Montessori Monday

Wow - you guys seriously rock!  How wonderful that we had 41 link ups to Montessori Monday last week!  I love how the link ups enable so many people to exchange ideas and information.

After saying that, I will sheepishly admit that once again I have no lessons of my own to share this week.  Things have been in a bit of an uproar lately - I'm still adjusting to a new medication, we are in the middle of a major home improvement project, and due to some huge traffic snafus involving a bridge closure The Mister is now working from home a few days per week.  All of this has completely thrown off our rhythm.  I'm finding it much easier to continue with our Waldorf schooling simply because it requires so much less planning and work than our Montessori lessons.  Hopefully we'll be able to get back to normal this week as I know the boys miss their beloved lessons!

If you have some Montessori lessons or ideas to share, please link up below.  Please also make sure to either place the Montessori Monday button from the sidebar in your post or put a link back to this blog in your post.  And while you're at it, make sure to visit my co-host Deb over at Living Montessori Now! Thanks for reading and participating.  :)

Montessori Monday

No lessons of our own to share this week.  Everyone sick, med side effects (still!) blah blah blah.  ;)  I'm happy that so many of you are linking up every week - it's always great to see so many old faces and new!

If you have some Montessori lessons or ideas to share, please link up below.  Please also make sure to either place the Montessori Monday button from the sidebar in your post or put a link back to this blog in your post.  You can also go link up over at my co-host Deb's blog Living Montessori Now.  Thanks for reading and participating!

Montessori Monday (on a Tuesday!)

These are photos from our work session a few weeks ago.

A kind friend lent us her light box and some really cool animal pictures that showed the skeletons inside.  Of course, now I can't remember where she said they came from!  The boys also enjoying playing on the light box with some translucent squares (and yes, I've ordered our own now!)

Both boys enjoyed a water transfer lesson using a large baster:

Pita Pocket worked on his pouring skills - dry pouring with a funnel:

Carabiners and texture dominoes were a hit:

As was this open and close tray I put together for Pita.  Tiny worry dolls were hidden in the various pouches and bags:

Pita also spent some time classifying animals as belonging in the land, air, or water - a follow-up to our land/air/water lesson:

Short Pants also did this spooning lesson from Pita's shelf.  The tall container and long-handled spoon make it much more challenging!

Short Pants also chose a work from his language shelf - which really suprised me.  He learned about the blend "ch" and looked at the "ch" objects in the box (cherry, church, chick, and a bird for "chirp")

In continuation of our living/non-living lessons, I presented once-living to the boys.  I brought out the living presentation tray and then a container of once-living objects The Mister had collected.  We talked about how each of the items had once needed food, water, air, and reproduced:

If you have some Montessori lessons or ideas to share, please link up below.  Please also make sure to either place the Montessori Monday button from the sidebar in your post or put a link back to this blog in your post.  And if you haven't checked out my co-host Deb's blog Living Montessori Now please make sure you do!  Thanks for reading and participating.



Montessori Monday

Last week we skipped out on our Montessori day in order to take a "field trip" to the zoo!  Due to the heat/humidity we hadn't been since early summer and I wanted the boys to have one last time enjoying the splash park there before it closed for the season.

Checking out the giraffes:

Fun on a rhino sculpture:

Admiring Arki, our zoo's polar bear - we were hoping to see Quannik, the new baby polar bear who has become quite famous, but she was not out for viewing at that time.  I found out the other week through the zoo's facebook page that we'll be receiving *another* young polar bear this fall - yay!

The splash park was great - not crowded at all and the perfect spot for a mama to sit in the shade while her boys played:

Short Pants will be taking a 3-part series of "experiencing animals" classes at the zoo for homeschoolers this fall.  While he's in his class Pita Pocket and I will explore and play.  More fun at the zoo for all of us!

If you have some Montessori lessons or ideas to share, please link up below.  Please also make sure to either place the Montessori Monday button from the sidebar in your post or put a link back to this blog in your post.  And make sure to visit my co-host Deb over at Living Montessori Now  Thanks for reading and participating!

*I did want to let you all know that I do go through and read your links each week!  Deb has graciously offered to handle commenting on all of your blogs for me which has been a huge help and timesaver.  So just know that even when I don't comment that I am reading.  :)*



Montessori Monday

We had a slightly shorter work cycle last week.  The boys were in a weird mood and we ended up coming upstairs for a snack/break partway through.  Then later (of course!) when Short Pants was super focused and working well for an extended period of time Pita Pocket decided he'd had enough and went upstairs to play.  Oh well! 

As usual, the sensory bin was enjoyed.  Last week's was aquarium gravel filled with little fish, etc.  The boys had nets, spoons, and scoops to explore with:

I set out the "fishy" sensory bin because last week we learned about fish.  We discussed the characteristics of fish and looked through our fish cards from Walk Beside Me:

And then the boys matched up our parts of a fish 3-part cards.  Pita matched the pictures together:

And Short Pants matched the labels:

They also worked together on our parts of a fish puzzle:

I love that the boys have the opportunity to learn together like this!  I'm also very pleased that Short Pants is emerging more and more as a natural leader, just as he would in a Montessori classroom.  He often volunteers to present lessons to Pita Pocket, and Pita seems to really enjoy having his big brother as his teacher.  Last week Short Pants worked on some pin punching:

Then he asked to present the work to Pita Pocket:

Continuing our fish theme, Pita Pocket worked with his magnet fishing game:

Short Pants and I worked together with his alphabet fish.  I made these a long time ago and we haven't used them in quite awhile.  They are just laminated fish with a lowercase letter on one side and the matching uppercase on the other side.  The paper clips on each work as "hooks" for fishing with a magnetic fishing pole:

