Folding - A Montessori Activity

This week Noah practised folding his little face washers.

A simple activity for eye-to-hand co-ordination.

A great little activity to practice detail and patience in attaining the detail.

He actually really enjoyed this activity.

Find a Way

I found this neat little activity at a local second hand shop while I was out perusing for books.

It has a main board with pathway pieces.  The idea is to take a card from the box and then make the pathway from one animal to the other.

It gets more complicated when trying to do both sets at the same time.

Just something I found by accident, but I think will be a great little activity to re-visit as we go along.

Charlotte and the Last Unit of Grade 1 Reading

It's official, Charlotte has now started Unit 6 of her Grade 1 Reading.  It's the last unit of the course in fact.  We'll be finished soon... crazy..... but yes, then we'll detour a little in between before we start Grade 2.

As you can see the stories are getting very much larger and longer.

So for that reason, when we are done with this unit we'll be taking a serious detour before hitting up the new year.

I haven't settled on what the detour will be just yet, but yeah, I'll let you know.

Laminating Day

Today I had a laminating day....

I had my stash of printables all good to go....

Surprisingly, it didn't take as long as I thought it would, but I was solid on getting them cut asap as they came out of the laminator.

Montessori 3 part cards for Multiplication 3x 

Clip cards for Noah in a summer theme.

More clip cards for Noah in a mermaid 10 frame theme.

Geometry shapes clip cards for Charlotte.

More Montessori multiplication 3x - but clip cards this time.

Birds and their eggs.  It's supposed to be 3 part cards, but I decided that we should only cut them to two to begin with.  They are absolutely gorgeous, and I've already had a lot of interest from the children about them.

More counting clip cards for Noah.

And how they look all baggied up when I was done.

Just making the most of the laminating and preschool stuff, since Noah is the last baby - and I won't need them after him.

Are you doing the laminating rounds at your place?  What are you laminating??

Self Correcting Math Counting Puzzles

Today Noah tried these self correcting Math counting puzzles.

The FREE apple jigsaws came from HERE:

I'm not sure where these ones are, but I'm looking for them.

If I can find a link for these two, I'll come back and let you know.

Art Monday With a Beatrix Potter Rabbit

This week we attempted to emulate Beatrix Potter to some degree with a Rabbit from one of her books.

The girls started off with a sketch.

By Hannah

By Phebe

By Chloe

By Mummy

Charlotte had a go at drawing a Princess House....

Charlotte and Division

Another jump today.  Charlotte has officially started Division.

6y10m

Today's lesson:

I always teach division in the language of a child, ie. using lollies for the explanation. ha ha ha, they get it every time. And then I showed her how it works with multiplication.

The second page of today's lesson - fractions and addition practice.

Life With a 3 Year Old

Today I share a little of what I get to see every day with the life of a 3 year old boy.

* * * * * * *

Little boy takes a pint jar and fills it with a tea towel - so half in, half out. He proceeds to toss the jar on the bed and throws himself away. Then he makes a huge dramatic ka-boom sound with motions and falls limp to the bed in mock death - his eyes closed and his tongue drooping to one side. Then repeats because he can see me laughing my head off.

* * * * * * *

Noah was playing a game of fishing off the side of my bed last night. { I was trying to read } He throws his tea towel line off the bed and pulls it back in. Removes his imaginary fish and throws the line back out. Again, he brings his line back in and then starts wildly thrashing about and yelling that a "shark eating my butt, shark eating my butt".

* * * * * * *

Here's two ways that I use a magnetic board with alphabet letters:

1. have the letters all mixed up all over the place. Put the board down leaning on a wall and call that the ocean - then label the bed as a boat. Ask your 3 year old to dive down to the bottom of the ocean and bring back a particular letter. Repeat for all the letters that he knows.

2. have all the letters all mixed up all over the place and then call them out one by one in alphabetical order and line them up as you go.

The Legend of Ulysses

Now, while it's true to some large extent that I haven't been one for much mythology in our homeschool journey, even when we were very devoted to doing Classical Education many years ago, I will still put some on the shelves occasionally.  It's more or less about ensuring that the children have a broader awareness of literature and vocabulary than anything else.  

At any rate, I wasn't particularly looking for anything in this particular department while out recently, so when I spied this little treasure, I snatched it up because of the quality of the book itself.  

Sometimes book collecting is more about availability and usefulness than getting my wish list fulfilled.

In it's cover there is a handy and helpful map which enables his travels to come more to life.

 Medium type, short chapters, and beautiful illustrations make it an excellent children's book.

An excellent addition to any Ancients year study.

Letter Nn Worksheets

It's been a bit of a while since I made any new worksheets, even longer was when I worked on my Letter of the Week program.

Now that I am back to using it again, I have discovered that I didn't need so many options and choices and pages, so I've considerably cut the main pack down.  I'm still going to add the two secondary packs as downloads as usual when they are done, but I haven't gotten to those at this point for this letter, but I thought I'd still share this one as it is.

Handwriting practice.

Cut and Paste activities.

Sorting activity between upper and lower case Nn.

I've also included a two paged game board as well.

There are a few other things in there, but that is the main gist of it.

Feel free to click on any of the pages above to download this FREE pack for your preschooler.

Thanks so much for visiting.

The Nightingale

The story of the Nightingale is what I consider a " children's classic".  It has been around for donkeys years.  In fact, the original was written in 1843.  It's something that every child should hear in their childhood growing up, even if it's only once.  Coupled with amazing illustrations the child is swept in by curiosity and delight.

It was by sheer chance that I happened upon this gorgeously illustrated version.

Another book that I cannot wait to share with Charlotte!

Noah's FIRST Worksheet

This morning I took a bit of chance and offered Noah a worksheet....

He had been asking for "school work" or an "activity", so I figured, sure, why not.

I thought he did an awesome job!

He's 3y7m.

A Little Mermaid

Today I relaxed and did some Art.

When you view an altered children's book tutorial on youtube and suddenly remember that you have a book in the bin { ok, there were several in the kitchen bin this morning } and you quickly run out to the kitchen and scab on through - thank goodness it was in the recycles and not the mess one, anyway, yes, scab on through and pick out an old children's book: a berensteins bears book and decide, yep, let's make that into an art album. So then you hunt down the jar of gesso and a brayer and do your thing.... 

Next thing you know after that, you've got a picture on the page:

And some paint too:

And then she's all done:

Glitter and all......