Montessori Practical Life activities

For some reason, most Montessori practical life activities seem to take place at the kitchen bench. Zari (3) likes to be at my level and "help" me - she stands on an adult chair to participate. Rori even tries to get to the kitchen sink by pulling over her little toddler chair but is too short to reach even on tippy-toes (so cute!). 

The kitchen isn't a big space - the bench itself and infact, the kitchen in general. There is no room to swing a cat. I've seen kitchens in one-bedroom flats that are larger! And the dining area is so small we gave up on the family meal idea, turned the table sideways and use it as our computer area. This is good for a number of reasons:

1. I can keep an eye on what my kids are doing online from the kitchen and loungeroom. And when I am on one computer right next to them I have my peripheral vision on whilst innocently staring straight ahead at my own screen.

2. I can easily do things online, such as read blogs and forum entries, check emails, ebay, amazon, youtube and do social networking while I'm washing dishes, preparing meals, feeding the baby or whatever. I have a hundred tabs open. Well, not quite...

3. In the very cold or very hot weather, we close the doors and shut ourselves in this area with either the heater or airconditioner blazing. The other parts of the house are not comfortable climate-wise. I couldnt fit a computer in the loungeroom, so the dining room is the only practical place - if they were elsewhere, we wouldnt be able to use them for quite a few months of the year. Infact, for this reason, even though I am setting up a school room in our larger family room (which has a heater), we will still do many activities in the loungeroom. Saves on fuel bills!

HELPING
Both littlies are both insistent about helping. ("No! I do it! I want to do it!" is Zari's favourite phrase I'm sure.) This can be quite frustrating for me when trying to clean up as I REALLY like a tidy house. Despite their neat-freak interests, they sure make an awful lot of mess. Particularly when washing the dishes - they dont want any help, and the dishes just pile up as they complain when I try to do some. The solution was to finally buy a dishwasher (housed in the laundry), so I can squirrel away crockery and cutlery into it when they arent looking and thus keep the dirty dishes in the kitchen to a minimum. Quite a sanity-saving idea. And of course, loading and unloading a dishwasher is a Montessori Practical Life activity in itself!

1. Making Fairy Bread.

I helped her spread the peanut butter on as otherwise she would've broken the bread apart. She chose peanut butter herself over margarine. I bought the sprinkles which come in long skinny packets for ease of pouring.

2. Pouring activity.
This occured while Zari was insisting on washing the dishes (hence dirty dishes everywhere). Basically, she insisted on pouring one drink of cordial (that hadnt been consumed) from one dirty cup to another to another. Thankfully, no spillage! And no drinking! Although when spillage occurs, both littlies get a tea-towel from next to the oven, wipe it up and then throw the tea-towel into the laundry. They cant actually get into the laundry hamper or washing machine to put them there.

3. Peeling vegetables.
Note the concentration on Zari's face. Hilarious expressions! Potatoes where too difficult to manage so she gave up, but carrots were easier to hold.

More activities and corresponding photos coming in parts 2, 3, 4 etc.

Botany - Pressing flowers (Montessori Science activity)



I found these 2 flower presses (one small and one large) cheaply at an opshop. Just a few dollars. As I studied Botany at University and had to flatten myriad Australian flora without a press, I was thrilled to find ones ready-made for my kids. I used to have to place flowers between pages of a phone book and put thick text books on top. Friends even used rocks. Anything that would weigh it down evenly.

Small press

large press

I took them both apart and found they had dried flowers within their pages. The small press was actually more effective as it exerted more pressure on the contents because the corner screws werent too far apart. And it had heavy material (mdf?) to separate each layer. The larger press (which tends to lift more in the middle) used corrugated cardboard to separate the layers, and newspaper directly around the flowers.
It's always good to date the pages as the previous owner did.

Large press when taken apart

previous owners pressings from 2007

dried and pressed rose with date

My older children go walking and have been picking flowers to dry.
We went walking in a national park recently and werent able to pick anything as they had a picture of a flower inside a circle with a red line diagonally through the middle. That was disappointing!



