Monthly Archive: August 2010

Geologic Time Line Activity 6

Geologic Time Line Activity

The Montessori teaching albums have an exercise called the “Clock of Eras.” I felt that would not work as well for our family as DD really doesn’t “get” the idea of a clock fully.  I didn’t think it would really teach them the enormity of time as well as a long set of ribbons would… so instead I used the proportions of the clock and made a very long geologic...

The Purple Strip 0

The Purple Strip

For those of you who know much about Montessori, you’ll recognize “The Black Strip.” This is an impressionistic activity that is meant to impress kids with the enormity of time on earth.  Our version was the purple ribbon strip — and it is only 21 feet (as my ribbon ream was 7 yards!).  But it still shows how very little time we humans have been on earth.  I’m showing you...

My heart is home 8

My heart is home

This week was really quite special.  As I mention in the post below, LD and I had some wonderful talks about life, the miracles of life, the events that shape us, the paths we take along this amazing life of ours.  Something almost as touching, was when I realized that we were here.  We have come so far in these past four months and now we are once again a...

Timelines 3

Timelines

Montessori uses five “Great Lessons” as an introduction to all topics.  It provides children with a big picture to demonstrate how sciences, art, history, language and geography are interrelated.  This idea resonates well with our learning style.  We did our own version of the first Great Lesson last year and LD still talks about it (and the science experiments and activities that followed). This year we’re off to explore the...

Want to make a “TRASH-O-SAURUS”??!! 2

Want to make a “TRASH-O-SAURUS”??!!

I lost my internet connection this week.  That’s a total bummer since writing on the blog is a major outlet for me since we’re so new to the area (and I know very few people yet). The kids and I had busy, fun week and I hope to start sharing some of our activities later this weekend. We’ve been working on our timeline unit (I’ll explain more soon, though a...

Nature Around the Yard 13

Nature Around the Yard

We had a lot of fun outside yesterday. We caught lots and lots of little tadpoles (and then let most of them go), as well as a couple of 3-inch frogs.  We came across a snake which I’ve tried and tried to identify.  My best guess is that it is a water snake (another book to borrow from the library!). And finally, we found another quite amazing looking mushroom growing...

Second Grade Readings 0

Second Grade Readings

It has been a LOOooong time since I have consistently sat down with LD to listen to him read.  Instead, he has been doing independent reading primarily on his own.  This week I was pretty impressed with his intonation, rhythm and general reading ability.  Grams gave us a children’s encyclopedia set and among other things he read some articles to me on birds and fossils.  He’s also reading through a...

County Fair 4

County Fair

Last weekend was LD’s birthday; he turned seven. We still don’t know anyone well enough to have over to celebrate his birthday with us, but we had a wonderful day at the county fair! We were surprised how few people were there — especially compared to “Show Days” (the annual fair that came to our town in central Australia). I wasn’t quite up to getting the kids organized to submit...

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Sunny Side Up (game learning about double digit numbers)

I brought out a dice game to play with DD called Sunny Side Up.  The dice have the numbers 1-5 and a smiley face.  I made little cards that have 9 numbers using just those digits (such as 51, 42, 14, 3, 5…).  We each have our own card and take turns tossing the dice.  We try to build numbers using the value on each die.  So you need a...

Egg-speriments! 14

Egg-speriments!

To make our bird unit especially appealing to LD we, of course, had to add in some science egg-speriments! While DD and I were unable to smash our eggs… LD did!!  We’re not quite sure why, but then when he tried it with a second egg he couldn’t break it no matter how hard he tried.  Anyway, this experiment was designed to show how strong egg shells are and how...

And more Egg-speriments! (Eggs and Pollution) 4

And more Egg-speriments! (Eggs and Pollution)

We looked at the air bubbles coming out of this egg when it was placed in vinegar and talked about why the shell is porous.  This lets the growing embryo get oxygen.  We then talked about how since it is porous it can let things through — like acid (vinegar), acid rain and pollutants.  We talked about DDT (how eagles nearly became extinct)– and how poisons, pesticides and so forth...

The Developing Chick-Egg Set 4

The Developing Chick-Egg Set

This summer, I saw a really interesting tool for studying chickens at My Montessori Journey.  It was a chicken hatching set that you can buy for about $35.  It was a great idea, but I decided the kids might get more out of it making their own.  So, earlier this summer at Grams’ house, I printed out some chicken embryo pictures.  One set has the developing chicken embryo with the...

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Bird Unit Activities

Last night I set up the table with a few more bird-related activities. These are activities for my 2 1/2 and 4 year olds: In the middle of the table are styrofoam eggs. The girls decorated them with plastic push pins (I don’t know what else to call them!) and colorful brads.  I also set out a bird identification set and the bird lapbook we made years ago. The girls...

Bird Unit 2

Bird Unit

I showed this picture last week, I think, but what better visual to go with our bird unit! We have started off the year with a new bird unit. We did a pretty extensive bird unit last year and learned all about galahs, magpies, Murray magpies and Port Lincoln parrots (lots of pictures in the “Where we Live” label). We did a lovely lapbook to go with those (I just...