The Preschool Shelf

I've been rearranging our playroom/schoolroom lately. Like I always do before we start a new school year. Cohen will be a little more occupied this year since, which means Lakin is losing his partner in crime during school time. Last year, they ran amok. I when Cohen was in preschool I did very well giving him activities to do while I was working with the older two. Last year, not so much. So....this year I cleared off one entire shelf to dedicate to Lakin-aged activities. Everyone can use them, but the activities I choose have him in mind.

Here is our 9-cube, preschool shelf:


I've been putting them out slowly, taking off old ones and replacing them with new. I put this one out tonight and he loved it. 2 bowls, rocks and tongs.

I ordered a couple things from Montessori Services, one of which was this creamer set. They are tiny and cute and great for pouring.

And this I put out tonight, after the boys were in bed. This is Lakin's mini sandbox. I took out the sand and replaced it with birdseed, some spoons and scoops. I am sure the dump trucks will go back in tomorrow too.

This little pouring set has been out for over a year now, but they all use it. I did finally replace the old beans with chickpeas for something new though.

Counting bears and cards, up to 8

This is what I did with the sand from the mini-sandbox. Along with some shells and a straining spoon...

And finally the dropper jars. We have a set for color mixing, which they all use weekly it seems. So I got a couple more bottles and droppers to use for other things. This one is for filling up these mini-cups. Cohen worked on it for awhile tonight when I put it out...making his blue and red pattern.

My plan is to switch these out every week or so. Keeping with the basic themes of these. Pouring, transferring, math, language, sensory, small motor, etc...

Next up on my rearranging list: The "Library"
I have an idea on what I want to do, I just have to convince Paul to help me take all the books off and move the massive 6 ft long, 4 ft high book shelf to a new location. (And back if it doesn't look like I want it to....)

Cohen's Eggs

Cohen has been asking to learn to read. He has an amazing memory for stories and he can "read" word for word most of his favorites....and what he can't remember all it takes is a one word reminder....the first in the sentence to get him going again. He's been playing on Starfall a lot and listening to our Sing Spell Read and Write CD songs. I *think* he knows all his letter sounds...although I am not sure because his pronunciation is off on a lot...he's incapable of saying some of the sounds correctly.....

Last week I made these eggs for him....he finally used them this morning since they were sick with the stomach bug before and we all now have colds....

Inside are: an item, a word card, and the letters used to make the word. The goal being to sound out the letters in each word(item), and them spell it using the letters. The word card is to check the spelling when the word is completed.

He did really well sounding out the letters that made up the words. He does like to go right to left instead of left to right, but my goal was for him to hear the individual sounds within each word. He got the initial sounds no problem and when I said the word really slow he heard the rest and spelled them all correctly.

Here is his finished work- he did them 3 times. I only wish I had a greater selection of miniature items!

Preschool

I feel a little guilty each morning when I call the boys to come to the table. They all come, and every day I hear "Mommy do you have anything for me to do today???" from Cohen. He gets a little grumpy when I don't but will work at the table on something- markers, playdough, sticker books- then go off and play, but what he really wants is school. Like his brothers. Something made and planned just for him.

I've tried this week. Not pre-planned, but spur of the moment. So here's a run down of what Cohen and Lakin have done this week:

On Monday we made paper dragons for Chinese New Year

On Tuesday we shelled peanuts

and painted with the dot paints

On Wednesday Paul emptied his pockets before work; pulling out about 40 golf tees he picked up from somewhere. Cohen and Lakin (and Rylan and Cale) have been hammering, or pushing them in Lakin's case, into clay or playdough for the past 2 days.
Today Cohen worked on a counting file folder game, and while he was counting I got inspired and made this up for him:

Quickly drawn and cut aliens in need of eyes

He was very happy to have work to do

And at (every)night they have acted out thier version of the song Mr. Policeman by Brad Paisley (on my sidebar playlist)over and over and over....from Hey, Mr Policeman, I bet I can drive faster than you can with trucks; to Hey, Mr Policeman, I bet I can run faster than you can on foot; to I'm in the jailhouse now complete with laundry basket jail.

Wonderful Things

Here are a few items from our school week that we have been enjoying:

I love this series of books. They are by Brian P. Cleary, the series is Words Are Categorical. My boys have loved reading through them this week. We have started each day with a different one so far....we will read the book, brainstorm huge list of words and then their writing assignments are based on them. Monday we just wrote nouns, Tuesday simple sentences with a noun and verb. Today adjective and noun pairs. Tomorrow we will put them together into sentences a little more complex. I plan on getting a couple more from the library so we can continue. Plus...Cale loves making up the silliest sentences he can think of and Rylan, of course, is much more realistic.

Color. I love color. We've been reading the Magic School Bus Makes a Rainbow, Little Blue and Little Yellow (for Lakin and Cohen) and a book called A Color Sampler which has a lot of visuals and designs based on the color wheel. So we have been exploring with our oil pastels- which is one of my favorite mediums.

