Weekly highlights--4/27

From my previous post you can probably guess that none of us really wanted to do lessons this week. Especially since I watched the other two babies Monday. That just kind of threw our whole week off. But we did manage to get a little done this week.

Monday Delores hopped up at the counter and said "can I do lessons?" Like I'm really going to deny her the opportunity to do lessons on her own. I had placed the miniature knobbed cylinders and our language boxes on the counter to prevent baby fingers from losing and/or tearing up the materials in this picture.


And here's some practical life experience as she spreads butter on bread.


Tuesday, I lost my voice. All I could get out was a whisper. This made it very interesting. I didn't want to try to round up the girls for lessons in the living room so I just took the lessons to them. It actually worked out okay that I couldn't speak. I find myself talking too much when I'm trying to present something anyway so this made it very easy to just say what I need to and that was that. They also had to listen very carefully and pay very close attention to catch what I was saying. Almost a win-win situation, except that it was extremely aggravating. But I got to experience what it is like for mute people for 2 days.

Open and closing boxes from Hobby Lobby intended for Lydia.


Our "F," beginning sounds basket and alphabet puzzle by Melissa & Doug. Each time they learn a new sound they get another puzzle piece and slowly fill it up. It gets them excited every time they get to put a new piece in the puzzle and they revisit the sounds they have already learned.

Wednesday I decided we were all too sick to have our Freeday and go anywhere so we had a short lesson period.

Trying out our new sound bottles. I'm not 100% happy with them though so I'll do a separate post on those when I've modified them a bit.



Working on "F," worksheets.

They were more interested by the new porch being built on our neighbor's house than doing lessons though.


Thursday, was a repeat of Wednesday.



Except that we found a dead baby bird outside and we spent a lot of time discussing and mourning and looking at the poor bird.



Today I needed to get out of the house so I took the girls to the library for story time and we've just been taking it easy. That's really all there was to this week.

May calendar

Along with fighting off sickness this week I have been getting my May calendar together. At the end of each month I sit down and plan out lessons for each girl for the whole next month. This really just gives me an outline of what I would like them to accomplish for the month but it changes every week once we get started.

Now you probably have noticed that there is still a few days still remaining in this month, but I only plan for the first full 4 weeks of the month. If the month goes over by a half a week or it is a 5 week month I take that week as a break week. No lessons, just fun.

So here is what our May calendars look like.

(If you are viewing the mobile version of this scroll all the way to the bottom and hit "View web version," to see images more clearly. However, my favorite blog list goes right through the enormous picture. Geez-a-Lou! Blogging solely on a mobile device sure is more difficult than it ought to be)





I could have made 1 calendar for each child but then I would have to be jumping back and forth between 2 documents each day as I made notes about how they did with their lessons. So it just seemed easier to put both of their activities on a calendar for 2 weeks at a time.

At the end of May I'll post our completed calendars and see how much they've changed.

If you have any questions or comments at all feel free to ask. I'll be happy to oblige.

No rest for the weary

In my last post I mentioned that Lydia was a little under the weather, well she so kindly shared that sickness with me. Last Friday night I started feeling puny and it progressed into full blown just plain sick. But, hey, it comes with the territory, right? I'm pretty sure it was in my job description when I left work to be a stay at home mommy.

"Mother of the household will be expected to share sick germs and contract same illness as children as well as take care of the sick children and carry on with normal daily duties. She shall obtain the illness in any of the following ways:
1. From the shirt she is wearing that was previously used as a tissue.
2. From sharing silverware with children while eating because it is more efficient not to get an additional set.
3. By kissing children because mother shall not reject any said kisses.
4. From wiping runny noses and not immediately washing her hands because she will remain too busy to do so.
5. From children placing their unwashed fingers into her mouth without notice.
6. Any other way necessary that has not been previously listed.

Mother is also expected not to pass germs to father of children because father shall not contract illnesses--ever."

The plus side? Rare cuddle moments.

Guess the lesson--chairs, chairs, chairs,

So, can you guess what we will be revisiting this week from looking at the picture?

Pushing in chairs! When the girls ran off to play yesterday and I walked into the dinning room I saw this. Both chairs at the kids table were left out and 5 out 6 chairs at the big table were left out. This is a big pet peeve of mine mainly because I'm the one that ends up walking around and pushing them all back in.

I have to let you in on a little secret, though. See that one chair at the head of the table? Well, that is my chair when daddy isn't home. Yep, I'm as guilty as the kids when it comes to pushing in the chairs but it honestly drives me nuts!

The reason for the lesson to push in chairs is fairly obvious. We leave things the way we found them so it is ready for the next person. It's respectful. It is not the difficult a lesson the give either. You stand behind the chair, place your hands on the sides of the chairs back, tip the chair forward slightly, slide the chair forward carefully as to not make any noise till it meets the table, sit the back the legs of the chair down quietly. That's it.

