Long Bead Chains - Photo Journey

Just browsing through photos looking for something else, and thought, "I should share these!"

Counting up the 1000 chain!

Drawing it afterward - elementary children

sample of elementary work with the long chains

the lighting was bad ;) 

1000 chain from my student teaching days
I still have that skirt!
And I still remember the happiness of the boy
who worked on this presentations
- the TRUE self-esteem -
the pride he took in his work
the complete turn-around in his behavior
having been given some REAL work to do. 

5 1/2 year old SO PROUD of his BIG WORK
(this boy did this work BY HIMSELF!)
It was probably one of the most fulfilling things
he had done in his life to that date!)

Lego day!

The morning of the day I write this post, my son wrote me a note:

can you come to the m(iddle) of the f(l)oor?
He's not been writing much lately - and despite all the
wonderful Montessori materials - if he doesn't practice,
it's GONE! So spelling skills are OUT.
Every child has their thing - spelling is his.
No spelling bee champ here ;)
(do they have an "Abbreviation Bee?" hehe)

(he'd been leaving me a series of notes - I have a PILE of them next to my computer - he writes them on scrap paper, folds in half, sneaks up, drops them in my lap or on my hands and RUNS, diving behind the living room chair supposedly before I can see him!)

We LOVE these CDs - very educational and very interesting!
Each CD plays the entire song through about 3 times -
once continuous with narration
once with starting/stopping and further depth of explanation
once just straight through with no narration
And LOTS of extras in between ;) 

This was right after he wrote a note asking if we could listen to "Carnival of Animals" from Maestro Classics.

Well, it's Friday and most of his work from this week is already done - so why not? ;) 

By why the middle of the floor? Legoboy has spent the last two days' worth of free time creating a Lego game from scratch.

So we played. Who needs school? Who needs to work? We're listening to music and spending time together.

challenge cards and playing cards

Pieces to build figures and barracks within each field

I like this game. I don't care for Legos myself - I support his interest though - yet I'm winning! So I don't mind this game ;) I did need to call a break for a while so I could get on with more of my own work. We'll finish up this evening.

I love how much thought and effort he put into this game - so much so that handwriting and spelling suffered! But he is going back to make revisions - and in the playing of the game, he didn't get upset when something didn't work - he just either revised the rules in the moment because they needed to be done, or he made a quick list of items that needed adapting for future playing.

I am very proud of him for doing all this work :)




Shshshshsh! Don't tell him yet I found this blog this morning with a LEGO co-op plan - at Homegrown Learners. I am going to see if any local children want to join us for a short-term LEGO club in our home ;)

Maybe we'll combine with this 4-day LEGO lapbook at Walking by the Way.
Click here for her LEGO resources.



What would Dr. Montessori say about LEGOs? I don't know! They are plastic and she saw a much larger benefit to all-natural tools, and I'll admit I'm not always keen on the sound of them and they do GET EVERYWHERE (Legoboy usually works on a sheet which we then gather up and dump back into the big bin, after he pulls out the small pieces he wants to keep organized - that way, at least the LEGOs are partially contained and they don't make a terrible sound when he does work on tile floor).

They are really great for problem solving, engineering-type skills and just plain creativity.

Would I have them in the "school" area (whether a homeschool or a regular school)? NO! I would keep them separate from the usual learning materials, but I don't entirely consider them pure "toys" either. Much like our other "toys" they must have a strong reason to be here, in order to be allowed to take up space in our tiny home. So they are not frivolous play, but lead to creativity, imagination, problem solving and can be combined with other items.

Just my OWN two cents ;)

Your Business Math - Pet Store

As with all elementary Montessori work, the idea is to get the child exploring and learning of his own accord - provide him the keys and let him do the unlocking ;)

Along that vein, when Legoboy came across some information about Your Business Math, he was really excited! And started saving his money for it.

While business math is ideal for the adolescent age, there is nothing wrong with some sidework in the business world at the elementary age too!  They have three options: pet store, book store, or sports store. We have the e-book version of the pet store.

There is a bit of printing with the e-book, but it saved shelfspace and allowed us to just print what we need so I'm good ;) You can print straight from the pdf they send you or they have links on their website to download just the needed pages.

He got started on it the week before Thanksgiving and while he would be happy to fly right through it, I am intentionally slowing him down so that we truly focus in on each step of the process.

You work in "months" which take about an hour each to do if you fly straight through and a bit longer if you are more mindful.

As I said, he started to fly straight through, because
he was SO excited. He mis-spelled a word -
but he's corrected that since I took the photo.
I would have added more color, but
he preferred keeping it simple. 

