Keeping Track of work

Whilst here in the UK, there is no requirement to keep records of student work when you are home educating. I like to keep track of what we have done, it also allows the children to see their own progress in action as it were. In order to do this I use two forms, one is my termly checklist, which I downloaded and adapted from Charlotte Mason help, and the other is a variation of a checklist that I saw on line somewhere.

The termly checklist is just that, it has each subject that I teach broken down by day over a 12 week term.  See image below:

I cannot offer you a copy of this as it is not my work but you can find them here by joining the yahoo group. CHARLOTTE MASON HELP YAHOO GROUP


The other tool that I use to keep organised is the children's checklist. I print this out at the beginning of the week and keep it in a plastic page cover which goes in their morning work folder. I put it in here as I did not know where else to put it. The whole weeks lessons fit onto one page and included a section for comments. But here is the best bit, each day includes a list of the lessons and what we do, with a column for 'done' and 'grade'.  For some reason Nuh is really into ticking things off, so he likes this bit and it gives him accountability which is good. The grade column is not used to record traditional grades like 'A' and 'B' as I think Nuh is way too young for this, but is used for our own grading system:

• E= Excellent 
• S= Satisfactory
• N= Needs work

Notice that I did not use 'unsatisfactory' I hate this term, I used to see how it crushed colleagues at work when I was a teacher when they received an 'unsatisfactory' for an observation. Imagine how crushing for a child. Needs work, is much more constructive.
Each 'E' on the weeks checklist receives a reward. We just add them up and give some money for every 'E'.

You can get an editable copy of the checklist here, by clicking on the text underneath the image:

STUDENT CHECKLIST

Narration, Narration

I think when I first started reading about CM one of the concepts that made inherent sense to me was 'Narration'. I just seems so logically, if the child can tell you back in their own words what you have just read then they have retained the information. Ergo, learning completed. However as I am sure many of you have experienced when trying to implement this wonderful technique in your home school, its easier said than done. When I first started it with Nuh, I explained to him what I wanted him to do and we started out with telling back every couple of sentences worth of reading. Then built on that, however I think that I was too demanding too exacting and some how this became a massive chore, and not some laid back wonderful mystical learning experience.

I started to dread it and so did Nuh, this was disastrous as most of the learning in CM requires narration, right? Whilst technically the answer is yes, if you read around on the web, there are many ways to accomplish this task apart from the 'you must insist on perfect attention' advice. From my forays into web land I learnt that I needed to relax, I also remembered that discussion is a valid tool in learning and so I decided that I wanted narration to be more of a discussion, so what if I am providing some of the information surely that shows that I am an interested participant in the learning and that this is something that is not being done to him. I also liked the idea of using note booking as copy work, so this is what we do.


So this is how we do narration, I read the chapter. This is not a continuous reading, I read approximately a paragraph then me and Nuh discuss what I have just read, either I will ask him to tell me something about what I have just read or what can he remember, we will then discuss it, especially if it was something interesting. In order to demonstrate this process, I will write about the most recent narration that we did for CHOW, chapter 24  , this chapter is about the Persia vs Greece.

the first few chapters deal with what the word versus means, which Nuh knows already so I am not going to ask him to narrate that, the next few paragraphs detail information about the Persian King Darius and how he wanted to conquer Greece, so he sent his son in law to conquer it. This is how the narration went:

Me: "Wow that King was really mad"
Nuh: "Yeah, he was, lets find Greece on the map"
Me: "OK, here it is"
Nuh: "Where was Persia" ( I pointed it out on the map)
Nuh: "So Persia was really big and it wanted to add Greece to its empire (I supplied, the word empire)
Me: "yes, that what empires do, they always want to expand, can you remember the Kings name?"
Nuh: "Darius, why was he mad at the weather?"
Me: "Because it wrecked his fleet, and he couldn't then conquer Greece"

Even though we sort of got off topic, Nuh always wants to know where these countries are on the map, so I point them out. (its so useful having the world map permanently on the table under a see through cover) We then got back on topic and discussed the salient points. I supplied one of the answers, which is natural in a discussion.

