Maps, Music and Pollock

Kindergarten Week 10

Day 42 - Monday

Starting with the knobbed cylinders (demonstrating for little sis).

Math - This work took a LONG time to complete. M has been slowly gaining confidence in recognizing larger numbers, and she has wanted to attempt the hundred board again after giving up about half way the last time. My only guidance was getting her started grouping the numbers. I think it would be good to add some labels (0-10, 11-20, etc) to remind her to do that on her own, otherwise she spreads the tiles out randomly and can't find the numbers she's looking for. Even after sorting, it took a lot of concentration to complete the board, and she was extremely proud of herself at the end!

Geography - I printed a set of Children Around the World cards from I Believe in Montessori, and they are unbelievable! The images are beautiful, and M is just drawn to them. She flips through the stack of pictures and it's like she wants to get to know the children.

She spent a long time looking at the pictures, comparing their faces and their clothing, looking at the backgrounds of the pictures, and imagining where each child lived. Then she took out her world map and sorted the cards by continent (each card has a continent icon in the corner, and I also glued the name of the child's country to the back of the card).

After she sorted the cards by continent, I suggested that she find each country where the children were from. We took out her Melissa&Doug Write-a-Mat (affiliate link), found the country on the map, and colored the blank side to match the Montessori color for each continent. (For example, she colored Mexico orange because it's in North America.)

Day 43 - Tuesday

Practical Life / Sensorial - We made bottle cap tambourine sticks as part of our Art & Music camp. M meticulously wrapped different colors of string around her stick to cover the wood. We tested a few different types of string to attach the bottle caps, and sadly none worked very well (if you shook it too hard the string would break or slide off the stick). The instruments were fun while they lasted!

Music / Math - After finishing her instrument, she spent some time working with the bells. We did a presentation on matching pairs of bells (3 at a time), and then I gave her and a couple of other children a small group lesson on whole, half, quarter, and eighth notes. We took out the fraction circles and matched the fractions to the notes, then we practiced using different notes to make rhythms.

Geography - After seeing another friend working on maps, M chose to complete the Africa continent map. She ended up dumping most of the pieces instead of placing them on the control map, so this took her a long time to put back together.

Music - After snack, we had a Musikgarten teacher teach a class for the kids. 

Language - M has really taken off with reading, and she can't get enough right now. She brought some library books along to check the progress of our house construction. Here she's reading the Dr. Seuss book I Can Read With My Eyes Shut (affiliate link). 

Day 44 - Wednesday

Science / Language - M read the book Beth and the Bugs, in which the kids go on a field trip to search for bugs. M wanted to recreate the "Bug List" they used in the book, so I gave her a blank book to make her own journal of bugs she found outside. 

History / Math - M has really enjoyed learning about calendars this summer. She uses a wall calendar as a control to fill in blank calendar sheets with dates. She used this month's calendar to fill in upcoming events, like her first Homeschool PE class and an Herb Fairies Book Club meeting.

Math - Snake game (review - making 10)

Science / Language - Did I mention that I can't stop M from reading? Such a horrible problem, right? Here she's reading Franklin in the Stars (affiliate link) and finding constellations on her chart from the Magic School Bus kit.

Practical Life - Punching a quatrefoil; Walking Daddy's job site, watching the crane move steel beams

Language / History - M has been on a Magic Tree House kick lately. We have been reading adventure after adventure at bedtime! We recently finished Pirates Past Noon (affiliate link) and found the Pirates Research Guide (affiliate link) at the library. M really liked the timeline of pirates, and copied it into her own notebook. 

Geography - If you haven't heard of Pin It! Maps, go check out their website (I'll wait)!! Seriously, they're amazing. I'll give a full review soon, but we have been having a lot of fun starting to explore some of the possibilities with these. As soon as they arrived in the mail, M wanted to get started. I frantically assembled the first set of pins for the land form map, and we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening finding land and water forms. 

Day 45 - Thursday

This was our last day of summer camps. We wrapped up the Art and Music camp with a session on Jackson Pollock. We did a mini session on the background of Pollock, followed by some Pollock-inspired art projects. We started with some marble painting, and then splatter painted canvases with each child's initial taped in the middle. 

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