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! :)

 

 

Starting Down the Reading Road

M has been asking to learn to read.  Oh my.  I’m not sure how I feel about this. 

I know I can teach him, and I know he can learn… but I’m in no hurry to have him reading on his own.  There is so much out there that he is just not ready to comprehend in a healthy way.  I honestly don’t believe that reading at such an early age gives a child any sort of a real advantage in the big scheme of things. 

But, but, but I also want to encourage his love of learning and since this is what he’s interested in right now, we are slowly, slooooowly starting down that road. 

He already knows a handful of words and can pick them out when he sees them – dog, cat, Mommy, Daddy, on, off, of, no, go, pizza (haha). 

One thing we’ve been doing, and it’s a lot of fun, is carefully listening to the separate sounds in words.  For example, I’ll tell M to r—u—n to the w—i—n—d—ow (speaking very, very slowly, and clearly making each distinct sound), and he has to put the sounds all together and do what I say.  He loves this; at first it was a challenge, but he’s enjoyed it so much as he’s gotten better at it!  It’s a game to him, and something we can do just about anywhere, anytime… t—ou—ch  your n—o—se, and that sort of thing.

We did the same thing with the group of objects below:Find the b—oy, s—u—n, t—ur—t—le, etc.  When he’s done a few of these then it’s his turn to sound something out for me and see if I can pick the right thing.  This is harder than it sounds – he has a, let’s say, interesting way of sounding some things out, haha.  But it’s a great way to get him thinking about how individual sounds make up words!  He already knows which letters make many of the sounds.

I also picked up the first set of Bob Books at our library.  I think M will really like these.  I like how simple they are, and while I have heard that the line drawings don’t appeal to some children, I think they will to M.

There are a couple of online programs that I looked into… 

Progressive phonics is a free program, and gets a lot of good reviews, but I was irritated that in the earliest books the names are not capitalized.  This is probably a minor pet peeve, but M already knows that beginnings of sentences and names use “mama” letters.  I don’t understand the idea of not using proper grammar right from the start.  I also didn’t like the idea of having to print out all the books. 

Reading lessons is another free program, created by the same person who created the Kididdles website, which we love.  However, as the program progress, it uses printable books from the Reading A to Z website, which requires a paid membership.  It does offer options to this, but nothing that I found very realistic for us.

And, like I said, I’m in no hurry to have M fluently reading everything he sees!  So for now this is enough for us.

If you know of something we might enjoy down the road, I’d love to hear about it in the comments – thank you!

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! :)

 

Learning by Heart – week 15

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

~M is 4 years old~

SHELF ACTIVITIES:

Sewing buttons – M watched me hand sew a quick repair job on his pillow several days ago, and was very, very interested.  So I set out this little button sewing activity for him: 

He used an embroidery needle and yarn to sew the buttons onto the cotton fabric.  Here’s how it turned out: He did a great job and really enjoyed it too.  He had to hang it in the window for the “birdies to see”. {Sigh – we have too many things hanging in our windows for just this reason.  We honestly can barely see out of a few, but it’s hard to take things down!}

 

Tying knots – this was supposed to be for knot-tying practice:

I thought M would love this, but no.  He was disappointed that it wasn’t a lacing card and didn’t have a picture on it.  Then he asked for train lacing cards, so I have made some for next week. (I would just let him use my shoes for knot practice.  I know he would love that, but I’m really not interested in untying knots in my shoes!  I’ll have to find an old pair somewhere.  Or maybe Daddy’s shoes. :) )

 

Pipeline Game – I found this several months ago at a thrift store, and I put it out on M’s shelves once in a while as a fine motor work.  This time we actually played the game, several times, and it’s a lot of fun.  There is a die to roll that tells you what shape pipe you get and the goal is to create a pipeline from your starting side to the opposite side of the board.  Your opponent can block you and “cap” your pipeline, and then you have to start over.  It really is a lot of fun and we’ve all been enjoying it (too bad I don’t have an action shot!): 

 