So, hopefully after we rehash the chair lesson, and I set the example myself, I won't have anymore opportunities to take pictures like this one.

Development

This past week we took a break from formal lessons and we spent almost every day out of the house. It rained almost everyday too. If it wasn't raining it was too wet to play outside so we did a lot of errand running. We had a lot of fun though.

This week we will be going back to our normal schedule but, there is that bittersweet feeling. I love doing lessons with the girls and watching them grow and I also love having fun with the girls and introducing them to different things out of the house. We can't have all of one thing though. I would either never get anything accomplished or my kids would look like little vampires and I would be cranky with cabin fever from never going out. Balance is important, for everyone.

On another note, it is interesting to see how my audience for this blog is developing. What I thought would be a mostly montessori community viewed blog has become a more Facebook community and family viewed blog. While I'm sure it will continue to grow and the audience will branch out to people who don't know me personally, it makes me wonder if I should change my tone just a little from Montessori information to "look what my kids are doing now." But I personally find that a little boring so I'll just do a mix. Some days you might find a post describing a specific montessori activity or lesson and other days you might find a brag post about how awesome my girls are. I guess you'll just have to tune in several times a week to find the posts that tickle your fancy. :)

Weekly highlights--4/20

As I look back through my pictures from this week I noticed a sprinkling of activities I didn't get to write about earlier this week, so I'm going to backtrack a little before I move onto our lessons from Friday.

First lets start with respect. Montessori is not just all lessons and circle time. It is also about Grace & Courtesy, which begins with the respect of the parent or instructor. The number 1 rule is do not interrupt a concentrating child. It is disrespectful and also the number 1 mistake parents make with their children. No matter how bad you want that picture or want to step in to help when they are struggling it is better to leave well enough alone and let them work through whatever they are doing. If they need help, they'll ask for it. This is an important milestone to gaining their independence. If I accidentally interrupt Delores to come to a meal because I don't realize she is in the middle of something she will tell me or Josh "I'm concentrating," and we apologize and leave her be. She shows up 10 to 15 minutes later, but no harm is done other than her food getting a little cold. This is why you don't see as many pictures of Lydia as you do Delores. She is more easily distracted by my phone and will leave her activity the second she sees my phone.


Of course it is equally important for the children to respect each other and their things.

Here Lydia is watching Delores do her lesson quietly without touching. If she touches she must leave Delores and do something else. She can try again once she has completed another activity. This takes a lot of practice and self control from a two year old.

Next we have some beginning sound work. We've been working on the sounds of the "b," "c," and "d," for about 6 weeks now. Last week Delores started recognize and pointing out the letters in text so I set up this activity.

She has to match the object's beginning sound with the letter. Then she went on a scavenger hunt to find objects that beginning with those letters. She brings them back to the mat and matches the object with its beginning sound. Here she is finding a cup. "Cup starts with the letter 'c.'"


Now onto our activities from Friday. Last August I made and tried introducing the miniature number rods to Delores and she just couldn't grasp the concept.

The child has to place the rods in order from longest to shortest and then they learn what rod represents what number which is the first step to sandpaper numbers and numerical beads. Delores has been showing some interesting in reading numbers so I knew it was time to give it a try again so we could move onto the sandpaper numbers so she could formally learn the name for each number. This time she did beautifully. Again, it's all about working in that window of opportunity.


In this picture she discovered the smallest block is the same size as the space between each rod.


Here she doing the 2nd part of the 3 period lesson "Can you point to number 4?"


Mixed up

"Can you show me 2?"

We worked all the way up to 9.

"Can you put 9 on your head?" We only did three at a time but she breezed through them. Each time you master one or two or three at a time you mix the previous ones back in to make sure they haven't forgotten the rest. After we were done with 9 she said she was tired and we put them away. I have no doubt we will be moving onto sandpaper numbers next month.

Lydia enjoyed the frobel bag. The frobel bag is an opaque bag with objects inside that the child already knows the names of. Many sources suggest using geometric solids (3D shapes) in the frobel bag, but I decided toys would be a better fit since she doesn't know the names of the geo solids yet. The child puts their hand in the bag, feels around and then guesses what is in the bag all without looking in the bag and then pulls out the object. The purpose of this sensorial activity is to refine the stereognostic sense, which is the ability to determine the shape and weight of an object by touching or lifting it. After the child has had some practice with this activity you can work up to 10 different objects. Three is a good start for any two year old though.


"Minnie Mouse!"

Here Delores is taking a turn giving the lesson. In a Montessori classroom it is not uncommon for an older child to give a lesson to a younger child. It reinforces the lessons in the older child and promotes his independence. The instructor is to try and fade into the background as much as possible while the children carry on in their world and form their own community.


