Semi Precious Rocks

Little-N has developed a huge interest in semi-precious rocks and gems.  He started to collect rocks and gems and I was amazed at how quick he was able to build a collection from little gifts from friends and family. We bought him these books and he has read them cover to cover.

Little-N used the books to identify his small collection of rocks. I came across this amazing precious rocks,  gems and minerals magazine collections which I bought him as a gift. Each fortnight Little-N receives a magazine with a rock or gem. The collection is brilliant, the stones are huge and the magazines are so informative. So far Little-N has received gold, amethyst, rose quartz, blue agate, desert rose, obsidian and geode.

He started to look into birthstones and was eager to identify everyone's birthstone. I made him these birthstone cards.



When Little-N gets interested in a subject he becomes totally obsessed. He sat and research each rock making what he calls 'fact files' about each rock. He drew picture after picture of different rocks. He started to talk about crystal shapes and taught himself the names of different mineral crystal shapes. I printed him a set of cut out crystal shapes that he could assemble himself. I also made him colour coded name cards so he can sort and name the shapes. This is how he set up his work:

My husband took Little-N to the natural history museum where he had the opportunity to see and identify many precious rocks and gems. 

Little-N's favorite precious stone is diamond, he asked if I could buy him some but I told him he'll have to wait till he's older. His next favorite is emerald and he is eagerly awaiting the emerald magazine that comes with his collection.

Homeschooling How We Do It

Little-N is now 7 and it's been a year since I stopped working in a school and have set up my own homeschooling classroom. I haven't written much about what we do throughout the week, so I thought of taking this opportunity to write about what we do on our homeschooling adventure.

My week is extremely busy and full, I really don't have enough time in my life to do all the things I must do. I've taken on too much, but it's all got to be done and there is no one else to do it. I follow a schedule to make sure I get the balance right between family, home, business and teaching Little-N. This is how a typical week would be spent.

Monday- Wednesday:

Monday - Wednesday we have our homeschooling class from 9-1. This is the core time that me and Little-N spend in the classroom, we are joined by four other homeschooled children. We have a three hour work cycle, in which the children work with the materials and have a free snack. After the work cycle the children typically play outside till 1 and then go home.

Once the children go home, Little-N helps me prepare lunch. We sit and eat together. Next we do a quick tidy up, making sure everything is in it's place and clean. At 2 we are joined by another student. This student is 13 and is also homeschooled, he comes to me 3 days a week for 1.5 hours of tutoring. I am taking him through the later Montessori materials and he loves it. The student's Aunt teaches Little-N Arabic, so while I'm tutoring, Little-N has his Arabic lessons which he loves.

We finish the lessons at 3.30, and by that time I desperately need a break! Little-N will go off and do some independent reading and I will sit at my laptop checking emails and reading all your lovely blogs. After that I begin my chores of cooking, cleaning, washing and well I'm sure you know the lot. While I am doing my chores Little-N with either be helping, reading or playing. At some point in the day I try to take Little-N out to the park, we usually organise this with friends so that Little-N has some company. Later in the evening we water the garden and Little-N goes to bed at 8.30. While he's sleeping I spend hours making new materials and preparing for the next day.

Thursday

Thursday used to be my FREE day where I didn't teach and I got to do other things that needed to be done. However I am now tutoring on Thursday mornings. While I tutor, Little-N has an Arabic lesson. On Thursday I try to spend some extra time with Little-N doing activities that we don't get to do while other children are around.

Friday

Friday is my meeting day where I am helping out the new Montessori school. We meet from the morning and the meetings usually last till 3. The meetings are at my home as the school is not set up yet. During the meetings Little-N usually plays in the garden, reads or draws. After the meeting, Little-N usually goes out with a friend of mine who often takes him to museums or parks, if I don't have to much work to do I join them.

Saturday and Sunday

These days are the family days, Little-N gets to see his cousins and other family members. My husband's family are Turkish, Turks are known for their love of barbecues, so we usually have a barbecue and Little-N loves that. We are very blessed to have married into a lovely and close family. At some point on Saturday Gem [my husband] will give Little-N a religious lesson, Little-N is learning so much from these lessons.

