Montessori toys!

So I was excited that our Montessori "toys" arrived 

On Valentine's Day!

I just got some knobless cylinders (3 of 4 - blue set missing)

and

Continent puzzle maps (world, Asia, Europe). 

Pics on the latter later.

 Emilie making her bead stair!

I brought it back out because it coincided with

her math lesson to make a "stair" 

on the AL-abacus (sorry no pic).

So she was able to see the pattern on both.

 Hugs ad stacking the knobless cylinders!

These teach concepts of large, larger, largest

as they increase in size and diameter (some) by 0.5cm.

 Knobless cylinder extension.

 And we've hit the playground twice this week!

 No trip to the playground is complete

without picking red holly berries.  :)

 While Jee was in Seattle we had Stella over, 

Em's old classmate from Elf School.

She had a blast - don't know why she's not smiling!

 I love her drawings. 

They are so fun and whimsical!

 This is Charlotte from Charlotte's Web.  :)

 Beautiful bird books we read last week, forgot to post.

 And a mini-animal track unit.

Matching animals to their snow tracks.

 Elizabeth's coloring and matching animals

to the food they eat.

And I'll end with this one from LEAP.

The girls listened to 4 different pieces of music

and they were asked to draw what they felt.

Instead, Emilie drew the instruments she heard!

I was impressed.

She has her Daddy's artistic genes!

T is for Turtle

I'm behind on pics! 

A new unit, a new week, and their first class at LEAP.

And new Montessori toys.  :)

Letter hunt and printables below from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

 Painting our paper plate turtles!

 The theme: 

"I do not quit.  I persevere."

We talked about how we don't give up

trying, or doing something, even 

when it's hard or when it takes time.

We keep going!

Besides reading a ton of turtle books,

the perseverance theme is read in

The Little Engine That Could and

Mike Mulligan the Steam Shovel - 

both favorites around here.

 Feb calendar.

 We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar

and practiced writing and ordering

the days of the week.  :)

 Printables from kidssoup.com.

And I'll end with this one.

I asked Elizabeth what her pattern was,

totally expecting her to say "Red, yellow, red, yellow."

Instead, she answered:

"Trapezoid, hexagon, trapezoid, hexaon, trapezoid, hexagon."

?!?!?!?

I said, in shock, "where did you learn this?"

"From home {you}".

She must've remembered it when I was telling Emilie the names!  

The girl is a sponge!

And I know Emilie couldn't have 

done that when she just turned 3!!  LOL

Emilie: "Is God looking at me?", as we sat at the table during lunch.

Me: "Yup, He is."

Emilie: "Can He see through walls? Through windows?"

Eliz: "Yeah, why did He zoom up to heaven?"

Me: "Because He lives up there, 

but His Spirit lives in us, so He is always with you.

But His eyes are always looking down 

on earth to help people 

whose hearts are turned to Him."

For the eyes of the LORD range 

throughout the earth to strengthen 

those whose hearts are fully committed to him.

2 Chronicles 16:9

 

One of the many conversations we've had lately,

only because we've had

unhurried time together.

Time to explore, time to play,

time to goof off and be silly and 

use our imaginations,

pretending we're butterflies flying

home from the playground

{oh yes, we flapped our wings

the whole way home!}.

I could not be more thankful, more filled with joy

at the gift of being able to homeschool them.

I don't know how long this will last.

But I am so thankful for these days!

They are certainly not easy.

Some days I want to pull my hair out.

Some days I YELL more than I love.

But some days...when the day goes right...

the kids behave...share toys..

learn about their Maker...

and His Goodness..

Then it all.becomes.worth.it!!

All glory to you, Jesus!

Extras...

Revisiting the ants:

I'm truly amazed at how "busy" they have been!

 Tis a shame it's too cold to release these beauties

outside.  They are surviving well

on their sugar water diet.

 A super fun nailing game

we picked up at the FREE table at LEAP.  :)

 Hammering in wooden pattern shapes

with tiny nails.

 Eliz's turn.

{The one time she actually shared, LOL.}

 There was an impromptu birthday party today

after Em's ballet class.

