Classroom Photos 2016-2017

As some of you know, we moved into a new house about 7 months ago and I am still trying to figure out how to make the space we have in the basement work for our classroom.  We had a pretty successful second part of the school year last year, but I made a few tweaks and hopefully they will work out for us.  I'm sure I will be making more in the months to come since we have a new baby arriving in September!  I have tried to relocate some of the larger book shelves to the more "dungeon" like area right when you walk in the classroom.  There just isn't much natural light there so I put some of elementary books and teachers materials there.  I also tried to open up the classroom a little more by moving our obnoxious tv and couches over.  I decided to utilize our love seat in the arrangement of the classroom to have a cozier feel to it. 

 

 

This is the dreary corner right when you come into the classroom and the dark spot on the right hand side is the bathroom.  I have some elementary language stuff here, random science stuff like the microscope, history charts up top (multi-colored), and the history curriculum (Story of Civilization along with Story of the Bible).  I really just don't have the space to separate all of these things into nice shelves so they kind of each get their own shelf on the same bookcase.

 

This photo shows some of the math shelves.  I decided to add a few more math shelves so that they could all be in the same location and we could have the different materials out for three different age groups.  Ideally, all of the materials are out at once, but with homeschooling Montessori, you really just need what the child is working on plus the material that he will be heading towards.  These materials are on constant rotation it seems like.

Another picture of some of the math shelves. 

 

This is when you are walking into the main part of the classroom. 

Here is where I have tried to open it up a bit and added the couch on the right hand side.  Some of the shelves are still bare because I am trying to finish up making materials.  (Man, that photo collage on the wall looks a lot better in person!  Looks a little crazy in the picture.  I am hoping to add more as the year goes on.  Perhaps it will look better then! Ha)

View of how I tried to incorporate the love seat.  There is a walkway behind those shelves to get to the bigger couch and it is still possible to watch education videos on the tv during the school day.  I forgot to take a pic of the poetry corner I set up on the other side of those shelves.  There is a cute little rocking chair with a basket of poems for all ages.

Another angle....

 This angle is if you were sitting on the love seat.  I have Kui's table in the corner and I moved Bub's table closer to me so I would have better access to him while I was working with her.  I also moved the tall bookshelf and replaced it with the smaller black ones on the left hand side which seems to have opened up the space a little more.

T-man's space keeps getting rearranged.  We moved the large wash basin upstairs to the main living area along with some of the practical life exercises like flower arranging, plant watering, and window washing.  This allows him and Nito to make better use of those materials more often in everyday life.  Plus it frees up space downstairs.  I am in the process of adding more language materials for T-man as well which will take up more space on the shelves. 

View from Kui's table in the corner.

 

Please let me know if you have any suggestions to our classroom or if you wanted a closer look at the different shelves.  I have added quite a bit of language materials to the primary section so I hope Bubs and Nito start thriving in that area!!

 



Phonogram dictionary

Let me first start by saying that I had never heard of one of these.  But man does it come in handy for the beginner reader. 

 

**Just a disclaimer before I get into the details of the dictionary.  I clearly don't have one of those fancy binding machines which makes a dictionary look like this, but I did the best with the materials I had at home already.  However, I took it upon myself to laminate the dictionary (when no one else did) because I have 4 children who will be using it now or in the future and I wanted it to last.  The downside......well, um, you clearly need to know how to hole punch in a straight line 4 times in a row for about 60-70 pages.  Or otherwise you get the oh so fancy product that you see pictured above.  With only 2 rings, yet 4 holes for rings!  Let's just say that you can't force the rings to go vertical when they are made to go horizontally so the pages turn nicely.  With that being said, it is functional, just not the nicest job of material making that I have done in the past.  But I refuse to reprint, cut, laminate, and cut again and waste another 5 hours or so of my time. 

 

Ok on to the details......I came across this dictionary when I was using the Muriel Dwyer approach to reading rather than the typical Montessori approach.  MyBoysTeacher does a great job comparing the two approaches at her blog What did we do all day.  The last phase of it includes this dictionary.  The child learns the key sounds through the sandpaper letters, sound games, moveable alphabet, and eventually moved on to the reading folders.  Therefore he is very excited about reading, but may not have everything memorized to read independently.  This is where the dictionary comes in.  You teach the child to use it just like a regular dictionary.  It has tabs that help the child find the phonogram that he is looking for.  As the child is reading a book or looking at words that he does not know, then he can go to this dictionary to help him learn the sound of the particular phonogram he is struggling with.  Another way to think of it is the child learned the key sounds with the sandpaper letters or even the double sandpaper letters.  He wasn't introduced to the "other" sounds that a letter could make until he started using the reading folders.  For example, with the sandpaper letters, the child would learn that "c" makes the "c" sound like in cat.  However, the reading folders introduced the "s" sound for the letter "c" like in the word ceiling.  The child may not remember this so he would then use the dictionary to find the key sound.  The picture below shows the first page of the dictionary which is the key for the child.  (Remember the photos will enlarge when clicked on.)