On Sunday Little-N attends a drama and story telling class that is run by a close friends of mine. He loves going to this class, he'll come home with a buzz singing new songs. Sunday evening is spent preparing the classroom for Monday.

Although we only spend three work cycles in the classroom, Little-N is learning throughout the day. My home is set up in a way that he is always reading, writing or playing beneficial games. At the moment, as I write this, Little-N is writing a love letter to me! He is very independent and will usually find educational things to do throughout the day. I'll post more later about what he has available to him in the environment that aids his independent learning.

Twig Sculptures

In order to make our climbing frame fit in the garden we had to cut down a few branches from a tree. I decided to keep the branches and allow the children a chance to play with them and see what they can create. Little-N and his cousin used elastic bands to hold the branches together and started creating vertical structures. They spent a lot of time working out where to put the branches so that the pressure on the structure will be just right. Having introduced Little-N to words like force and pressure, it was really nice to see him use the words in this contents.

Once the structure was complete, it stood for a whole day and the boys were very happy. The next day Little-N took it down and built another one.

Planting Vegetables

Last year I was envious of my mother in-laws garden. Every time we visited her we had salad freshly picked from her garden. This year I am growing my own. Here are some pics of Little-N planting seeds.

First he filled the recycled tub with compost. [Can you see those little cat ears? totally cute]

Then he made to grooves in the compost and sprinkled the seeds.

Next he covered the seeds with compost and watered it.

And of course he wrote labels to make sure we know what's growing. The seeds will be kept in a mini green house until their ready to be moved to the soil.

So far we've planted:

-Lettuce

-Broccoli

-Cucumber

-Radish

-Aubergine

-Carrots

Montessori I SPY sound game

Before introducing your child to the sandpapers it is extremely important to work with the Montessori 'I spy game'. The 'I spy game' helps to make children aware of the different sounds in a word. The game is played at various different levels, level 1 is very concrete and the child will work through the levels until they are able to identify all the sounds in a given word. Here is a quick description of how to present this activity.

Level:1

Materials needed:

-A special box

-A few objects that start with clear sounds, make sure the child is familiar with the names of each object [for this example I have a dog]

-Mat for table

Presentation:

Take an object from the box and place it on the mat. Say 'I spy with my little eye something beginning with 'd' 'd''. Make sure that you say the sounds correctly, it should be short 'd' and not 'da'. Since there is only one object on the mat the child will be able to succeed and reply 'dog'. Reply 'I spy dog' and emphasis the 'd' in the word. Put the object back in the box and take another object, repeat the activity for the other object. You can continue this game with as many objects as the child needs. I've had children play this for 20min and more.

Do not move onto the next step until you notice that your child is becoming aware of the initial sound in each word. This may take days, weeks or months. Be patient and continue, change the objects and change the placement of the objects to keep it interesting.

Level:2

By now the child should have developed some awareness of the initial sound in a word. On the mat place two objects with contrasting initial sounds. Say to the child 'I spy with my little eye something on the mat beginning with 'mm' 'mm'. The child now has to choose between the two objects on the mat. If the child has mastered level 1 hopefully they are able to distinguish the sounds and choose the correct object. If the child chooses the wrong object, in this case the dog simply reply ''d' dog, I spy something beginning with 'mm''.

Continue working with two objects at a time. As the child succeeds at the activity gradually increase the number of objects.

Level 3: In this activity you use the environment [room, car, garden]. Choose a sound that represents more than one item in the environment, for example book, basket, ball. Say 'I spy with my little eye many things that begin with 'b'. Encourage the child to find as many objects as possible.

Once the child has mastered this step then they are ready to start the sandpaper letters. The I spy game doesn't end here, continue to work through the different levels, it is still very important that you do this as this will help your child to isolate each sound in a word and ensure that they will be able to successfully work with the pink series and moveable alphabet later on.

