It's Montessori Monday!!

Thank You!! to all those who came by and left comments and suggestions in regards to what you like and would like to see here. I am happy to be linking this post to Montessori Monday hosted by http://www.livingmontessorinow.com/. I added a bit of work to our shelves, non-holiday related. I love the holidays but it is time to focus on our traditional works. I did find a lot of Presidents' Day fun but it was too late and I had already ran out of ink for what was already planned. I do have some fun reads for the children though. Rhyming words. The children have had a lot of fun matching rhyming objects this is what I have next for those who love rhyming and are working on this skill. Next I will be adding the Rhyming Chain work. This work is avaliable at Montessori Print Shop, there are plenty more sets that came with this .

Art Classified Cards, a classic FREEBIE from Motessori For Everyone.

Go Together Cards, another FREEBIE from Montessori For Everyone.

The Zoology area has become a lot busier with our visiting pet parakeet. Ken has been doing lots of fun things with Sunny. The children have become very interested in Sunny and asks Ken lots of questions about her. So she started out with showing a few children how to feed her. They are happy to be able to learn more and be in Sunnys' prescence.

I set up this work area for them to be able to make a parts of the bird booklet. Ken has big plans to extend their lessons about birds. I can't wait to watch them fly with this!!

Polishing wood. Using the Geometric Solids I hope will increase their interest in this sensorial work.

Polishing shoes.

Braiding

Scooping bird seeds.

Tonging feathers.

Using a ladle and a funnel to transfer sand.

Pouring water beads.

Plant nomenclature cards to go along with our new plant. The cards are from Montessori Print Shop.

Pattern blocks. The templates are from Prekinders.

We finally have the Geometric Cabinet!! Thanks to Nicole from One Hook Wonder who had a real good deal on this:) We appreciated this so much!! Can't wait to see what the kiddos think about this work.

Edited to add link to the Preschool Corner hosted by Homeschool Creations.

A Visual Aid For The Visual Learners

Most of the children here must be able to see it before they can totally understand what it is before I can present new concepts. In an effort to accomodate their learning styles I put together a bullentin board showing the parts of the pumpkin. Yes we are just begining to delve into learning themes and I am so excited that these children want to learn, and are focused long enough to grasp the concepts. Nope I won't be talking to myself:)  I used the Parts of the Pumpkin cards and The Parts of the Pumpkin book as my guide, because they are going to be works avaliable on the shelves that we will be using in our study, they all were downloaded from Montessori Print Shop.

           Some of the cards that are included in the work The Parts of The Pumpkin

                             Parts of The Pumkpkin booklet

                                            An example of a page inside the booklet

I have been able to really learn a lot about the group of children that I have now, it has allowed me to be able to set up works that they are very successful at doing independently.
                                                                           

The Garden Challenge

Ken has had a desire to have a flower garden for sometime now. Ken has shown me that she is prepared to take on the responsibility to care for flowers and plants. So I thought it would be wonderful for us to participate in the Homeschool Village Garden Challenge. This past month Ken participated in her schools' science fair. Ken loved every bit of it she received an honorable mention award for her work. The passion that I see her have for plants is just amazing. Her question for her project was What is the role of leaves in the process of photosynthesis?

        Here is a picture of her science fair display.

                           This is Ken tending to her project plants.
                      

 Ken wants to grow a flower garden a place for birds and butterflies to enjoy, maybe even some fairies may enjoy a visit. This week Ken has started growing Princess Flowers to attract butterflies, Petunias to attract Hummingbirds, and Evening Stars thought to attract fairies.

The flowers were placed in her greenhouse inside until they sprout. It is still rather cold in our part of the world. Right now our challenge is being prepared to work in the garden on any given day cold or not.