The first sound listed is "a".  The dictionary lists out the four sound options for that letter.  For example, "a" could make the sound "a" for apple, "ai" for paper, "o" for all, or "u" for above.  This helps the child determine which sound is needed to pronounce the word.

 

Another example is "ough".  The child's choices are "au" for fought, "ou" for drought, "oa" for though, or "ue (coo)" for through.

 

I chose to use a more thorough dictionary and included a second column of tabs which include more sounds just to help the child in the beginning stages.  Here is an example of the "sc" sound.  It can make the "sc" sound as in scale or "sc" can make the "s" sound in science.

Just another example.  (I love visuals!)

 

Here is a link to the download I used to make my dictionary. 

Addition Strip Board and Finger Chart

Finally some new math materials for Bubs!!

Bubs was very excited to have new math materials.  He had been working with the snake game for awhile and stopped pulling out the ten/teen boards awhile ago.  He goes through phases of working with the paper decanomial and the bank game.

 

 We started with the addition strip board.   This board has a row of numbers 1 through 18 across the top.  The numbers 1-10 are red and the numbers 11-18 are blue.  There are also 9 red bars and 9 blue bars.  The smallest rod is labeled with a 1 and the longest is labeled with a 9 with the remaining numbers in between.

I have a few containers with simple equations.  For example, in the picture above, he has the equation 9 + 4.  He takes the 9 red bar and the 4 blue bar.  They are placed side by side horizontally.  Then he looks at the numbers at the top to see what number he has formed.  Both bars together end at 13.  He then knows the answer is 13. 

Here is a closer look.  He did this work until he finished the container and moved on to the next one. He thought it was pretty easy which was what I was afraid of.  He has passed this material, but it is a good stepping stone for his addition work.   

I quickly started him on the first finger chart.  He was pretty excited to have his own clipboard, special paper, and a pencil for this work.  This chart is officially called the Table of Arithmetic, but we definitely wouldn't want to tell Bubs that!  It might overwhelm him. 

The setup of the board is red numbers from 1 to 9 vertically down the side with blue numbers 0-9 horizontally across the top. All of the other squares are the sum of one red number and one blue number.  The child uses his fingers to find the answer.  For example, the equation above is 3+5.  Bubs puts his left finger on the red 3 and his right finger on the blue 5.  Then he slides his left finger across and his right finger down until they meet in the middle at 8, which is his answer.  Before he finds his answer, he writes his equation on his paper.  Then he fills in the answer once he finds it.  (The paper is just a simple graph paper with large squares. You can download it for free here.)

I did discover that this work is not necessarily full proof.  I noticed that on one equation, he slid one finger down to the other row as he was sliding, which then made his answer incorrect.  I just used that as a point of interest for the next equation.  He will continue to work through all of the equations before we move on to the next finger chart for addition.  Right now, I have every equation from 1+1 through 9+9.  He was very excited when he got 9+9 because he was able to use the highest number on the board.  If you click on the pic, you can see his equations written on his paper.  Sorry I didn't take a better pic of that. 

Language Games

Ok, so this is not a traditional Montessori material for language, but someone from our parish gave me some homeschooling materials she used when her kids were young.  I decided to put them to use and see how it goes!  Well...the kids had a blast with them.  I started Kui out with this game below called the Prefix Mix.  She is, or should be, done with prefixes, suffixes, etc., but this game was a good refresher for her and something fun to do.  We are reaching the end of the year so it is always nice to have new materials to spice things up a bit.

 

This game can have up to six people or maybe each person could have more than one card to make it more interesting.

 

Each person gets a card with four prefixes on it.  Then you draw a card from the bag and read the word.  If you can make a word with one of your prefixes then you place it on your board and it is the next person's turn.  If not, you put the card back in the bag.  For example, Kui drew "belief".  She put it with "dis" to make the word "disbelief".  When you have all four spots filled up, you win!