Level 4: Now we are focusing on the ending sound of a word. It is easier to limit you objects to three letter phonetic words like dog, cat, pot.

Place two objects on a mat that begin with the same letter but end in different letters for example peg and pin. Say, 'I spy with my little eye something on the mat that begins with 'p' and ends with 'g''. Usually the child will not get this first time, if the child chooses the pin say 'Yes pin begins with 'p' but I spy something the begins with 'p' and ends with 'g'. Lets listen the the ending sounds, p i n, p e g. Then repeat I spy....'g'.

Once the child has mastered this level they will be able to identify the beginning and ending sound of a word.

Level 5: Once level 4 is mastered play the 'I spy game' with the middle sound. This can be very difficult, make sure you have three letter phonetic objects and help the child to sound out the word.

Please note that during these activities you do not show or teach the letter symbols, this activity is an auditory activity and the child should focus on hearing the sounds in a word. If you do the letters at the same time then they child is likely to get confused.

Begin presenting the sandpaper letters after the child has mastered level 3, but do this as a separate presentation/activity.

Do not get frustrated and stressed if the child is not mastering any of the levels, you can continue with each level as long as the child is happy and interested. If the child is unhappy or uninterested it may be because the child is simply not ready. In that case the best thing you can do is put the activity away and try again in a few weeks. But do try it again as this activity is extremely important for many of the later activities in the language area.

If you have an older child who is having difficulty spelling phonetic words, work through this activity and increase the difficulty by having objects with similar sounds like 'b' 'p'.

Those of you who I am helping through your home-schooling journey, try level 1 and 2 and then report back to me on how the activities went!!

Developing concentration, going back to the beginning

As I mentioned in a previous post one of my newer pupils Little-M needed many activities to develop his concentration and coordination. Although Little-M is 5yrs, I decided that the best way to do this was to go all the way back to the beginning. I started by introducing the early practical life and sensorial materials. Yes that means that at 5 he worked with the pink tower and even spooning exercises. I took him through the activities at a quicker pace then one would working with a younger child. Here are pictures of some of the activities he worked with.

Working with these activities were very beneficial for him, his concentration increased, coordination developed and he learn the gentleness and precision that one must work with when doing an activity. Going through these simple activities also ensured that he doesn't have gaps in his learning and that he has developed a stable foundation to build upon.

Some parents may have view his work as unimportant or time wasting, however Little-Ms mum was fully supportive. Now that he has completed many of the early activities he can now move onto more complex tasks and benefit appropriately from them.

If your starting Montessori with an older child it is always a good idea to take the time to go all the way back to the beginning and work with the early activities no matter how simple they appear to you. It is also the indirect aims of each activity that we hope the child will acquire and these will ensure that your child does better in the later activities.

Classroom at home!

I've lost count of the number of times I have set up a Montessori classroom! I thought it would get easier the more times I do this, but it's getting harder! I'm finding it hard to get motivated! Things are dragging on and I'm just so frustrated I want to get it finished! Frustration and motivation aside, I'm really happy that finally I've accomplished one of my dreams: I have a beautiful Montessori classroom in my home! I do feel really lucky. But I wish I can find the motivation to get it finished! There's so much left to do. So much!!! I want it to be perfect!

Over the summer my plans for teaching changed a lot. Firstly Big-S who is now 10yrs will no longer be attending. After many discussions, me and her mother felt it was best for her to go into regular school in order to prepare her for secondary school next year. She is now attending a private school and has settled in well enjoying the socialisation. I will miss her so much, however it is best for everyone this way. All the really advanced activities have been put away. The students I am left with are my son Little-N [6yrs] and his friend Little-S [6yrs] . Then two weeks ago we were joined by Little-M [5yrs], he's a wonderful, funny and cute boy. He needs a lot of sensorial and practical life activities to develop his concentration and focus, I had to rearrange the class to include some of these for him. Also my nephew Mu-Mu turned three and I decided that I must find away to include him in the classroom somehow [I'll post separately about my plans for Mu-Mu]. As you can see there have been big changes. My classroom now consists of 3 boys between the ages of 5-6yrs and we have a little 3yr old on the side.