The next few paragraphs explain that Darius sent messengers to all the Greek cities asking them to send him some water and soil as a sign that they would surrender peacefully. Most did except Athens and Sparta, who decided to join together to fight him. Our narration is below:

Nuh: "where is Athens and Sparta" ( i point them out on the map) "Wow they are really small, they will never win against Persia"
Me: "they must have been brave to ignore King Darius and not send the stuff"
Nuh: "Why did he want earth and water?, its funny that they threw the messenger in the well" ( I explain the significance of the earth and water"
Me: "would you have sent the earth and water"
Nuh: "yeah, Persia is massive, its army must be massive, in minecraft you have zombie armies".
Me: "That's interesting but we are not talking about minecraft, lets focus"

I know its time to read the next chapter now, if he is trying to talk about minecraft. Nice try son, nice try.

The next few paragraphs outline how the Persian army was transported by Trireme's and how many soldiers they were. there are two really important points in this chapter to remember one, the number of soldiers and two, how many miles marathon is from Athens.

Me: "lets look at a trireme on the Internet"
Nuh: "okay, wow they must have being really squashed in. 120,000 soldiers is a lot" (nuh is good with numbers)
Me: "They landed a long way from Athens, can you remember how far"
Nuh: "26 miles".

Nuh definitely needs to know where things are on the map and have a clear image of things in his head. the next paragraphs of the chapter carry on like this, in a discussion format with me supplying some of the information and prompting him sometimes. The last narration always involves some kind of summary in discussion format.

Ancient Babylon: The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

As you probably know Ancient Babylon crops up a few times in the history time line. This post is about the chapter from CHOW that relates to the creation of the hanging gardens of Babylon. Again this post is a retrospective post as we actually completed this activity quite some time ago.

As with all of our history studies we started out by my reading the chapter from CHOW. We then discussed what we had read, as I mentioned in an earlier post I do not read the whole chapter from beginning to end then ask him to narrate it back. I read approximately a paragraph then ask him to tell me something that interested him from the reading, we then discuss this. When we have finished reading the chapter we then do some copy work. I ask Nuh to tell me which was his favourite part of the chapter. This week he chose the part about King Nebuchadnezzar going mad.  I copied this out onto our note booking paper, I pointed out the grammar, then had him copy it out.

Sometimes he does not want to draw a picture to go with the copy work which I do not mind as we usually do a craft to go with the chapter. I know that doing craft is not strictly CM, but hey I am home educating I can do what I want. Anyway the craft helps to solidify the information. Today we are making, that's right you guessed it the 'Hanging Gardens of Babylon'.
This craft will take more than one day to complete, which I am totally cool with. We used cereal boxes, paper cups and tissue boxes, glued them together with my glue gun and then glued tissue paper over the boxes, this will allow us to paint over the boxes without the writing showing through. When this was dry we then painted it and orange/brown colour. When the paint was dry we then painted on the arch ways, and went into the garden to collect some plant material to glue onto the garden, I used my glue gun for this.

This is our finished product, the kids were really pleased with how it turned out, me too... I always let Zuh take part in our craft projects even if she has no idea what we are doing.


p.s yes that is a log on the carpet in the background.lol

What we do and when

I love the rich and varied subjects on offer through following a Charlotte Mason curriculum but I also know that I can honestly not do them all. I tried this last year and we sort of managed it, but not totally and then I got into all the self recrimination rubbish until Allah ( SWT) showed me that I really do not need to slavishly follow the Ambleside online curriculum, or Charlotte Mason Help, or any other curriculum for that matter, this is home edcuation, right. Not that there is anything wrong with these curriculum's, far from it they are thorough and rigorous and will no doubt provide your child with an excellent education. However, I wanted to simplify this academic year as I knew we would be moving twice, eek...  So I  decided on what would be our main goals this year both in terms of education and emotional development and which subjects we would include. I also needed longer with some of the subjects as we were definitely going over 15 minutes, so I decided to modify our timetable to accommodate this, isn't brilliant being able to do what ever you want.

Educational Goals:

• To have Nuh reading at a developmentally appropriate level by the end of the academic year.
• To complete the 3-6  Montessori maths album. (We should finish this pretty quickly and start on the 6-9 after Easter)
• To start to teach Nuh Arabic 
• To carry on with world history and not stress about staying on track with either Charlotte Mason Help or Ambleside. 
• To continue with Nature Journalling 
• To really study the continents in depth - using a combination of classical, Montessori and cm pedagogy's.
• To do artist study in our own way
• To develop good adab
• To start prophet studies again, but more in depth this time round.
• To teach Zuh how to count to twenty and recognise the symbols. Maybe the letters in her name as well.
• To have fun

Emotional development: 

• To help them prepare for the move from north lincolnshire to the west midlands
• To help them once we have moved
• To teach Zuh better conflict resolution strategies ( very fancy way of saying, stopping her whacking anyone who takes her toys, shouts at her etc..) 
• To teach them both better problem solving skills - how do we solve a conflict between each other or share a toy we both want etc..
• To teach Nuh how to play with his sister more appropriately(she does not want to play fighting all the time)

In order to accomplish these goals, I devised a timetable and selected the books and resources that we would use. Easy peasy, lol. 

