Spanish: El Alfabeto (The Alphabet)
Today, we reviewed the vowels, the numbers (1-10) and the letters. We practiced the letters of the alphabet with the additions (ch, ll, ñ, rr) and they did great!
I have alphabet stickers. I'd secretly pick one and the first person to say its name in Spanish would get that sticker. They were having fun. The cool thing was that if someone was a little behind, I'd ask that person specifically for the name of a letter and no one complained. They were so respectful. We are definitely playing this again, at least until I run out of stickers, hehe. 
Art: Wassily Kandinsky
We studied warm and cool colors, learned a little about Wassily Kandinsky and the concept of abstract art and Expressionism, and then did our own Kandinsky circles. Everyone seemed a bit hyper, but the kids all did really well.
Music
We discussed Dynamics (Volume or Decibel Level Of Notes) and learned about Pianissimo, Piano, Mezzo-piano, Mezzo-forte, Forte and Fortissimo. We also discussed Crescendo and Diminuendo. The kids now know that they should use their Mezzo-piano voices inside and Forte/Fortissimo are okay for outside . Try telling them, "Piano, Piano, Mio Bambini" next time they get loud inside!
Each house should have a set of cards depicting a picture and then the word for each volume level. We watched Beethoven's Symphony #5, Haydn's Symphony No. 94 "Surprise", and Hallelujah performed by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. All three allowed the children to use the picture references to decide which volume level was being used, and how a composer might change volumes throughout the song.
Finally we learned the song, "Are You Sleeping" but we learned it in Spanish (see how I did that!). So, you can practice this with them (sorry no translation abilities for the punctuation): Fray Felipe! Fray Felipe! Duermes tu? Duermes tu? Suenan las campanas, Suenan las campanas. !Ding, dang, dong! !Ding, dang, dong! We will review with this song next week, and use it to play a crescendo/diminuendo game
Home Goodies
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I made waffles for breakfast on Saturday, but we ran out of milk, so I used homemade coconut yogurt made out of homemade coconut milk. I also used applesauce instead of frozen blueberries. It was delicious! To see the recipe, click here.
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We made our homemade toothpaste again. Two words: delicious success. This time, I had a helper! To see the TWO recipes I use, click here. This time, we used the Complete and perfect homemade toothpaste.
Bathroom setup! Chores! Yes!
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I found this chore chart online (for free). The best part is that I can type in anything,
print and use again to type other stuff. So, if a chore doesn't become a chore anymore,
but more part of normal life (which is my prayer every day, haha), I can simply use the
same template, retype and reprint.
I use sheet protectors and dry erase crayons to check completed chores.
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Hand-washing instructions (Montessori), light with buttons for hand-washing (20 seconds) and tooth-brushing (2 minutes), automatic night light (it detects level of light and turns on on its own when it gets dark and turns off on its own when it's bright, musical hand soap (pump plays Thomas the Train theme song when pushed down, total bonus).
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My kids love brushing, flossing, and even using a tongue scraper! One of the reasons why, I think, is because I keep it fun. They each have a bunch of toothbrushes and flossing picks. I let them choose and I let them get the toothpaste out of the 4 oz. mason jar (homemade toothpaste is in jar).
This is "Toothie." He has very big teeth and loved getting them cleaned. I keep an old toothbrush next to him so the kids can practice brushing Toothie's teeth. We can also wind him up and watch his teeth chatter.
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Montessori Practical Life: Flower Arranging
If there is one thing I splurge on is on flowers. Well, I don't "splurge" necessarily, but by that, I mean that I buy them regularly, not that I spend outrageous amounts of money on flowers. I spend $5-$9 a month (hint: Sam's Club has awesome pricing).
Just a thought: "Relax...we're all crazy...it's not a competition." ~Anonymous
(Personal note: I am sure we have all said or thought that at some point.)
Life-Changing Awesomeness at Home
This is transforming my firstborn! Seriously! Something soooo simple! Chores! Yes!
