December (and a bit of January) School

J-jo (3) has had an explosion of interest in counting and reading.

Math:

I introduced the golden bead material (using Karen Tyler's albums) and we proceeded to play "Go to the Bank," in which I ask him to bring me 5000 or 20 or 3 or 600 and so on and he collects the beads.  His toys assist him in his work.  I attempted to show him how we can build really large numbers (see photo below), but my goal was for him to get practice with unit, ten, hundred, and thousand.

 Here he is collecting "9".

 He had a lot of fun doing "cards and counters" with the bells.

 I was so proud of him for finishing without my help!

He loves to count to one hundred and is pretty good at remembering the names for the tens if he can see the number.  He can't count to one hundred without help if he doesn't have the chart in front of him as he will forget what number he is on and go back to twenty:)

Practical life:

Spooning bells.

 Mazes

Cutting (this was All About Reading Level 1 work).

  

Bear (5) likes to make J-jo breakfast in the morning.

Art:

We've done quite a few art projects, but the only one I photographed is the one we did January 1st, for the Solemnity of Mary. The lesson plan is here. We've also studied Rosa Bonheur and Andy Warhol, using the projects from Meet the Masters for those lessons. 

 Culture:

We played with play dough and made all the landforms to match our landform cards.

 J-jo did the "parts of a volcano" cards from the Classical Conversation bundle from Montessori Print Shop. (You can also buy just the volcano file.)

We've started our Geology study and made a layers of the earth pizza for lunch.

Fun Extra:

This is a fun game Bear got for Christmas. Bear doesn't prefer the Disney princesses, but she loves cupcakes so she loves this game in which players select cards and build the "recipe".  

 Stay tuned for two amazing giveaways next week and more blog posts about our geology unit.