Category Archives: montessori

a schoolish post

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It’s been a while since I’ve shared any learning/schoolish posts. We aren’t “homeschooling” anymore, but I’ve become a very firm believer that even though my children are primarily educated at school, we are still partners in their education and our house is going to be a house of learning too. We are getting ready to embark upon this science book starting in February. The Rooster is all about fish…he’s like a walking encyclopedia of fishing lures, fish types etc and is about to DIE that we are going to take a Netflix fast and he won’t be able to watch all his Discover Channel, Animal Planet and whatever else fish shows! Hopefully we will be using all the time on our science studies. The goal is to finish it by the time school starts up in mid-July (our system goes year round) and culminate our study with some sort of dissection of a fish. We have also adopted a couple of spots on a stream through Tremont and hopefully that will play nicely in with our swimming creatures study. I’m so excited about this spring!

In the meantime, I’ve started to do some kindergarten work with the Chick. She is in a preschool program, but it’s a blended program with students who are considered at-risk, learning English as a second language and typical preschoolers. That said, she is ready to start doing some Kindergarten work and while she gets some at school, I wanted more. So when the Rooster works on his homework after school, we do her “homework” together.

I’ve been struggling with how and what to teach her with and finally decided to use these three things:

Explode the Code: book 1. I love, love, love this series and it was one of our favorite things to do when we were homeschooling. She passed the pretest with flying colors, so we are starting with book 1. We’ll go slow and not push it, but I’m super excited. For someone who doesn’t have a clue about teaching phonics, this is a lifesaver for me.

I’m pulling alphabet review stuff from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Her stuff is amazing! For now, we are working on the A-Z Beginning Sounds Game.

I actually printed these at half size (I’m a stickler on making my colored ink last). Looking at the little letter dots I realized they would fit perfectly under these clear glass gems I had in my craft stash.  A little modge podge later and voila! Fun little letter gems.

 

We are also starting very slowly on learning our kindergarten sight words. I found this awesome group of printables from 1+1+1 (which is also a phenomenal blog) and made a special reading notebook for the chick. She has about a 5-10 minute tolerance for this, but I really didn’t expect more than that. Each list of 4 words has a great variety of activities and is easy for a momma to get together.

 

As we get into our science work, I’ll be sure to post some updates of the fun things we do.

March Sensory Box

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March/St. Patrick's Day Sensory Box

Our March Sensory Box in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. The box is blue, which makes everything inside it look blue, but I promise it’s all green! I’m hoping to get a little activity sheet together for the chick to do in conjunction with this box…we’ll see!

What’s inside:
split peas (which actually don’t smell great…fyi)
green puff balls
a small set of St. Patrick’s Day trinkets/buttons
a few gold coins
some gold pipe cleaners
some green shot glasses I found at Target in the Dollar Spot
a green garlic roll thing-a-ma-bob

February Sensory Box

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Here is our February and Valentine’s edition of the sensory box. We filled it with:

rice
lima beans
fake red roses
2 terra cotta pots
puff balls
ladybugs
sparkly hearts

February Sensory Box

I had great intentions of actually making these sheets that would go in there to sort out the puff balls and count the ladybugs and hearts, but today my little mischievous chick found her way under the kitchen table (into hiding) and I discovered her later with lots of pots of water and all the rice from the box. Needless to say, we’ve dumped the box and I’m not sure if we’ll redo it or not (naturally consequences you know!)

January Sensory Activities

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Today is the second day of the Rooster back in public school. So far, so good. I’m trying to ease into what I hope to accomplish with the Chick this spring. Mostly I’m hoping to just enjoy her and be with her, instead of filling our days up with nonsense things or to-do lists.

Winter/January Playdoh

This morning we made playdoh. This has been on my list of things to do with the kids for months. I’m hoping to get into the habit of doing a new “flavor” each month. This month being a snow filled month, we just kept it white and added some peppermint extract and glitter. It was totally easy and fun to boot!

 

Next, we did our January/Winter sensory box. I’m learning with these tubs that I need to add little things as we go along in the month, versus throwing everything in there at one time. I’m hoping to add a few more wintery kinds of things, but for now she is content to play with it as is.

Winter/January Sensory Box

What’s inside:
batting
snowflake ornaments (Target clearance)
momma made pom pom balls
glittery felt trees, snowflakes and snowmen (Dollar Tree)

As January drags on (can you tell I’m not a winter person?) I am hoping to add:
an ice cream scoop
a small white bowl
some large cotton balls
some penguin or polar bear animals

Holiday Sensory Box

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Here’s our holiday sensory box. I have to tell you that this one has not been the favorite of the past ones. (so far the popcorn is winning out). I had originally intended to do colored rice, but the coloring the rice part and the rice all over my house part just kept me from doing it. I had a smart friend who suggested colored paper stuff and that is what we did. It was a big hit for about the first week, but it is waning for sure. I’ve already got a great one in mind for January!

Here’s what’s inside:

colored paper (for wrapping)
faux presents
little poinsettias
toy soldier ornaments
a felt nativity set
gold “marbles”

*I bought almost everything for 50% off at Hobby Lobby, except for all the little packages. Some I had from years past and I also bought a pack at the Dollar Tree.

September Sensory Box

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If I had to do my teaching education all over again I  am pretty sure I would be a Montessori teacher. There is so much about the Montessori approach to education that I love. Maybe it is because Maria Montessori got her way working with students that I love (those not so typical students). Nevertheless, there is a part of me that given enough time and energy and money would create a Montessori-like space in our home and teach that way. These sensory boxes are my first step.

I found the idea from the Counting Coconuts blog (which is fabulous by the way) and knew that this was something I was going to do as soon as possible for my little chick (although if I am being honest the Rooster is going to probably love it just as much).  Here is our September version. Seeing as it is nearly the end of September and we are moving in about 2 weeks, this one will surely be reincarnated again in November with a few Thanksgiving-ish things added in.

Sept/November Sensory Box

Here’s what’s inside:
popcorn (both yellow and white) (Kroger for $1.50/bag)
silk leaves (from my stash)
silk marigold flowers (from my stash)
a set of fall colored beads/leaves (I scored at Tuesday Morning for like $2)
tiny pinecones (from my stash)
fake pears (from the stash)
and I am hoping to hit Hobby Lobby tomorrow and add:
a few cinnamon sticks
a small wooden bowl and spoon
some fake apples
and a tiny search and find object: 2 tiny apple buttons

What would a child do with this?
Mine will just rummage through it looking at all the different things. They might pour and fill things up with it. The chick might take the flowers and set them up inside. Every month I hope to add a few tiny, tiny objects that they have to search and find and I would also love to do an I-Spy scavenger hunt too (see Counting Coconuts, she did this with her yellow tub idea). But that will have to come after the big move.