Moveable alphabet work with K

K has been doing some work with our printable moveable alphabet I printed from here.  This week  we did some more traditional Montessori type work with the cards, using pictures to put together words.  I would ask K to tell me the sounds he heard in the words, and he would pick the corresponding letters.  We worked with three letter words this week, and I plan to continue to do three letter words for a bit.  Most of the words he knows by sight, but using the moveable alphabet helps him to hear the sounds in words.  We both enjoyed this work.  Of course, he did move into wanting to make other words that weren't on the cards, like cars, trucks or any other moving vehicle.  This does afford us the opportunity to discuss how s makes words plural though, which means we need more s's.

The Week in Review (March 19th)

This week was a lot of fun, and we got to celebrate Poppy's birthday!  Here are some of the highlights.  We are working on Psalm 23 and have learned verses 1-4a.  The kids really enjoy singing the song; even little M smiles when we start to sing.
Here is K working with his moveable alphabet.  I got the letters from Montessori Materials; it's their free printable moveable alphabet pdf.  He really enjoyed this, and lately has been interested in almost anything that has to do with letter writing or word building (During his quiet time in the afternoons, he has been doing a lot of work with his Leapfrog Scribble and Write and free letter/number/word writing on his Thomas draw and erase board).  After doing the word cards I created, he began adding his own descriptive words to the nouns.

G was very much into stacking and counting games this week. 

Here is some of K's coloring.  He had to read and follow the instructions in order to complete the activity.  I am very proud of the way he followed the instructions and attempted to color in the lines (we recently started working on coloring in the lines).  The only hiccup for him was finding the color purple in the crayon box; he kept picking up black instead.

K "helped" his Poppy cut the grass.  I know my husband will be glad when K can really cut the grass on his own =). 

When we went to see Poppy's new office, M really had fun with the construction sensory bin and is even putting rocks back into some of the cups instead of simply dumping them out.

Here is a moment that doesn't happen as much as I like, but I savor it when it does: all the children engaged in an activity (Of course, M did some rearranging work before this picture took place).

Grateful for another week with the chickadees!

Happy Birthday to my Husband Jean!

Today is my husband Jean's birthday.  I must say he is one of the most supportive, caring, and loving men I know, and the reason I have the opportunity to stay home with our children.  I am grateful everyday, but especially today for the man he is to me. 

So, in celebration, the kids did crafts (cards) for him from the foam kits we purchased after Valentine's Day.  They had a blast ! And so did I.  Keenen did help find his letters for his card.  I had forgotten how much fun arts and crafts can be.  The inner child in me was coming out =). 

G and K picking items for their cards

The final product.  Their Poppy loved it!



G's is on top, then M's (done by me) and K's at the bottom

Next time I plan to make this a two day project so that I keep the kid's interest better.  All in all, it was a success!

The Week in Review

We had lots of fun this week, and had some good times with friends.  Here are some of the highlights.

We built letter cubes/dice from our letter mat. The kids had fun rolling them and coming up with words that started with the letter that they rolled. 

G and M playing with our cubes

K putting the cube together.  Took some time, but he finally got it with a little direction.

M is finally able to place the cars in his little zoomers track himself, so he did that for a while.

K and G did a bean pouring activity together.  This didn't go exactly as planned, but they had fun.

K finished a connect the dots book this week, and we also started working on coloring inside the lines with some coloring by number.  I simply took some of his connect the dot pictures and used the sections of different parts of the picture to make it. K also did some tracing work with his name and a couple of fun sentences he would like. I am planning to go back and work on each letter individually to make sure he is forming the letters properly with the right grip.  I am thinking about using the sandpaper letters to help out with that. If you have other ideas/suggestions, feel free to post them as a comment.

G worked on stacking and decided to do some reverse stacking.

G reverse stacking the blocks

We also got to hang out with some friends who are moving back to Michigan this weekend (insert sad face here), and take in a little construction work that is taking place in our subdivision. The kids and I had a lot of fun.

Thanks for checking us out and for your comments!

Fun at the Jeune House last week

Here are some of the things we did last week:

We worked on a couple of oversized puzzles.  The kids enjoy putting these together, and we also get to work on our letters and numbers in English and Spanish.

