows most of them now!! The only ones she didn't know were 6, and 8, 9.  Big progress! Way to go Flossie! Glad to know something is sinking in :) 

Somewhere during all of that we took Bella to work, got gas, came home, ate lunch, took naps, picked Bella up, got more gas, dropped Bella off at a friends, and picked up Scout from camp. Whew! Another day done :)