Kui really enjoyed this.  The game goes pretty fast so we played a few times.  It is actually kind of challenging to make the words.  I made up my own word and ended up losing in the end because my word wasn't on the answer key!!  (I do the same thing in Scrabble as well!)

 

We also played a bingo game called "Diphthong Bingo".  We included Bubs in this game since he is learning how to read and it would be good practice for his sounds.  For those of you who have forgotten elementary English class, a diphthong is two vowel sounds joined in one syllable to form one speech sound.  That clears it up right?!  For example, "ou" in the word "sound".  Don't worry, I had no idea there was an actual name for it! Haha  If you enlarge the picture above, you should be able to see that the diphthong is highlighted a different color.  This helps the child distinguish the sound.

 

The kids had markers and I called out the words and then you play just like regular bingo. 

There is even a card for the caller to check the words at the end of the game.  The kids loved this one so much that they asked if they could play it in the afternoon!!  I secretly wanted to play with them, but was cooking dinner :( 

Adding Fractions - Different Denominators

Good ole fractions!  We finally dusted these bad boys off again.  Kui is pretty behind on fractions so I am making quite the effort to get her back into the swing of things.  I think I was initially scared off from these when I was looking in the album.  Not quite sure why.  Maybe it is the endless amount of charts that need to be made for the fraction work.  Who knows!  Regardless, I am back at it making more and more charts to be used for this work.  Kui was pretty excited to get a presentation today and worked very well.  We have been working upstairs this week because Bubs has been sick and quarantined upstairs.  I needed to stay close to hear him.  It worked out though.  We had plenty of space for all of the fraction pieces. 

 

Kui finished up the presentations for adding fractions with the same denominators awhile ago so we just took a minute to refresh the concept.  She picked up on the new concept pretty quick, however, we do need to dive back into the Least Common Multiple work so that she can be a little quicker in finding the common denominator.  We will do that tomorrow.

 

Here Kui is working with the first problem in the album.  I believe it was something simple like     1/2 + 1/4 =.  She needed to get the denominator in the same "family" like all halves or all fourths.  She looked at the fraction pieces and said, "How many fourths will fit in a half."  This should come very easy to the child at this point and she quickly found out that 2 fourths fits into a half.  So her equation changed to 2/4 + 1/4 = 3/4.  She could easily push all of the fourths together now since they were from the same family.  She worked on many simple examples like this today.

 

She also has this box of extra fraction pieces if she needs them.  Sometimes the fraction insets are not enough.  You can buy these plastic pieces here.  I believe I got mine from Montessori Outlet, but for some reason that link was not working.  They are a little pricey, but well worth it.  I never did end up finishing mine that I started cutting 3 years ago.  I just broke down and bought a set.  They are going to be more precise than my cutting skills anyway!

Once we went through a few examples and she got the hang of it, I introduced one of the charts to her.  This is a great visual to show how the fractions are changed to match the same family.  1/4 gets changed into 2/8.  It is very clear by the color coding on the chart.  Then you can add eighths with eighths.

 

She was very inspired by my beautiful drawing and coloring skills (NOT!!) and wanted to make her own chart.  Here it is below. 

 

It is actually a good review and practice for the child to do this.  It allows them to color which is Kui's all time favorite thing to do.

Here is another chart showing 3 addends and how we exchange along the way to see them all in the same family by the last row.  (Please remember that you can click on the picture to enlarge it.)  I realized half way through that all of my fraction pieces would not fit and I had to tape on a bottom piece.  Doesn't look the greatest, but gets the concept across.  I love this one because it also shows how the fraction can end up as 9/9 or 1.  This reminds the child to simplify the fraction when they are done. 

 



Here is Kui's attempt.  Can you tell her interest waned by the end?  It was approaching recess and her brothers were already heading out.  It is also a good reminder as to why making the charts is really the job of the teacher and not the child.  It is too labor intensive for the elementary child.  They have moved past this developmentally.  However, I did let her do it since I was trying to follow the child.

 

I also started making her some equations that she can do on her own for extra practice for each operation.  I still need to cut them out, but here is a picture for your reference.  Tomorrow we will probably touch on a refresher for Least Common Multiple before we move on to subtracting different denominators.  Plus, this teacher needs to get busy making the rest of the charts for this group!  It was a good reminder to check the state of the colored pencils every so often as well.  This child clearly needs a new set!  I was using a red pencil today that was the size of my pinkie.  Makes coloring nicely quite the challenge!