Thinking about Second Half of Year

Trying to think about the homeschooling for the second part of the year ..... I don't have to REALLY think until after New Years' Day but I wanted to get started now.

With my Christmas $$$ I finally bought this book which has been on my wish list for a long time.

For some reason, multiple intelligences have been on my mind recently. Here they are in picture form:


They seem like they could be the framework for a curriculum....

Two possibilities for streamlining that were mentioned on the LCC list were:

Once a week scheduling -- math, Latin, and Progym daily, then other subjects by day -- Christian Studies, Classical studies, Literature Studies, and American Studies (also Science and Nature Study, I suppose).

Another idea is to move through these subjects in blocks or units. ....focus on Literature for a few weeks, then move onto History, etc. This seems to work if there is a specific outcome or product, like a notebook or lapbook, to be worked on. Hmmm.

Anyway, as usual, I'll probably start week 18 after this break as a skeleton.... that is, Morning Time and basic Math, Latin and language.... then work back up to a fuller schedule.

Lesson Method

The Seguin Method

"In every exercise, when the child has recognized the differences between the qualities of the objects, the teacher foxies the idea of this quality with a word. Thus, when the child has many times built and rebuilt the tower of the pink cubes, at an opportune moment the teacher draws near him, and taking the two extreme cubes, the largest and the smallest, and showing them to him, says 'This is large.' 'This is small'. The two words only, large and small, are pronounced several times in succession with strong emphasis and with a very clear pronunciation. "This is large, large, large,"' after which there is a moment's pause. Then the teacher, to see if the child has understood, verifies with the folowing tests: "give me the large one. Give me the small one." Again, "The large one." "Now the small one." "Give me the large one." Then there is another pause. Finally, the teacher, pointing to the objeects in turn asks, "What is this?" The child, if he has learned, replies rightly. "Large." "Small." The teacher then urges the child to repeat the words always more clearly and as accurately as possible. "What is it?" "Large." "What?" "Large."

Education of the Senses

"We may conclude with a general rule for the direction of the education of the senses. The order of procedure should be:

1. Recognition of identities (the pairing of similar objects and the insertion of solid forms into places which fit them)
2. Recognition of contrasts (the presentation of the extremes of a series of objects).
3. Discrimination between objects very similar to one another.

To concentrate the attention of the child upon the sensory stimulus which is acting upon him at a particular moment, it is well, as far as possible, to isolate the sense; for instance, to obtain silence in the room for all the exercises and to blindfold the eyes for those particular exercises which do not relate to the education of the sense of sight."

Both excerpts from "Dr Montessori's Own Handbook", quoted from Natural Structure.

Lepanto Timeline Figures

Some timeline figures (pdf) to go with the Lepanto resources.

Continent Cards

I made some continent cards (pdf). You can see them on the left.

Here they are as half -sheets, but I didn't like 'em as much that way.

North and South America
Europe and Asia
Africa and Australia
World Map for control, and Labels

(I am afraid the colors aren't consistent and I don't think they match the Montessori color scale either)

They seem a bit bland, but I don't like using too much color toner and this way I figured I could print them out in greyscale and color, if I wanted to.

A few links:

A bit of this and a bit of that has cards for the continent folder.

Continents and Oceans flashcards

Welcome to My World! -- continent lesson plans for 2nd graders



Continent activity for small ones at Montessori at Home.

Some activities to do with the continent folder.

These are fun to look at and so are these.

Outline Maps and a flag theme page

Week 15 -- History Cards

Timeline Cards (both in PDF)

Early New World Discoverers
Scientists 1 (the scientists are taken from the first few chapters of The Boy Scientist, an Ambleside recommendation)

The weird borders on the jpgs are just artifacts from Word editing-- they aren't like that on the PDFs.

It is beautiful fall weather outside so the boys have been outside adventuring. I did do morning time but that is about all. I may work a bit with Kieron later... I was planning to have him work with these timeline cards but it took longer to make them than I expected.

Kieron has been doing a brain-game on the computer which includes a math component so there is that for informal learning; also, all the younger boys have gotten a fair bit of use from the whiffle ball on a string that the OT left behind.