"Yay sissy!"

So we had another successful week despite an under the weather child. When I look back it really does amaze me at how far they have come and how much they've learned in just 3 months. I can't wait to see what is left to come.

Thinking outside the mat--preparing a lesson

Around here we never seem to have what I would consider a normal week. I didn't have any extra kids this week to watch. We didn't even go to the library. I invited a playmate over for half a day instead on our Freeday. Everything seemed to be going smoothly when all of a sudden Lydia gets a head cold or a sinus thing (I never can tell the difference) at the beginning of this week. So much for that. So she has not been in the best mood, let alone, in the best frame of mind for lessons. So, I decided to ditch the mat yesterday and focus on getting them busy with me. There are a lot of activities kids can get involved in around the house to put activities they've learned on a mat into practical uses. Why else would the lessons be called "practical life activities?" Delores especially seems to have more fun doing things this way.

I needed to get things ready for a sound cylinder lesson for Delores I planned to present to her on Monday.

This is what sound cylinders look like traditionally and what they will look like if you chose to buy them for around $30 online. Or you can buy two packs of party favor bubbles from Walmart for around $4 and fill the bottles with things you have around the house. Which is what I'm going to do.

There is a little prep work involved though so I set the girls up at the counter and started an assembly line.


As a mentioned in a previous posts Lydia really enjoyed peeling eggs during our Easter Day and she has been peeling crayons, unwrapping cough drops and bullion cubes, and unfortunately picking apart board books lately with great fervency. So I put her in charge of taking off the labels.


And since she has been working on opening and closing bottles she was also in charge of opening the bottles. Thankfully there was a seal on those bubbles so I didn't have to worry about a mess.


I opened the seal and passed them onto Delores who used a funnel to fill up some of our other bottles of bubbles and then put the empty bottles into the sink.


After those bottles were filled I just gave her a pitcher to pour the rest of the bubbles into. After that they each rinsed the bottles.


And Delores placed the bottles on a towel to dry.


Then Delores poured the bubble solution from the pitcher to a milk jug.


And just for the heck of it we planted some strawberries, tomatoes and daisies (botany) to watch them grow in the window seal. I have the reputation of killing anything that is suppose to be green so we will see how that goes.


And of course after that we had to clean up the soil that got everywhere. Notice how happy Lydia is that she gets to help.



All of this took about 90 minutes, which is about 15 to 20 minutes longer than we normally do lessons and they wore me out. But it was worth it and I will be planning more mornings like this soon.

Weight discrimination

I know what you're thinking. That this is going to be a post about me teaching my girls to discriminate someone based on their weight (unless you are a montessorian, then you know better). Sorry to bust your bubble, but no. Weight discrimination refers to teaching a child to be able to tell the difference between objects that weigh only 10 grams different from each other simply by using their fingertips. All while doing this blindfolded.

Could you do this? Believe me, it is not as easy as it sounds. In fact, when I was preparing this lesson I got the tablets mixed up and couldn't tell by looking at and weighing them which one was supposed to be the heaviest and which was supposed to be the lightest.

This lesson is achieved by using the Baric tablets

Three different types of wood, all different colors, varying in 10 grams from one another. Each box contains 6-8 tablets for matching. That's right, not only do they have to measure weight with their fingertips blindfolded, they also have to match up and sort through 18-24 different tablets.

So what's the point? Well, let's go back to that question earlier. Could you do this? The point is to introduce the idea that everything has a different weight. This lesson also shows that even though the tablets are the same size they don't weigh the same. And as always in a sensorial lesson it is also to refine their senses that helps them better absorb their world around them. In this case that sense is the baric sense.

I realized Delores was ready for this lesson when she was working with the locks and keys I set out for Lydia and she casually mentioned "this one is heavier."


Lydia working with the locks and keys this past Monday.

That's all it takes. It is important to work in that window of opportunity for the child so I wasn't going to waste any time. I found an informative blog post at Rhythm of the Home and headed to Lowes after a failed trip to Home Depot. Two weeks later I had these made and out on the shelves.

Just a quick note though, if you are using the link above she doesn't tell you what wood is supposed to be light, medium and heavy weights. In my experience I found the poplar to be the lightest and the oak to be the heaviest. The aspen was supposed to be the medium weight but it felt the same as the poplar. The type of aspen our Lowes carried was not them same as she used. So when picking out your wood weigh them yourself and trust your instincts. I didn't and I'm going back for pine this weekend. You can also refer to this Wood density website to give you a better idea of what woods are heavier and lighter.

Now back to the lesson. During the first presentation the child only works with the heaviest and the lightest tablets. After they have mastered that then you move on to the medium and heaviest, then lightest and medium and then finally all three. So here is Delores doing brilliantly (if I do say so myself) with the light and heavy baric tablets.


