Last Elementary Montessori Order

I just placed our final Montessori materials order - and couldn't believe what a struggle it was to reach the free shipping level! We had all else we needed!

Wow.

One more year of lower elementary, 3 more years of upper elementary to come... and we have everything???

Ok, we'll still be purchasing and borrowing things along the way - items to correspond with interests, replacement chemicals and other supplies - but the Montessori-specific items are done.

Overall... elementary is no more expensive, Montessori-wise, than primary, perhaps cheaper (I'll look at actual numbers another day!) - and covers SIX years.

And the re-sale value canNOT be over-stated!

He was still sleeping in this photo,
but he reached out to me as I sat down next to him.
Those hands that were so tiny at birth.... 

This is a bittersweet day. It means a preparing for a closing of one area of life (browsing Montessori catalogs, determining what to make and what to buy and from whom), but it also means a true settling in. Settling in for the next 4 years. Settling into just BEing in elementary. Then on to adolescence.


Ok, scratch that last sentence. Just focus on this time. Right now. The moment we have - right now - together.




ETA: November 12: IT'S HERE!

Geometry Command Cards

Legoboy (new nickname for the blog ;) ) is working on the Geometry Command Cards, partially because he needs review on geometric concepts, partially because I need the materials checked before I offer them to others and partially so I can get some updated images to correct the incessantly annoying mathematics album files!

He is rushing through some of the work, but I thought I'd post some of it anyway :) 

Working on convergent and divergent lines: 

Reviewing the concept with the geometry sticks

parallel - the children are
neither happy nor sad

convergent - connecting of
paths - the children are SO happy!

divergent - paths are going two ways
the children are so sad!

Fast drawing the concept on paper
From a command card for "two lines"
note the opposite direction of the stick work
showing mastery of the concept in a different layout

BONUS:
ETA a link to the sample geometry command cards my son used above. These are also being added to the Keys of the Universe Geometry album, along with more advanced versions for older children. 

Homemade Vanilla

The resident child (hehe) has been studying a bit about herbs of late. And it has been on our plans to make homemade vanilla extract for quite some time. 

Obviously, not something he can do on his own... He can cut the beans, he can drain the extra fluid, he can drop in the beans, label it all and seal it up, he can store it. 

But I had to make purchase. My first alcohol purchase of my life! The things we do for our children! It does seem ironic I just purchased an alcohol for my son, though! 

(for the record, I am not opposed to alcohol, I just don't tout it or drink very much, and I have not had a reason to purchase it before now.... wait.... when I lived in Belgium, I bought some wine to bring home to family, but that was a different culture - alcohol was out with the sodas!). 

Grandma was given this kind of rum/vanilla; and we
were so happy to find it stocked at Kroger.
It has fantastic flavor, so we are excited! 

The beans we purchased from Mountain Rose Herbs: 

http://www.mountainroseherbs.com/index.php?AID=135782&Redirect=/search?page=1&q=vanilla+beans&utf8=✓

We have the "1oz Vanilla Bean organic and fair trade" and it smells right! ;) I do wonder if we got quite the driest beans (apparently you are supposed to use grade B beans - but I also wanted fair trade, etc). These seemed more most than I anticipated. So we'll see. Either way, it will work from what all sources say - it's just a nuance ;)

He has been looking at the history of the use of vanilla - and true to Montessori style, we want to look at the PEOPLE involved. Most fascinating is that a 12 year old child worked out how to hand-pollinate the vanilla so that it could be grown outside of the Latin America countries. 

Forget gold and corn and other such things - the greatest gift that the Europeans found in the Americas: VANILLA! 

Ever had chocolate without it? 

We did! Never again, thank you! 

Vanilla brought chocolate to the impoverished Europeans! And now they make the best chocolate in the world. One plant changed the world! One little boy's discovery! 

Practical Life in our Day: Mint

We are trying to be good stewards of the earth, while not letting the earth get in the way of the most important gift of human beings: relationship.