Later I'm going to try to rig up some sort of timeline background where he can place the cards.

I can support these by making quizlets, too. I have one timeline quiz up already.

Week 15 -- the Little Ones

I've lost track of the day we're on since I stopped keeping daily logs.

This is how I worked on Paddy's schooling today... OK, not very colorful, but as a change it worked OK.

First I wrote down a little story he was telling -- that's over on the top right. I used to write out stories the older kids told when they were quite little, and then had them read them back for reading practice. They enjoyed this, and it's working quite well for Paddy and Aidan. Paddy was intrigued and read it out for himself. The last word is the only one he had trouble with and so I guided him to sounding it out.

Then I wrote out a few addition problems for him, underneath -- as you can see, just adding 2, which is review for him. He started to predict the answers --"the next one's going to be ten!!" and then I asked him to complete the question. Two plus What equals ten then? That was a little harder but he sort of got it by looking at the preceding ones.

Then I made the sheet of rimes for "at" and "it" that you can see over there on the top left. His phonics knowledge is rudimentary -- all his reading ability is sheer memorization of familiar words. He had a bit of trouble but sort of got it.

Then the middle sheet in the back -- I thought I would try some multiplication problems -- sets of two. He liked those and figured them out quickly.

Then I asked him to write a big C, which is something he did once last week. This was the only task that made him groan, but he did it. Then he asked to write an S, then he wrote another C, then he asked to try to write small letters. This is because of the OT's suggestion that big repeated motor movements are better to start with before trying to write normal size. I didn't know about this kind of thing when my older ones were little.


As for Aidan, he has been very involved with this (left).... calendar felts for the flannelboard. It looks chaotic but the last few lines actually wrap around like a snake. He still hasn't mastered number order past twenty, but that's obviously the skill that he is trying to master right now, so it was serendipitous that I was digging through supplies and found the calendar felts -- they were too advanced for him a year ago.






The OT was here today and she did:

• Wilbarger brushing and lotion massage, from center to extremities.
• Marching on mini-trampoline, then running in place, then squatting.
• Brain Gym (OT drawing X's and infinity symbols or horizontal 8's on his back while he drew them on an easel)
• Stepping on crumpled newspaper in a large ice cream bucket (to help him raise and lower his foot in place
• Throwing and catching a wiffle ball on a string (it's strung in our entrance and every boy in this house seems attracted to it as if by gravity).

She always works a bit with Paddy too and actually it is kind of nice for both of them.

December Calendar

December Calendar in PDF
It is blank except for the pictures and the notations for the holidays.

I'm not going to list themes for December like I usually try to do each month because:

(1) Everyone probably has their own December activities already and
(2) I'll probably be listing them all month.

But here are a couple of nice Advent Calendar links

"a nice online Advent Calendar" HT: Lent and Beyond, and
Countdown to Christmas at About Homeschooling


Here's the Liturgical Year overview at Catholic Culture.



Oh, OK, just a few then:


I liked this Stocking Advent Activity at My Montessori Journey.
Advent Lapbooking at Squidoo
The Jesse Tree -- a unit study for the homeschool
Forms for an Advent Lapbook (PDF) -- not mine
50 Frugal Christmas Ideas
Nice Christmas on a Budget

not a freebie but has an Advent lapbook: Faith Folders for Catholics

Food and Toy Sheets

I made these two sheets to deal with two household issues that have been annoying me recently -- toys, and food. With the toys, the problem is the lack of order. Some toys get buried and are never accessed, while others get scattered all over the house. I'm trying to figure out a better "flow" for this.

For the food, I want LESS flow, so to speak.

For both issues, I thought that having a list of goals would help me to work on things. For me, stating the problem is fairly close to solving the problem. The problem is getting the problem accurately stated : ).

There's something else -- I want to try to turn the negatives into positives, as so many things CAN be turned. I don't know if that makes sense.

Let me use an example -- I read a Montessori article where a teacher saw a toddler being reprimanded for "getting into" her daddy's office supplies at work. The teacher noted that what she was getting scolded for was exactly what small children are being encouraged to do in an orderly, constructive way at a Montessori school.

