October Montessori Works

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October 8, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Bubba loved our Halloween sensory bin.

Thank you, Walmart and Target! There are oodles of fun little things at their dollar spots right now!

Our October Tot School and Montessori Works:

Halloween Sensory Bin!

He copied my pattern with erasers and beads

Then he wanted to “stack” them

Sorting apples and leaves. He also told me their colors.

Coloring a pumpkin page from the Letter of the Week curriculum

Sorting hot and cold for fire safety

Matching shadow leaves. He thought this was great. Did he want to do it again? Nope.

Pin pushing a pumpkin page. How do you like that alliteration?

Floam. He wasn’t sure what to do with this.

Matching shapes. I named them for him. He knew most of them.

Words with Tots app. The only thing I don’t like about this one is their picture of a chimpanzee: they call it a monkey.

Dot painting an A with apples

Scarecrow tot pack. He did this letter maze finding all the S’s! I was impressed.

He loved cutting these fall leaves on their lines.

He was so happy with himself doing his school work.

He woke Daddy up super early this weekend and demanded to do his schoolwork. He cried when Daddy told him it was still dark and too early. It must’ve been before 5 AM! That’s my boy.

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Math Monday: Fractions

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October 8, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

We did so many fun math activities this week!

We measured our hands and feet and school items with a pumpkin ruler. We got this fun activity from a Simple Schooling Autumn Fun Book.

We worked on our reviews in Singapore Math 1B.

Now I know we need to really work on multiplication tables. It’s a new concept and they just don’t get it yet.

We went through a living math book called Fraction Fun. It had great activities to bring fractions into everyday life.

We made pizza fractions from paper plates. We know we want the big slice!

We used red, green, and blue to represent 1/8, 2/8, and 3/8.

We weighed coins, tissues, and pencils.

We made fractions out of the measurements. 20 tissues weigh 1 ounce so 1 tissue is 1/20 of a ounce.

We graphed equivalent fractions. We drew blocks of 1/2, 2/4, and 4/8 to show they were the same.

Spider and bat rings sure help.

We’re following up this week with some more fractions work involving pizza and pumpkins. We’re going to really work on money values over the next month too.

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Math Monday: Hopscotch

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October 1, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

We did math outside since it was such lovely weather!

We used our Twister Hopscotch rings and chalk to group and worked on multiplication.

Tori listened well and read the table I wrote. She drew flowers in her rings to represent the numbers.
$Hopscotch Math$
Katie went one step further: she copied out the multiplication table!

Even Alex wanted to get in on it!
$Preschool Math Play$

Liz brought her books out and sat on the plasma car to complete her work!
$Math Work$
A constant distraction last week and probably for months to come: dump trucks and bulldozers as a new house is being built. They’re just digging the basement now. The dump truck drivers honked their awesome horns at in the driveway each. time. they. drove. by.

The girls measured trees with little apples.

Here is September’s math calendar page. The girls chose two colors and grouped the chips.
$Cookie Mouse Math Page$

The girls each chose brown and blue chips.

We’re continuing with Life of Fred and Singapore math for Tori and Katie. Liz finished her Life of Fred Fractions book! She’s on Decimals now.

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Fall Sensory Bin and Light Table

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September 28, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

Alex is busy, busy, busy!
He loves helping me make dinner and he loves to cut veggies with own little doggie knife!

He was SO excited to color with markers and watercolors with his sisters!

We tried to learn about seasons and appropriate clothing. This game lasted only a few seconds and he was “done.”

Our fall sensory bins. Alex loved playing with these clear plastic acorns and pumpkins on his light table.

I raided the dollar spot at Target. Lots of great stuff!

H is for hippo. We started I for Iguana. We watched videos on BBC about hippos and iguanas. He actually narrated to Dad what he learned!

These little beetles took over the park. They were all different shades and patterns of red and orange and black. I think they’re fire bugs. Perfect name.

Alex loves watching Abby and Dinosaur Train and Diego.

Alex says he’s DONE WITH NAPS. Lord help me.
Alex’s attention span is about non-existent. I hope that changes over the next few months. Our schedule has been crazy keeping up with him and trying to get the girls’ schooling completed and chores done. He begs for constant companionship. He will not play alone so someone always has to be with him. This makes for sporadic lessons. Right now, it’s barely working for us.
Tori, Katie, and I do morning school with Alex while Liz gets her math, Greek, and other work completed. When she’s ready, she takes Alex outside or somewhere to play while I get some reading and lessons done with the girls. Then we have lunch and we try to get “one more thing” done after that. Some days we do. Often, Liz completes some history or science and the girls play with Alex.
So, this means no rest time or alone time for Mama or the girls.

Can you say exhausted?

Linking up: Kids Activities Blog, The Resourceful Mama, Life of Faith, Written Reality, Kiddy Charts, The Educators Spin On It, ABC Creative Learning, Living Montessori Now, Simple Life of a Fire Wife, Los Gringos Locos, Growing Hands on Kids, JBMumofOne,

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Apple Tasting

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September 28, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 3 Comments

We had an apple tasting!

Kind of like a wine tasting, but with kids and no cheese or olives or fancy crackers. We did have water cups to cleanse our palates.

The kids had so much fun!

My favorite growing up was a Rome apple.

We bought every kind of apple we could find. There are so many apple varieties!

We ended up with 10 plus one from the neighbor’s apple tree. So, 11 apples to taste and compare and graph our findings.

