Classification, my favorite......

Ok, I may be a Zoology nerd, but I have been wanting to do some lessons on classification for the girls for a while.

I always had wished I had a better grasp on it myself in my younger years.
Things might have made a lot more sense.

Anyway, I found this charming book called

Benny's Animals And How He Put Them In Order. It is actually a children's book that talks about how as child learns to group animals into vertebrates and invertebrates by going to a museum with a stack of animal photos and talking with a professor there.

You can check it out here.

You know how I love using living books when possible, so this was perfect, and the girls dug it.

What did we do after the book? Well we got out some animals of course.....

I have lots of follow-up activities planned for this too~stay tuned.

First week report~

~Was my motto this week.

This is from a poster the British government came out with at the start of World War 2.

They never decided to use it, and I can't understand why?

It embodies the everything that needed to be said.

I love it!

So the girls did great. Sofia loved having her own schedule to follow, and really jumped ahead at times with her subjects. We added a little circle time, which was made possible because of Lucy- (or should I say triangle) where we have been doing read-alouds, talking about the day, and Sofia has been reciting her poetry to us.

This is where I eventually plan to do our artist/composer study.

Lucy had lots to choose from, lots of Montessori "jobs", puzzles and art.

The challenge was trying to grab her here and there to do a little math or phonics.

But I am pleased, I want her to have fun.

She has her own little area, and folder where she keeps her stuff,

and she really takes pride in it.

Well It's Happening.........

I have two in the mix this year. Lucy is joining the madness, I mean fun.
I have been planning like a crazy woman, and I think we are ready.
The girls woke up to these boxes this morning full of school supplies.
and I woke up to this~~ a much needed cup o' coffee.

Will write more later about how things are going, and curriculum, one of my favorite topics~

A little update

School has been going good. I am finally coming to terms with the fact that everything is never going to get done. As usual my expectations are always high, and I am realizing it is quality not quantity that matters.

For example I had a stack of things I wanted to do on thursday, (latin, language arts, science), the math got done at least, and for some reason we began talking about right triangles, I ran upstairs to grab a geometry template I had, and she was off. She spent and hour making all the shapes with the stencil and labeling them. I took the opportunity to read What's your angle Pythagoras? aloud, and that was it. An official geometry rabbit trail.

I absolutely adore when something comes up and I have the materials, "in house" like that.
Next week I will pull the Montessori three part cards on triangles and let her play with some shape models I have.

We also have been really interested in what's going on with the birds in our backyard.
There is a great website, where you can post and keep track of migrations of all sorts of thing. A great way to teach about data collection.
check it out here~

Bye for now.

Roman Feast

We finally finished Story of the World Vol. 1, so it was cause for celebration!

Sophia put together a "Gifts of Rome" collage that came out so great, and she gave us an "oral presentation" about all things Roman.

Then we ate, (not sure how accurate the menu was), and danced......

Moving Along

Well she is moving along with the Little House books. The other day I was in shower and she left this on the bathroom floor for me to find. The note on the book says "all done!".

For schoolwork this week I have some story cards that I plan on introducing to work on some writing. We are about to finish up with Rome, so that is exciting. It took a little longer than I expected, but oh well...Oh, and she is loving cursive.

I am pleased to say that we have entered the realm of the Little House on the Prairie books.

Pleased because she is reading them to me.....no.

Pleased because I am having another opportunity to experience them again. I don't really know what I remember more, the books or the TV shows, but I loved it all.

Just in case you didn't already know it existed, I found this great little website devoted to all things Little House.

http://www.littlehousebooks.com/

Having a child read you something so

poignant such as the Ingalls family

as they battle malaria is truly an amazing feeling.

Hey kitty, you are sleeping on our math books

They joy of school at home......

Things got started again today after a long break.

It felt good to attempt to get back on schedule.

We took it slow~~Back to math operations, skip counting, and multiplying, some review of action and helping verbs, copywork, and a journal entry about her adventure riding a pony in Los Angeles. We even managed to get out for a nature walk with some friends at the marsh. It was a wonderful sunny day today~yay!

First Day of "School"

Here are some photos of our first day of school. There was a lot of anxiety leading up to the day, (I was not really ready for summer to end), but it really turned out to be a wonderful day. It was almost magical the way the praying mantis egg sac choose to erupt on that particular day for us. Nature Study in action. There must have been over 100 of them! The girls were enchanted.

The photo of Lucy's arm, and the little specks......, that is them~

Another sick day.....

Spent time playing games....
This one is a favorite around here.
We also played Somebody. but this one is her fave.
Good for sum practice and strategy.

A good week~

This week has been good, I have to say, after the break, it felt pretty good to get back into our routine. We got back into a flow with Story of the world. We are slowly coming out of Ancient Egypt, and spent some time with Ancient India, and China.
We also had some fun doing the snake game and playing with the math manipulatives.
She practiced her skip counting with 2,3,4,and 5's with the chains.

Geography has taken on a new life with our map and figures from Winter Promise.
You can check it out here .
It has been fun, because whenever we learn about an area, there are cute stickers to put on the map. I purchased their children around the world unit, and really love it, but can't seem to fit it all in. I wonder why?

Plans for the new year.....

1. More art projects
2. Composer study
3. More fun~can it be possible?
4. More nature walks
5. More tea parties

We do field trips too!

Here are some photos of our great field trip to a local
bakery that I mentioned. I think the parents learned just as much as the kids. There is nothing quite like bread when it comes out of the oven is there?

Oh my gosh, there are books everywhere!

They seem to be multiplying as fast as I can get bookshelves in here.

Between my 3 year old hauling in about 20 books each night for bedtime, school books in every room, and Sophia's piles of reading, I spend the first part of every day putting them all back, just to have it all over the place again the next day.