Learning new things. Rylan has been wanting to really learn multiplication. We took a break between where we stopped in his subtraction book to learn a little more about place value. I figured since he could subtract (and add ) 1,298,342,234 and 3,456,646,565 he should be able to read past the 1000s place. So now that he can read up in the trillions we started an intro to multiplication. I used the bead stairs I made a few months back and the multiplication exercises I printed online. (this site has them for add, sub, mult and div). We were going to do zero today, but he was so excited about how easy that rule was he wanted to do x1 too. And since that was so easy he wanted to do x2. He figured out the patten immediately and I love seeing him so excited. Cale is using the addition excercises this week to start on the road to memorizing his addition facts.

And of course we love and enjoy the friendly dragon that has been dancing around the house all week...

Moveable Alphabet

I ordered this from Lakeshore Learning and it was delivered yesterday afternoon. All 4 boys immediately began to play around with the letters. But today I worked them into our school day. First Cohen and I used them after our "A" scavenger hunt to spell out all the items we found around the house starting with the "ahh" sound.

And here is Cale working on his first set of sight/instant words. He was using our small flip book for spelling, but I can tell it really helped him read the words. Especially since he would read the entire list as he added a new word.Rylan also wanted to use these today. He decided to spell out all of this week's spelling words (-dge words) to help him practice for his spelling test tomorrow.

Random Pictures from our Week

Here is Cohen with his new grinding set. I've been saving egg shells for awhile and he is having a blast grinding them (and cheerios too)

This is one of Lakin (16 mo) favorite things to do right now. We got this tiny little spoon with something else and it is just right for him to transfer the popcorn kernels from bowl to bowl.
And here is Lakin's first experience with pouring. He did well actually since I only put a tiny bit of water in it. Of course getting the little teacup to his mouth with out spilling that was a little harder.

Here's Cale working on his place value, 10s and 1s.

And Rylan working on skip counting 2-9 (12 times each). He worked really hard and enjoyed pointing out the factors that the different numbers shared.

We got this egg a few days ago. We've only gotten one this small once before. They sure are cute...but yolkless

And finally the bunches of birthday balloons seems to have tied themselves into one big bunch that I am kicking all over the house. The boys however are loving hiding themselves in them.

Today's Baking: Tortillas

Today we decided to try out the boys new baking set by making some tortillas for lunch. It's a really easy recipe I found on a blog somewhere:
2 cups flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp oil

1 tsp salt

3/4 cup warm milk
Mix the first 4 ingredients. Slowly pour in milk while stirring. Knead for 2 minutes. Rest in bowl under plastic wrap for 20 min. Break dough into 8 balls and rest for another 10 min. Roll out to about an 8 in diameter. Heat a pan to med-high and cook each tortilla for about 30 seconds on each side. Keep the cooked ones wrapped in a napkin while you cook the rest.


First I rewrote the recipe step by step in a way my oldest could read it. They measured and stirred everything. The boys wanted to actually knead this. It is a very stiff dough so there was a lot of pushing on a ball and not much kneading. After about 2 rounds each they took it to the Kitchen Aid and let the dough hook have it.

Their favorite part is of course the rolling. These are really yummy and tasted great with our fresh egg burritos for lunch.

Animal Classification

I worked on this project all last week. We are discussing animals for the next few weeks, with the main part of the time being spent on an indepth animal "report" for both Rylan and Cale. I am thinking they will do a lapbook or something similar, but I want this to be them. But I will help them get their ideas focused and brainstorm for content to include. This is also a duel purpose unit on research. But before we jump into their projects I wanted to go over animal classification again. We did this a little last year, made a big poster and everytime we saw an anmimal we would glue it's picture in the right place. And draw a symbol for it's habitat.

So this year I made this:

Our animal classification box. There are divisions for Invertebrate/Vertebrate/Arthropod, then into the classes: mammal, bird, echinoderm, insect, etc...

Here is the control chart. I downloaded it from here.

Then there are animal picture cards 3-4 for each class. I based them off the ones available at the above website. I didn't like them so I found my own pictures and printed them on business card paper (makes it so much easier!)

Then there are reference cards that tell a few facts about each class:

We've been working through it together. So far sorted all the animals into their Phylums and the vertebrates into classes (no I didn't actually use the phylum/class terminology with them...) Tomorrow we tackle the invertebrates, before they choose which animal they want to do their reports on.

