Littlemiss was sick for a few days this week :( Green snot and a slight cough took priority middle of the week. Which meant she needed to nap more, so we didn't get as much one on one time. But I'm learning to be flexible and read her cues for when she needs a nap instead of completely taking them away from her. We tried to remove them completely for a few weeks and she became a hot mess. Being flexible seems to be working better, even if we don't get as much time for "school" together. You will notice they are in the same clothes for most of the time because we did most of our school in one day since she wasn't feeling well the rest of the week, and I just don't take pictures of everything we do together :)
We focused on butterflies this week. We reviewed their life cycle through different types of play and literature about butterflies.
Littlemiss's Learning Center looked much like the week before. I wanted her to have more time to do the independent work on the bottom two shelves.
The top shelf here are the nomenclature cards. One set for labeling the different parts of the butterfly and the other for the life cycle of the butterfly.
The life cycle of the butterfly, a favorite toy now. I bought this on Amazon. It is made by Insect Lore.
Our insect collection for observation. Most are wasps, because there must be a few nests around our house. The butterfly is one of the butterflies we "grew" at home. Unfortunately, I should have released them as soon as they morphed into butterflies, because this guy didn't make it. He got stuck to the sugar water that I had at the bottom of their habitat for food :( We were able to observe him though. His wings fell off after he had died, because of the kids handling him.
BooBoo's Learning Center. I didn't get to do much learning time with BooBoo this week. He is included in most of the activities we do when he is awake though. We will be doing "B for Bear" and the color blue again next week.
B is for banana, bear, block, boat, bus, and bison.
Science:
Books are a HUGE part of our science "curriculum." We mostly sit on the couch and read books together. Littlemiss loves it. I love that I am learning with her too! Our library is our main source for all our books. I have over 20 books checked out right now! These books range in age-appropriateness. Half of them are told as stories about butterflies. Some show real pictures and focus on the facts. On the books above her level I don't read every word, but review each page and talk about the pictures to adapt it to her learning level.
We released our butterflies! SO exciting to see them fly away.
Nomenclature cards of the butterfly life cycle.
Matching the butterfly life cycle models to the pictures.
Littlemiss then spontaneously started acting out the butterfly life cycle. Not surprising if you know her :) She acts out EVERYTHING. Picture above is her hatching out of an egg and crawling around as a caterpillar.
Now she is in the chrysalis phase.
Emerging as a butterfly! She flew around and around the school room.
Laying an egg to start the cycle all over again.
We made the butterfly life cycle with finger prints one day. I let her choose the colors, but I guided her to make the different phases. I was surprised she didn't choose pink for every phase. Everything is pink to her!
Math:
Most of the math learning was on the Montessori Hundred Board. We first counted to one hundred while putting glass gems on each number. After thirty she caught onto the pattern and started saying the next tens number correctly. We did some other learning with the cuisenaire rods as well, but I didn't take pictures. Mostly review of the rods and identifying rods smaller and larger, shorter and longer.
Proud of herself :)
Another day I removed numbers and we worked together to place them correctly. She can't identify the numbers right away when she sees them, which is totally appropriate. She would figure it out mostly by counting the numbers around the space.
Reading:
I printed off pictures from the Internet to represent the words for Littlemiss to spell.
Spelling "sat."
When sleepy she misspells words on purpose. She thinks she's SO funny :)
Matching pictures to words.
This activity was a bit above her head, but we adapted it. I wrote down all the words we are working on learning right now. A mix of our Montessori sound set and some sight words. The idea was for me to call out a word and she would jump on it.
I called out words she could see around her and helped direct her to the word. Some words she knows better than others.
This could be done with letters of the alphabet, and could be adapted to make it harder or easier. The student could jump on a word and call it out at the same time or have a spray bottle of water to wash away the words they can read. The options are endless!
Fine Motor:
We do a weekly play dough activity for fine motor, this weeks was story telling with "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." I collected foods for the acting out the story and play dough to make a caterpillar with. I got this idea from The Imagination Tree.
I read the story and we set out the foods the caterpillar ate as I read. Littlemiss grabbed our model caterpillar to eat through the foods.
Then she made her own hungry caterpillar.
Lacing used to be one of Littlemiss's most frustrating activities. She happily grabbed the lacing cards and went to town this week!
She practiced writing her name. She doesn't have an interest in coloring yet (I call her my gross motor girl, cause she excels with large motor movement), so this is a good activity for her. I'm going to hang onto this so we can see fine motor improvement over the year. Most of our fine motor activities don't involve coloring or writing letters, because there are endless ways to build fine motor skills without picking up a pen and paper that will help her when she is ready to learn to write letters more formally.
Sensory Play:
They rescued insects stuck in ice. They approached this task very seriously and worked hard to free every single insect. It was fun to see Littlemiss get caught up into the dramatics of rescuing insects!
Goggles were a necessary tool in excavating the insects, clearly needed :)
This kid LOVES to wear goggles.
There was much rejoicing when this insect was rescued!
Art:
I had a marvelous plan that didn't work out this week. Our art project was to paint cardboard butterfly wings that I was going to fashion into wings for the kids to wear. I came up with the idea from Fun at Home with Kids, pretty cool huh! Well, long story short, mine didn't turn out. The kids had no idea the end plan, so they just had fun painting them with squirt bottles.
That was our week. Thanks for stopping by. Hopefully you were encouraged to teach, get messy, and have fun with your kiddos :)
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