 When the flowers sprout they will be planted here.                                                                                 

Kens' very own piece of land :) As you can see we have a lot of work to do!!
                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                             

Botany: The Bean Seed

I put the" Bean Seed Work" on the shelf last night. Looking forward to seeing the kids work with this today. The goal of this work is for them to investigate the parts of the seed through a hands on approach and spend as much time as they like doing so. In the the test tube are lima beans that have been soaked overnight. A pair of tweezers that the child will use to transfer the bean to the petri dish and than start investigating. I really wished I had the small metal tweezers for this activity, but I have misplaced those. I added a tiny amount of red food coloring so that they would be able to identify the different parts better.

The children here are really into coloring so I also prepared a Parts of the Bean Seed booklet for them to complete. I don't have the wall space to tape this to the wall so the work can remain stationary for the child to use as a guide. So I made this moveable display where the child can carry this to their work space.

Materials for the child to complete the Bean Seed Booklet. After they have finished coloring I will help those who need my help to write the names of the parts, then they will staple the book together.

This is how the work looks on the shelf.

Linking to Flower,Plant,Garden Blog Hop.

Watching Grass Grow

 During our  farm lessons we planted some grass seeds. The children enjoyed observing the grass growing everyday. N showed a strong interest in this activity and took on the responsibility of making sure they were getting watered.

                                                 

                                             

The Pumpkin Patch (Science Sunday)

                  My kids got all bummed out when they heard that I will be taking the preschoolers to the pumpkin patch next week. I tried to tell them that we can go another time, but they wanted to go when everybody was going. Then yesterday I went into Jo-Ann Fabrics and guess what ?  Yes they were having a sale on all their Harvest items 50%  off. Now I was truly inspired to create this activity for my children. When I told them what I had in the car they were very happy once again.

                                      They had some work to do to create this special place.
                    

                                                                         
                                                                                 

                                                                      
                                                 Here are the deals I got at Jo-Ann Fabrics.

                                                                                
                                                  Preparing their very own Pumpkin Patch.

                                                                         

                                                                             
                                                                The proud owners!!

                                                                           
You know you can't bring pumpkins home and not expect them to want to cut one open. So we decided that we would learn the parts of the pumpkin. What they are doing is matching parts of the pumpkin to The Parts Of the Pumpkin Cards.

                                                                          Diggin in.

                                                                      
                                                                           Fibrous strands.

                                                                     
                                                         The stem and the bottom end.

                                                                               
                                                                           Seeds.

                                                                                   
                                                                           Rind.

                                                                              

           The leave. This did not come from our pumpkin DJ found this outside.

                                                                          
                        Our pumpkin did not have a tendril and the pulp was just talked about.

                                     For DJ this science lesson was great sensorial fun.
                                                              

                                                                       

                                                                               
To see other science lessons that children are doing visit Adventures In Mommydom for Science Sunday.

Apple Life Cycle Bracelet

          I found this idea on the website Making Learning Fun. This is how I set it up on the shelf.

                                                           
In the basket are all the materials needed. The picture directions, the red box is to hold the beads when the child takes it out of  the baggie. I prepared the baggies with the beads, so all the child will have to do is take the picture card, a baggie, a pipecleaner, the red box and place it on the tray to carry to their work area.

                                                                            
                                             Here is a picture of the work when it is completed
                                                               

                                  
 Although this is somewhat of a practical life activity I choose to put this on our Botany shelf. This activity reinforces the sequence of the life cycle of the apple in a very concrete way. I will have the child tell me what the bead represents and they hopefully will be able to retell the lifecycle of the apple to me and their parents. The children love taking their work home.

Apple Observation

                           This work came from Montessori Print Shop "Apple Unit Starter".
               Mumble really enjoyed doing this work, and it did jump start his interest in apples.

                                                              

Mumble is recording what the outside of the apple looks like, and what he thinks the inside of the apple will look like.

Measuring the circumference of the apple using a non-standard measuring tool.

                                                          Measuring the height of the apple.

                                                                              

 Mumble guessed that the apple had ten seeds inside. Slicing the apple to see if he is correct.

Looking for the seeds.

                                                                                   

Gluing the five seeds he found onto his paper.

                                                   Mumbles completed work and taste test.