Monthly Archive: April 2010

Free Montessori Cards 4

Free Montessori Cards

I noticed that there are free “guess what” cards at http://www.shop.montessoriprintshop.com/SALE_c69.htm. For example, there’s a close-up picture of a sunflower and one picture from farther away. These cards would probably be appropriate for 2-4 year olds.  It’s probably only available for another day or so, but thought I’d mention it here. Also there are some new free cards at  http://www.montessoriforeveryone.com/assets/PDF/From_Plant_to_Food.pdf  showing the food and its product (tomato and ketchup, for...

Addition Math Games for Number Families 9-18 7

Addition Math Games for Number Families 9-18

I spent some time making some cards and games to work withLD on his addition facts the 9s through 18s families (so 4+5=9or 11+7=18, etc.). Each game set works with three families(so pictured below are the games for the 9s, 10s and 11s families). Addition Bingo (below):In the board below, the cards for 9s, 10s, 11s should be upside down in a pile. Each player takes a turn picking upa...

Preschool Games 0

Preschool Games

In this game, I made a number of dice with the numbers0-56-1010-15Each player chooses the mouse they want to be. Theneach player choose one die for that round. Both/allplayers roll their dice and pick up that number ofcookies for their mouse. Spin the spinner for that round and see who the “winner/s”was/were. cookies were from:http://www.learningtreasures.com/suite101/literature/cookie_math_plate_counters.jpgother cute activities relating to If You Give A MouseA Cookie from Belinda Mooney are at:http://kidscrafts.suite101.com/article.cfm/i_give_a_mouse_a_cookie_pattensI...

Preschool – Tot Bag Activites 0

Preschool – Tot Bag Activites

As you probably know, we’re getting ready to leaveAustralia. The packers come next Tuesday, soI’ve been quite busy. Our suitcases are mostlypacked with the things we’ll need/use for thenext 3-4 months. I thought I’d share thisbag of preschool -tot activities I put together.We’ll be spending a week here, a week therefor a couple of months, so this should be a goodcollection of small things to pull out when inneed in...

Preschool – Tot Bag Activities 0

Preschool – Tot Bag Activities

Matching: I made this using foam boards,matching foam animals/shapes and coveringit with contact paper. An inexpensive wooden teddy bear puzzle. Frog/Dragon Fly Color Matching Gamefrom filefolderfun.com Marbles, golf-t and suction cup the golf-tand marbles are for doing balancing “relay”races trying to walk keeping the marblebalanced.

Looking Back over the Year, 2009-2010 0

Looking Back over the Year, 2009-2010

This year (2009-2010) our main units included natural disasters,China,  biomes/animal habitats, ancient Greece (we did ancientEgypt just before this school year officially started and before Istarted this blog), flowers and apples (the last two  were gearedmore towards my preschooler).  We also enjoyed lots of scienceexperiments (almost weekly) and the younger kids really enjoyedthe theme time tables.  We did a lot with geography throughout the  year and reallyenjoyed doing  country/continent swaps...

Workboxes: Set to Go! 1

Workboxes: Set to Go!

This is probably not the typical workbox picture, is it?!As you can see, we’ve broken down the workboxes andstacked them, ready for the movers. Now all schoolsupplies that I’ve chosen for the next few months are inthe green bag there. (Ignore the blue tray; it has manipulatives,workbox subject labels and other random things that haveyet to be packed and put away.)These days, school is considerably less “hands on” sincewe haven’t...

Workbox Area–The Way It Was! 2

Workbox Area–The Way It Was!

Like many people, we were short on space. Our workboxeswere set up between the kitchen and hallway doors. Imade the red book display case to fit under the hangingbaskets which held some of the bigger books that we usedregularly. The hard plastic files (to the left of the red bookdisplay shelf) helped keep things organized for the work-boxes. They held things like Montessori math manipulativescut up “science-take it to your...

Craft Table 0

Craft Table

We’ll also be bringing the beloved craft table because it’slong (fits three kids comfortably) and is the perfect heightfor them. A friend made it and it’s been wonderful forsetting up our weekly science experiments and theme time tables.You can have a browse of what we did this past year if you lookthrough the tab at the right.

Craft Table — pic 2 0

Craft Table — pic 2

As I said, the table was quite long and we permanentlyhad the dulcimers (there’s a kids dulcimer not picturedthat we used this year), composer pics, etc. So, while it’sprobably not valuable it sure is functional for us!!

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Bike Trail

The kids have been real troopers as we pack up, sort, break down furniture, sell appliances, outdoor play equipment, and everything that moving entails. Not to mention the endless errands around town. We were also stuck at home as ED was sick all night a couple of nights ago. Today, we dedicated the morning to some plain outdoor fun. We packed up the kids’ bikes and had a really fun...

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Five Foot Spider’s Web

Golden Orb Spider:   When we stopped for a water break, we spotted this huge spider. It’s web was at least five feet across. The main portion of its body was as big as the first joint of my big toe (it was probably 4 inches across if you count the legs)! Glad it was off to the side; it’d be horrible to ride our bikes into that web!!