It is even better when the two are the same thing :)

In this case, we are growing mint in our living room. As it grows long, we trim it, hang it to dry, grind it up and make tea... and more... While it is drying (upside down so the oils flow back into the leaves, maximizing their potential), we have a beautiful decoration that makes our home, truly homey. Comforting. And there is a natural inclination towards being with one another in a cozy, homey home ;)

Once it is fully dried, we spend time together pulling the leaves off into a large bowl (easier to collect everything then, transfer in small quantities to the mortar and pestle). I bought a set of 3 of these on Amazon years back (affiliate link there) that have been simply fantastic!

The mint leaves are stored in a jar to use for making tea, or to add to our homemade toothpaste or anywhere else we need some mint flavoring.

That leaves the stems - which are fine for adding to the composting, but well, we have an interesting set up with our apartment management and mouse-traps get pricey when management does little to alleviate the issue. But fresh mint keeps them away.

My mother will cringe when she reads that I tuck these stems in all the places where the mice have been spotted. Despite her cringing, I can confidently report success (so far!) - ice-free and my home smells so nice! We freshen them up when we harvest new mint and THEN we compost the stems. There may be other purposes for them, but that is what we do for now :)

mint, dried, laying on the stove
because our counters were full at the time. 

grinding mint leaves with mortar and pestle

Daily life Montessori style

I've received a few comments that I don't post much about my son's actual daily work and it would be nice to see how it all works together.


The trouble is - I don't monitor everything he does. I wish I could! But he has his work plan, his work journal, times to meet with me, and he does a LOT of independent researching; a LOT of building with Legos; a LOT of reading high-quality literature (re-reading Fellowship of the Ring as I type this); and as much snuggle time as we can get in. Within there somewhere are the Montessori math materials, the language materials and some geometry yet. But mostly at this point he is working with materials that are not specifically Montessori in nature, but are used in a Montessori way.

That is the result of a Montessori education ;)

We start with the Montessori materials and presentations and totally branch off from there.


For example, this past year we delved into the Montessori botany album heavily again, re-discovering eco-systems, parts of seeds and plants, classifying leaves, etc. A friend offered some space in his not-so-great-but-better-than-nothing-at-all garden space and we planted beans, broccoli, squash and watermelon. We didn't get much (in fact we got a bit more off our balcony space and that wasn't much either!) but it did provide lots of all-too-real lessons on sunlight, wind, soil, gravity and nutrients. We also had a variety of plant leaves to explore; flowers to dissect; unripened and underdeveloped fruit/vegetables to explore the various stages of growth (did you know certain squash, if under-developed, can be treated as though it were zucchini - just chop it up and add in with mixed vegetables where you would have zucchini. ???)

This same friend gave us some mint to grow in our home. Noone can kill mint. HAHA! I did! Three times over in fact! And then, suddenly, it lived! And we have had our own fresh mint tea for several months now! This, along with references to natural poultices in his literature as well as his Young Man's Handybook, led to some interest in plant usage for more than food and fun tea.

mint, dried, laying on the stove
because our counters were full at the time. 

grinding mint leaves with mortar and pestle

Somehow or another we discovered a children's herb book on Amazon. I finally purchased it and it arrived. My son was interested but not overly excited at the time of its arrival. Perhaps that is because the order also included the long-coveted Minotaurus Lego game ;)

But he did sit down to read it - and now he is devouring it! It is so nicely laid out for children, including silly songs, interesting information, decent size font, with non-cluttered pages.... recipes, remedies, history, and more; it even gets into the best materials to use for tea-making (earthenware and the like is best; stainless steel if metal must be used, but preferably not) and all the reasons why. It far exceeds my expectations! And he has started a list of herbs he wants to start growing this winter inside - just a few for the most important things.

He gets a kick out of this one:

He said to me, laughing,
"Just give me this when I start whining, Mama -
you'll never have a problem with me again!" ;) 

I could get used to this song ;) 

All this, from starting with the Biology album again!

So, in a nutshell what happens in elementary Montessori is that the albums are used heavily at first - but then you SHOULD BE MOVING AWAY from the albums. Mathematics is relatively continuous, but all the other albums keep moving away and coming back, moving away and coming back. The albums are touchstones to personal and practical research, daily learning and personal growth. We don't need an album presentation every single day, because we are taking advantage of a multitude of learning opportunities - branches off from the album presentations.