If you would like a copy of the timetable click on the link below the image:

TIME TABLE

This timetable is not set in stone and I have re written it once since September, it took me a long time to move away from the rigidity of school type scheduling, I know that this looks very school like, but I do not stress if we start at 10am one day or miss artist study because we have to go somewhere after lunch. Being able to relax and use it as a guide rather than a checklist has helped us all immensely. 

Quiet time is my time. If we are in the house then after lunch we have quiet time. The kids have to leave the front room and go and play in the house somewhere, sometimes I will provide an activity like get out the play doh but not always. Anyhoo the point is that  I get to watch TV for an hour with a cuppa without them. Bliss.. 

I know that housework is scheduled on the timetable, this means that the kids have to tidy up, at 2pm. I don't care what it is, it might be a shelf in their bedroom or sorting through a toy box this again does not always happen at 2pm. Just as gardening does not always happen at 2pm, for instance this week it was more like 3pm because we had to go and buy some seeds. 

Our version of Islamic studies

This post will be past tense, as it is attempting to condense what we did for two years.

Back in September 2012 when we first started out and very dear sister and I worked together to devise a curriculum for Islamic Studies. Now obviously we knew that there are many different excellent curriculum's that you could buy, however we felt that they kind of dropped you into Islam to far on as it were. Our thinking at the time was that surely the children need to know the history of prophets in order to understand Islam's place in world religions and that Muhammad (SWS) is the last prophet and messenger. We did not do anything special we simply decided to use Ibn Kathir's stories of the prophets ( this is free on line to download) as our base for fact checking. I would then rewrite some of the information from this in a more child friendly format, whilst still keeping the rich language. Sort of like a living book.

I also used some of the good word books but kept to the facts from Ibn Kathir book. So I would simply omit anything from the text in the good word books that did not concur with the Ibn Kathir book.  I have several good word books that include information about the line of prophets. I also used the 'Learning Roots' books, where i could. I would just read straight from these.

We decided that we would just use note booking and discussion to solidify the information and help the children retain what was read.  So a typical lesson in our house would go like this, first I would say we are going to learn about Adam (AS), the first prophet. I would then read him the abridged version that I had written or use one of the other books that I have mentioned. After we do some copy work about what I had read about Adam (AS) and draw a picture.(this is where the note book pages come in) Initially we would discuss what I had read I  would then write up the narration, and get Nuh to do a little bit or writing, by tracing over my words, as he was only just learning how to do his letters.

The prophet studies took about a year and a term.

Our History Curriculum

What we do for History

We largely stick to CM for history, I say mainly because we do veer off a little and we do differ slightly in that we only do world history and not both UK and world history. We did try doing both when Nuh was 6 but it was a tiny bit overwhelming for both of us, so I wanted to simplify this year but still cover history, so I thought that I would wait until the time line converges and then pick up UK history again.

The curriculum we follow is a mixture of the book recommendations from the Charlotte Mason Help website and The Mystery of History Vol 1. Our main text is 'A Child's History of the World ( CHOW)  we also use some of the other book selections from CM help. (See links below for all books)

So what do we do on a weekly basis? Well I read the chapter from CHOW as per CM methodology, whilst doing so I will pause at significant points and Nuh to narrate back to me. He is not old enough for a non stop reading of an entire chapter which he then narrates back. So I read two paragraphs perhaps or one, then pause and ask him to narrate to me. This is done in a very informal way, through a little discussion or me expressing astonishment at something we have just read, which will then lead to Nuh then adding his recollections and thoughts. When we have read the chapter we then complete some note booking.

Note booking at the moment involves me asking Nuh what his favourite part of the story was, it is usually something violent. I then write out a sentence from the chapter about his favourite part, which he then copies onto note booking paper. After he has completed his copy work, he can then either draw a picture relating to the story in the space at the top of the page or stick and image or some stickers if I have them.  You can download a copy of the note booking page that I have made by clicking on the link below the image.