We spent one evening just setting up. I sat at the computer and worked; he came to me for the next step to read the instructions, print as needed, then he was off. When he needed guidance he brought his binder to me and we worked through it. This way, I was "occupied" but available and would not fall to temptation to micro-manage. ;)

He chose a binder and some dividers; drew out a logo and selected a name for his store:

The first divider - all inventory sheets, order forms,
customer orders,, ledgers, etc. for each month
are behind their own tab. 

We like it. I wish it was a bit more intense, so we could more easily beef it up and make it a younger adolescent experience - but this is solidly 8-12 as their website specifies - and I could see most Montessori 11 and 12 years old wishing for more intensity.

The nice thing with families - is that each child can have their own store - the instructions are the same, the order details are different - and they can place orders with each other. There are other ways to provide variations, such as other family members placing pretend orders, choosing not to accept a program-provided order on moral grounds (ie one customer wants to feed his animal purchase to his other animal, so would you as a *pet* store owner want to allow that, etc). The instructions note when you should develop certain policies such as these. And there are certainly your own variations you can make as you like.

There are chance cards and cards for "additional in-store sales" (AISS cards). These also add some variations and allow for varying situations.

At the end of each month, profit and loss are calculated; as well as at the end of the year. Evaluate how things went, what worked, what didn't - and how would this all work in the real world.


Down-sides: 

• The ledger system is a single-line - good for some purposes, but some accounting records need double-entry - this might be an item to add to an adolescent experience, following using this program in elementary - build up complexity in increments. 
• The labels of debit and credit are incorrect - reflecting what your personal bank statement looks like rather than what a real business ledger account would look like. This is easy to fix by simply crossing them out and re-writing them - or leaving those words out altogether. It is also a good discussion point for the children - when is a debit "money in" and when it is "money out". 
• the orders have no actual dates, so we make them up. The program has you calculating all ledger entries at the end of each "month" instead of as it happens. This has benefits and drawbacks in the real world. Another discussion point for the children. 
• the chance and AISS cards can be a tad confusing - how to record them for example: if you had $450 in additional in-store sales, what inventory are you replacing? It doesn't say. So we chose to mark it down as services rendered - perhaps pet-boarding for the day or the weekend; or delivery service. We just have to ignore the other expenses (extra food used, gas, mileage) - this is where this is program is solidly elementary, but would not be appropriate for adolescence who want real world experience. So we make the adjustments, gain the experience and move on. 
• If a chance card says increase earnings by 10% - 10% of WHAT!? It doesn't say, so I created another set of chance cards, that when this sort of card is picked, he draws from the new stack to tell us the percentage of what - AISS, monthly profit/loss, total income for the month, etc. 

For what it is and what it purports to do, it is fun, lays a good foundation and introduces the practical purpose of various math concepts. Can't beat it! It would be great to see something for middle schoolers with more of the "trickiness" included - perhaps that is something to look forward to! 

Passing from One Square to Another

After our work with the cubing part 1 and part 2, I figured it was probably time to officially present "Passing From One Square to Another" since he'd already done the allegedly harder work of "Passing From One Cube to Another" (just subsequent passings at this point - not jumping two sizes).

rebuilding the square of pythagoras from primary
YES, this comes in a LOT in elementary
in particular using the bead bars! 

First he wanted to stack the squares to make a flat pyramid.
Then he turned them a bit to make them "fancy"
(think of all the art ideas a child could do with this work alone!)

Backwards order - he passed from square of 6 to 7;
then he passed from square of 5 to 8.
Hm. Looks like the binomial cube he said.
Then quickly added: but DIFFERENT colors!
(see previous posts on cubing to get the joke)

Displaying the originals with the finals. 

When we were done, we verbalized what we had done. We also noted that pattern on each side - for example, the square of 7 IS the square of 6 plus the square of 1, but with two rectangles add of 1 taken 6 times. The square of 8 IS the square of 5 plus the square of 3 plus 2 rectangles of 5 taken 3 times.

Now let's look at the values: the square of 7 (49) is the square of 6 (36) plus the square of 1 (1) plus those two 6x1 rectangles (12). It adds up!

Repeat with the second square. It still works!



Yep. We did the work out of order - some things are entirely ok to change up! This was all strong interest-driven and the main pre-requisites were in place - that's ALL that matters! We have plenty of time to review the concepts again and again to be sure of thorough understanding. (and see my previous posts this past week on that aha! moment when a child verbalizes something his actions have shown he's known for YEARS) ;)

Yes, scope and sequences are great - they get us organized - but feel free to diverge from it! Cover pre-reqs (could be informally) - that's all that matters!