Eliz shared in the spoils.  :)

 My silly girl, wearing Daddy's glasses!

Love her!

And lastly, forgot to post this one from our apple unit.

What a fun book!

And a fun game to go with it.

We could've spent a week on this book,

learning about countries all over the world.

We'll definitely have to revisit this one.

N is for Nest

We started a new unit today.  

N is for Nest!

The tagline: "God takes good care of me".

 We made bird's nests out of spanish moss

And fake easter eggs.  :)

And glued beans down as their "seeds".

 Do-a-dot letter N from here.

She has some GREAT printables

and even creates curriculum for free or cheap!

Love her geography and art curriculum.

 Finally getting back to some traditional montessori work.

Cards and counters.

This is a good way to visually teach odd and even numbers

(the odd numbers have a "tail").

 Making polygons from colored sticks.

The task is self-correcting since

there are only 3 orange sticks for a triange,

4 green sticks for a square, etc etc.

 Making pie fractions.

 Eliz doing some metal insets.

This is a montessori pre-writing activity.

And finally a plain old measuring tape.

The stool is 12 inches, she said!

It was a good day.

LEAP Co-op!!

Our local homeschooling co-op finally started yesterday!!  

It was an awesome time. 
We met some great moms and their kids.

And got to do some kid science experiments led by scientists from Johns Hopkins University.

What a treat!  I didn't know what to expect. 
But the kids had a blast!!

There were 3 stations.  The first was to MAKE a rubber bouncy ball!

 They mixed borax and warm water and some gluey substance.

After stirring, it turned rubbery...

And they were able to bounce it!

(Sorry no pics of the balls.)

 This station mixed baking soda and vinegar in water

to cause raisins to "dance" in water.

 I have a video of the raisins dancing but haven't uploaded it yet.

Eliz was the smallest and youngest kid there.

But she loved it!
And the last station was to look at germs uder a black light.
And compare how many germs were left
after washing with hand sanitizer
vs. hand washing for 30 seconds.
There was no comparison!
Hand sanitizers don't work.  :/
And with that happy conclusion - wash your hands everyone!
For a LONG time...

February?!

I can't believe it's already February!  

Meaning, we've homeschooled for a month

and I haven't run for the hills or lost my mind completely!  :D

Just kidding.

It's actually been, overall, really good.

God has blessed it.

The kids tell me they "LOVE" doing school at home

(music to my ears and motivation to get going in the morning!).

So onwards we go.

 So this is little math addition song is from our math curriculum.

There's a CD to play along but it's

more fun to just sing it acapella.

Even Eliz is learning her math this way - LOL!

The word AND is boxed 

because that is the sight word of the day.

 So in keeping with our apple/fruit theme of the week...

We colored these fruit of the Spirit activity sheets.

 And each kid got a sticker for displaying one of the fruits of the Spirit.

(Notice only ONE sticker for today?  LOL)

 Then we tweaked a recipe from this FUN kid's cookbook

And made surprise blueberry muffins.

(And Eliz actually ate some!)

They were fighting over who got to stir what ingredient in

the entire time so I couldn't get many pics.  :/

And here is Eliz playing with her barn animals.  

She looooves her animals.

 Forgot to post our cherry trees pics from yesterday.

They always want to paint and would paint daily if I let them!

But I try and keep it to once a week b/c of the cleanup factor.  ;-)

 And our salt trays.  

Tracing alphabet letters in salt is a great pre-writing activity

for little toddler fingers.  

You could use sand too but salt trays "erase" (shaking the tray) easier.

(But boy is this MESSY!)  :/

And of course, Emilie had to join in.  :)

We also went to the playground at lunch with Daddy 

since it was a GORGEOUS afternoon outside.

And we worked on handwriting, we read nursery rhymes, 

and closed the day with our chapter from the Big Picture Story Bible

and (I forgot to mention) our chapter from Charlotte's Web. 

Most of the language in this book is above Eliz's head 

(Em gets about 75% of it)

so sometimes I paraphrase.  :)

But they LOVE the story!