School day outtakes

I thought I'd share a few quick pictures taken here and there over the last couple of weeks.

Bug decided it would be a lot of fun to bring all three knobless cylinder blocks from the shelves to her mat and mix them all up. She repeated this several times before putting the work away, which was delightful to me. If you read my post on my observances in a Montessori Primary classroom, my Bug qualifies as 'a newbie'. She has not yet reached normalization, so her concentration and independence levels are very low. She either, (1) wants to work *thisclose* to me, and have me work with her always, or she drifts away and does something totally NOT school related - like playing chase with Buddy Boy. Any focused work is a good sign on her part!

 I'm fixing to shock some of you. Little Mama is 9, and therefore falls in to the Upper Elementary year 1 - but she's doing multiplication with the multiplication board (a lower elementary work). The method used in the curriculum we have used so far teaches mainly memorization of facts. There's a place for that - but that comes after the understanding of how you come to the solution itself. Little Mama knows most of the facts off the top of her head, especially 1-5 times tables, but after that the memorization is even a little sketchy. Which causes a big problem in division once the dividends/divisors get larger, and we can't progress. So both Little Mama and Hoss are working through the multiplication board and finally have a good grasp of why they come to the answer they get when multiplying. After that, I expect they will move well through the memorization sequences. I will also be bringing in division this week with Little Mama, to remind her of what she already knows, make sure she understands how she comes to the correct conclusion, and show her (again) the relationship between division and multiplication. This is about where we were leaving off last year at the time that we began to slow down and back pedal to make Math more enjoyable. It may seem like we are going too slow, but I know that we are right in line with where they are, which is perfect!

This is a printable slip-n-speller that I printed off sometime early in the school year last year, I think, colored, and laminated. I have 6 or 7 of them, one for each short vowel sound with c-v-c words, one with c-v-c-c or c-c-v-c words, and another with four consonants and one short vowel. I wasn't sure when I would use it, but this year it has come in handy so far. Miss Priss is enjoying her new found reading talent, and she loves to take these out, slip in the correct letter slides, and read away.These are really easy for her now, but it's giving her good practice on blending faster, and in her mind instead of always out loud.

She has also taken to using them for writing practice, and really enjoys finding how many words are 'really' words, and making her page as full as she can get it.

The day I took these pictures, she had out the short 'o' fox that you saw pictured above. She had mentally sounded out the word 'hog' and asked if it was going to be there, so when she found it, she wrote it, and then went a step further. :) It's football season - can you tell which team is her Daddy's favorite?

Fall has also arrived, which brought a great day of raking leaves and playing in them one afternoon! Nothing like crunchy leaves underfoot. Okay - so I don't like it, but the girl on the other end of these feet did!

Buddy Boy has not only mastered the brown tower, but he has pulled out the extensions that I made for it and does surprisingly well with them! This one that he is using is the most difficult of the brown tower extensions, and he was able to self correct until he got each piece correct, and then repeated it a few times before putting it away.

This last one is of Miss Priss, plugging away at her addition memorization charts. She is working right now on the first presentation of the blank chart. Up until now, she has sped right through the first presentation of each chart very quickly, often finishing in one to two days. This one has her slowing down, however. We have the free printable addition charts from here at jmjpublishing/Hope4Me printables. Because I chose to print and laminate them as-is, to save space, the tiles get a little slippery. She and I together worked out a good way for her to be able to first find the correct sum tile(s), then place them in the correct place on the board. If she tries to do one at a time, many times other tiles would slip around and get her so distracted she couldn't even manage to remember what equation she was working on, much less the answer to it.

Anyway, that's just a few pictures taken when I had a minute and remembered to snap them!