Rather than get irritated because the kids leave their boots in the kitchen (!) it would be better to teach them how to put their boots away, making it into something that is a sort of ritual in itself. Hmm, don't know if that makes sense, but when you read those sheets don't imagine me posting Rules Lists but rather just trying to focus on these areas for improvement.

I didn't make these as downloadables because I figured other people have different issues than we do here.... but let me know if I'm wrong!

Literacy Activities

I have been trying to write out things that seem to work for the little ones, partly as a form of record-keeping and partly in order to build a sort of file of activities to work on.

This is an example of one of Aidan's "journal stories" with some room below to write words, and some ideas for possible activities (mostly based on Charlotte Mason's ideas for working with nursery rhymes in order to teach reading)

Below is a sort of "album page" (I'm not sure exactly what you call these). Actually there are two pages -- one is for the story activities, and another is for variations on the "word box" activity Aidan played with me and his two older brothers last week.

I wouldn't use any of these ideas unless I thought it was something he might want to do -- I'm looking at them and sort of cringing, thinking of how I could make a fun game into torture. This is more about retrieval of possibilities when I need them ;-).

Fraction Circles

Fractions for beginners -- see here and here. Also here for other fraction activities.

I tried baking some Sculpey clay into circles -- may try it again someday, but it was a flop -- the sculpey burned and gave off toxic fumes.

So I gave that up for now, but found these soft circle shapes in my closet that I cut into fractions. Simple but hopefully will work all right for now.


Side benefit--- my young collaborator Aidan took the rest of the shapes and went to town counting, classifying and displaying them on his felt board:

Base Ten -- paper beads

I tried to make some golden beads on paper -- here in pdf, left on gif.

It doesn't go up to thousands : ( and I think sometime if I can acquire enough beads I'll try to make some "real" ones). I'm just using regular beads or some other counter for the units.

Here are some base-ten activities and paper manipulatives (using base-10 blocks rather than beads)

Here are some virtual base-10 manipulatives.

Here's an online base 10 game Paddy likes quite a bit. ... it goes up to 100's but you can start with just units, or units and 10's.

Place Value

Number Cards, pdf:

Hundreds and Tens
Thousands and Ones.

The way I understand it, they are designed so you can overlay them to form numbers.... for example, 2345 would be a 2000 on the bottom, then a 300 hundred, then a 40 then a 5. That would give children a concrete sense of place value and how it works.

... Units are in green, tens in blue, hundreds in red and thousands in green again because thousands are the "units" of the thousands period (1 thousand, 10 thousands, 100 thousands). I got this information from Elizabeth Hainstock's Montessori in the Home.

More Math

Addition Beads (PDF) to demonstrate the teens.

Addition Strips (grey-scale PDF) -- these go with the addition board. I read somewhere that once you get past ten with addition, you can demonstrate grouping by replacing, say 9 + 6 with a ten and a five.

It is the same as these, except in black and white, but I realize I didn't picture them previously as gifs, because they didn't look good that way.

Here they are in laminated, file folder form:

a few more cards and things

First, here is the map Kieron colored. He got kind of tired of it so as a hands-on alternatives it wasn't entirely successful. I wonder if I have the only kids that seem to think of lapbook type projects as a penance. Perhaps the hands-on needs to be reserved for engineering projects, science labs, and arts and crafts that don't have an educational component.

To find out if it had any educational benefit I might have to ask him to narrate what the map is about. Then I could have just skipped the coloring in the first place.














Here is something I was experimenting with -- giving Kieron little "command cards" for his reading assignments, in the form of bookmarks.

















Here's a jpg of the printout itself.
















This was a mixed success, too. He did the reading all right but it still seems just as directed and "passive" as just following an assignment sheet. Also, the Native American Legend readings are obsolete now because Sean read the whole book yesterday and thought it wasn't very good, and narrated every single story in great detail, so I don't have the heart to make Kieron read them unless to add to the ongoing discussion.... that is a thought. Lissla gave me some suggestions for things to read that I plan to look into; perhaps more representative of some Native American thinking than the legends, and that was what I wanted to try to get across in the first place.


