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!!
                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                             

Bug Wranglers

This past weekend my kids and I decided for the fun of it to go to Toys R Us. I really like looking at different toys and of course my kids are always game. They know by now that just because we are looking doesn't mean we are going to buy anything. It has been awhile since we visited Toys R Us so I was really shocked by their selection of quality science related materials at good prices. So DJ spotted an Bug Vacuum where you find bugs, catch them, observe them, and release them. Now we are jumping up and down because we are seeing some really cool things. For example they carry a lot of Insect Lore products right now they are half off the price!  The moment we made it back home my kids have been outside trying to find as many bugs as they can. DJ has claimed this vacuum because he wants to earn the badge that was included, the directions clearly state how you earn the badge. I don't have a picture of it because it mysteriously came up missing when I went to look for it.

                Here is the cover of the Pop-UP  Field Guide.

 Digging for bugs. Although the season is Spring it is still chilly here in Michigan so looking for bugs may not be a successful task right now.

                          
                                     Turning rocks over.

                         
                        Showing off  the ant he found.

                                   Checking out the field guide.

                Ken loves dirt, she can shovel dirt for hours!!

                                                                        

                                                                 

                                                                            
           
                                                              

Paper Bag Fun!

O.K so I ran out of extra paper for the kids to do their coloring on, and the kids here well they have to color everyday. So I was looking around for some sort of paper and I found a stash of paper bags. I placed them where extra paper is kept on our shelves, I didn't tell them anything about it. They were like kids in a candy store, they made all types of puppets.This was used by all ages. I love their creativity!!

I whole hour of busyness! Now just imagine if they had collage materials avaliable?                                                                              

                                                                                  

Montessori Monday

The kids are staying busy as usual. This is a good thing looks like we are working towards that being our "normal".  This week we have a new assistant working with the toddlers, I hope it goes O.K. for them. This will be assistant number three for them (sigh). Jessica will be with the preschoolers now, I don't see any reason to put her through this change. Jessica is really a leader in the toddler group, this will probably make Happy become unhappy I will be observing her closely. Now I have three children in the toddler group  "M", "Happy" and our new friend that will also start today with her mother who is the assistant. I got my fingers crossed that this time around the assistant and I are a fit. Well onto the activities the children chose to work with last week.

                                                  Practical Life
                          
                                       Lacing Spools.
      

                                     Tweezing fruits.

Language

Independently reading.

    Movable Alphabet. Matching letters to the inside of the box.

Writing the date all on his own !!

Mathematics/Sensorial

Brown Stairs/Pink Tower work.

                                   Sorting coins.

                                     Matching fabrics.

                                  Number Rods.

Counting eggs, practicing one to one correspondence. This work came from a Time For Tots kit.

                                    Bead Stairs work.

Cut and pasting numbers on the clock. This printable is avaliable on the blog Early Learning with Marta And Eaton.

                       
                               Cultural

  Using a magnifying glass to find the matching insects. This work also came from the blog http://www.earlylearning-eaton.blogspot.com/

 Dissecting a Lima bean. N is smelling the bean while she is learning the parts. This work was good for the children. They really loved doing this!

             Working with the Tag map.

    
   Yeah! Jamesha completed her first Nomencalture book.

To see other children doing activities inspired by the montessori method please visit One Hook Wonder.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Making His Own Work

DJ was playing around with his toob of prehistoric objects. The objects have their names written on the bottom I noticed this before making the purchase and was happy that these objects were labeled.While playing with the toob DJ was asking me to help him name the objects. When I turned away and came back DJ was doing this.....

  Writing the names of the objects to make picture to word matching work.

DJ wanted the labels to look a little more appealing so he glued them onto pieces of construction paper.

 Invited Mumble to do this work with him once he was satisfied with how the labels looked.

 Found a container to place his work in.

                      
              Then DJ placed the work on one of our cultural shelves.

                                                             
                                                                                 

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.

People Say Hello

Our small reading group started a new book titled People Say Hello. I was hoping that it would be a good reader for them and they have shown me so far that I was right. The sight words are mainly names of different countries, the new sight words that are on most dolch word list are: people and hello. This reader has brought back the childrens' interests in geography lessons. Here are some activities that we have managed to do so far this week.

                                    The cover of our book.

 
                                A page inside the book.

  This maze was a great warm up activity for their hands. As we were flying our airplane to the airport(using our pencils) I read the names of the countries we were flying by.

 Working with the Tag World Map. This is super cool resource for our reader. When you place the tag on a picture of a child the child tells you how they say hello in their language and what country they are from.

  Another activity that we did as a group was make a continent map poster. Using our continent map puzzle as a guide the children have been tracing and cutting out their shapes of the continents. I traced the map puzzle on a piece of poster board so they could use the outline as a guide to match where the continents belong on the map.

Once they had placed their continents on the map correctly they were given a  glue stick.                                                                                         

Then they cut and pasted the matching names of the continents onto their maps.

                        They finished up their work by tracing the letters of Our World.

  I am linking this to Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn where you can find more activities other children have been doing with geography and history.