Welcome to hopefully my first of many installments of our week in review. For an online portfolio blog I realize I do an awful job of actually documenting what we do when. My hope is to hold myself accountable each Friday to write more about what we worked on that week. I also want to include interesting articles I’ve read and videos we’ve watched or products found. Lastly I will give an overview of work / field-trips / fun I hope to get to with the kids in the upcoming week. Look for new posts by Saturday.
Week of March 11th:
Where we live everyone is on Spring break! However we had too many “workbook” days in February due to a random herniated disc in my neck with constant, unrelenting radiculopathy in my left arm — it was more painful than childbirth y’all and lasted weeks and weeks longer. So we didn’t end up doing much Montessori work whatsoever. We also skipped over the Lenten prep I’d planned.
I’m finally feeling healed thanks to lots of acupuncture and a steroid pack, thank goodness. So we’ve hit the ground running with homeschooling again. I realized too we are so close to completing our primary Montessori album! We should finish easily by May which is excellent because baby number 4 is due June! Josie our oldest has special needs so we will continue to practice and review all the materials. Mary is right where I’d like her to be — the finish line for us will be if we successfully make it to long division (racks and tubes which just arrived yesterday to our door). Mike is five and attends a true Montessori primary preschool. However he’s been working some at home. I don’t expect him to have learned all the lessons, but we do not exclude him since this is all work he is capable of completing.
Now for the week in review. I feel like there should be trumpets. Let me try that again. And NOW for the week in review!
Weekend field-tripping: We visited our local nursery, said hi to the coy fish, and got some spring veggies to plant.
We had one last freeze this week, but I think we’re good to go planting our Spring garden tomorrow.
Geography:
There was more biome card matching with our three-part cards from Waseca Biomes. The girls used air-dry clay and acrylics to craft a really lovely biome map of North America (our current continent study).
This project took a few hours over a few days. They really loved this activity and learned some hands on geography too.
and DONE!
Language:
We did a lot of grammar work with the farm set. We reviewed articles and nouns and learned a few new parts of speech: conjunctions, verbs, adjectives.
We finally used our grammar stamps for the first time. Big hit!
Mike did some matching cards and everyone practiced cursive a lot this week.
Both girls worked on Language Works, and Josie continues to struggle with Waseca Reading Program’s yellow drawers. But we are trying!
Not pictured: we practiced some Snap Words (Sight words with actions) and sang some Heidi Songs too.
Sensorial:
Constructive triangles and geometric figures made their debut this week. They were enjoyed.
I also managed to take this in-depth video of our evolving sensorial shelves if anyone is curious for a more detailed look.
Math:
Building numbers with golden beads and a Hape puzzle (both Mike and Josie liked this work):
https://www.instagram.com/p/BgRUEI5H1qD/?taken-by=cosmic_montessori
Bead chains for Josie who reeeally needed this practice. I think we will try to do a bead chain every week day for a few months to help with her counting. The three long bead chain she could do completely independently. Everything larger than that was tricky.
We worked with fractions introducing nomenclature: whole, half, third, fourth, denominator. Apple fractions were Josie’s favorite activity this week. She asked to repeat this again which we will do when we make apple fraction muffins next week!
Mike completed the whole hundred board using the control. It took him all morning, and he was quite proud!
He also reviewed quantity and symbol as well as formation of numbers with me one-on-one quite a bit. There’s the beginnings of the nine layout as well. Kid is so smart.
We even got in some practical life work this week (we get in a lot of practical life work actually. I just don’t usually photograph chores unless it’s special like this pollen removal window cleaning mission):
Go girl, go!
Our windows look amazing by the way. Take that pollen season!
Random interesting finds this week in no particular order:
1) I’m adding these to our “must-read” booklist:
Hush!: A Thai Lullaby by Minfong Ho
Illustrated by Holly Meade
When I Was Young in the Mountains
by Cynthia Rylant, Illustrated by Diane Goode
2) Here is such a fun fairy garden invitation to play that I plan on borrowing for our grammar table.
3) This is a fun tutorial on Pudding Slime by The Soccer Mom Blog we plan to try. My kids are crazy over all things slime.
4) This video for the story of Geometry is a great help; we will be presenting it very soon.
5) I found this educational and interesting video that convinced me we need to order seed for sweet Seminole pumpkins ASAP.
6) How ah-maz-ing does this Brazilian stroganoff sous vide recipe look? I am dying to try it soon!
7) Here’s an excellent overview of the Sensorial shelves by Maitri Learning. The entire site is a fabulous, fabulous resource all around. HIGHLY recommended.
8) This is one of the coolest articles I read all week. It’s about how crucial sleep really is to learning and how it affects our neural development — especially like how it relates to studies like music. Very cool.
9) In the same vein, this new research shows how you can actually help form sleep spindles (see article above for a breakdown of what that means) to improve memory.
Homeschooling over the next week, I’m excited to introduce the Everglades Habitat Mat from Waseca Biomes, more constructive triangles lessons and more. I’ll work on our overall plan this weekend. A little behind this week. I did however order some dresses and veils for Easter mass I’m pretty excited about. We’re also working toward the girls’ first holy communion end of April and their Spring violin recital in May.
That’s all I have for right now. Have a great weekend!
Jeni
