Story of the World - Volume 1

 

History........my ultimate nightmare and the one subject I dreaded the most as a kid growing up.  I mean, who cares about all of those ancient people and their Gods, spears, and armor anyway?  Ok that was a little harsh.   I'll apologize to all of those history buffs and lovers out there but the thought of history really does leave a bad taste in my mouth for whatever reason......until I discovered Story of the World by Susan Bauer.  Granted, we are only in Chapter three of Volume 1, but I am already in love with how she presents the information and makes it intriguing for the children. After all, the second plane child loves to hear a good story.  This is how you capture their attention and then let their imagination run free.

For those of you who are not familiar, Story of the World, it is a four volume set ranging from the Ancient Nomads to Modern Age.  There are several formats from paperback to audiobook.  Susan Bauer also provides a great resource with the Activity book.  Included in this for each chapter are additional literature resources to find at the library, review questions and several activities to go along with the current chapter.  It is actually quite awesome and I have learned a lot so far.  It is so great to be able to learn along with my daughter.

 

These two pictures are of a "cave painting" that Kui needed to do as one of the activities for the chapter on the Earliest people.  She was to try and create a painting like a prehistoric man would on a cave wall.  Her picture is of a goat with two people carrying bows and arrows trying to kill it for food.  She struggled with the technique that she was supposed to use, but overall I think she got the general idea that these prehistoric men would leave messages on the walls.

 

This is an example of a coloring sheet from the activity book.  The earliest nomads turned into farmers and created a leather bucket to capture water for watering their crops.

 

Our next step down the history trail is to utilize our history question charts.  Stay tuned for a post on our progress in learning about the Egyptians through the use of SOTW (Story of the World) and these charts.

 



Decimal Fractions - Part 1

 

 

Yay!  We have finally started something official for math this year: DECIMAL FRACTIONS.  I am shocked that I actually have my act together enough for this.  It isn't "easy peasy lemon squeezy" like my daughter goes around saying.  The tricky part to all of this Montessori homeschooling business is that I have to first understand it, figure out how to do it, and then be able to present it to the kiddos in a way that makes sense!  Thanks be to God for You Tube and all of those teachers who like to video themselves doing these presentations.  Just when I think no one in their right mind would video themselves talking about how to read decimal fractions, what do ya know?  There are at least 100,000 videos on the topic.  Go figure! 

We have moved along pretty quickly with the first few initial presentations.  Simply explaining that whole numbers are a unit multiplied by 10 to get 10, 10 x 10 is 100, 100 x 10 is 1,000, and so on.  Then, if you take a unit and divide it by 10, you get a tenth.  You have to almost spit on your child to emphasize the "th" at the end.  (Ok, how many people just tried to say tenth to see how much spit you produce?!)  Then if you divide 10 x 10 you get a hundredth.  A hundredth divided by 10 is a thousandth, and so on. 

 

The picture above is the "pinwheel" shape that is created when you write out the whole numbers and decimals with the cards.  I didn't get a picture of it, but if you stick a pin in the middle of the unit, you are able to spin it around, thus showing that everything revolves around the unit.  (Sorry about the glare in the photo.)

 

 

We jumped right into working with the decimal board which Kui really seems to enjoy.  She is using the piece from her chess set to show that the unit is King.  This reminds her to either multiply or divide depending on which way she is moving away from the unit.  If she is moving to the left, she would multiply to get a whole number.  If she is moving to the right, she would divide to get a decimal fraction.  Side note:  Don't mind the tray of beer bottles in the background.  She was working with those earlier to create different pitches with varying amounts of water.  Yes, #herdaddrinks

 

Here is a simple problem using the decimal squares and then locating the corresponding card.  She has 8 decimal squares in the ten-thousandths column and has found the 8 ten-thousandths card.

 

We did quite a few more examples of the simple problems and then moved into problems that involved exchanging.  For example, if she had 12 millionths, she would exchange 10 of those for 1 hundred thousandth and have 2 millionths remain on the board.  So, it is getting used to the idea of moving to the left to exchange quantities (which is a lower amount if you think of it as a whole number).  So far, so good though.  She enjoys it and keeps pulling it off of the shelf.

 

Stay tuned for adding and subtracting decimal fractions!



1st day of school

Well... we actually did it.  Started back with school in the middle of summer.  I mean, who does that really??? 

 

Our first day was a big success.  The kiddos were very enthusiastic to see the new materials on the shelf.  However, I did have to slow their roll and remind them that I would not be presenting anything new for a few weeks.  We are spending some time reviewing while I get Nito transitioned into the Primary "classroom".    He is quite the eager little fella and will make quite the student. 

 

 

All summer long, Bubs has talked about how he was going to do the water and wine presentation, but the first thing he pulled off of the shelf was water colors!

 

Nito went straight into gluing, because, what is more fun than getting your fingers all sticky and then touching all of the other materials?

 

He did move on to more serious work like the brown stairs and dishwashing.  His first presentation went smoothly.  I was very impressed with his concentration level.

 

As you can see (sort of) in the background, I have rearranged the classroom since my last post.  I also have some empty shelves because new materials are in the mail.  Also, because T-man is around.

