Montessori Elementary Homeschool Blog - with documentation of our infant Montessori, toddler Montessori, and primary Montessori experiences; as well as preparation for the upcoming adolescent Montessori homeschool years.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

World Puzzle Map at Home


Montessori teachers generally highly recommend not to have duplicate materials at home and at school.

For the most part, I agree.

But there are always moments that make you say, "hmm."

And this was one :)


Junior Legoboy (he had not yet discovered legos at this time of his life!) was in an AMI primary Montessori school for his 3 year old year. First thing of interest is that he started to write at home - writing out the letters to spell "thank you" on his after-Christmas cards - but he wouldn't write at home - OOPS! Meant to say *school* - he would NOT write at school - and it's not like we spent that much time at home that year for him to be distracted by duplicate materials at home. I had tucked away all of our Montessori materials so he would focus on them at school. But he just wouldn't write at school!


One day, at home, he pulled out a world puzzle map we had there (yes out of storage, without my permission), and proceeded to do work he'd seen the older children doing at school.
This photo became the cover of my sensorial album!
Please ignore his clothes hanging in the closet behind him ;) 

Assembling the puzzle outside of the frame,
with no outer border reference. 



So in this case, we certainly had moments where he went deeper with the work at home than he did at school. I'm not drawing any significant conclusions from these observations - just something to say, "hmmm."


Yes, this material was in my sensorial album - not a separate geography area. I had sensorial aspects of the world in sensorial, with the appropriate language activities in the language album. I personally found this layout to be SUCH a relief after having spent several years finagling with multiple subject albums - 4 was such a blessed relief! It certainly helped me to organize the patterns and connections in a way I just didn't "see" before despite the number of years in Montessori environments!




Wednesday, December 5, 2012

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!)

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

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 ;)



Monday, December 3, 2012

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.
Your Business Math Pet Store
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! 





Saturday, December 1, 2012

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!