God with No Hands - Some Follow-Ups

We first did the Story of God with No Hands when Legoboy was 5 1/2. He was just very, very ready for it!

But many people wonder - what do we do after? Follow the child? But how? What materials should I have ready?

Don't REQUIRE anything. Let it sit. Let it fizzle. Let it percolate. I promise in most cases, you won't be waiting long! If at all!

• Have ready everything you have demonstrated to the children - so the children can repeat. 
• Have lots of large paper on hand if they want to copy the charts. 
• Have beautiful colored pencils or watercolors on hand. 
• Have some flexibility in your schedule so you can hit up the library on any given day. 
• Keep an open, trusting mind - and have some questions of your own you'd like to research, perhaps side by side. 
• It is probably best to just have on hand what you need for the remaining geography album pages and don't worry about much else - because honestly, NO one can tell you where your child's interests will go - even I've been surprised by own son! 

My son's original interests were in the volcano (go figure!) but he didn't get into the parts of volcanoes like most children - he wanted to know about types of volcanoes, which necessitated learning some of the parts, but in a different way from a child who wants to directly know that information - and where active volcanoes sit today - and where inactive volcanoes sit. And could one be where we live. We then got into Pompeii. And two years later, our local museum hosted the Pompeii exhibit! Oh my! It was WONDERFUL! We went twice! He had other minor questions which were not as polarizing at the time.

And we moved into the other Great Lessons, instigating a study into ancient history. We began reading through Mystery of History in our own manner - reading a "lesson" each evening, creating an index card for it, then he could select any of the suggested activities from any of the listed age groups to do during school time in the coming week. Well, 2 1/2 years later, we've not quite finished the book because this study branched into Ancient Middle East, Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece - leading to a study (when I say study, I mean reading lots of books and watching videos and having lots of discussions) of the multiple gods of their religion, leading to an interest in astronomy because of the connections of all those names, leading into a study of clocks and time-telling through history, back into astronomy. And then back into Ancient Civilizations (only reinforced since joining the level 3 atrium a year early). He really has little to no interest in modern history. Ah yes, then he discovered there were more suggested activities in Mystery of History, so he's gone back time and again to review the past stories and add more work in.

And one wonders why I post so little about the direct use of the Montessori materials ;) because it's ALL Montessori materials - the whole world! ;) 


In the meantime, we did another re-telling of the first Great Lesson when he was just past his 6th birthday, with follow-ups that time being the states of matter - heavily into the states of matter. Repeating ALL the demonstrations

At 6 1/2 to 7 1/2, with 2 more tellings during that time, the focus shifted to the layers of the earth, mostly focusing on different types of rocks. Here, he went back to the volcano to discover types of rocks around different types of volcanoes and the use of some of those rocks. Pumice and its uses; some volcanic rocks are great for closet deodorizers - put them in your closet or a polluted area, it soaks up all the smell and pollution and gets really heavy - put it out in the sunlight and the sun's rays burn out all the pollution and you can use the rocks again and again and again. He told me, "Let's buy me a bigger pair of shoes, so I can keep a stone of this stuff in each toe!" (he has raunchy-smelling feet!). I am purposely not telling you the name of this rock so you'll go look it up yourself ;) Isn't it interesting this type of rock would be spewed forth by the very volcano that it helps to "clean up". Kind of a nice balance to nature there, eh!?



Since then, he still continues to come for re-tellings of the original story - told just the same as the first time (with glass test tubes now) - and now he ponders questions of morality: how all these particles have particular laws, obey those laws, and the human race has these choices even though made from the same particles as everything else. He also ties in elements from the later Great Lessons and his own personal research, relating the particles to the planets, or to human peoples and their various methods of migration. His follow-ups these days are not as distinctly coming from just this one lesson, because he has the grand overview, told many times in the last 3 years and he is making connections and discoveries.


Some people suggest changing the story up from time to time - while focusing on just one small section has been a positive experience, I have not once had a positive experience with changing the story at all. The children seem to thrive on hearing the SAME story told over and over and over and over - much like when they were preschoolers! And each time they can listen in for a new detail, a new enticement, a new discovery, a new learning path, all from the same old story.


In upper elementary, children explore other creation stories and make comparisons, exploring how the culture and their stories tie together - what do all of these stories reveal about the Truth and about the ways of life of the people holding to their own story. At this time, it might be feasible for a child to re-write the Great Lesson, modifying it. Or they might enjoy coming back to an old friend.