Alex was excited to get started.

Liz helped Alex. He tried most of the apples. I didn’t make him graph anything. He just told us if he liked it or not. And he liked to tell me the colors.

Here is Tori’s completed graph. I see that she didn’t name her favorite or least favorite. She did circle two favorites and X the one she did NOT like.

I sliced the apples into fifths and we discussed fractions. We just read Fraction Apples, so it went well.

We counted seeds.

We discussed color, texture, and taste.

I helped the girls with their graphs by letting them copy mine after we discussed everything.

Alex ate half the Honeycrisp. Overall, that was everyone’s favorite. And the most expensive. He kept staring at it and saying, “I like it!” and biting it. So cute.

We love apples!

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ProSchool Membership - Productive Homeschooling

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Pumpkin Unit Study

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September 28, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Pumpkins mean autumn!

We love seeing the pumpkin patches and pumpkin decorations in September and October.

We’re cleaning out the garden. Most of the pumpkins are ripe and ready.

Aaron cut them and the kids carried them to the deck.

Alex is telling me: “It’s HEAVY!”

Katie is super excited it’s fall and October is next week!

Tori always does the most work in the garden.

She’s already picked all the tomatoes and brought a few pumpkins to the deck.

She’s getting tired.

These are only few of our pumpkins. Not sure what to do with them all. They’re not eating pumpkins, but jack o’lanterns. They’re pretty for decorating though!

Pumpkin Unit Resources:

Here’s my autumn Pinterest board with lots of fall fun!
We made some yummy pumpkin streusel muffins
We love these pumpkin scones!
It’s always fun to head to the pumpkin patch and play!
Pumpkin math activities
Pumpkin unit from The Homeschool Scientist
Meet Penny Pumpkin Unit
Living Montessori Now Pumpkin Unit
Pumpkin Study from Enchanted Homeschooling Mom
The Biggest Pumpkin Ever Unit from The Proverbial Homemaker
In All You Pumpkin Printables

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Math Monday: Food Shapes

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September 24, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

So sorry we missed the math Monday post last week. I was recovering from flu mist, apparently. Anyway, we had an easy week of life school, unschooling, whatever you want to call it, since I didn’t feel well.

We read some more living books.

We did some fun activities that I found on Pinterest.

Food shapes math!

I love this printable chart and the girls had great fun!

She has suggested foods for the shapes. We had different crackers and candies that represented different geometry shapes. {I didn’t have any cheese balls so we used M&Ms, work with me here!}

$Food Math$ $Graham Cracker Math$
And the best part? Snacks after the page is completed!

I downloaded a fun math pack from The Moffat Girls. Some of it was beneath the girls now that they’re oh so grown up, but they still love the dice games! On this one, they only used one die. Tori won.

Domino addition is another fun game that they could do on their own while I was busy planning our next activity, cleaning up, or working with Alex and Tot School.

The girls so graciously asked me to play with them on this dice game. They needed both dice to play this. They added them together. Tori won again.

The girls continue in Life of Fred and Singapore Math as primary math texts.

Follow Jennifer’s board Math Journals on Pinterest.

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Grasshopper Nature Study

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September 21, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 2 Comments

Dad was brave and took this close-up picture of this HUGE grasshopper. I love it.

He was WALKING across our deck ever so slowly. We giggled to watch him.

I love how we can see all his parts. This is a perfect specimen to draw and label.

Isn’t he beautiful?

Here’s another humongous grasshopper.

For some reason, the kids thought he needed a house in my Gladware.

Fingers by him for size perspective.

Alex was ready to BOLT if that sucker came any closer.

He’s still nervous around bugs and this was a rather big guy.

Grasshopper Resources:

Grasshopper notebooking page from Homeschool Share. The girls can color the grasshopper and write a couple facts about him.
Homeschool Helper Online Grasshopper Page
Activity Village Grasshopper Notebooking Page
I nsect notebooking pages from Homeschool Creations

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Tot School 2.5 Years

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September 20, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Alex still loves hammering those golf tees into Styrofoam.

I had to get a new block for him!

Liz played a game and taught Alex fractions with these fun wooden fraction blocks. He loved it.

We made letters with Magneatos!

We stacked our ABC nesting blocks and Alex was excited it was almost as tall as he is!

Look at that proud pose!

And, of course, knocking them all down!

Big sister Lizzie helps Alex with his poster centers. I bought two posters, had them laminated, and then cut one out so he can attach it with Velcro dots. It’s great. He loves it.

Dinosaur stamping was a favorite this week. He also played quite a lot with stickers.

The Piggy Bank toy is still a favorite.

Alex can play Boggle Jr., but he quickly tired of it.

I made a painters tape road for him to drive his cars on in the basement. He loved it. For a minute.

I am impressed by Alex’s general compliance with helping to clean up his works and mat. He is mostly eager to do this and I am glad I trained him to put away his work this way.

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Official Reader

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September 19, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

It’s official: Katie is now a reader.

She reads every chance she gets. She can read almost anything all of a sudden.

She is often found like this.

How can I justify getting upset when she’s reading? Even if she is supposed to be going chores or school work? I love it!

I have to be careful: she will even pick up my books and try to read them. Now, it’s not like I have 50 Shades of Grey (ew!) lying around or anything, but she needs to read her own books and stop dropping all my bookmarks!

Our Favorite Reading Curricula:

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