Flowers dried before pressing




previously pressed flowers

 Dont press moist flowers. Let them dry first or they get mouldly and stick to the pages, wood or cardboard they are resting between. Flatten the flower as much as possible first - remove centre bits first.
If there is a particularly thick specimen that is too thick for a press - park your car on it. That should work!



Pressing a rose in little press




putting large press back together with flower inside


Uses for pressed flowers:  Cards.  Art.  Potpourri.

Money-saving tip for Art, Craft, Handwriting, Mathematics, Science.

I chanced upon a pile of patterns and templates from Creative Crafts weekly collectible magazines at an op-shop (charity shop/thrift shop). I always go and scrounge for homeschooling supplies in these places. I got the set for $1, and the next day went back and purchased another set I hadn't noticed the day before complete with folder for $1. So now I have duplicates of everything. See the photo examples below:

Then I noticed that certain craft magazines also had patterns and templates. So, for 50c each I purchased some quilting, patchwork, embroidery and stitching magazines. The quilting books have the BEST templates in the middle...dont bother with card-making and scrapbooking magazines as they dont have anything at all. Before Christmas the op-shop is having a sale of  3 for $1. I'll be there with bells on!! Here's some pics of what I scored...

Dressmaking patterns could also be useful, but the paper is a lot thinner and tears easily. You can also find these in op-shops.


These templates are useful for the following activities:

1. Cutting out shapes and pictures using scissors, or even a stanley (box-cutter) knife for older kids.

2. Colouring in pictures. (Using pencils, felt-tip pens (textas), paint, crayons).

3. Tracing along a line (cheaper than buying a Kumon book) - fine motor skills activity.

4. Drawing between 2 lines (similar to a doing a maze).

5. Pasting onto the template cut pieces of paper/material scraps/buttons/sequins etc.

6. Tracing over large handwriting of differing scripts (eg. print, cursive).

7. Craft: Older kids can actually use these magazines and templates for quilting, cross-stitch, embroidery etc.

8. Copying pictures freehand on to blank paper (trying to replicate the original as closely as possible).

9. Folding: Some templates have dotted lines with "fold here" written on them.

10. Geometry: The templates often have basic shapes such as triangles, squares, circles and hexagons because the layouts of quilts are usually symmetrical and organised in a manner I learned in Year 7 math is called "tessellations." These are patterns of repeating interlocking shapes, as if you were tiling a room. So, if your child quilts a symmetrical blanket, they are doing mathematics. Here's some links on the subject:
http://www.mathcats.com/explore/tessellationtown.html  has free relevant information.
http://library.thinkquest.org/16661/escher/tessellations.1.html for many free tessellations to print out.
http://www.coolmath4kids.com/tesspag1.html 

11. Science: There are a variety of subjects/themes covered by these templates, including flowers, animals, seasons and farms. Great for lapbooking and Science assignments.

If any of these ideas has given you some new ideas, please leave a comment. And if you do some activities using these ideas on your own blog, please link back to me!

Fantastic FREE Phonics resource website

Visit English Grade 1 teacher Christopher Thorne at http://www.mrthorne.com  or www.mrthornedoesphonics.com for hundreds of free video clips on all aspects of learning to read using the phonics method. And other english literary helps as you may glean from a couple of the clips below.







Onomatopeia

 




Words to use instead of nice.

 

Mr Thorne's clips are an enjoyable and colourful watch for children. And also suitable for ESL students. I've written to him more than once about doing Doman and Shichida style flashcard videos for babies and toddlers. It may happen. I also recently asked him if he'd donate an AUTOGRAPHED COPY of his brand spanking new first children's picture book, "Geraldine the Giraffe", as a giveaway on this blog. (He'll be famous one day - mark my words!). He answered yes, so keep checking in as I plan to have a major giveaway session beginning in a few weeks. His book's a great read - I saw a video clip of the entire story before he took the clip down (or hid it in some fashion).