You saw earlier in this post a picture of K's morning chores. The entire list takes him 6 minutes, tops.
One evening, I forgot that I had washed A's cloth diapers and it was already dark outside to hang them up. Plus, there was a chance for rain that night. So, I brought hangers with clips and my special multi-clip hanger (see pictures below) inside and started hanging everything on my garment hanger in the laundry room. As K was sitting idly on the couch, I thought of recruiting him to see if he could help me in any way. I gave him the fleece diaper liners to hang on my multi-clip hanger. Success! Not only was he quick, he was precise, meticulous, I got done faster, he was having fun and it gave him something to do.
Total win-win. This definitely got my wheels turning...
The next day, the diapers were dry, so I recruited my little guy again. He gladly accepted. I was floored at what happened. Keep reading.
I would put together the pocket diapers (I need to stuff them with the absorbent liners) and hand K the diaper. He would put the fleece diaper liner, close the diaper and put the diaper in the cart. He was so focused and precise and quick! I had to stay on top of my game to keep up! haha He was constantly telling me that he was done. And the sweetest thing is that, every time I'd give him a diaper, he'd say "thank you." Sigh.
I was floored because it literally took me a third of the time to put them together, we all had fun (even A was throwing liners and diapers around and then collecting them again, of course) and I didn't have to use my time after the kids went to bed to put them together. It was a lot of fun and I saw a new side on K. He loves helping out and does things well!
My wheels kept turning... (stay tuned to the next post or two)
This is our current cloth diaper setup. The daytime diapers hang on the bathroom door. The nighttime diapers (blue only) are stuffed more because they're worn for at least 8 hours and are kept under the sink, along with the wool covers we use on top of the nighttime diapers. Does your family use cloth diapers?
Montessori Culture (Geography): Penpal and Postcard Exchange
More postcards keep coming in! We are so excited! I will post a picture of our map soon.
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| These postcards are from his good buddies, S and G. |
Bible: Salvation 101 (Beginners Level)
K is old enough to make sense of certain things. Among those things, I wanted him to begin to make sense of how he is supposed to treat his sister and more importantly, why he is supposed to treat her a certain way (the right way). I was praying about how to converse with him about it in a way that he would understand and start developing an intrinsically-motivated change of heart that breeds permanent results. An idea "came" to me.
I waited for A to go down for her nap. Then I sat down with him. I had a whiteboard and dry-erase markers.
1) I drew a heart on the whiteboard.
2) I told him that it's our heart.
3) Whenever we do something bad or make the wrong choice/decision, a black spot appears on our heart. The more mean or rude or bad things we do and not feel sorry about them, the more black spots appear on our hearts. When we have many spots, we aren't happy. We need our hearts to be right with God and to be clean.
4) How can we make those spots go away? We feel sorry about what we have done, we pray to God and apologize and then we go to the person we hurt and say sorry to them, too. We make it right as much as we can.
He totally understood and I could tell he made sense of it.
His favorite part was, of course, erasing the spots.
We went into a short conversation about what "SIN" is and made a short list of things that are considered sin (lying, pushing or kicking others, throwing things that hurt others, disobeying mom and dad, having a bad attitude, yelling, being mean, talking back, etc).
Ballet
Ballet Postions in French: Première (1st), Seconde (2nd), Troisième (3rd), Quatrième (4th), Cinquième (5th). They did awesome!
We all meet at the gym. While I teach the girls ballet, one of my neighbors takes K and her boy and they do sports, yoga, tumbling, and other boy-related sporty things.
My other neighbor takes A and her daughter and they do age-appropriate activities for their age.
Everyone loves it and we have a lot of fun. I am so glad we are doing this and to see kids grow (physically and intellectually) right before my eyes.
For Letter of the Week with Jenna, they did "T is for Turtle." Such a cute project!
Inspiration...
Inspiration...
