Pages

Friday, October 29, 2010

Shoe Polishing

Shoe Polishing Work!


Items from our home.

This gets used A LOT!  We all have shinny shoes!


Saturday, October 23, 2010

Decorating for Fall

My favorite season!  
The kids love October because they get to dig through all the fall and Halloween decorations and help decorate!  I love Fall because of the beautiful colors, the cooler weather, leaves falling, the pumpkins, and mums.  Ahhhh!!






After the house is decorated I then sprinkle Fall and it's beautiful colors in our school.
Leaf shape sponges from Michael's.

Play-Doh with Halloween and Fall cookie cut outs

For making cards.  The kids get a piece of construction paper decorate their card and write to and from.
They have made several cards for Grandma and Daddy!

For tracing and coloring

Necklace Work

Stamp on the tree, color and add leaves!

Cards and Counters

Add caption

Small, Medium, Large cards.
Look at the very bottom of this link for Halloween Cutting Skill Pages
This link has lots of great cutting skills pages.

Friday, October 22, 2010

School Week 7

Week of 9/20/10



All about letters.


Presentation of all land and water forms.  Kids LOVED it!
   


Used sandwich containers and clay.



Making thirds.  We are doing this for whole - tenths.

Craft for letter 'Z' for Bella.


Baby Hanging out!


We finished Friday with Texas State Fair Parade and play time!





Thursday, October 14, 2010

School Week 6

A few pictures from Week 6 - September 13-17


Rhyming Puzzle - this was a challenge for Bella.

Geography puzzles were popular last month.  I will sit with Bella and help her with these puzzles.  I use a book to see where the pieces go.  I wrote the name of the country on the back of each puzzle piece.  So, I'll pick up Spain and say "Spain" look it up in the book and then she will put it in its place.  This is not how this work is suppose to be taught but I like doing it this way.
    Penny Work from Goldmark Montessori.
So proud

Coloring the Mexico flag  I did a little Unit for September 16th.
I read the following books to the kids:  Stories of Mexico's Indepence days and other bilingual children's fables.
Mexican Independence Day and Cinco De Mayo - MacMillan
They colored the flag and Mexico on a map of North America, 


 

One morning the kids woke up wanting to play kitchen.  So, I told them how about playing restaurant!
 



They created Menus.  They decided how much everything cost. I wrote Bellas menu and Sweet Boy wrote his.




Sweet boy took my orders!  Here he said "Sorry, I'm a little slow.  Just learning to write!!!"
They loved it.   I had a little purse with money to pay them.


Making Lemonade is a favorite Practical Life Activity.

 
Adding.  I will be posting about this work later this week.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Bad Day

What a day.  

I have two classes with a total of 60 students that end tomorrow so I've been stressed about grading.

The physical therapist came today at 1pm to visit Andres and even thought I went through this with the kids and talked about how to behave and what to do while she was here my son acted HORRIBLE.

My son did not want to do ANY work because he got a new lego toy and that is ALL he can think about. 

My daughter went to Catechesis this morning and wined all day after that.  "I don't want to do any work.  I worked hard this morning..."  I told her it was fine to not do anything but then she complained about that!

Went through all of the effort in getting everyone out of the house on time to get my son to Catechesis at 2:30pm and the office told me "I'm sorry, we forgot to call you.  1st grade Catechesis was cancelled today due to testing"  ARGH.  I had to wake the baby up from nap for NOTHING. 

I wanted to call my husband and say we are enrolling the kids in school.  I can't do this any more...

So, I came home, yelled at everyone, made my son do work before he could go out to play with his friends and slowly chilled out as I worked with him.

I sure do hope tomorrow is better.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Continents

I had this display up for the past month.  This is a table between our kitchen and dinning, 
Works Found here:
- Label the Oceans


 


These labels are fantastic for Bella since she is just starting to read,   The color of the font matches the continent color.



If you are not familiar with the Montessori Method here is a short explanation of how this material is used and at what age.

Ages: 3 and 4

-Will be presented with each continent.  The teacher traces with her finger the continent puzzle piece and says the name.  The child is encouranged to do the same.  3 period lesson is done.

-Child will match the puzzle pieces to the posterboard.

-Child will pin punch the continents.  You can have these pre-traced on construction paper that matches your puzzle pieces,

Ages 4 and 5

- the child can create a continent book with each continent colored.  They can write the continent names if writing. 

- Continent and Ocean Nomenclature.  Simple matching name to the continent.

Ages 3-5
Take the pin punched continents and make their own world map.  The students that are writing can label the continents.