FRENCH resources Part 3

I found this site which is suitable for 3-7 year-old French-speaking kids, which would mean for non-French speaking children, the upper age limit would be extended. It teaches science, reading, english, music and more. http://www.genikids.fr/ states in its own words, for those who understand : activités ludo-éducatives pour enfants de 3 à 7 ans. apprendre en s'amusant avec des jeux de lettres, chiffres, sciences, anglais, coloriages, dessins, dinosaures, ect.





It is a site where your child will need a certain rudimentary knowledge of french in order to navigate, and so would you. I stumbled upon it via YouTube and let a French friend know. Here's what she kindly wrote back (copied and pasted with her permission).

You've made my day with the genikids website. This is what I've been looking for for such a long time. It's a very complete program. Well done.

There is a free access or a paying one. For the free access you click on 'Inscription gratuite'", fill in a simple form, validate the email they will send you. Then for each category, you need to look the 'gratuit' (free) icon. I've subscribed to the free access to have a peek.

First impression: the animations and pronunciation are great (i like that they are quite a few different voices).

In order from left to right:

For reading: ABC lettres:  We did the zoo one (level 2). The kid selects an animal, and the name is broken into syllables. there is an option to print the animals. They will learn to read with this as well as the pronunciation. GI/RAFE : girafe, la girafe.

Chiffres: no free access to sample :-( They are many level available though! looks good!

For science: I watched the show about plants growing. Just need to click on 'suivant' (next) to navigate.

Couleurs:  Print and cut activities.

Music: we had a blast with the piano ! There is a free play option, or you can play a tune (each note as a specific letter).

For contes (fairy tales, but it's more stories): we had to watch a little animal wanting to go out in the cold, and her monkey friend told him to get dressed. The children need to put on the warm clothes in specific order. They have feuilletons (chapter stories) coming up.  Kids learn a lot of vocab with this type of exercises.

Decouvertes: ‘Le tour du monde’ (around the world) : a story, like a cartoon. 

Aire de jeu: We did ‘prepare a pizza’ : you need to select all the right answers from different options.

Petits futes (smart kids): We did the shape game: a shape is shown and we need to select the same one & we did the imitation game (the monkey imitates an animal the kid needs to recognise). Very cool games those two!

Dur, dur (hard, difficult): help banano find the bananas: (I did not understand this game).

Dinosaures: paying members only.

Genienglish: You wouldn't use this obviously :-) but we did all unit 1 and loved it.

I'm pretty sure an english speaking parent can work his way around the site. Once you're into a unit it's pretty obvious for a kid what's expected of them

'Gratuit' mean 'free'. "Suite" is "Next"
On the left tab you have:

Mon compte: my account
S'abonner: subscribe
Mon carnet: my notebook (only for paying members)
Horloge parentale: parent click (to monitor the time spent on the site)
Site map

Fees (s’abonner) : 9 euros a month (I’m guessing you won’t take the English learning option), 48 for 6 months, 84 euros/12 months.
end of her personal assessment.
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I think that learning ANGLAISE (English) would be like an English person learning to read and probably be useful - especially for learning French while learning to read English. Best go judge for yourself, as I havent used this site yet but will start soon with my just-turned-3 year old. Here's an example of the ANGLAISE lessons:

FRENCH resources Part 2

http://www.jefrench.com/ has FREE videos and audio for beginners and up. It is a great site for travellers to go to learn how to survive in France or a French speaking country (asking directions, ordering food etc).




http://www.frenchpod101.com/ contains a vast array of FREE resources - videos, blogs, audios, iPhone apps and review materials. The videos seem to be mostly vocab words with corresponding pictures, but covering a wide variety of topics. See 2 examples below (and at the end of each clip there are other clips in this series you can watch). There is an online community your children can join when they are old enough to interact online with adults trying to practice a foreign language.








http://girls4teaching.com/ Has mostly videos to teach various languages such as French, Spanish, Swedish, Italian and German. All FREE. Unfortunately for males the attractive somewhat provocatively dressed women could be a distraction. There is an on-line forum community there too - great for older homeschooled children to practice the language. These communities/forums are best done under parental supervision as you dont know who might want to converse about what!