The Montessori Method

Seeing that I have posted a lot about Montessori in the past few weeks I thought I would compile a few resources I have found. I am by no means pure montessori, there are some aspects I just don't care for or see the point in. But the aspects I do like are the early instruction for practical life and getting the children to be more independent early on. I like the level of concentration the children can achieve when given appropriate material. The subjects of math is one of my favorites, and I really like a lot of the math manipulatives used to help children really understand they why behind the process. Geography is also a big one. Map puzzles and pin maps are used a lot to help children really see the world and learn the location of all the different countries and other geographically important places. I've got 2 in the early stage and 1 in the elementary and then Cale somewhere in the middle I am trying my best to creat an environment that is a good fit for everyone. We are on an off week from school and I am in the middle of planning our next 4 week block. I am trying to figure out what I want to incorporate into our classroom and what I want to stay the same. Anyway...on to the links...

To start here is a basic FAQ on the Montessori Method. And another informational site on the basics of the Montessori method and history.

This site is a wonderful resource, especially for someone who is not at all trained in the Montessori method. The site is broken down into the different subjects and each subject is described and along the sidebar you can look at all the different activites, the directions for all the games and activities and how to present it to the child is right there for you.

For the younger kids- ones working with numbers up to 1000s, understanding the logic behind numbers and place value, you can view videos online of the activities.

Another good site for some of the activites for the 3-6 age group is Montessori Mom. There is a lot of explanations of the different activites from sorting to the addition. Some info on language and Montessori in general. And here is another album of activities for the 3-6 age range

Here you can view a scope and sequence for the different age ranges, 3-6, 6-9 and 9-12. They also have teacher training albums for the different subjects for the different levels too. THis is one of the few sites I have come across with a good amount of info on the older ages.

Montessori for Everyone has a selection of inexpensive materials you can buy- and some free to to download. Lots of sorting cards and parts of an object cards. I personally don't like too much of the card work but I see a place for some of it in our schooling esp. for independent work and refining the skills. I also use these to get ideas on how to make my own; I have made animal classification cards and Living/non-living classification cards using printable business card paper. It makes it much easier with no cutting. Another site for free resources is Montessori Materials it has free, donated material from other teachers and homeschoolers.

There are also a few good catalogs to buy, or if you are like me, get ideas and put them into play using your own resources. Montessori Services has a wonderful selection for practical life and Michael Olaf has an online catalog, you can purchase a print copy, but the catalog is divided into age ranges and there is a lot of good information on methods as well as products.

And since I am a visual learner and I like to see how a lot of this goes together and how it looks, Sew Liberated has a lot of pictures of her materials and classroom (again, 3-6 but you can use your imagination for older kids, and the set up is similar just different materials for their level). She also has a lot of pictures in herprepared environment gallery. Another nice blog is My Montessori Journey. There are also a few youtube videos where you can see an elementary classroom at work.

This is by no means a complete list of resources, but a jumping off point for someone looking for more information. And a way for me to organize some of the information I have come across.

New Additions

I mentioned last week that I have a new interest in the Montessori way of teaching. I love the preschool ideas and the practical life instruction. I have found in the past week that information on the elementary- or 6-12 class- is hard to find. There is a wealth of information on setting up a 3-6 classroom, but not so much on the older kids. So I have been adding things to our "classroom" and rearraging our existing items in more appealing ways.

One thing I have been making is this:

The beads are a major mathematics manipulative. And if you buy the ones through the Montessori stores they are ridiculously expensive. We actually don't really have much in the way of manipulatives. My kids have never used them much for counting. They just learned by counting things; while building, reading etc. I like it that way. Rylan was a natural when it came to addition and didn't take long to go counting objects to abstract problems. We own cuisenaire rods, but they aren't marked so it makes it hard to know which rod is 8 and which is 6. I can see a lot of uses for these beads. Montessori uses them for everything from counting to understanding higher numbers, to mulitplication and square root. So I went to Hobby Lobby- lucky for me the beading section was in the flyer last week and plastic beads were all 50% off. So I bought a bunch and used some wire left over from the chicken coop and started stringing. I made 10 sets of the bead stair (above) and I also am working on long chains- about 10 long- of each number for use in skip counting. Rylan need some work with that- esp since he will be coming into multiplication before too long. I set the beads out and they have loved "play" with them so far.

And Cohen has taken to these changes like a moth to a flame. He is at the perfect age for this. He's pouring and counting and scooping. I made him a salt tray to write in. He has actually been trying to write some letters- can do a c, o and i. He was so excited and ran to find his dad after each letter, yelling "Daddy, come see my "o"!!" Today I made this sorting set and he wanted to use it immediately. (excuse the smile, he's at the stage where he puts this grin on when he hears the camera...I tried to get one of him actually working but he would here the focus and look up with this smile)

Once he was done, I asked him to roll up the mat and put it away, which he did, but then he wanted to use the red mat. So I found an old counting game we made last year. An egg carton, numbered to 12 and enough beads to fill each with the appropriate number. I think for a not quite 3 yr old he is an excellent counter. He did all of them. A little help near the end keeping his 1:1 correspondance straight but overall he did it alone, counting the beads one at a time to put them in the right spot.