NOTE BOOKING PAGES

Next up we place our time line card onto the massive cork board that we have, at this age CM does not require dates on the time line, its more to give a sense of the order of events in history. You can download a copy of the time line cards that I have made below:

CHOW TIME LINE CARDS

Finally we complete a craft activity relating to the chapter. I have these crafts planned out about 5 weeks in advance. This gives me plenty of time to buy the relevant materials. I will include these in a separate post along with our current timetable and yearly objectives.

Book links

Childs History of the World

The Mystery of History vol 1

Numbers 1 to 5

I have decided to start teaching Zuh some basic Maths concepts, she is still only 4 1/2 so I will only be doing Maths and Adab/Habit training, no phonics or anything else.

Some of the first lessons in the Karen Tyler Maths album relate to the numbers one through ten. The first lesson deals with quantity, then symbol, then quantity and symbol together. I didn't really document this with Nuh, but Alhamdillah, Zuh is chomping at the bit (sensitive period) for numbers and counting. So I am going to document activities as we go, I didn't bother buying the official Montessori counters, and wooden number symbols. Instead I used some wooden numbers from 'The Range' and a variety of objects for counting, I will now reuse these with Zuh. One of the cheapest and best counters in my humble opinion are the glass nuggets you buy in the garden centre, I do believe you can buy them in a lot of pound shops as well. I like these because they are not too fancy as to be distracting but they are lovely and tactile and my kids anyway seem to love them.

Zuh can already count out individual objects 1 - 20 but can only recognise number symbols 1, 2, 3 and 4. So obviously I will be concentrating on teaching her the symbols for each number one to 10 this will involve lots of counting, which she loves.

Lesson 1

Even though the Zuh can recognise the numbers 1 - 4 I wanted to give her something that she can easily accomplish for her first lesson ( self esteem building and all that, also as this was her first ever lesson I wanted it to be a success)  so I thought we would do three activities around this. The first activity was to correctly identify the symbols for 1 through to 4. I made sure that she could recognise them without any mistakes, so I did a simple presentation by laying each number out and naming it, then I pointed to them into sequential order and asked her to identify them. Lastly I mixed them up so that they were out of sequential order and then pointed to them and asked her to identify the number. She did all of the above without any problem.

I then let her decorate the numbers.

Next I took an activity straight from the Karen Tyler Album involving stickers and counting. Basically you set up a piece of paper with the numbers on that you are presenting, and some stickers on a tray. The task was to simply put the correct amount of stickers in the correct number column. Simple but effective.

Lesson 2

This lesson was all about 5, I wanted to focus on this number individually as she sometimes confuses it with 2. So I did not do a traditionally Montessori presentation of 3 numbers, we just did 5. I started the lesson by reviewing yesterday's learning. I then got out the wooden number 5, I placed it in front of her on the tray and said "this is the symbol for 5", I then got her to trace the number with her finger and say 5. Next I got her to decorate the number 5.

After she had decorated the number 5, I gave her a number of activities that involved counting to 5 and sequencing. First I made a sticking activity, using a grid format. Basically she had to stick the right amount of circles in each row to correspond with the number. I had originally planned to use pom poms with this task, but decided that coloured circles would be better as pom poms don't stick very well.

This is the tray set up

This is the completed activity

The next activity that I had prepared was hole punching the correct amount of holes into each card. Zuh really liked this as she has never used the single hole puncher before so it was a novel for her.

After that she completed a counting task of a one to one correspondence. The activity was to put the numbers in sequential order and then count out the correct amount of pom poms onto each card.

Finally she completed a number puzzle, where she had to look at the numbers on the bottom and put them into sequential order in order to complete the puzzle.