Anyway here are some pictures and detailed posts will follow once I feel that I have perfected each area. The classroom is actually very small, somehow it looks bigger in the pictures!

The shelf to the right has practical life activities. The centre shelf is sensorial and shelves to the left are for mathematics.
The shelf to the left of this photo is the science section.

My map shelf which also contains the continent boxes and some folders containing geography related activities.

Oliver making sure he leaves cat fur on the maps.

This is the reading corner with non-fiction books to the left and fiction reading books to the right.

The shelves on the right are for literacy activities.

Mathematics shelves. I made a bead cabinet which is on the left of this photo but I will post about it separately.
Grammar shelf and the pink tower.

Many of the shelves are still empty!!! And I am not happy with the order of some of the materials. I will still be doing a lot of rearranging and material making over the next few weeks.

I'm eagerly awaiting everyones feedback on the classroom set up and any advice is welcomed. If you see anything that I can do better or have any neat ideas for arranging the materials then please do let me know!!

Pin Maps

I decided that it would be too expensive to buy the Montessori Pin maps and I could better spend the money on something un-makeable. So I made my own. I noticed a few other blogs that had home made pin maps, but not exactly what I wanted. I spent a long time making these files that include flags, countries and cities for each continent [except Antarctica]. You can make your own or take the easier route and buy them from here. It takes a very long time to cut everything out and put all the pins in, but its well worth it. Little-N said that these maps are much better than the wooden ones he used to use. I think it's something to do with the colour coded pins.

Is it time for him to move?

Little-N is supposed to be going to year 1 next year in a mainstream school and I'll be honest but I haven't even given that a thought till now. I have not visited any schools, I didn't send in any applications and I didn't even discuss the matter with his dad! I just turned a blind eye to the whole non-Montessori school idea.

Last year Little-N was between my 6-9 classroom and the 3-6 classroom lead by a group of other teachers. He was allowed to come into my class, not because he was my son but because academically many of the materials he was using were in there and many of the lessons he needed to take were part of the 6-9 classroom. He was also able to follow the intense learning that was going on in my class, where as some other children of the same age would come in and not like the 'hard work' that was going on and leave. There were days and weeks where Little-N would stay in the 3-6 class but eventually he always came back to my class. He didn't always work with me, sometimes the mother-son relationship was awkward and he would choose to do an activity from my class with another teacher from the other class.

I can definitely say that Little-N learnt so much this last school year and I believe it was the combination of being allowed the freedom to work between the 3-6 and 6-9 class and the back up he got at home when he had me all for himself. He can read very well for his age, he started writing independently and he even attempts writing stories. He is so mathematically advanced I can't explain, he has amazing knowledge of geography, science, culture and history and he's acquired many life skills that have made his life easier.

This year will be different. My school no longer has a group of 4-5 year olds as all of them have moved onto mainstream. Little-N will be the only 5 year old and there will be a 1 year gap between him and the younger children and the older children!!! It doesn't really bother me, but I'm guessing Little-N will be in my class a lot more now. That means that Little-N and I will be face-2-face 24 hours a day! Sometimes that gets a bit hard for me, especially that I'm a single mum and can't just drop him off at his dads or something [to do that I'll have to travel all the way across continents]. There are days that I just need my me time.... that's why I put him to bed early.

Back to the subject: My class will still have only have six children aged 6-9 + Little-N who is 5. So I'm lucky that I don't have that many children to work with this year, although I would love more as in some strange way the class works better with more children. I will be setting up new materials at the end of August and I hope to post about them if i get the chance.

