Learning by Heart – Spring Fever

“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom”
– Henry Ward Beecher

 

~M is 4.5 years old~

LITERACY

We continue to play our little word sound games, as detailed in this post, and M is progressing well through the first set of Bob Books.  He is not crazy about the story line in these, heh.  But really, any first reader is going to have plots like Mat had a cat.  The cat sat on the mat.  The End.  :)  I am happy that his desire to read stems from the joy of a story, and his comprehension of a complex plot continually amazes me.  Yet, we have to start somewhere – he can’t begin with Mark Twain or Charles Dickens, haha.  I am slightly concerned that his interest in reading on his own is waning as we go through such simple stories… any ideas?

MATH

Math got a post of its own this week. :) You can read the review of what we’ve been doing (mostly) in math, here.

SCIENCE

We’ve been enjoying the outdoors and learning about plants, flowers, trees, and birds over the past few weeks.  We’ve used a lot of our 3-part cards (click on the images if you are interested in downloading any of these sets)…

Bird identification:We have new little bird friends in our backyard this year – a sweet bluebird family in one of our birdhouses, and some yellow-rumped warblers.  We normally only see the warblers for about a week as they migrate through, but this spring at least one has stuck around, and is welcome to stay as long as he wants. :)  Most of our bird-learning has been done spur-of-the-moment style, and we race to our favorite bird identification book a lot:

We are also reading The Bird Book for Children, by Thornton Burgess.If you can get your hands on this book, it’s well worth reading.  There’s a lot of information packed into this little book about birds: what they look like (beautiful illustrations), what they eat, where they nest, how many eggs, etc.  And it’s all written in story form to appeal to the young child.  M loves all of Thornton Burgess’ books; each one really is exceptional. (A side note – Burgess was a naturalist as well as a great story teller.  Each of his books is packed with information about animals and nature, and M doesn’t even know he’s learning because the story is just so good.  I am tempted to make lap books to go with each story for next year, since M is already talking about reading all of these again.  We’ll see…)

Flower identification:

Parts of a flower:

Parts of a tree:

Parts of a leaf:

And M has been tending little pots of marigolds and forget-me-nots (kits found in the Target dollar spot):

 forget-me-nots, just beginning to sprout

forget-me-nots, beginning to grow!

 marigolds, just beginning to sprout

 marigolds, beginning to grow!

He will have his own little garden outside this year, and already has big plans (bigger than the plot will be, to be honest) for vegetables and flowers.

Two books about plants that we’ve enjoyed reading are:

PRACTICAL LIFE

Making seasonal arrangements is one of M’s very favorite activities.  I set out a dish, some florist’s foam, and a few seasonal items on picks or wires, and he is happy for a good 30 minutes.  Here is his spring arrangement – flowers, foam, and bowl were all from Dollar Tree; the birds were from some Christmas decorations:   

And M has been mowing the lawn:Hahaha – just kidding. ;)  He is steering the lawn mower in the above picture, but the blade is up for safety, and no actual mowing is going on.   And Daddy is keeping him very safe (note the ear muffs to protect his hearing; I think they are so cute!).

ART AND MUSIC

Painting outside is always fun.  M and I had a blast painting on an old roller shade out in the grass:

trying out some splatter painting

And painting a new birdhouse:

All finished:

 

M made this bright and cheerful flower garden in an egg carton:

And we’ve been enjoying some new spring-themed songs.  Our favorites are Robin in the Rain, and this one:

The Rain

With a drip, drip, drip,
and a drop, drop, drop,
See the rain on the pane,
Will it stop, stop, stop?

With a wink, wink, wink,
And a blink, blink, blink,
Will we ever see the rain,
Do you think, think, think?

And M has been watching, and loving, this:

I’m linking this post up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up; be sure to check them out!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Learning by Heart – May 13, 2011

“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom”
– Henry Ward Beecher

  Mother’s Day 2011
This was taken at the end of the day – I look worn out and
M looks ready to go. :)  That is usually how it is around here! 
I normally wouldn’t post a picture of myself with glasses on (I so dislike how I look in them), but I have to be in SOME pictures on here!  It’s my blog! :)

~M is 4.5 years old~

Literacy

M continues to love poems and these sequencing cards are a great activity.  He can do these all on his own, as long as I separate them into groups for him (one paperclip of cards for each poem): 

His homemade puppet theater (a tension rod in a doorway with a blanket thrown over the top) has been seeing more action lately, and we made these great little stick puppets for The Three Bears.  This is a fun way of doing more story sequencing and mom and dad get a cute little show to watch. ;) 

And M wants to learn to read.  You can read more about that in this post.

 

Science – Dinosaurs!

M loves the little dinosaur fossil eggs you chisel apart in order to find the bones.  He’s done many, many of these over the winter and early spring.  You can find them at Michael’s as well as Dollar Tree. See the little hammer lying on the table?  That quickly got set aside, and M began using his “real”, big hammer.  This kid is all about action, not patience.

     This particular one is an Ankylosaurus.  For each dino he’s unearthed and put together, we’ve looked for a book to learn a bit more about it.  I can’t remember the names of the books, but there are a ton of dino books out there (on the odd chance you haven’t noticed)!

 

Fine Motor Skills, Practical Life, and Misc.