 



http://www.simply-land.com/ is a website where kids can play online french learning games FREE. To access all the educational material, a subscription is necessary. Thank goodness for google translate bar. Use it, and have a look around. A native French speaker friend of mine didn't like this site for her child, but from my non-French speaking viewpoint it looks like it would be worthwhile using with my little ones.  Recommended for ages 5-11. If anyone tries Simply-Land, particularly if they understand French, let us know what you thought and any give us tippers on how to navigate around in a language we dont comprehend.

 




I will share with you in the next post a free French games learning site my friend thinks is AB FAB for little ones.

FRENCH resources

Youtube member comptines has French children's songs complete with on-screen lyrics, and often lyrics written below each clip for you to cut and paste elsewhere to help you learn to sing the song. comptinesmaternelle has similar, but no on-screen lyrics.

Below: comptines


Below:comptinesmaternelle


http://www.imagiers.net/ has over 26,000 clips for learning everything from colours, numbers and the alphabet to more difficult French. The site appears free, with interviews with francophones, discussions about french culture, flashcards, worksheets, podcasts, audio files and of course, a Youtube channel. I was subscribed to this but had to unsubscribe due to the sheer volume of clips posted daily...I was missing other members clips I was subscribed to. Here are some basic examples of imagiers content:










The following clip is from a series of interesting podcasts "French for Kids by Kids" (on YouTube only) which appear to be by US kids (non-native French speakers) and their probably native-French-speaking teacher. They range from 3.5 to 9 minutes long.

Why this homeschooling blog? MY AIMS.

I began this blog because education is my passion. I always wanted to become a teacher - that was my career choice from a very early age. I attribute this desire to all the Enid Blyton books based at boarding school I read as a child. Namely, the "Naughtiest Girl at School" series, the "St Clares" series, and the "Malory Towers" series. This was compounded later when I chanced upon and subsequently devoured the "Chalet" series by Elinor Brent-Dyer.
Unfortunately my parents would not allow me to study education at university (believing there were no jobs in the teaching field!), so I studied Science instead.

I also am a researcher. I love to research things - to search for and unearth hidden treasures. And the nuggets I discover that are useful educational resources - I want to share with you here. I spend a lot of time plumbing the depths of Youtube - countless hours - finding a goldfield of useful websites and clips. Over time I will share them all. I want this blog to be RICH with information - a one-stop-shop for all your homeschooling needs.

I have 5 children ranging from 1 year old to 15 years old, and have experienced both the public and private school system with my older children. I desperately wanted to homeschool my older children, but my now ex-husband vetoed the idea. After my divorce, being a single parent of little ones on welfare, I was lead to believe that I had to put them in school, and go out and get a full-time job. I was under the misguided understanding that if I did not comply with this, my financial support would be cut completely. It was only recently that I discovered that single parents in Australia have the same right to homeschool their children as anyone else, and the government could not have cut my benefits as that would have violated my constitutional rights. Bit late now, for my older children. They all choose to stay in school, and despise the very idea of homeschooling. One thing they've learned from attending school - homeschooled kids are weird. They are aghast that I shall be homeschooling my younger ones. Thankfully, I have the full support of their (Zari and Rori's) father, who can see the negative results of schooling in my older children - more so some than others.
More about the pros of homeschooling and why I will NEVER school my younger ones in another post. (I am not anti-preschool, just anti-school - I'll tell you why that is later, too).

CURRICULM:
I intend in my blog to cover the whole scholastic curriculum - History, Geography, Art/craft, Music, English, Languages, Mathematics, Sport and Bible/Religious studies.

LANGUAGES:
I will be covering learning many different languages, including French, German, Mandarin, Indonesian, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and Sign Language. My older children have been learning Japanese for years, and some German, though my son is currently learning Indonesian. In Australia, Indonesian is a sensible language to learn, as Indonesia is our closest neighbour, just as North Americans tend to learn Spanish due to being in close proximity to Spanish-speaking Central and South America. Unfortunately, there are not many resources for learning Indonesian or Australian sign languages (Auslan, Makaton and Australasian sign). So I will concentrate on American Sign Language (ASL) as we are currently swimming in resources for that!

