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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Update on Montessori Triaining

Here is an update on my Elementary I Montessori Training.
Currently I am working to finish my observations. We have 12 observations in the Primary Classroom (ages 3-6) and the Elementary I classroom (ages 6-9). I am also finishing up my written papers.

I am now taking a break from classes since the baby will be here in two months. What I have left of my courses are the Math and first part of Language. I decided not to start the Math classes since I would not be able to finish. The Math classes go through May and the baby is due in April. I will then have my 9 month internship and tests and I'll be done! Only time will tell if I actually finish. The only thing I worry about is the internship. I just don't know what the future holds.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Sweet Boys Work from School

Sweet Boy is in Kindergarten, he just turned 6 years old and he attends half days at the Montessori School.

Here are some of the works he has brought home from school.


Read and blue rods which he actually did a million times last year. He just did it one time this year and was done!

Triangle Box

Cutting

Decimal Layout

Addition booklets done with beads.

By looking at these works I can tell the progress he has made with writing his numbers and letters. In the read and blue rods work you can see some of the numbers backwards. He has worked on his numbers at school and at home. The teacher suggested we make crafts and do fun things with numbers.

As far as letters, he is writing more lower case letters and smaller. At home we work on stories for him to practice his letters. He draws pictures and tells me the story, then he writes part or all of the story. He also helps me write out my grocery list and writes small notes to grandma and grandpa.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Bellas Work from School

I took pictures of some of the things Bella has brought home from school. The school keeps a portfolio of their work from the time they start school until they leave the school. So, if they stay there from 3 years to 8th grade then that is 11 years worth of work.

Of course, at this Level in Montessori there are LOTS of works that do not have pencil and paper tied to it. But here are the ones that did! Just a reminder: Bella turned 4 years old 2 months ago. She does not write her numbers, she does not read, she is learning her letter sounds.

This is the BIG one. One of her favorite things to do is pin punching. She started doing this at her last Montessori School Last year and she would come home with tons of these. She has slowed down a bit!

Bella said this was an exhausting work. She does not like long works. She is not good at concentrating for a long period of time yet. Not a surprise to me AT ALL. She hyper and a social butterfly. She also did cards and counters. The counters were penguins.

Read and Blue Rods. She has told me she has done this several times.

Metal Insets

Cutting straight lines.


Coffee Grinding. They have a hand grinder. As you can see, she LOVES this work!
It is time for me to make me a cup of coffee!!

Sewing. She does this work with her teachers help.


Parts of a Jack-o-Lantern book. She colors the different parts but does not write the names of the parts.

Here is the folder I use to keep all of the things the kids bring home from school. Each one has a folder. I have a portfolio I have kept of their work since they started pre-school. In here I also keep things they have done at home. I make sure to label with name and age so I don't forget when they did what!

I will show Sweet Boys Work on my next post.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Asia Continent Box

My mom was part of a US Educational Delegation that was selected to go to China in December for a week. Guests of Hanban, the groups trip purpose was to deepen their knowledge of the Chinese culture, share best practices and build partnerships with Chinese schools in order to implement Chinese programs in US school districts.

I asked her to bring me a few things for the kids Asia Continent Box.
Here is what she brought us!


Thanks MOM!!
She also has many pictures, one news paper and information about the schools they visited.

Here are the other items in our Asia Continent Box


These items came from my husbands travels when in the Navy - around 20 years old!

The children have already done a presentation at their school on the items that Grandma brought them. "Show and Tell" is an opportunity for the kids to get up and talk in front of all of their class mates.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Organizing and Blogs

I love to organize. Believe it or not my husband turned me on to organization. He is so good at it. It comes natural to him. I have to get ideas from others and work at staying organized. I love to see how others organize and love bloggers who post about how they organize their home and school/craft materials.

Yesterday I found the blog The Tie That Binds Us and had to write about it because she has several good posts on organization. She also has beautiful ideas like the nature pack and the pressed flower and leaf notebook.

Jen from Wildflowers and Marbles has written some great posts on organizing her school room and materials.

Another blog you will find some neat ideas is lovelydesign. I read about this Mom in the January 2010 Better Homes and Gardens. Here is a post I really liked on organizing the kids dishes!

So, I am writing this today to share these blogs with you and to see if you know of any other blogs with good organization posts. Please post a comment and let me know. I am also always looking for good ways to store and display the kids toys. This is a challenge for me. For example: how do you store Legos? How about all of the little accessories that go with baby dolls and Barbies?

I hope to get some great ideas! Happy Organizing!

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Nieve - Snow

This month we are going to talk about snow. Here are some science snow activities to choose from!

Nieve begins with an N. Worksheet to use for an N craft. From Primera Escuela.

Snowman Necklaces Work


For this Necklaces the child will get a string and string snowman faces, pieces of straw and beads!

I got the beads from Michael's. It was a little bag with all of these beads in the Christmas section. Probably 60% off now! Here is the file I made for the snowman faces. I just cut them out and punched a small hole at the top of each snowman face. I printed it on card stock.


Matching Snowflakes or Memory Game for older kids



I made these last year after reading about it at My Montessori Journey.
My Montessori Journey has great Winter Activities. Look in her Archives - January 2009.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Winter Activities


HOLA! Hoy es 4 de enero del 2010. HELLO! Today is January 4th, 2010.

Yesterday I made many activities for the kids. I'll share them all in the next few posts.

Below is our winter craft shelf.

One activity on the shelf is "Dressing a snowman".
I printed the template from First School.
The kids color, cut, and paste the clothing on the snowman.

Above is Bella's snowman. El hombre de nieve.

Below is another shelf with one of Bella's favorite counting activities.




Counting Snowflakes.
I made this just like the counting apples.
Here is the counting snowflakes file to download.

Bella counts the snowflakes. If she does not know how the number looks like, she looks on the back of the card. She then finds the clothes pin to attach to the card stock.

Hard at work!

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Speaking Spanish to the Dog!

A little short post about something funny that happened this weekend!

We have been dog sitting my brothers dog. My brother speaks Spanish to his dog so we have been speaking Spanish to the dog also. It is funny because the kids have been speaking Spanish to the dog!! So funny... "Bepo, siéntate" "Andalé Bepo" "Bepo, ven aca!!" I can't believe it took a dog to get my kids to speak Spanish!!

A giveaway!

Branch of Winsdom - a homeschool Mom of 5 girls - is having a great giveaway!

Friday, January 1, 2010

New Years Educational Resolutions

Lori at Montessori For Everyone asked her readers to share some kind of resolution they were making for the new year when it comes to education. I really liked this question because it is goals that I needed to write down to help me focus. I tend to want to do everything with the kids and in the end not do any one thing right! After thinking about it, I decided that I wanted to focus on two things:

1. Work harder at speaking more Spanish in the home. I am going to concentrate on surrounding myself with more Spanish in my life so that it will then overflow to my children. For example: I already listen to all Spanish Music. My kids therefore can sing in Spanish. My husband and I started to attend activities at the Latin Cultural Center. This surrounds us with Spanish speakers which then naturally allows us to speak Spanish around them and to them.

2. Work on teaching the kids about our religion. Last year my son attended a Catholic school so I just left it up to the school but now that he is not at a Catholic school I need to do this. I joined the Catholic Learning Yahoo group which has GREAT files to download that follow the method of teaching Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. I am excited about the children and I learning together!

So, do you have an educational resolution? I would love to hear it!