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Category: Ages 2-6

Desert Unit (USA) 3

Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Science: Biomes; Animal Habitats

Desert Unit (USA)

This was a unit I thought would mostly be fore ED, but all the kids jumped excitedly into it!. My kids know very little about the American deserts of the southwest, though they could tell you heaps about the Australian desert (they were born in the Outback and we moved back to the US about a year and a half ago).  So we focused on features and animals of Texas,...

Making Globes 7

Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / History: Geography Activities

Making Globes

One of the Montessori materials we do not have is a sandpaper globe or a globe that shows just the 7 continents in their “proper” Montessori colors. That’s partly because we have a cute globe already (one that lights up and has various world animals on it). But for some reason we got a hankering to make our own globes. What better way to learn where the oceans are located...

ED’s 3 yr old preschool activities 10

Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2)

ED’s 3 yr old preschool activities

We still start out our week with a scavenger hunt. This is a HUGE hit with all three of the kids.  This week it had to be down in the basement since it was raining outside.  As you can see, each child has his/her own set of cards to hunt down (letters for ED, addition for DD and multiplication for LD). As they find each card I have them run...

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Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Science: Ocean Unit

Sewing Ocean Animals

We haven’t done that much sewing here at the Homeschool Den, so when I saw these cute projects over at future girl‘s blog I thought they’d be perfect. The kids each chose their own project. I thought they turned out pretty cute! DD made the octopus. LD made the jellyfish. ED made the fish. DD and LD did the sewing completely on their own, although I threaded the embroidery thread...

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Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Science: Ocean Unit

Ocean Activities: School of Fish

Why do fish swim in schools? We cut up little pieces of tin foil and paper to be our fish. First we dropped in one.  It was easy to spot. Then we dropped in a whole lot of fish and tried to follow just one with our eyes. It was much harder to follow one in the midst of many others.  We talked about how there was safety in numbers....

Ocean Animals Math Game for Preschoolers 4

Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Freebies / Science / Science: Ocean Unit

Ocean Animals Math Game for Preschoolers

I made a preschool math game for ED.  ED worked hard to cut out all the pictures.  In the picture to the left, she rolled a 10 and I rolled a 1.  We each chose that many ocean animals to put on our gameboard. Then ED spun the spinner and it came out “even.” I showed her how to make partners and that she had all partners, so she had...

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Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Arts and Crafts / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Science: Ocean Unit

Preschool Routine, Tuesdays

ED’s Tuesday Routine: So you heard yesterday that I’m planning to use biome/habitat themes with ED this fall. This is what I have planned in a general way for Tuesdays: Arts and Crafts (based on the theme) Montessori Math Beads; Math Activities Science Sorts (Long post and link to my 30-pages of notes, etc.!) Arts and Crafts The girls painted boxes to make a diorama. Now all this needs is...

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Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Ages 2-6: Toddler/Preschool Activities / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Montessori (general info) / Science: Ocean Unit

Preschool Routine, Mondays

ED’s Monday Routine: The idea of planning all this is so that I can change up ED’s activities, keep them fresh, interesting with the minimum of thought on my part.  I expect to skip days, but then I’ll just pick up on the appropriate day and continue on.  The routine is (hopefully) to make it easier on me to keep things engaging for ED. Mailbox Letters and Scavenger Hunt Montessori...

Our Homeschool Room Setup 0

Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2) / Homeschool: Organizing and Cleaning / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Workboxes

Our Homeschool Room Setup

I often enjoy having a glimpse at other people’s homeschool setups.  We had quite a small house over in Australia, but we are now blessed with this amazingly large, airy homeschool room. We have bright colorful workboxes. Each kid has their own row, but I do not fill them every day with new things. Instead their basic subjects get stored here (including the manipulatives, new games, activities and printouts).  It...

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Ages 2-6: Preschool for ED - Fall 2011 (age 3 1/2)

Preschool Activities: ED age 3 1/2, Introducing ‘routine’

Last week I set up the first few activities for ED.  I’ve been working to get the homeschool room setup to make it easier and more routine for me to setup each day/week for ED’s preschool.We’re easing into school — so none of these pictures will be too much of a surprise, but one thing I did last week was to re-introduce and reinforce the routine of putting out a...

Science Sorts — Our Montessori Science Work, Fall 2011 4

Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities / Freebies / Homeschool: Planning and Preparation / Montessori (general info) / Science / Science: Vertebrates - Invertebrates

Science Sorts — Our Montessori Science Work, Fall 2011

Over the past few years, we have done a lot of Montessori science work.  This year I compiled a review notebook and will let DD and LD work on this as they are interested (ED will be introduced to these for the first time this year).  Mostly I expect the older ones to cut out pictures from magazines and write on these sheets (pages 5 and beyond in the pack). ...

Animal Notebook Pages 0

Freebies / Montessori (general info) / Science: Vertebrates - Invertebrates

Animal Notebook Pages

This year I hope to introduce my older kids to researching things on their own.  We’ll be going over a lot of the Montessori zoology curriculum again, so I thought I’d create a page to help guide them. For what it’s worth, I’ll share that with you all too.Animal Notebook Page (for the kids to do research on their own about animals they are interested in). Animal Discovery Notebook page...

Montessori and Motivation (Article) 0

Montessori (general info)

Montessori and Motivation (Article)

I mentioned a few days ago that I’ve been seriously reassessing how our homeschool runs.  I’m pretty excited about some of the changes I’d like to make– creating more structure yet giving them more independence,   or another way of putting that… creating academic work time yet giving them freedom within that, working with them on goal-setting,  creating the environment that gives them that autonomy.I read the book The Montessori Controversy...

US Landmarks and Symbols Cards 23

Freebies / History: American Colonies / History: Geography Activities / History: This is the United States-Unit Study (grade 1) / Montessori (general info)

US Landmarks and Symbols — free 3-part Montessori cards

I made some Montessori 3-part cards for the kids for our study of some of the well-known landmarks and symbols of the United States. These cards include landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, the White House, Mount Rushmore and more. You can download the  US Landmarks and Symbols Cards at this link.  We used these cards by talking about where they were located and placing them on our giant...