Anyways the whole purpose of this post was to state my reasons for keeping him in a Montessori school next year instead of taking the easier option of sending him to a mainstream school [drop him off at another school, picking him up at 4 and not have to think about his learning sounds a lot easier to me!!]. So here are my reasons

1. Little-N is already quite an independent learner sending him into mainstream will mean that he cant pursue his own interests independently.
2. Little-N has already covered a lot of the Year1 curriculum, if he goes into mainstream, he will be relearning things he already knows for almost half of the year.
3. I visited the best mainstream school in my area with the children from my school who will be moving there. On the visit my class was allowed to attend the session that was going on in that school. Little-N had his first taste of mainstream schooling and he made me laughed. The teacher was talking about geometric solids to a group, she held up a square based pyramid and asked all the 30 children on the mat what it is. Little-N just started to say Square based.... and she said 'no its not a square'. Little-N said ' Yes it is a square based pyramid, look at its base!' In someway I don't think the usual teachers and the curriculum of a mainstream school will add anything positive to Little-Ns education if he moves there next year.
4. Respect, love, friendship, forgiveness and many other beautiful characters are not developed in the state schools in my area. It's very important for me that Little-N develops these important characters from a young age and that's exactly what Montessori does.
5. At the moment, if he doesn't hear what someone says he'll say 'Pardon' I'm pretty sure if he went to state school he'll say 'waaa' or 'what'
6. In a Montessori school, Little-N is allowed to be himself at all times. He is allowed to dig for bugs at anytime, he is allowed to do a project about anything he chooses, he is allowed to learn something new when he wants to and he is never held back because of a curriculum.
7. Being a only child raised in a single parent family, Little-N does have some issues that come up every once in a while. At my school, the head teacher takes an interest in his 'issues' and she personally helps him [and me at times] through them in a loving way. I know he would never get the same love in another school.

I know there are many more reasons but for some reason I can't think of them now. Perhaps the above are much more important that other reasons have disappeared.

So the plan is that Little-N will continue to attend a Montessori school and he will be part of my 6-9 class :) . Therefore I will continue blogging about his learning and keep you updated.

Little-Ns dead bug collection

Little-N has started a collection of dead bugs. I think its great that he's found something he loves collecting. I remember all the fun I had when I used to collect stickers as a child. He finds his bugs in all sorts of places and usually they're already dead. I've made it clear that we're not going to kill any bugs.

We're storing them in these pill boxes that I got from a local pound store, each bug has its on compartment. Little-N has categorised them, so he has all the beetles in one row, all the bees and wasps in another and so on.

Most of the bugs he decides to keep are intact. He regularly puts them each under the microscope to look at them in closely. He's used our bug book to identify each one and then researches about their habitats and life cycles.

At the moment we have 9 bugs, I'll keep you updated. I can't wait to see how many he'll have by the end of the summer.

Does anyone know any good bug encyclopedias?

Letter positioning

Little-N has been spontaneously writing a lot more here and there. He has a few words he writes over and over, like LEGO, police and cheerios! His writing Isn't that great, but good enough for me to read. To help with his writing we did a letter positioning activity. To do this you need the moveable alphabet and lined paper or a lined mat. Lets hope he remembers how they're positioned when he writes them!!

An independent learner

Last summer I spent a while planning and setting up activities that I would do with Little-N. This summer I can't plan anything because he's learning so much without my help. So I've decided to stand back!

All the activities in a Montessori classroom have a common purpose, Independence! When a child is young you can see them being independent in their environment, helping themselves to a snack, cleaning after themselves, getting dressed and so on. But when the child gets older you see another side of independence and if Montessori is done correctly in the 3-6 age group you should have an independent learner at the end.

Looking back at my posts from last summer, I can see a huge difference in Little-N. Here is what he is up to:

Little-N loves encyclopedias, he has about 5 big ones and a few topic ones. I usually buy them second hand. Almost everyday he will independently take out a few and flick through the pages until he finds something that will interest him. Then he would read about it and sometimes draw it. I've shown him how to use an index. He isn't very confident with it yet, but sometimes I'll find him trying to look up a word. I leave him to find things out himself and I stand as far back as possible. Children can't develop independence if we are always there trying to help them, sometimes we've got to leave them to work things out for themselves.

