B.C. /. A.D. Timeline

First off, I want to apologize for not posting as often these days.  We are in the midst of packing to move into a new house.  I am super excited, but it is a lot of work.  I will post pictures later in a few months with our new classroom setup.  We will have a separate space for our atrium which will be very nice.  It will be good to have a dedicated space for that.

Ok on to the B.C./A.D. Timeline!

Kui and I have been talking about the books of the Bible and how it is split up into different sections. For those that are not aware, the Catholic Bible contains 73 books while the Protestant Bible only contain 66 books.  There is a great article here, explaining why 7 books were removed from the Protestant Bible by Martin Luther in the 16th century.  We have discussed the first 5 books (Pentateuch) along with the next 11 books (Historical Books) and are currently talking about the next 5 books which are referred to as the Biblical Novellas.  It is quite interesting to be learning these things along with my child.  Such a great gift and blessing of homeschooling! 

I'm sure you are thinking, great, but what does this have to do with B.C. or A.D.?  Well in our Story of the World study for history, we have already touched upon this and what each stands for.  B.C. stands for Before Christ.  B.C.E. is also used and stands for Before Common Era.  (Of course Kui then asks why it doesn't stand for Before Christ Era.  I didn't have the answer.  It was a very good question though.  Please comment if you know why.)  A.D. stands for Anno Domini.  However, most people think it stands for After Death. So she learned this, but we never really went into further detail about how the centuries are calculated and that one era counts up and one era counts down.

So....I made this simple timeline for her so she could visibly see the difference and where the beginning of our calendar began, with Jesus Christ's birth.  I put a picture of the nativity in the center and built the B.C. and A.D. centuries to the left and right of it.  I explained to her that there was a monk named Dionysius Exiguus who was a Roman scholar and theologian who was best known for his creation of a calendar that led to the modern Gregorian calendar.  Then Kui jumped up and ran off!  I was intrigued as to where she was going because I didn't think she had ever heard of this monk (or really even cared)!  Boy was I wrong.  She came back with the book, Story of Clocks and Calendars.  She had found the page with the story of the monk and told me that she recognized that name when she heard me say it.  I was impressed.  I mean, she actually reads those books I put on the shelf?!  This is GREAT.

We also reviewed over how long a century is and talked about how B.C. centuries start from a larger number and count down until they reach 1 A.D.  Then the A.D. centuries count up, the numbers get larger. 

Decanomial - Sensorial and Bead

THE DECANOMIAL......dun dun dun......

 

Coincidentally, I showed Bubs the sensorial decanomial in the same week that Kui and I got to the bead decanomial (Well really we got to it because we finally got the beads in the mail!) 

 

I presented this to Bubs after I had shown him the short bead chains and he had worked with them for awhile.  He is quite aware of the different colors for each number.  For example, red is one, four is yellow, etc.  So when I started showing him this material he immediately pointed to the bead cabinet and said, "Mommy, it looks just like that!"  His shrill little excited voice encouraged me greatly in my homeschooling journey because all of these materials are quite time consuming to make.  Yes, there are quite a few materials that can be bought, but there are also quite a few that need to be made by the teacher (a.k.a. myself).  A great example of my hand made material can be seen in the third picture below.  Anyone see the wavy rectangles?!  Ha  Those got jammed in the laminator and when I tried to reprint them, my ink cartridge ran out and the blue squares looked more like a sky blue.  Needless to say that I wasn't going out to get ink any time soon and every day is precious in the wonderful world of Montessori learning.  So.....I decided to go ahead and present to him even though the materials were somewhat less than perfect.  (I do plan on fixing these, but for this presentation, it had to do.) 

 

I also need to make a storage container for all of these little rectangles.  Not sure where I will find that.....

Those wavy rectangles just add character right?!  This material is truly one of a kind.

 

Now for Kui's bead decanomial.  Wow, I definitely did not allow enough of the morning to complete this one!  I mean how long can it take to lay beads out in rows?  Clearly over an hour.  Ok maybe we had a few distractions like the table being bumped and beads messed up, T-man discovering that he can reach the top corners of the table and grab beads, snack time, etc.  Kui finally completed it though.  She was very proud of herself. 

Working diligently

 

In the picture above, Kui has already switched out her loose squares with the fixes squares on the diagonal.  If you click on the picture it will become larger.  Then you can see them in the top left hand corner and going diagonal to the bottom right hand corner.  Then she switched out the beads using the commutative law of multiplication.  2 x 3 is the same as 3 x 2 for example.  This is what gives you the pattern of the decanomial.

 

Her finished decanomial.  Phew!  It was a lot of work, but she discovered that it was the same thing that Bubs was working on and he thought that was pretty cool.  He looks up to his big sis and the fact that they were doing something so similar was cool to him.

Typical school day

Well, here are a few pictures from a typical school day around Our Lady of Good Counsel.  Don't mind the moving boxes in a few of the pictures.  I tried to not get them in there, but they are all over the house and they prove to be a great barrier for T-man entering the classroom, especially the one with heavy dishes.  However, you can see in the picture below, that someone had moved this great barrier and he had his way with the environment.  His first stop, Nito's chalkboard!

Oh did I forget to mention that he prefers to draw standing up and probably on one foot if he could manage!  This boy has no fear.

I presented the decimal checkerboard to Kui the other day and she picked it up right away.  It is very similar to the regular checkerboard. 