MUSIC:
I will be discussing how my children learn to play the Piano using Piano Wizard software, and how they learn to play the violin, bagpipes, recorder and other instruments I collect while scrounging around in thrift shops. I will share what dvds, software, websites and Youtube clips are helpful for learning about music and for learning to play instruments.

SCIENCE:
You will notice that I will spend quite a lot of time teaching my kidlets about science. It's my natural bent and where my expertise lies, so that is understandable. You will begin to observe that I will divide the subject of science into subcategories such as Botany, Zoology, Astronomy, Chemistry, Physics, Geology, Paleontology, Microbiology, Genetics and so on. I majored in Zoology, so will subdivide that further into Entymology (study of insects), Ecology, Animal Anatomy and Physiology and so on. I hope to place the various subjects in the right categories, so if you are looking for studies on magnets or electricity the best place to look would be filed under Physics. I think. I'm not a physicist, but I hazard a guess that that would be the correct spot.

I could go on and on about how I plan to cover each subject, but suffice to say I will include tonnes of resources (links and reviews), photos of our activities and more. MUCH, much more - I promise! I'll include handy money-saving tips too, and lots of art/craft activities. I am just a bit overwhelmed at the moment with the demands of motherhood and hometeaching, my other passion (visit my other blog to find out what that is), and figuring out how to set up a blog - so much information to swallow before I can get started in earnest. So much to learn - so little time...

ASL Deaf Christian resources

I wanted to point all those interested in their children learning to sign American Sign Language and interested in them also learning good Christian values (such as honesty, caring for others, fairness and obedience) to this charity website...http://www.deafmissions.com/

They have various dvds and also books for sale cheaply. The dvds have sound and music to keep hearing children interested. The following Big Bible Stories dvds are $10 each. http://www.deafmissionsstore.com/bigbistinasl.html

Big Bible Stories - Gideon



Big Bible Stories - Abraham




Big Bible Stories - Ruth




They sell other ASL christian dvds (http://www.deafmissionsstore.com/kidsfamily.html), including the Dr Wonders Workshop TV series. The website has resources for children and free printables...http://www.drwonder.com/ The TV series is for both deaf and hearing children with English and Spanish captions. Check their website for TV stations near you (probably all in the US from what I can gather). For the rest of us, each 13-session series is $40USD.



Check out Youtube members DrWondersWorkshop and MGCmobile for more excerpts of episodes and songs. Also check out details of the Series One 13 episodes here..http://drwonderinfo.com/episodeguideparents.html
There are plans to add descriptive narrative for blind children as well!


There is some interesting information on this website for children. For instance...
Q: Do Deaf people think in English?
A: You think in your primary language.
Just as hearing people “talk” to themselves by imagining the sounds of words in their heads, deaf people talk to themselves by imagining the signs. Some hearing people talk in their sleep. Some deaf people sign in their sleep.

Other FREEBIES!!!
You can also access free ASL videos including signed songs for children...
http://www.deafvideo.com/shopcategory.asp?catID=18
http://www.deafvideo.com/shopcategory.asp?catID=17
http://www.deafvideo.com/shopcategory.asp?catID=25

I have not received any kickbacks for mentioning these dvds and websites. They dont even know I've written about them...yet. I would like to buy some of these products down the track myself as they look educational and I would be supporting a good cause.

Heidisongs Musical Math Giveaway

An internet friend of mine is having a giveaway on her blog.
The product is one I've checked out on Youtube for about 2 years now and am subscribed to. Check out this variety of clips below. She teaches mathematics and English (phonics) to preschool/kindergarten and early primary years via singing and music. What you sing, you learn and remember.









http://domanandaba.blogspot.com/2010/11/heidisongs-musical-math-giveaway.html

Japanese experiences

As of last Thursday we have had a Japanese student stay with us. He leaves Wednesday, and we get another student the next day for another week. I'm required to drive him to school and pick him up on the weekdays. And also to show him some Aussie sights and just generally immerse him in Aussie culture.

Through the school he is attending here he is doing an English intensive course and learning Aussie things like singing "G'day, G'day G'day", making boomerangs and visiting a wildlife sanctuary.