G is getting much better at "matching" the pieces to put the puzzle together

K worked on his teen number counting/recognition (If you're wondering why we have all of this on the table, it's because M likes to "rearrange" things for us, so we try to keep that to a minimum)

I finally built up the courage for Playdoh.  The kids absolutely love it.  K asks to play with Playdoh almost every day.

Here's G working on her numbers with our bigger number cutouts. I found the template for these numbers here, and used card stock to print them on.

We also played with the sensory tubs that I talked about in my last blog.  We had fun doing lots of reading, hanging out with friends and spending some fun time with trucks and dirt =).  M played with his books, toys and puzzle pieces and continues to "rearrange" things for us.

My First Sensory Tubs!

Over the past week and a half I made my first sensory tubs!  They were fun to make, and the children have been enjoying them.  The first one was just a mish mash of items I had around the house, and the last two I made were a little more thought out.  Here is K playing with the first one.  I didn't take a picture of it by itself, but nonetheless, here it is.  It consists of dry macaroni noodles, some water bottle tops, a couple small bowls, a couple of measuring cups/spoons, some foam hearts, and some plastic teething toys.

K had a great time scooping the macaroni noodles into the bottle tops and counting them in English and Spanish

The second tub is a construction themed tub.  I got this idea from Pink and Green Mama via Our World Wide Classrooom.

K and G playing with the construction tub.  K enjoyed sorting the rocks by size (big and small) and just crashing the trucks into the rocks =)

M even enjoyed the rocks (with very close supervision)

The items in the tub are as follows:
2 bags of rocks (from the Dollar Tree)
a variety of small construction vehicles (K got these for Christmas)
1 measuring cup
1 measuring spoon
Mr. Potato Head hard hat
small bowl

The kids also have access to other measuring cups/spoons/bowls in the learning area.

The third tub is a pink and blue tub, which I made mostly for G.

G playing with pink and blue tub.  She really enjoys sorting the items and putting them into different containers

This tub consists of the following:

water bottle caps

pink bows (from a random craft kit)

pink and blue foam hearts (picked up on clearance after Valentine's day)

pink craft sticks (from aforementioned craft kit)

pink fridge magnet #5

blue plastic decorating beads (from the Dollar Tree)

white and pink poms

spoon

small bowl

pink heart measuring spoon

Note: I would like to add some cotton balls to this tub to provide more of a base.

Fun, fun, fun!

Starting Out

Hi, I am Teressa, and I am a stay at home mom to my three wonderful children, ages 4, 2, and 1, and wife to a fantastic husband. 

In the past three or four weeks, I have started to consistently incorporate a learning time into my children's day.  I have been teaching the children many things along the way (K knows letters, numbers, letter sounds, and can read easy books, and G knows letters, colors, and can count to ten- just to name a few things) and reading to them a lot, but with my oldest getting closer to five, I want to take a more proactive step in our home education. 

After talking with a friend about the Montessori method of teaching, I decided to look into it more, and I liked what I saw.  I am by no means a die hard follower, but I do like many of the aspects of that teaching method, such as respecting the child, providing freedom of choice, hands-on-learning, and the fostering of independence, to name a few.  Another aspect that drew me to this method of teaching is the fact that different aged children work together, and since I am at home with children of different ages, that works great for me.  I would say our activities are certainly Montessori inspired.

The event that really hooked me was when K really engaged in a bean pouring activity.  He poured beans back and forth for around 40 minutes, and even forewent television watching to continue.  He really looks forward to learning time each day, and we take pictures/video to show Poppy when he comes home.

K pouring beans

We are starting out small here, and seek to expand what we have and our prepared environment as we go.  I really just started with what we had around the house, and I got a few things from the dollar store to help out.  Here is our learning area right now. We plan to add some shelves, and I would like to get some baskets that allow the children to see what's inside along with some other Montessori/Montessori inspired materials.  Some things stay on the table so my one year old will not be able to get to them =). 

Here are a few pictures of some of the activities the kids have done lately.

G scouping pistachios





K covering name with pistachios

M playing with magnetic letters


Some of the websites/blogs that have really inspired me are countingcoconuts.blogspot.com, chasingcheerios.blogspot.com.  An ebook that I have been reading is Montessori at Home (http://www.montessoriathomebook.com/Home.html/).  I also get great ideas from other moms too.

If you have any cool ideas or great sites for inspiration, please let me know.  Always looking out for new ideas!