2nd Blog award!

I can't believe this but yesterday I got nominated for another blog award by Jo from A bit of This and A Bit of That, thank you so much Jo you made my day!!

I will pass the award onto the following blogs:

Adventures of a Montessori Mama this is a GREAT blog

Montessori Spanish

Having Fun Yet

Its A Boy's Life

Montessori Free Fall

The Crafty Crow

Montessori At Home

There you go seven more great blogs!

Grammar: Adjectives

Here are pictures of Little-N working with Adjective box 1. The presentation is the same as Noun box 1 except you explain what an adjective is. Little-N read the adjective cards and then found an object that fits the adjective. He has a set of dragons that come in kinder eggs, he wanted to you them for all the adjectives. Mummy this dragon is sad, this dragon is bad!

This dragon is red!

Learning Log

I would like to share with you my secret in homeschooling. I'm the type of person that likes to see progress and I like to have some form of reference for Little-N's learning. Years ago when I was only homeschooling I made a learning log.

In Montessori you don't really plan learning, instead you follow the child's interest and decided on suitable activities by observing the child. I designed this learning log where I note down what Little-N has been doing over the past week. The columns are for the different areas of learning and the rows are for the days of the week. Each time he does an activity I note it down in the correct box. I try to make sure that 3 days don't pass without making sure he has done something in each area [except for those days when he is obsessed with one area of learning]. If I find that he isn't learning in a particular area I look and the materials and see if there is something I can change about them to interest him. Maybe the activity is too easy, maybe he already knows this, it might be to hard or not interesting. I then play around with the 'purpose' of the activity and see if I can find another way of getting Little-N interested in that area. It is important to look at the child's holistic learning every once in a while.

The Learning Log should be made to fit your child's needs, so if you have a 2.5 yr old then add extra columns for 'Grace and Courtesy' and perhaps change literacy to language and then note down language development. For my older children at school I will use a more complex Learning Log that covers the different area's of mathematics [Operations, writing, geometry] and literacy [ Grammar, reading, writing, spelling]. We send these learning Logs to the parents once every 6 weeks.

I can't find a way to easily upload files on my blog so that you can download them. So if you want this Learning Log [1 page] then let me know and I'll be happy to email it.

Beaded stars

Yesterday Little-N and I made a beaded star. This is a bigger version of the stars I make with smaller beads.

You need:

About 70cm of wire

About 45 beads

Step 1

Twist the end of the wire so that the beads do not fall off.

Thread 10 beads on the wire.

Thread the wire through the first bead to make a circle.

Step 2

Thread 4 beads on the wire, then thread the wire through the 4th bead again so that it makes a loop over the bead.

Step 3

Thread 3 beads on the wire.

Thread the wire through the 3rd bead on the ring made in step 1. This makes the first point of your star.
Continue with step 2 and 3 until you have 5 points.

To finish twist the the start and ending piece of wire together. Little-N added his star to a key ring.

Freezer Paper Stencil

Finally I had a go at freezer paper stencilling. Little-N loves rockets, so I drew one and followed Laura's tutorial at My Montessori Journey. Its really fun, but I had a problem with the red paint being too runny and it leaked under the stencil. I used tulip fabric paint. Little-N was so excited that he smugged the paint when i wasn't looking. I'll add some other stars to hide the smug marks.

Straw Shape Activity

Little-N had a go with the straw shape activity I saw at Sycamore Stirrings. At first he was struggling to get the shapes to stay together but eventually he got the hang of it.

I used a sorting dish to separate the straws according to size.
I made that pyramid to show him what he can make.He made these shapes and various others.

He then decided he had to make a house for his dragon. I helped him with the roof bit!

Road Signs Memory Game

Little-N's new interest is in road signs, he wants to know what they all mean and he tries to make up his own. His favourite is the red circle with a diagonal line through the middle. When he is angry with someone he'll say 'I'm going to draw a circle with a line in the middle and write your name so it means you cant come in'.

Here is the road sign memory game I made. I only did a few signs to start off with and it looks like I will be making more soon! If anyone wants to make this let me know and I will email you the file.