The Natural Homeschool: homeschool co-op

We have started a wonderful co-op with two other families and it has been beyond great. W have been meeting for a couple of months now and I never want to stop! I get all 5 kids and teach them Spanish for 30 minutes, then they go next door to learn about Music for another 30 minutes and then they all go a few doors down to learn about Art for 30 minutes. Perfect! My co-teachers are so wonderful and creative and all the kids are thriving. I couldn't be happier.

Free Play

I got K some new wooden rolling pins for his playdough and he's been having a lot of fun with them. I got them at the Learning Zone store in Texas (4 different ones for about $10).

Circle Time Additions

I have made copies of the Montessori shapes nomenclature
cards and put them in sheet protectors. Very cool stuff.

Desk Work

K has been having a lot of fun reading new readers (other than our typical Preschool Prep Co ones). I found some random ones at Goodwill and Sam's Club (Go, Diego, Go, Superheroes, Monster Trucks, etc). I went out on a limb and bought levels 1-3 (thinking 3 is second or third grade reading), thinking that he'd eventually read them well and they would be a great challenge for him. He's only 3.5 years old and, to my complete surprise, he is reading level 3s almost perfectly! So proud!

Tracing numbers, counting Spiderman masks, ordinal numbers, and tracing more numbers, are just a few of the activities that we did today.

This is Desk Work from another day. Tracing shapes.
Great practice for beginning penmanship.

Montessori Culture (Geography): Flags of the World (North and South America)

Nomenclature Cards: Flags from a few countries in North America.
We matched them up as we talked about them and pointed at the countries on the globe.

We did the same with the flags of a few countries in South America. K memorized them quickly and remembers them almost perfectly.

Montessori Sensorial: Red Rods

These are 10 red rods differing in one dimension – length (from 10cm to 100cm).

The unit of difference between each rod is 10cm.

- Show the child how to hold the shortest rod by gripping over the top of the center part of the rod using your right thumb and fingers.
- Slowly slide the rod off of the shelf (wooden stand) until it is fully out.
- Grip the rod with your left hand below your right hand.
- Carry the rod vertical and so your hands are at waist level.
- Have the child carry all of the rods over one at a time and place them randomly on one of the mats.
- Once all of the rods have been brought over to the mat, have the child stand to your left.
- Carefully pick up the longest rod and as you kneel in front of the mat, place it horizontally near the back of the other mat.
- Turn to the child and tell him that you are now looking for a specific one.
- Go over to the other mat and carefully choose the next longest rod.
- Kneel in front of the longest rod and in a steady and precise movement, place the rod directly under the longest rod on the other mat, and align them so that the left edges are well aligned.
- Once it has been placed, check to see if it is well aligned by sliding your hand along the left edge of the two rods.
- Continue placing all of the rods in correct order and placing them so that they come closer and closer to you as each rod is placed.

Extension 1: Once the rods are placed in order (longest to shortest), ask child to look away or close his eyes and remove a rod. Push all rods together so there are no obvious gaps. Show the rod to the child and ask him to tell you where it belongs. The material is self-correcting.
Extension 2: Same as Extension 1, but this time, do not show the rod to the child. Put it behind your back and ask the child to look at the rest of the rods and try to figure out which one is missing. This exercise is definitely harder because the missing piece isn't visible. It is a wonderful exercise.

Free Play

Desk Work

K is really starting to be interested in writing, so tracing letters and numbers has become really important to him. It is one of his favorite things to do right now, which is great. It is amazing to see his little brain work and how much he improves every time we practice.

Daily Devotional Time is part of our Circle Time routine

We always read the Bible (a kids version most of the time, but an adult version sometimes) and then read a book besides that. Sometimes we read a Christian children's book (like the one pictured below), a children's Bible story book, a book from the "Dear God" series, a Bible story coloring book, etc. The kids absolutely love this time. We have managed to make it a routine every weekday morning (right after breakfast), but we don't do it on the weekends. We live pretty far away from civilization, so we go to town (about 40 minutes away) on Saturday mornings to run our errands and do our grocery shopping, so we are usually out the door by 8am. On Sundays, we also go to town for church, so we pretty much let that be our devotional time.

We do read the Bible together as a family almost every single night. When we read from the kids version of the Bible, we let K do the reading. He does a really good job.