I have friends and a relative housing other students, so we got together for a party yesterday. The older kids and the Japanese students had fun playing chasy, until they wore themselves out and sprawled out sedately on the front lawn. While checking on my little kidlets I went out the front and my older 3 kids told me "we're talking to them about whaling".

So proud I was of my older kids at that moment. The Japanese students were clearly listening and hanging on to every word (truly a captive audience). To help with the language difficulty, I drew a crude picture and labeled it "whale". Then I wrote out the sentence, "Australians don't like Japanese people killing whales." It is a huge issue here, as the whaling often happens in our waters, is claimed to be "for scientific research", and Australians monitoring these whaling vessels have been injured by the whalers.

It might be difficult to change the mind of a nation (I have no doubt whales are probably delicious and one blue whale could feed the entire Japanese Military for a year) but change begins with one person. We were potentially educating 3 Japanese youth to be anti-whaling, with a ripple effect ensuing, and perhaps a domino effect followed by a tidal wave of Japanese anti-whalers.

Our student added us as Facebook friends. Perhaps my older kids can communicate with him over the internet in Japanese. I live in hope.
A friend I went to university with now resides in Japan and speaks the language well, so he will be able to translate anything I want to say and find some information on the web in Japanese for me.

This experience has been great for our student's English practice, but it has highlighted my children's lack of Japanese knowledge despite years of studying the subject at their private school. As they told me, "we just learn what we have to for our next test, then after the test we forget it straight away."

How pointless. Perhaps I need to have a year-long japanese student for my children to really get some exposure and practice. Yet another reason fo homeschooling my younger ones. So we can actually practice a language, reinforce the learning, and practice some more. So they will actually become proficient in the language, so they can actually converse with Japanese speakers. Seriously, counting to 10 and saying Konnichi wa is just not good enough for years of studying that language.

I am considering the idea of raising my littlies to be Jack of many languages as opposed to being Master of one foreign language. Then they can easily build on one of those languages if they should go to that particular country. But I hope to maintain their proficiency and not let it drop off like my older kids.

Yesterday we took our student out bushwalking to a lake, with some four-wheel driving thrown in. It was an experience, especially wheeling a jogger pram with toddler seat along a rugged track with steep inclines and mud. Signs saying "Beware of Snakes" worried me a lot, but thankfully all we saw was some sort of spotty lizard.

Will be good to do nature hikes when the little ones are older, so we can photograph the flora and fauna, and do identification tasks at home. I have good flora identification charts and books. I did this myself in Second year University Botany and found it totally dullsville, but am hoping it will be fun for our homeschooling years. I have 3 flower presses to use. I also intend to collect all dead insects we find, categorise and mount them the way we did in my Second Year Uni zoology entymology course. The difference being then that we had to kill many insects ourselves on field trips, a killing spree I did not appreciate partaking in.

Today we may go down the coast to the beach spots and waterfalls. Little bub, Rori for the sake of this blog, isn't well so I may not go. Though fresh air and sunshine is great for health, and there will be that in abundance until the thunderstorms arrive later on.

I have been wanting to show my student Little Pim Japanese and Bilingual baby Japanese so he understands that the littlies are learning Japanese, but have not been able to as my 14-year-old has been saying "No mum, no! Don't be embarrassing." And has been criticising my attempts at communicating non-verbally using crude sign language. It's embarrassing. I look like an idiot, apparently. Well, perhaps if she spoke some Japanese,or even wrote some hiragana or katakana down on paper, I wouldn't need to make an idiot of myself with crazy gesticulations.

My Zari is learning Japanese at kindergarten, and at home also, so I hope this experience helps her pick up Japanese and familiarise her with the sound of the language. And as for Rori, it should help her to speak Japanese with no accent but an authentic Japanese one, as she is still young enough to absorb the sounds of a language and be able to reproduce them later. We lose that ability if we arent exposed to a particular language.

I will be showing my Japanese visitors some flashcard programs and materials that would teach an english person Japanese and a Japanese person English. I hope they leave my place with lots of tools to aid their English learning. More about that later...