Weekly Wrap Up! 1st Week of 2015

Howdy!!  I know have been MIA for over 6 months (well except the super brief, 2 day, attempt at daily posting in November...what was I thinking?).  To be honest, it has been a mixture of not knowing where my head is, to not having 2 hands to type with, and not feeling like I had anything worth posting about!

But, we are back, with REAL Montessori (or at least Montessori inspired) schooling.  Last semester we used workbooks and curriculum.  So, we are finishing up on those and transitioning into more Montessori lessons again.  I'm ready!  

We started out this year with a new theme for our calendar.  We use the Calendar Connections from 1+1+1=1, and we are using the cards that focus on the Arctic and Antarctic.  Seems about right, since the high yesterday was all of like 4 degrees, and the windchill was below zero ALL.DAY.LONG.

Our discussions have included ice, glaciers, icebergs, and polar lights.  We've also talked about latitude and longitude, hemispheres, and the arctic circle.  

We used these wonderful Arctic Animals set from from Trillium Montessori. 

And I was thrilled when Mini Cooper, completely on her own, went and found a journal and wanted to draw pictures and copy the names so she could remember her work!!

We had a refresher course with our Little People animals and the Article and Noun presentation.  I also presented Grammar Box 2 (which I see I have no photos of).

Working through Grammar List 1.  We enjoyed the discussion of what some of the words meant.  We even watched a Youtube video of a wringer to learn what that was!

Explorer completely enjoyed getting to work on the Continent puzzle.  We also sang the Continent song, which she loved.  We used this to talk about where Antarctica was at.

Mini Cooper had a really fun day when she spelled her first word!!  She is certainly at a language sensitive period.  Always wanting to know how to spell things and write them down. She had no idea it would be possible that she could spell her own word!

When we started pulling out the Montessori Materials, it apparently brought inspiration to the sensorial materials.  The girls spent a lot of time building together this week.

For Christmas, Charger got this super cool Snap Circuts set!  We will be working on this a lot!  

We made the fan fly!  Super cool!

We learned about how ice melts by using a fun experiment I found from Art and Creativity.  First, we sprinkled it with salt, and then we put food coloring on it.

You could then watch the salt make tunnels through the ice as we watched the food coloring go through the tunnels.

The kids spent a good hour watching their ice cubes melt, adding food coloring, and experimenting.  Mustang was adding salt to get hers to melt faster and even pulled out a magnifying glass so she could get a better look.  Very fun experiment.  

One last little fun activity the big kids have been doing is to play the Oregon Trail.  This was a flashback for me and we've all been enjoying trying to get to Oregon without having our oxen stolen, our friends die, or to get sick from dysentery.  Lots of strategizing, planing, and discussion has come from this game!

All in all, it's been a great week back!  I hope yours was as well!  See you next week :).

God Bless,

Lisa

We're going to link up:

Knobless Cylinders Spring Extentions

The girls and I were working with the Knobless Cylinders and came up with a few spring extentions.  One of my favorite Montessori Materials!

Mini Cooper decided that if we used the tops of the boxes we could have grass and sky!

Charger's favorite-perfect for our country road ;).

Flowers.

Thanks for stopping by!

God Bless, 

Lisa

Montessori Preschool Frog Theme

So excited to be typing this while I look out on a beautiful, sunny day that is supposed to be WARM!!  Yay!  Finally!  This last week was still a bit chilly and didn't seem like spring would ever get here.  

The big kids were learning about parts of an amphibian, so we did our own frog and amphibian themed activities.  

Books this week

There are TONS of great books on frogs for little ones.  These were some of our favorites this week.  Frogs by Gail Gibbons, Red-Eyed Tree Frog by Joy Cowley, About Amphibians by Carolyn Sill, and Once There Was a Tadpole by Judith Anderson and Mike Gordon.  

Frog themed trays

Matching Frogs.  I picked this one for Explorer because she loves matching and loves frogs.  She tried this for about 3 minutes and was done.  At least Mini Cooper liked it.

 This is a freebie from Montessori Print Shop. 

This tray had different activities on different days.  The first day, the idea was to attach the correct amount of links to the card.  This work was only for Mini Cooper.  It is too hard for Explorer.

I found the idea and free printable from Mudpies and Makeup.  

Another day, the idea was to match flies to the cards.  This wasn't as much a counting exercise as it was a hand eye coordination activity.  The girls LOVED this one.  They have been playing with the flies ever since.

Another fun color matching tray.  The printable is free from File Folder Fun (minus the file folder).

This one took her a LOT of effort, but with some encouragement, she finally finished.  

Montessori Materials

Mini Cooper is still working on her teens numbers, and I wanted a fun way to work on them.  So, I found free calendar card numbers with frogs on them.  I printed out numbers 11-19 and then mixed them up.  She is getting much better at her layouts.

She loved moving on to the tens board and getting to use LOTS of beads :).

Parts of an amphibian cards and puzzle.  The cards were free from The Helpful Garden.

We purchased our parts of an amphibian puzzle from Kid Advance (not an affiliate link).

More Frog Fun

Thanks to lots of yard sailing over the years, I have a ton of frog themed learning manipulatives.   I made sure to get them all out this week.

Both of these were a big hit.  The stamps are from Lakeshore Learning, but I found them for $2.00 (brand new) at a yard sale.  The models are from Hobby Lobby, purchased with a coupon, that made them around $4.00.

Both girls (and actually Charger, too) really enjoyed the stamps and the models.

This was supposed to be a cutting and pasting activity, and it was.  But, it also turned out to be a sharing activity.   Explorer had started first and she was not too pleased when Mini Cooper joined in and I told them to share the glue.  See Explorer's face?

She decided to 'fix' the problem by taking the glue away.  

Thankfully, the sharing resolved itself and they finished their papers.  Explorer was very pleased to show me her work.  This printable is free from Mudpies and Makeup (link above).

Our Leaping Frogs game was kinda fun.  Thankfully, it only cost me $1.00 at a yard sale because it was a very hard game.  The girls (and the big kids, too) loved trying to play it, though.

One of the best 25 cents ever spent!  This frog puzzle was a huge hit.  For some reason, it really appealed to Mini Cooper.  She proceeded to put this puzzle together about 3 or 4 times a day for the entire week.  It was almost a joke.  If you couldn't find her, she was probably busy putting together the frog puzzle!

Frog Prince

Because you can't talk about frogs with little girls and leave out the frog prince, we switched gears on our last day.

We watched a recording of the Frog Prince on YouTube (this is the one we watched and it is okay).  But, it was the first time we had read this story, so it was still fun.

So, of course we HAD to do some princess activities.  P is for Princess from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Princess shadow matching and princess puzzle free from 123 Homeschool for Me.

I pulled out our felt Disney princesses scene.  This was a freebie I picked up at one of our yearly homeschool swaps.  So much fun!!

And, Mini Cooper FINALLY got to decorate her Melissa and Doug princess that she received for Christmas.  She LOVED this!!

Whew!  That ended up being a LOT longer then I realized it would be!!  Thanks for reading the whole thing!  I hope you enjoyed our week and found some ideas for yours!

God Bless,
Lisa







Items we had (or wish we had) this week.  This widget contains Amazon affiliate links.