 

This is what the true classroom looks like when T-man is awake and on the prowl.  Bubs is being so patient with him while he is trying to do dishwashing.  T-man thinks it is like the bath tub and is splashing bubbles and water all over the floor!  Don't worry though, Nito is not too far behind with a towel to clean up the floor.  He actually enjoys doing it.

 

In the two pictures above, Bubs is planting fruit seeds.  The kids had this grand idea to plant cherry, lemon, and apple seeds and see what happens.  I'll keep you posted throughout the year to see if any seedlings pop up.  (You might have to check back in like 5 years to find out if any other them turned into an actual tree!!)

 

Bubs had quite the busy morning, moving from sensorial, to practical life, to language.  In the picture above, he is weighting the baric tablets.  He uses his fingertips to decide which is heavier.  He got them all right!  (I even struggled to get them right last year when I was "practicing".)

 

 

Nito ended the morning with his own rendition of "Twinkle twinkle" on the recorder.  It was veeery loud.  Thankfully T-man was awake from his nap. 

By the way.....if you noticed, there were no pictures of Kui.  She was not feeling well today.  I'm sure there will be a lot from her coming soon :)

Multi-aged classroom

 

 



Well, it's about that time of year again.  We are working off of a year round calendar this year so we are getting started with school next week.  (Yikes!!!  I haven't made any of the materials that I dreamed of making yet.  Where did the summer go already??).

Before we start back this year, I did a little organization.  Of course..... I mean, what brings me more joy than reorganizing a room??  Oh wait.....tea and muffins. Ah.......  Ok back to the classroom.  I will attempt to describe a little about how our classroom is setup and how we will manage to "make it work" in one space.  Right now, I technically have four environments: Elementary, Primary, Toddler, and Nido (infants).  The Nido (not to be confused with my little guy Nito's nickname) is quite neglected along with the toddler (even though my training is in this area).  Nito is really working his way out of toddler and just dipping his toes into some sensorial and practical life material from primary.  This might make my environment a little more manageable with toddler materials put away.

We recently added a few more bookshelves to the environment and this has helped me to organize the materials more into categories than age levels.  It is not really ideal to have them intermixed, but it will have to work in our classroom for now.  Things might change as we add materials or as the children grow.  For instance, we now have a large bookshelf with all of the math materials.  I just put the primary materials on the lower shelves for Bubs to reach them and Kui can keep her racks and tubes and checkerboard beads higher away from Nito.  For someone who hasn't experienced it, there are ALOT of beads associated with racks and tubes and they roll very nicely on hardwood floor......right under all of the shelves.  Makes for cleaning up to be a challenge.  It's sort of like 52 card pickup with 4 times the beads!

Another nice element thrown into the mix is T-man.  He is now 11 months old and quite the destructive little fella.  He can make a room look like a tornado hit it in a matter of minutes!  It makes organizing the classroom quite interesting.  We may have to live with the bottom few shelves empty on each bookshelf until he moves away from being a shelf sweeper.  Not to mention that the smallest cube of the pink tower, the ones bead from the bead cabinet, and the small knobbed cylinders are all within his little grasp and make perfect choking hazards!  Good thing I have three little observant helpers to keep T-man alive during the school day.

I have added just a few pictures below of the classroom while I'm in the process of reorganizing.  The picture below is our bead cabinet and math shelf.  I still need to spiffy it up a bit, but it works for now.  My mom made Kui a quilted checkerboard and decimal checkerboard so they roll up nicely and are in the basket in the corner.  Helps save on space!

 



This next picture has a lot going on due to the size of the materials along with the shelving that I have and the best use of it.  The fractions are sitting on the top and are as close to the math section as I can manage for now.  Then below on that shelf is some practical life materials along with a dishwashing basin and table washing to the left.

 

I will post more pictures as I get things organized.  The other side of the classroom looks like T-man just passed through so I won't be posting any pics of that.  It is the elementary side and has some exciting materials for him to explore, including beer bottles used for making different tone sounds!  Gotta love it when you look over and see your baby blowing in a beer bottle.  Oh the joys of homeschooling.  Priceless......

 

2014-2015 Portfolio

 



Phew!  It's done.  Took me waaay longer than expected. It's definitely not a perfect representation of what we did, but it's a great recap.  I was actually feeling better and better about our year as I went through each subject area.  I guess you really do more than you think throughout the year.

I have included a few pages from various sections of the portfolio to just give you an idea of some of the paperwork that I saved.  For Montessori, there are not many worksheets so it becomes challenging to represent her work.  We did the best we could do for this year and hope that it will suffice. 

Multiples work

Poetry

Earth and Sun

Parts of the Leaf

Ballerina Dancer by Matisse

  

Typewriter work

I had an Elementary trained teacher look over her portfolio and hip hip hooray!!  It looks like we are on the right track.  She was very impressed with what Kui had covered this year, especially in math.  She was also very helpful in giving me tips and suggestions on the areas where I was weak this year, like science and history.  So, I feel like the hard work paid off and I am very excited about the upcoming year.

Stay tuned.  We are taking a few weeks off and trying to start back in July.