You can download the activities that I made for Zuh by clicking on the link below the image:

COUNTING 1 - 5

My Approach to Reading

Before I started home educating Nuh I read extensively around the subject ( I am a voracious reader) and one thing I was determined to do was to wait until Nuh was 7 to begin reading. This was due to the plethora of research and information regarding age and reading. Which basically found that children who started reading instruction at age 5 were no more advanced than those who started at age 7 and in fact starting early could be damaging by putting children off of reading. It is thought that intensive phonics instruction at 5 can be too much for a lot of children and can put them off of reading because they struggle with some of the concepts being taught. As I stated in another post, Nuh was keen to start reading at 5 as his friend who had gone to school had started phonics. I agonised over this and I decided that I would teach him the alphabet and basic cvc words so that is what I did, we managed to stretch this out over about 1 yr and a bit of homeschooling. We did Montessori Pink series, I do not think that there is a finer method of teaching children their alphabet. We also did some of Blue Series but then we just dilly dallied until he was 7. I remember  times when he was 5 and 6 that he was in tears over reading, telling me that he hated it and so on, I think I would have been totally stressed out if I had not already taken the decision to go easy. It meant that during these difficult times we could just ease off and leave reading for a week or so.

Watching him now flying through the All About Reading program, I am glad that I waited.


If you read this article in the New Scientist, you find links to all the major research into reading instruction and age.


new scientist

Volcano

Week 1

Anyhoo for the past 3 weeks we having been learning about volcanoes. We followed the instructions in the Geography Trail Guide, there was not much information in the trial guide nor the Ultimate Geography Guide so I thought I would look for some suitable resources from Montessori. I thought it would be really good for Nuh to know the different parts of a volcano so  I  found some 3 part cards from the Helpful Garden blog ( this blog is a gold mine, link below). So for week 1 we read the information in the GTG, then used the 3 part cards. He particularly enjoyed the thought of volcanic bombs. We then made a volcano model using lego, we did this together Nuh, Zuh and I. As we were building we ran over the vocabulary we had learnt and named the various parts of the volcano.

Week 2

In week two, we looked at the Ring of Fire on the world map which on our dining room table, Nuh was fascinated by the fact that 250 volcanoes are situated here, we also looked at some volcanoes erupting on youtube.

We then made a volcano with vinegar, food colouring and bicard of soda. (sorry no pics) The children really enjoyed this, we had to make the volcano erupt several times. We made the volcano from tinfoil, a plate, some plasticine and a plastic cup. You can see a similar one here:

TIN FOIL VOLCANO

I was pleased that Nuh pointed out the 3 states of matter that were present. I chose this method rather that paper mache because it is quicker. We have completed plenty of paper mache projects in the past and they are brilliant but time consuming.

Week 3

I also wanted a bit more information about volcano's in a age appropriate format for Nuh, most of the stuff I was finding was for grades 4 and above. I happened to stumble across this Montessori blog, I have never bought anything before but her volcano stuff is brilliant, it is a paid for resource. i cannot remember how much I paid, even though it was only last week that I bought it. ( fibro fog strikes again) The pack came with 3 part cards for volcano parts and volcano parts explained, a label the volcano diagram and volcano facts.  I did not use the 3 part cards as instructed or as you would in a normal Montessori way. I simply cut out all of the 3 part cards, with labels in tact,so they were effectively 1 part cards( he, he, he) I also cut out the explanation sections with the label in tact. I then got Nuh to lay them all out on the table and told him we would be making a book about volcanoes. I then asked him to locate various cards by the name of each volcano part. He did this using a mixture of identifying the image and reading the label. I was so pleased that he could read words like 'volcano fragments'.

We also did some copy work, I read out the facts to him from the pack and asked him which one he was most interested in, he said "which ever is least amount of writing", HONESTLY what are you gonna do.

Geography Notebook - Facts about our Planet

The Geography Trail Guide (GTG) stipulates that the first few lessons should be about our planet, specifically facts about the oceans, longitude, latitude and the hemispheres. You should also set up a Geography notebook.

For our notebook we are using a lever arch folder, we have not got round to decorating the outside yet, but we will. Anyway, the GTG is a daily curriculum but we are using it as a weekly one, so we have one 40min geography lesson each week.  This means that we complete the tasks for week one over a number of weeks.

Week 1 

We refreshed our memories on the continents, so Nuh coloured in a world map using the Montessori colours for the continents. We then refreshed our memories about the different oceans of the world.
I got Nuh to point them out on the world map that is permanently laid out on our table under a clear plastic cover. Next I read out some information about the oceans from the Ultimate Geography guide (UGG),  I then got him to complete a workbook/note booking pages that I made about the oceans, he had to simply write some facts about that ocean next to the image of it. This was a copy work exercise, I  wrote out a sentence or two about each ocean from what we had read and he copied it.  You can get a copy of the workbook by clicking on the link below the image:

OCEANS WORKBOOK

Week 2

This week we looked at the terms 'Northern and Southern Hemisphere' and located them on the world on the table. I then printed out some Montessori 3 part cards that I had ( I do not know where these are from) I did not use them as 3 part cards, but simply cut them out and asked nuh to pair them together based on the correct labels, we then stuck them onto some paper and read out the description. We then looked at the different continents that were in each hemisphere and those that spanned both.