 

 

I showed the Zoology booklets to Nito and he really picked up on it quickly.  He did about 4 more and a few more the following day.  I am quite sure that he is ready for more materials, but I am finding a hard time giving him priority over Kui and Bubs at times.  There is just not enough time in the mornings to get to all of them.  Then you throw T-man into the mix, well....I'm not sure how I get anything done!

Bubs has zoomed his way through labeling the short chains and I can't quite keep up on the following presentations fast enough.  I am so happy though that he loves numbers so much, unlike his sister.  She is slowly coming along these days, but I hope to keep his interest as long as I can.  I just need to be more diligent in making sure I know what presentation comes next and having the material ready. 

 

Here is Bubs again with his numbers.  He insists on writing all the way to 20 and has begged me to let him use the marker board.  I gave in and told him that next week he was ready for paper though.  We'll see how that goes and hopefully there isn't a tantrum involved.  Stay tuned!

The 1,000 Chain

 

Well Bubs has made it to the 1,000 chain!  I really can't believe it.  He is really into counting and numbers these days.  When we are at Mass, he just opens the missal and starts counting the numbers in the Table of Contents!  He does seem to always point out to me the number 23.  He says, "Look Mommy that's how old you are!"  I have to remind my dear son that I am indeed not 23, but rather 32.  Clearly we have a little more work to do. 

 

Anyway, back to the 1,000 chain.  Bubs was sailing through the teen board and ten board so I moved along and presented the 100 chain to him to see how he would do.  Well.....he did it correctly the next time he took it off of the shelf on his own, so I watched him do it one other time by himself and then moved him on.  But here is where the challenge began.  Now I had to get creative with this gigantic chain.  Where shall we do it?  Do we have enough work rugs?  How can I time this presentation to fit nicely into T-Man's nap time?  (I wouldn't want 1,000 beads rolling all over the hardwood because T-Man thought the chain makes a better necklace or toy than a material!  It was sort of a spur of the moment presentation because he was asking for something else so I winged it (which is never a good idea to do in primary since the child really needs that sense of order and all of the materials ready for him as opposed to the elementary child).  Nonetheless, I persevered and improvised.  Only my daughter knew that I was using the Black Strip from elementary as a work rug (Shhh!).  But hey, it worked perfectly!  When you are homeschooling on a budget, you really have to work with what you have.  That thing was collecting dust anyway.  (Until now, because my daughter saw it again and of course wants another presentation on it like yesterday.)

Bubs was placing a hundred square at every hundred beads.

We managed to stretch the chain from the far end of the living room to halfway through the kitchen.  Thankfully T-Man slept the whole time.

Bubs really did the entire thing by himself.  I started him off and it is basically counting by 10s all the way to 1,000. It looks like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 20....100, 110, 120,.....980, 990, 1000.

 

Then at the end, you can put the 10 hundred squares next to the 1,000 cube to show that there are 1,000 beads!  Voila!! 

 

He did get it out the next day, but T-Man was awake so it was quite interesting to see how he managed to lay it out in the classroom.  He made it all the way to 700 before Nito had his way with it and messed up the labels.  Boy oh boy you can imagine how that went down........

My new Primary student - Nito!

 

 

After several persistent requests, Nito was finally presented watercolors!  I was actually trying to hold off on this because I could just envision the disaster looming in the future especially with that loooong walk from the classroom to the bathroom sink to rinse out the water bowl.  However, he surprised me 100%.  I guess it is really true that you should follow the child.  He has consistently taken this off the shelf 5 more times and with each additional time, I can see his concentration level grow.  I believe he is feeling very happy that he can do the same work as his big brother, Bubs!

 

 

Here he is doing button sorting.  I had to get a little creative with some transition materials from toddler to primary.  I had moved all of those items off of the shelf for Bubs awhile ago and sort of transformed them into new works.  Nito really seems to enjoy this and right now he is just sorting by colors.  I did present it as a work for gradation of the sizes, but that will be a point of interest later on after he works with it for awhile.  I will say that Bubs likes to take it off the shelf and say, "Nito, this is how you are SUPPOSED to do it!"  Thankfully Nito doesn't think too much of it and just says, "Oh."  Phew.....hopefully his self-esteem isn't crushed (I probably do enough harm by myself without Bubs).

 

 

Good ole table washing.  He is getting better with this one.  Less water on the floor these days.

 Oh, if only I could lounge on the couch and catch up with an old book!  He is very intently reading up on the energy from the sun.  I think he likes the pictures the best.

 

 

What is it about polishing that just peaks the interest of the boys in the house?  Whether it be brass, shoe, wood, it doesn't matter.  Polishing is the prized material in the classroom these days.  Let's just say that all of our boots, crucifixes, bells, wooden bowls, etc. should be quite clean at this point. 

Ok so this set of materials is just ghetto!  When it comes to the color tablet boxes, I only have the second box out of the three.  Therefore, I had to become creative to see what color Nito knows.  So I took the closest looking tablets of a few colors from Bubs box.  Then I just threw them in a basket and presented a matching presentation to Nito.  It was great!  He loves it and actually knows all of these colors.  I will then add the brown, black, gray, etc.  Then he can just move on to the regular color tablet box where it involves the gradation of colors from lightest to darkest.  Hey, he's only two and doesn't know any better.  Thankfully Bubs hasn't mentioned it or maybe he doesn't realize these came from his box.  Oops.......well maybe he will discover that soon enough!