Ages 6-9
- Continent and Ocean Nomenclature - these actually have the picture, the name and a card with information.

- The child has a notebook where they write the continent and ocean name and write their own information about the continent or ocean.  They DO NOT copy the definition from the nomenclature.

- The child can free hand their own continent map and color or paint and label. Pretty much they can do whatever they wish here.  If you provide felt they can create a felt map or map with construction paper or whatever other media you wish to have here for them to create their continent map.



Saturday, October 2, 2010

1st Grade: How the school day works and Curriculum

Here is how I work with Sweet Boy and what I use.




1) I have a folder with 5 pockets for him.  In that folder he will find work that HAS to be done that day.  He does this folder work any time he chooses in the day.

2) He chooses work from the shelves.

3) He gets one or two lessons a day from me.  I TRY to do a minimum of ONE Geometry, Fraction, Geography, History,  Language Arts, Grammar, Botany, and Zoology lesson A WEEK.
I use the following curriculum.   Montessori Research and Development Elementary Manuals.
These lessons are done in both Spanish and English.

4) I also have one Artist and one Musician we study a month.  I do not have a curriculum for this.  I use free resources on the Internet and check-out books from the library.

5) We have 30 minutes of planned physical activity when we do not attend Co-op.  Read about our Co-op here.

Folder Work

Here are the works in his folder.

1. Spelling words.  Some options I use for spelling.  Only one of these is used a day.

a) A list of 5 words.  He reads these to me, I then say the word and he spells it out loud and then either writes them on paper, white board or in a spelling notebook, OR paints them, OR writes a sentence with a at least 3 of the words, OR whatever else I figure out to get him to practice.  I really try to make this fun by making silly sentences and finding fun ways to practice spelling.  I always ask him how HE wants to practice.  I will give him choices.

b) We could also be talking about something in the morning that he is interested in and we make a list of whatever it is we are talking about.  He loves this.  Like what he wants for his birthday or Christmas.  Things about Baseball.  Lego sets he wants. Animals from a country, etc...


c) A little container with objects for spelling or match the word to the pictures and use these for spelling.

OR

d)  Finally, we could be writing a little research about something from the Cultural area and these will be our spelling words.  Example:  Writing a little about each of the water and land forms.

2.  Math Problems.  These are switched between: Math Facts (He uses the beads to help him if needed), golden bead or stamp game addition/multiplication, fraction work, money work or geometry work.  Some times he does 2 or 3 of these a day. For example: he could do golden bead addition, fractions and money work.  BUT he needs to work on addition daily (could be two or three problems).

3. Logic Worksheets from Lollipop Logic.
I am actually not doing one a day on these any more.  More like two a week.  But when they were easy we were doing one a day.


4. Fun Worksheet.  For fun I put a connect the dot, maze, or search worksheet.  He loves these.

5. A book to read to me.

In this folder he also puts work in progress.  For example:  currently he has a little book of fractions, parts of the plant and the continents that he is slowly working on.

Not in the folder but daily work.



He also has a Spelling Workbook (McGraw-Hill Spelling Level 1student book) he works on every day.  He does at least 2 pages a day.

We are currently doing 10 sight words a day because he knows many of these and it is a review.  We are working from the Dolch Word List. 
Once he gets to words he does not know I will scale down to 5 sight words a day.

Sounds like a lot?  If I were to add up how long it takes him to do this, I would say one hour.  The exception is on days when we work on research.  He writes a lot more and it takes longer. 

Throughout the week we work on memorizing a prayer, the date in Spanish and English, and the weather in Spanish and English.  Regarding the prayer.  I am working on us memorizing mass prayers so the kids can be more involved during mass time.  This should help with them not getting bored.

We also have computer time when we can get it in, usually 2 or 3 times a week.

I question myself weekly if my son is doing enough, not enough or too much.  I just don't know.  How do you know?

My First Link Up!

What do you do with your 1st grader?  What is your curriculum?  Link up, I would love to see! Please link to the exact blog post and not just to your blog using Mr. Linky below.

Friday, October 1, 2010

School Week 5

Here are pictures from 3 weeks ago!

I wrote about our Botany lessons last week.

100 Board
Bella's Legos
Break time with little brother!
Making 10's.  In this work the student tries to see how many ways he can make ten with two numbers.  We use the short bead stair to try out different possibilities.  This worksheet comes from Goldmark Montessori.
3D Bug Puzzle


Sink and Float Work
Cards and Counter Cards


Thus a transportation puzzle.  Sweet Boy read the words for Bella to match to the pictures.