Here are the narration cards I mentioned the other day. I haven't used them yet but I like them .... : ).





















Here are the laminated bead cards I made the other day. So far, not much interest on Aidan's part. I think they are too abstract for him right now.




















I am looking through all these and thinking they seem very "schooly". And yet I am trying to move towards a more self-directed approach that doesn't rely so much on ME tutoring, and allows for more choices. Still thinking....

Aidan's Journalling

This is what Aidan did for a long time one evening. He was watching me write in my journal and then said he wanted to do a "reading lesson". That meant telling me stories that I could write down. It evolved to Aidan "writing" what he wanted to write (he is the one who was writing the long straight up and down lines) and then I would transcribe what he said it said.

I think this journalling is quite charming and it will be a nice record someday of what was on his mind. He actually filled about 10 pages that night -- has only asked to do it a couple of times since then so maybe it satisfied the need for the time being : ).

Aidan's Work

Aidan has had a busy week. Just to mention one thing, he has been devising all sorts of scissors activities for himself. .... I suppose he has been inspired by watching me make cards for him.

I printed out a set of numbers and he cut them out. Later in the week he did the same thing only with phonograms.




















Yesterday, after I printed out some Starfall materials and worked on them a bit, he devised a neat game. He wrote words on index cards (or I wrote them sometimes), then cut out the separate letters with craft scissors, then reassembled the letters to make words. This was quite a wonderful game, combining scissors practice with spelling, writing and whole to parts/parts to whole.
























Even though the card games take a while to assemble, I think it is paying off for this very concrete, hands-on child. He is learning some creativity and motor processing along with the 3Rs. I am getting lots of ideas watching how he reacts to the materials.

Narration Cards

I liked the Spelling Command Cards here and decided to try to make a set of Narration Command Cards (PDF) (or Idea Cards, maybe). I used some of the suggestions from Simply Charlotte Mason, dropped others that I knew my boys wouldn't do, and added some that I thought they might actually do. I can already think of a few more that I didn't include, but this will do as a start!

I know some people use a narration jar and this might be somewhat similar, but I'm going to make cards out of them.

Here's a nice Narration page at Squidoo. It's pretty, and has lots of ideas and resources.

History Planning -- Native Americans

Pictorial plans for the pre-Columbian unit which will take place over the next 3-4 weeks..... see photos below. Advent is starting right after the Thanksgiving break, so the regular history will take a back seat eventually as other things take over.

Another book not pictured here is Favorite North American Legends, which I plan to read aloud to the children over the next three days.

I also have a few coloring books which I haven't dug out yet, and a few of these Draw Write Now books.

Other resources are at the Thanksgiving post and I also found this page of Native American worksheets.

If you remember, I made these History Pages to be used for this study.



These are the contents of a few old-fashioned books, probably too easy for Kieron really and too advanced for the other ones but I thought I'd list them anyway.



California Standards (Native Americans)
California Social Studies Standards correlated with lesson plans


This is a group of books that aren't directly related to the central unit but that I thought might be interesting and somewhat related for springboards for further studies.

Planning Week 14

Plans for Week 14 (pdf)

I thought I'd try to get used to Microsoft's newsletter templates by making the plans in that format. (page 1 in gif form on right).

You may have noticed that I didn't do daily logs on here during the last week. I'm trying to figure out a way to transition to a more streamlined weekly form. I did keep a rather basic log -- it's in google doc form -- Week 13.

Study Guide 1 -- Our Country in Story

Our Country in Story, Pathway to the Atlantic -- Supplement Packet (pdf)

Basically I just found and copied in the poems mentioned in the list (gif on right) and added some information from a couple of online sources.

Here are the simple links in case you are interested and don't want to download the complete text.

Activities:

· Read about The Skeleton in Armor

· Read the poem by Longfellow, and some other Norse poems

· The Norsemen

· Saga of Erik the Red

· Evidence of Viking discovery of New World

· History of St Brendan

Color the maps. Or make a notebook page.