After seeing this post over at My Montessori Journey, I thought it would be fun to set something similar out for M.  I found simple step-by-step tutorials for drawing a bird and a dog (look towards the bottom of the web page for the dog), and made instruction cards for M.  He wasn’t as eager to do this as I imagined he would be, and that was fine.  I don’t want to inhibit his own imaginative drawings by making him think things have to be drawn in a certain way.  However, I did enjoy seeing how he was able to go from step to step in order.  Here are the cards (I had each set on a ring):
And here are M’s finished drawings: Are these not absolutely adorable?!  :)  He said, “look at my chicken!” – I think he surprised himself, haha.  I have to say I like his chicken better than the bird he was trying to draw. :)

 

M loves to watch me use my sewing machine.  It is an event, let me tell you.  He anticipates it, watches every move, tries to figure out exactly how it works, and begs for more when I’m finished.  Sometimes I think he’s going to break into applause.  Part of it is his inclination towards all things mechanical, but part of it is just a love of the idea that something new can be created.  So I set out a simple embroidery hoop, some muslin, and a little yarn for him.  He wanted to sew a picture, so we started with a smiley face.  He learned to backstitch in order to create a line of stitches (although not perfectly, as you can see!), and overall really enjoyed this.

 

 

May Day meant a little flower crown for the statue of Mary in our garden.  I used some leftover flowers from a lei, cut a crown shape out, and let M staple the flowers on.  He LOVES the stapler (totally supervised, don’t worry!). 

 Ok, I guess the garden needs a little work.

It’s a little big.

We read two beautifully written and illustrated books about Mary:

 

 

Art

Here’s a look at M’s Art Box for spring (which has recently changed into an Art Cart – more on that later).  It was full of things to make flowers and butterflies: 

Here’s a bit of his artwork: 

 
And, my favorite, a ribbon and flower collage on contact paper for Mother’s Day. :) 

I’m linking this post up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up; be sure to check them out!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

 

Learning by Heart – Frogs

“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom”
– Henry Ward Beecher

~M is 4.5 years old~ 

May 18th will be our final day of “school” here – I can’t believe it is just around the corner!  To be honest, we aren’t doing all that much right now.  The weather is unpredictable, and I’m trying to go with the flow… not planning too much and saving what is planned for rainy days.

We have had an unofficial frog theme going on for a while.  I’m not sure how it all started, but I think it was the song “Froggy Went A-Courtin’”, which I taught to M in early March for some reason.  (I have always loved that song!)  And then there were some Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel that M picked up at our library.  Have you read any of these with your child?  I’ve heard of them quite a bit, but have had trouble understanding the big deal about them.  Well.  Now I do.  They are hilarious, and obviously Mr. Lobel understands children.  M loves these books.

Then one of our nature center classes was all about frogs and toads and we learned so much!  It was perfect timing!  I wish I had brought my camera!  We learned that toads are bumpy and prefer to live on dry land, while frogs have smooth skin and prefer to live in ponds (mostly).  Both have a nasty-tasting liquid that comes from a bump behind their eyes (and sometimes other areas of their skin)  that keeps other animals from wanting to eat them.  Both come from eggs and are called tadpoles when they hatch.  You can also call them polliwogs. :)

And so a mini frog unit was begun.

M cut out pieces from this lifecycle wheel and put them together (with a little help) to make a frog lifecycle chart: He really enjoyed doing this on his own.

We did a quick activity to learn about webbed feet, and how they work.  No photos of this, but you can learn about it here.

M made a little Frog nomenclature book (and fell in love with the stapler in the process; pretty much every piece of paper in our home is currently stapled in some way).  I intended to make cards for him to match up, but realized that he would get more out of it by just making the whole thing himself.  I found the cards here, at Montessori Print Shop.  M colored the appropriate area on each card and labeled it, then we made it into a book.  This was a big hit – I guess I need to remember that now he is getting to the age where he will enjoy making his own materials instead of having them made for him!

M’s nomenclature book (I promised him I would show you the entire thing, so here you go!):Front cover

head, eyes

mouth, neck (or “heck” if you prefer, heehee)

body, arm
(Actually he was supposed to copy “trunk”, and “foreleg”, but chose what just made more sense to him. 
A writer’s prerogative, right?)

hindlegs, webbed feet (minus the “webbed”)

He has his father’s penmanship. ;) 

Just for Fun…

These were miscellaneous activities that were out on M’s shelves for him, and tied into the frog theme.

Color by Number – I found this coloring page in an online book I purchased quite a while back.  I printed it and then made a color key for M, curious to see how he would do with this kind of thing.  He really enjoyed it!

Pin Punching shapes – the large shapes used for these were also in an online book (Scholastic had a lot of their books on sale for $1.00 earlier this year – what a great deal!).  I printed these out on colored paper, then M used a large push pin to punch holes all the way around.  Once they were perforated, we punched the picture out.  He enjoyed this more than I imagined, and did all 5 of the pictures I had out for him.  This proves that he can focus on something that takes a lot of time when he wants to!

 

Mosaics – I found these great little mosaic pictures at Dollar Tree.  They have been a huge hit, and great fine motor skill work:

 

 

And, of course, we read lots and lots of books about frogs!

Frog and Toad Are Friends, by Arnold Lobel:

Frog and Toad Together, by Arnold Lobel:

The Frogs and Toads All Sang, by Arnold Lobel:

Frog and Toad All Year, by Arnold Lobel:

If You Hopped Like A Frog, by David Schwartz:

From Tadpole to Frog, by Wendy Pfeffer:

The Adventures of Grandfather Frog, by Thornton Burgess:

 

I’m linking this post up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up; be sure to check them out!

Have a beautiful day! :)