I put some fish out on our blue playsilk pond, and then said a word that ended with one of the letter sounds.  Short Pants had to "catch" the correct fish.  When I told him we were going to focus on ending sounds he groaned and said it would be too hard.  I asked him to try, and to his surprise and delight, identifying ending sounds was much easier for him compared to the last time we did it.  I think this was a much-needed confidence boost:

Pita Pocket explored our landforms again last week (Short Pants once again named all of them for him):

He also spent time creating a mosaic from his cutting scraps left over from last week.  I love the look of concentration on his face as he uses the brush to spread glue:

Pouring was also on the agenda - last week it was pouring popcorn kernels through a funnel:

Short Pants and I worked on tying for the first time.  I found a fun story about a Native American building a teepee on this site (halfway down the page):

He also worked with our globes and United States maps.  I was surprised at how many states he's able to identify now just from working with the puzzle map:

Like our weekly sensory bin, I always make sure I have playdough set up for each school session.  I think it provides not only a nice experience but a good sensorial "break" from some of the more academic lessons:

As I noted last week, Short Pants has really been drawn to practical life works lately.  He not only worked with Pita's pouring lesson but also worked with this pencil sharpening lesson I'd put out on Pita's shelves:

Here's another of Pita's trays - I presented "land, air, and water" to him for the first time:

If you have some Montessori lessons/ideas to share, please link up below.  Please also make sure to either place the Montessori Monday button from the sidebar in your post or place a link back to this blog in your post.  Oh, and don't forget to visit my co-host Deb over at Living Montessori Now.  Thanks for reading and participating! 



Montessori Monday

Thanks to everyone who linked up last week.  I'm crazy excited to see how much Montessori Monday is growing!

Last week was another 3-hour work cycle for us.  The boys have adjusted quite quickly to the longer work cycle and I'm pleased with how much the extra time is helping them learn.  Last work our Montessori day was in the afternoon after a very exciting field trip to the fire station, so both boys had a hard time at first sitting down and focusing.  After about 30 minutes though they were both settled down and stopped jumping from lesson to lesson.

Both of the boys enjoyed a shell scrubbing lesson I set out on Pita Pocket's shelf.  First they had to add a drop of dish soap the cup and then pour the water in:

Then it was time to scrub!

Pita worked on cutting strips of paper.  The strips were just wide enough for one single cut.  His goal was to cut on each black line I'd drawn and then put the cuttings in a bucket.  He will use the cuttings in another lesson next week:

Pita also worked (while sitting in my lap!) with our snapping frame.  He was able to easily unsnap and certainly understood the mechanics of re-snapping, but his little fingers just aren't strong enough yet.  Any tips on making this easier?

Short Pants really enjoyed his new logic game Hoppers Jr.  He worked through about half of the puzzles and asked that we bring it upstairs the next day so that he could work with it some more:

Pita Pocket kept busy playing with the moon sand and space play dough from last week.  We had an umm...throwing...incident with the moon sand so he had to get out the sweeper and clean up afterwards:

During circle time last week Short Pants and I worked on skip counting by 5s.  He caught on *very* quickly, but I wanted to make sure he understood concretely why skip counting is helpful.  I got out 20 of our 5 bead bars and told him that I needed to count them all.  I started counting by 1s and then showed him how much faster it was to count the bars by 5s.  Next he counted by 5s, laying out each bar as he said the correct number:

Then I pulled out our hundred board control chart and had him count off the 5s while laying translucent tiles over them.  This was a good way to double-check his number identification too.  I originally saw this idea used for the multiplication tables over at The Learning Ark:

Next we used each strip of numbers to play a "mystery number" game with.  For example, I'd say, "I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10.  It is smaller than 8 but more than 4.  (between each hint Short Pants would guess a number by laying his tile on his guess)  My number is 2 less than 7."  Short Pants had a BLAST doing this.  I love the joyful expression on his face as he correctly identifies the mystery number in this picture!

Pita Pocket reviewed "living" and "non-living" by sorting pictures.  The cards were a free download from jojoebi:

He also built the pink tower all by himself vertically:

Worked with our dragonfly puzzle:

And also worked with a pouring lesson:

Both boys also strung wooden spools.  It was really neat to see how easily Pita was able to do this; just a few months ago he still had trouble:

They also explored our landforms together.  Pita won't have his formal presentation of them till this fall, but Short Pants went through and told him the names of each one:

Short Pants also worked at tonging pasta and sorting it by shape.  He has really been drawn to practical life lately, so I've been trying to put out a lot of those activities for him:

Pita Pocket surprised me by announcing that he was going to work with two knobbed cylinder blocks at the same time.  He was very excited when he completed this work!

He also worked at folding cloths horizontally and diagonally.  Such a tough job for little hands:

I didn't get the chance to take any pictures, but Short Pants and I also continued his work in astronomy last week.  I introduced the solar system to him and we looked at coloring sheet, noting the difference in the number of moons per planet.  We also talked about the sun and looked at a picture of it.  Next we looked at our shadows and discussed how a shadow is something that blocks the sun.  Afterwards we used a flashlight in a darkened room and shone it on our globe to demonstrate how day is when the sun shines on our continent and how it is night when the earth turns and we are in shadow.  Both of the boys really had fun taking turns making it day and night on the globe!

If you have some Montessori lessons/ideas to share, please link up below.  Please also make sure to either place the Montessori Monday button from the sidebar in your post or put a link back to this blog in your post.  And don't forget to go visit my co-host Deb over at Living Montessori Now!