Design and Drill – this is a new, great little activity for M.  The drill really works, and has 3 bits that go with it, all of which work on the included bolts.  That’s neat in and of itself, but there are also 20+ designs included; M picks one, then puts out all the bolts needed, drills them in, then un-drills them and starts over again.  It’s neat because he has to mentally transfer the design from the card to the board (usually by counting each row to see how many blank spaces there are before the first bolt):

 

Picture Pies – these are from a great little book titled, Picture Pie by Ed Emberley; you can make almost anything by cutting out a circle, then cutting it into a variety of shapes.  I’ve been choosing a design from the book, then drawing the circles and cutting lines for M, and giving him a small drawing showing how to put the pieces together, or simply showing him the design in the book.  This week he did a bird and a mouse:

  I think these will be a feature on his shelves many times in the weeks to come!

 

Biggie Fuse Beads – these were a hit again, as always.  This time, M came up with his own designs, then took a lot of care in getting it “just right” on the peg board.  Here is a car he made, with a road beneath it and sky (with clouds) above it.  You can see the seat and the steering wheel too. :)        

 

 

  “TOGETHER” ACTIVITIES:

Math Skills:

We haven’t done much in the way of Math, although I do think the Picture Pies and Design and Drill mentioned above definitely qualify as math activities.

This week I tried to help M understand why teens look the way they do – he can count to 100, but he is having trouble identifying written numerals.  He’ll say “two, five” instead of “twenty-five”.  (Small digression here – when I say he’s having trouble, I mean it is troubling him that he can’t identify them; I honestly have no problem with it and know that he’ll eventually get it, but since it’s something he’s interested in learning, I’m happy to help him out a bit.)

I printed out some number cards (I can make these available as a printable file if anyone is interested – let me know!), and grabbed our homemade Montessori bead bars.

First We put a ten bead bar to the left and a single digit bead bar to the right (4 is pictured here).  Then we took the 10 card (which he can identify) and placed it above the appropriate bead bar, and did the same with the 4 card: 

Then we “chugga-chugga-choo-chooed” our bead bars together, and counted them – fourteen!

Then we “chugga-chugga-choo-chooed” our number cards together and I showed M how to place the 4 on top of the 0 so that it was right over the 4 bead bar, and the 1 (for 1 ten bead bar) was right over the 10 bead bar: 

Fourteen beads to count, and the number 14 to show it.  We did this with all the teens, and I then showed him how 20 is simply 2 10 bead bars.  It was much simpler to do this than it sounds in writing it all out! :)

He got it, but was ready to quit at 20.  I can’t tell yet whether this really sunk in or not, but the chugga-chugga-choo-chooing was pretty fun. :)

 

Literacy Skills

Rhyming:

M is all about rhyming now, so I stuck the following letter magnets to the side of our dishwasher:We sounded out ‘at’, then picked a couple of the other letters to place in front of the ‘at’ and had fun making up rhymes –”the cat sat on the bat under the mat and gave him a pat” and that sort of thing. :)

 

More Rhyming:

I grabbed a little bowl full of miniature objects and we took turns closing our eyes while the other one picked an object and hid it in their hands.  The person with the hidden object had to give rhymes as clues to help the other person guess the hidden object.  I was surprised that M had trouble making rhymes for words that had more than one syllable.  He always tried to make a rhyme for just the first syllable and nothing for the rest of the word, which made my guessing pretty difficult sometimes. :)  Also, a couple of times I tried to give him hints with the beginning letter and a rhyme, like “it starts with ‘z’ and rhymes with ‘bebra’” and this just completely floored him, hee hee.  We’ll play this again some time; it will be interesting to see how he progresses.

Spelling and Letter Formation:

One day M got out a bunch of toothpicks and wrote his name with them.  This was completely on his own, and he was really very proud of himself:Yes, it’s backwards.  Totally backwards.  This didn’t bother him, but he did tell me that it was too hard to make “baby” letters with toothpicks, so he decided to make most of them “mama” letters.  I think it’s interesting that he has picked up on the fact that only the first letter of his name should be upper case, and I’m just a tiny bit worried about the backwards thing. 

I will be posting about our science experiment of the week on Sunday – don’t miss it! :)

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

Have a beautiful day! :)