Daily Report:Montessori Monday

Last week was another fun homeschool week. The kids made some discoveries in the math department, and they are loving our mini lessons in Geometry. I can't tell you enough how appreciative I was that we had the Geometric Solids as a material to work with. Let me just share with those who have preschoolers, don't even worry about if your going to get your monies worth out of this material. The rectangular prism helped DJ to find the surface area and he was so excited he has memorized the formula. As soon as I master the presentation of using the Binomial Cube to solve algebraic equations I am going to present it to him. DJ asked me if I have any more formulas to show him, this is going to blow him away:) I am always nervous when presenting new lessons I haven't given before(even with my own kids). Maybe if I can get over the nervousness I can show him tomorrow. I have been going through some Montessori Albums or Presentations that I have avaliable and reading just the presentations of each material. Can I say just pure awesomeness. After reading some Math, Language, Zoology, Geography Presentations I have ditched the scope and sequence concept. I find that following my children it hasn't been helpful. Since I am following their interest in a material, I look directly at the aim of the lessons and go for it! If they are too challenged then I look for information on a material and dig deep for indirect aims to prepare for mastery then revisit the concept at a later time. It is working and they are being challenged enough to continue their interest in the concept or material. They are able and do make their own discoveries as they create their own extensions, which has helped me to clearly see if their understanding the concepts that they are being introduced.

On Friday Ken and DJ both enjoyed looking for edges, faces,vertices on the Geometric Solids. They also counted how many different shapes that can be found on each solid.

Today both of them worked in their math workbooks. DJ completed pages working with polygons and different types of triangles. Ken worked on decimals. As far as workbooks go it is sometimes something that they like to do. Last week DJ came to the page about surface area of a rectangular prism I told him to just skip this page, but he still was interested. What I did was have him create number slips and we used the prism to label it,etc. I never teach a brand new concept with worksheets!

Measuring rocks with a scale.

DJ finished up his Amelia Bedelia reading on Friday, he loved every bit of this literature unit. Now he will quickly start up a question using an example of homophones, or idioms asking " What would Amelia Bedelia do if you said.....". Today we started reading a really neat graphic novel about Dinosaurs. He made an example of a Pangea as a go along activity.

Today he also decided he was going to make a board game about Dinosaurs in the pictures above shows one of his trivia cards.

Ken is still really into learning about Africa. Ken loves reading the timeline and it has sparked much research, her friend Addy an American Girl joined her today. Addy tells the story of a girl growing up in the Civil War living as a slave. Addys' stories inspired Ken to learn more about Africa, she has read the books in this girls' series more than a hundred times.

This minibook Ken put together to learn about different types of shelter in Africa.

Meet Sunny! Kens' new parakeet. Ken got her new friend Friday and ever since she has been reading and talking to her pet. She keeps him in the classroom during the day and at night Sunny goes in Kens' bedroom to a nice quiet location specially set up for him. Ken has been doing a great job of taking care of Sunnys' cage, water and food.

Ken also has been trying to do some bird watching. It hasn't been too exciting yet since we are in the North, but she is still setting up bird feeders and experimenting with locations. In the photo above she is learning the names and information about different types of birds. The work comes from Montessori For Everyone.

To see other children doing activities inspired by the Montessori Method please visit http://www.livingmontessorinow.com for Montessori Monday.