As we were on the topic of hemispheres and continents, we learnt about Pangaea. I used the UGG and Nuh then completed the Pangaea puzzle task from the Geography through Art book.

Week 3

This week we looked a layers of the earth, I knew this would capture Nuh's attention as he is totally into mine craft, so any mention of bedrock etc and he is hooked. We completed 3 tasks for this lesson, first we used some 3 part cards as a booklet on the different layers of the earth. These were loaded with facts about the different layers of the earth. We did some CM here as I asked him to narrate back what I had read.

We then made a model of the layers of the earth with play dough and finally we made a card model of the layers of the earth.

Geography Curriculum 2014 -2015

What we will be using 

For Geography this year we are totally eclectic, we are using CM, Montessori and the Trail Guide to World Geography  (TGG)  in conjunction with several other books we have such as Geography through Art and The Ultimate Geography Guide (UGG). I bough the latter two books mainly because they are constantly referenced in the Geography Trail Guide. The reason why I chose this method is that I knew that I would not be able to Montessori pure ( see previous page on Montessori mash up )  I was also really struggling to find suitable living books for CM in relation to English geography.  So after reading many a blog and several reviews I chose the TGG and the related books, I bought them all from Amazon for a total of about £30.

I will use various living books as well to supplement our learning, for instance I plan on using Around the World in 80 Days and reading this when we start to move through the different continent studies in the TGG. I have also found a really nice book about a young Muslim boy from England who has family in Egypt. Its called 'Adventures in the Nile' by Susan Omar. I bought this from Amsons on Coventry Rd, Birmingham. There are obviously other books from the living book lists on the Ambleside online curriculum, Charlotte Mason Help and Simply Charlotte Mason. A lot of living books can be found free online through the Baldwin Project.

From a Montessori perspective I will include anything that I think will further our knowledge, this might be 3 part cars ( which I use in my own way) or continent box type activities or objects.

Geography Books 

Trail Guide to World Geography


The Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide


Geography through art

First Nature Journalling Lesson

I explained to Nuh that we would be learning about nature in school, so we would look at plants, flowers, insects, birds etc.. We would go on walks where we collected nature or took pictures and we would then draw what we had seen in a special book called a nature journal.

I bought three hardbacked books with okish quality paper in them, one for me, one for Nuh and one for Zuh. I bought these from 'the works' I know that you can get them from Amazon though (see link below).. We then decorated the front of our Nature Journal with our names and flower stickers.






sketch book on amazon







I then collated our field kit. I used a large 'tuff bag' to keep the field guide books in and a smaller 'tuff bag' inside of it to keep the drawing pencils, eraser, sharpener, brushes and water colour pencils in.
I usually take bottle of water with me to paint with. I know that the CM method requires watercolour paints, but at such a tender age I though that water colour pencils would be better.

For our first outing I wanted to look at flowers, as I know that Nuh likes them. So we headed to Normanby Hall which has a nice walled garden that contains lots of flowers. As we walked around the garden I pointed out different flowers and we talked about how different they were. I then asked Nuh to choose a flower that he would like to draw in his nature journal. He chose a 'cosmos' flower, we found one on the floor (bonus, I would not advocate picking flowers). I told Nuh that this type of flower is called 'cosmos'  we then examined the flower, we talked about how many petals it has, the colour and shape of the petals, the colour of the centre of the flower. I did not want to introduce too much terminology at this point as he is only 5. We talked about the leaves and the stalk. We then sat at a picnic table and drew the flower in our nature journals. Once we had drawn the flower in our nature journals I then looked up some information in one of the field guides, I told Nuh that the flower comes from Mexico ( He knows where this is from Montessori Geography) but we have introduced it into our country by bringing the seeds here and growing them. I also informed him that they are annual flowers, which means that they will die at the end of summer. I then wrote this in his journal for him as he is incapable of writing this much yet.

 ( I know I made a mistake in his journal and wrote perennial , oopps...)