A few days ago Little-N was reading about vultures and eagles. He had the animal encyclopedia open on a page of interest and he was drawing something about that animal. Sometimes his pictures are beautiful with lots of details that I can clearly see, but other times he's draws to much I have no idea what he's drawn. The important thing is that he has somehow recorded his understanding.
Little-N is a confident reader and with the correct reading books at his reach I often find him reading independently for hours. The other day he had about 12 books out and he'd read them all. As a Montessori mother it's so warming to see the fruits of all the effort I put in to helping Little-N become an independent learner. Those of you who are homeschooling don't give up its just a matter of time and your Montessori child will grow.

Grammar cards, chart and booklets

I've just finished making my Montessori grammar chart, cards and booklets for use in my 6-9 class. And I have a surprise for everyone so keep reading.

This is the grammar chart with an explanation of the parts of speech.

These are the grammar symbol 4 part cards. The control cards are stuck together in accordion style.
This is the grammar booklet that I printed and then discovered that our school owns a ring binder machine so I'm so happy I could bind this into a real booklet.

You can see the front of this in the above picture.

We don't own a set of solid grammar symbols, they aren't available in the UK except at sky high prices and buying them from abroad will cost too much postage. So I decided to make them from card, below is a picture of the noun pyramid I just made. I'll make all the other shapes except the verb and adverb symbols as I'm sure I can find balls the right colour.

Anyway the surprise is, that I am selling the files for the grammar chart, cards and booklets on eBay. You can go to the listing here . I decided that I have to do something to make some more money as our school is suffering financially and unfortunately has cut all staffs salaries including mine :(

However.......

If you have shown support to my blog by leaving me 5 or more comments before this post and are interested in getting these files, leave a comment on this post and I will be more than happy to send you these files for free. This is my cheeky way of getting those who lurk to start commenting :)

I'll post more about how to use these grammar materials.

The grammar files that I posted about last week are no longer on eBay as I just found out that its against eBay policies to sell digital delievered materials. So I have move the file to my store, you can get them here.

Yesterday was such an exciting day. My delivery of Montessori elementary materials arrived, some for school and some for ME. I spent more than two hours looking through the boxes, checking all the materials and making sure everything was complete.

I hadn't actually seen some of these later materials, so I was so excited. Little-N did his bit helping me out. In this picture he is checking the Pythagoras theorem material, I opened the catalogue to the correct page and left him to complete the material making sure all was there. He made another break through with his maths: as he put the pieces, he  looked at the spaces and worked out how many squares there should be for each place. I don't know exactly how he worked it out, but without counting he said 'we need 9 blue squares for here and 8 and 8 is 16 so we need 16 yellow squares!!' He obviously isn't ready for this material yet [only sensorially], so he wont be working with it. 

I ordered a binominal cube, a natural binominal cube, a trinominal cube and a natural trinominal cube. These went straight onto the shelves in the learning area. 
In the morning while Little-N was still in his PJs [he learns a lot first thing in the morning] he got out the binominal cube and did it with ease.

Next he got out the natural binominal cube and tried that. All the cubes are one colour, so it's much harder to do, he did that with ease.

Then he took out the trinominal cube and instead of building a cube, he built a castle. The yellow cubes where the knights!! Then he got up and sat at the other end of the table and started to build the trinominal cube. 
It's been a while since he worked with this so he was a bit rusty. He completed layer one, then did half of layer two and explained that he can see a binominal cube in the trinominal cube.

I didn't ask him to do the natural trinominal cube and he didn't suggest it either. I think he needs a few more goes with the coloured trinominal cube first.

I gave the natural trinominal cube to my 16yr old brother to try and he did it straight away [he's a genius anyways so I was sure he'd do it]. I then gave it to my dad to try and he gave up half way. It's interesting how some adults I meet can do it without a struggle, while others are totally lost. Little-N also took out the 4 bead chain and counted through that and through the 4 squares and cube, but he didn't want to work with the arrows [I'll post more about these later].
While he was doing his activities his Lego men [I mean Lego knights] were working with him too. He seems to want to involve them with everything he does [this has been happening for the past 4 months] Missing companionship??? He took the above picture and told me to include it in this post!