Weighing, no blindfold


Matching, no blindfold


Weighing and matching, blindfolded.

We both enjoyed this lesson. I don't know if every child is like this, but she always does well when there is a blindfold involved. This amazes me because most adults are so out of tune with their senses it would be hard for them to do this with their eyes open. I know I couldn't.

Scheduling

One of the most frequently asked questions of homeschoolers a like, no matter what your method or unmethod, is "What is your schedule like?" We are constantly trying to figure out how to fit everything we want to accomplish into our days, how to be more efficient or just how to make things better. The answer is always the same "Follow your family's natural schedule and do school work during the times the children are most receptive to learning; when they are not tired and have their bellies full." Still somehow scheduling school time is a mystery and puzzling enough to make us doubt if we are doing it "right."

So I thought I'd offer a look into how our schedule flows throughout the day, but before I get into times you should probably know what a Montessori day entails in a classroom of 3-6 year olds.

I cannot speak from experience but I have read probably over a dozen different articles on this subject written by directresses or instructors of some sort. The order of the day varies depending on preference of the school, but it always involves a circle time, a 60-90 minute lesson time where the children either have one on one instruction or free range to practice anything out on the shelves, a snack time, a lunch time, a nap time, play time (preferably outdoors), and depending on how long the day is, a second work period, a second snack time and a second play time.

That seems like a lot to fit into a day, and believe me it is if you're trying to pull all of this off at your home, because unlike in a school setting, life happens at home. Dishes, laundry, doctor's appointments, and all the other things that make life life. Not to mention all the additional distractions at your home like toys, guests, pets, TV, etc. So you really have to pick what is most important to you and your family and make it fit into your day.

For instance, to me play and lessons are equally important as well and eating and napping. A scheduled "circle time," however, is not so much a priority for me. In our house things that happen during play involve so much of what happens in circle time that it doesn't really make any sense to have a set amount of time for story telling, reading, songs, movement, finger play or dress up so I dropped circle time from our schedule.

Our schedule changes often. But here's what it looks like right now for my 2 and 3 year old for Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. As mentioned in previous posts Wednesday is our "Freeday."

8:00-8:30: Girls wake up
9:00: Breakfast
9:30: Change clothes, make bed, brush teeth, comb hair.
10:00: Lessons
11:00-11:30: Play time
12:00: Lunch
1:00: Nap
3:00-3:30: Up from nap
4:00: Snack time
4:30: Playtime
5:30: Delores' music lessons (tues & thurs)
6:00: Dinner
6:45: Bath
8:00: Bed

Right now the girls do not have a second work period. I probably won't have one until they start grade school and/or they outgrow naps. They are most receptive to learning first thing in the morning and I have a hard time holding their attention after nap. I had also planned to start teaching Delores Latin this year but dropped that from the schedule when I realized that she had a hard time concentrating after nap and I just couldn't fit it into our morning.

Also, Our girls know we will probably go out somewhere on Wednesday and Saturday and go to church on Sunday. When we don't they get antsy and are much more temperamental. We don't have to go to the same place every time they just know we will be going somewhere. Another example is that Delores knows she has to clean her room and make her bed (chores) before she can brush her teeth and come do lessons or get ready to leave the house. That is a cushioned block of time to do chores so if I ask her to do extra things or add more chores to her list it doesn't throw her off.

So you see, scheduling is more going with the flow than it sounds. The important thing is just to have some sort of structure set in place for the child so they learn to know what is coming up next. When a child is blind sighted by a change in schedule or a sudden task require of them that wasn't there before they become frazzled and show their discomfort in some sort of fit.

One of the great benefits of homeschooling is being able to make your own schedule and do school when and how you want to do it. You can really follow a schedule that works best for your child(ren) and your family and that's something we all can embrace and maybe stop fretting so much about whether or not we are doing it "right."

Winning the Race

This week was what I call a slow and steady week. Each day it didn't seem like we accomplished very much but at the end of the week when I reflect on all we did it really was a productive week.

So here are a few things we did this week:

Lydia learning the difference between smooth and rough with two different grades of sandpaper. (Sensorial)


Delores practicing her small button frame (Practical life)


Spooning black eyed peas (Practical life)


Hopping on the line with a bucket (Circle time)


Grading shades of Red. She was very excited that after working with the color box 1 and 2, pink finally made an appearance. (Sensorial)


Setting a table for casual dinner. (Practical life)


Checking her work with a template I intended to use for Lydia, but she never got around to doing it



Using the triangle inset. (Pre-writing/art)



Washing and drying the chalkboard. (Practical life)
She said she loved doing this. Personally I never saw the fun in doing these practical life activities but kids get a kick out of it. I guess because to adults it is work but to children they are helping do grown up things like clean.

Those days when it seems like we get a lot of work done are nice but in the end it is more important to let them work at their own pace.