Nuh's drawing of a cosmos

I also drew one in my nature journal, I like to journal right along side of Nuh, one it teaches him how to draw and two encourages him by seeing his mummy doing it. Three I love it, I love anything arty.


Other items that we use for nature journalling are a field microscope, and a flower press for preserving specimens. We then tape these into our nature journal.

I bought both of these items from Amazon. You can get them here:

PINTOY FLOWER PRESS


FIELD MICROSCOPE

Teens

Learning about teen numbers

The Karen Tyler album, starts out with quantity. I fetched the coloured bead stair, and 9 golden bead 10 bars over to the table. Now the magic I absolutely love the way that this done, take one of the 10 bars and put it vertically in front of the child and then get the one bead from the coloured bead stair and put it next to it, and say " Ten add one is eleven". Wow so simple and so completely understandable. Repeat this with all of the teen numbers up to 19. Nuh totally got this straight away as I knew he would, Montessori maths is totally brill....

Completed work

Over subsequent days I then reinforced the concept a few more times by having Nuh replicate the work with the beads. Once he had mastered the quantity element I then wanted him to be able to identify the written numbers. I used our homemade teen boards for this and followed the presentation in the Album. (sorry no pics of this)


 I then set up a number of activities for him in order to solidify the new concepts. I made a tray using the teen number cards that I made, some animal stampers, and a few sheets of paper divided into columns. basically he had to take one of the cards turn it over and place it on the tray or in the dish, then stamp that many animals into the column. I did not put the cards in sequential order as I knew he would catch on to this quickly and stop looking at the symbol.

 Here is another activity that I created its a worksheet that reinforces the concepts, Nuh had to count the beads and the draw a line to the correct number. You can download a more ascetically pleasing version by clicking on the link below the picture.

TEEN MATCH WORKSHEET

I wanted Nuh to work on writing the number symbols for each of the teen numbers, he really dislikes writing of any sort even numbers, SubhanAllah. So I made this worksheet for him basically he had to read the number then trace it twice,then write it independently. Again I have made a better version of the sheet, click on the link below the picture

Teen, trace and write

Adding to 10

I made a tray for 'Making 9' knowing how he hates any kind of writing at the moment, I designed the task so that he would only have to choose the correct number sticker from a selection of numbers on the tray. I know he quickly identified that all of the sums would make 9, however he still then did each one on his own by counting out the objects that he had chosen for the work.

Making 9 work

Whilst Nuh was busy working, 'the Zuh' was busy attaching some magnetic letters to the fireplace and then taking them off again. Hey what ever floats your boat!

Oooh magnets!

Montessori Pink 'a' objects

Today Nuh brought all of the Vincents (his toy dinosaurs) to school, we all had circle time, then Nuh wanted to spell dragon. He is definitely in his sensitive period for language.

We got the movable alphabet down off the shelf and he sounded out the word, I helped him with the phonograph 'dr', but the rest was all him.

Movable Alphabet - VFreddy as the Dragon!!

He then completed all of  object 'a' by himself, I am so pleased. Lets hope that this continues.

The Dragonfly

During the late summer a dragonfly came to our garden, I think that the poor creature had been injured by a bird, as we are quite far from the lake. The children were fascinated, well Nuh was and Zuh was a bit scared. they are massive insects after all. The dragonfly was about 6 inches long and yellow/green black.

The Dragonfly visitor on our wall

 I asked the children if they would like to draw the dragonfly with the pavement chalks, Nuh was very excited and this is his picture of the dragonfly:

The Dragonfly stuck around all afternoon, it was definitely injured. He even landed on Nuh's picture, to much delight and a scream from Zuh.

The next morning when we woke up Nuh wanted to quickly go outside and see if the Dragonfly was still there, it was and it was very dead. We very gently placed him in our bug magnifier, so we could have a good look at him/her.

I had already prepared some resources the night before so that we could learn about the parts of a Dragonfly and the life cycle of the Dragonfly.

Some how the colouring looks neater than it actually is......

Washing rocks

I set up a tray for washing some pebbles we had collected on the walk we did the other day by our house. We are lucky enough to live near plenty of bridle paths, which allow us to have access to good walking routes right on our doorstep.  Anyway I have got a little off topic, which is easy to do as I am easily distracted. Here is the tray:

Nuh about to begin the activity

Zuh playing with the water