The week's Montessori works

We did an insane amount of Montessori this week.  There are a lot of photos.  Bear is showing a renewed interest in Montessori materials right now and I am following her lead.  I may need to take the Keys to the Universe elementary training just in case.

This is both Bear's (4.5) and J-jo's (2.5) work intermixed.  I'll try to label which work belongs to each.

 Practical life:

Sponge water transfer initial set up

 Later I found the heart dishes and made it look prettier.

 J-jo working on the transfer.  His friend (3 yrs 5 months) was over this day and loved it so much he must have done it 20 times in a row without stopping. No exaggeration.  J-jo did it a few times but didn't love it the way his friend did.  Bear enjoyed this too.

 Using strawberry huller to transfer heart table scatter (Target last year).  very hard.  More for Bear than J-jo.  He used his fingers.

 Bear's embroidery project from Keepers of the Home.

J-jo's friend loves to pull things off our shelves and ask what they are for.  So when he brought the dyed alphabet pasta, I showed them what they could use it for at that moment.

 J-jo LOVED the funnel and it inspired more funnel work later on in the week.

J-jo's friend learned to sweep up the mess. :)

  Pouring salt through a funnel.  He did this over and over.

 Transferring the table scatter with a mini ladle.

 He uses the cutting food every day.

Math:

Laying out numbers in number order (Mommy does that part with him) and then counting as he puts them in the slot.  An every day choice.  I thought he would be past the "thing in a slot" work.

Bear's work to put her facts to memory (over time).  She rolls the die and then finds the answer.  If she needs the addition board she can use it.  Often she just does it in her head.  I saw that Jessie at The Education of Ours had a similar set up.

Our spindle boxes.  J-jo is very intrigued with zero and does what Bear used to do with the zero - want to give it SOMETHING, ANYTHING so it isn't empty.  I hand him the sticks as we count them and he puts them in the correct jar. 

Bear's fraction work.  She may be off to a better start with fractions than I was.  I had the harderst time with them, but she understands them and was even working with equivalent fractions (two 1/6 pieces are equal to 1/3, three 1/9 pieces are equal to 1/3)

She did a few worksheets (with enthusiasm - she really liked fractions) from the Miquon orange book. 

 I noticed at the beginning of the week that she had forgotten how to read large numbers so daily now we put out a few numbers like this and have her read them.

 We started division this week as well.  She understands the concept of multiplication and had already done a lot of stamp game work with it.  Static problems.  She'd already done simple division when sharing snacks so she understands the concept.  She liked sharing the stamps amongst the wooden people.  I first presented this with the golden bead material, but she finds that tedious to work with and prefers the stamp game.  She loves making the people talk and complain that she isn't sharing fairly:) 

I need to learn the names of the numbers again and name them for her though.  Here she makes the number with the stamps.

 After dividing the stamps, she has an answer.  I got the idea to make a giant division sign from Making Montessori Ours.

 

Sensorial

 Bear is really into sensorial again.

 This is J-jo's work.

  Puzzles and remnants of cutting work.

Language

Bear is working through the Sonlight third grade reader list (all from the library), with a few of the second grade ones thrown in because they are good historical stories.

In addition, we are working through First Language Lessons and using our Montessori grammar symbols to reinforce what is in the book.  I love that book as it takes no more than 5 minutes per lesson while we eat snack and then we can work with the Montessori materials at her leisure during the rest of the work period.  She's really retaining what she is learning, too.  We did do the first half at triple speed though, as it focused a lot on nouns and we'd done does a lot last year with the Montessori grammar farm.

Some other language works - a rhyming pairs puzzle

Culture

I have printed out a bunch of botany works and am loosely following Karen Tyler's botany album with Bear. I had hoped J-jo would join along but he doesn't care yet.  He has quite the aversion to three part cards and we've tried to sneak them to him via Bear "playing school" with him and doing the presentation, but he just ignores both of us:)  Obviously he is not ready!

Parts of the tree puzzle

    Parts of the mushroom cards.  A few months back we had tons of mushrooms in the yard. I should have pulled these out then.  Now there are no mushrooms in the yard at all! 

 The parts of the mushroom booklet she colored.

   From Montessori Print Shop, the shapes of the leaf cabinet and matching leaf photos.

Bear working on that.  A bit begrudgingly, mind you.

Art and Nature Study

 We couldn't find mushrooms, but we found daffodils and observed them and then drew and painted them.

 Linked to Preschool Corner, Tot School, Montessori Monday, and Weekly Wrap-up.