The Natural Homeschool: language arts

Showing posts with label language arts. Show all posts

Thursday, November 13, 2014

The Ultimate Gift Guide for the Montessori Home

"Montessori..." bask in that beautiful word and all it encompasses. Now, attach the word "home" to it. What does it spell? Montessori Home. What a concept! What a wonderful concept!

We are an eclectic homeschool that incorporate The Montessori Method in nearly every subject we learn. Why? Simply because of what Montessori stands for: supporting child dignity, fostering independence, inviting peace, encouraging spontaneous education, teaching care for one's self and the environment, finding beauty in everything, just to name a few.

In this post, you will see a thorough list of Montessori materials that can be given as gifts for those who seek to have Montessori homes. Not only will your children love the materials, but gifting them something educational, useful and beautiful is the best gift of all. My wish is for you to find in this post many great ideas and inspiration for your Montessori Home.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Homeschool Room Tour 2014

Welcome to our homeschool room! We are happy that you have chosen to pay us a visit. We hope you like what you see.

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Homeschooling Journal: April 2014 Part 12

This is what we did in our homeschool at the end of April. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did! Read on to see all of our adventures.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Homeschooling Journal: April 2014 Part 3

We loved babysitting this sweet guy! :)

Field trip to the Farm

We picked our own artichokes and had a delicious lunch.

Read on.

Monday, April 28, 2014

Homeschooling Journal: March 2014 Part 2

A.C.E. (Accelerated Christian Education)

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Homeschooling Journal: February 2014 Part 4

Montessori Practical Life: How to Hang Cloth Diapers to Dry

Desk Work

Egg and Dairy Free Banana Bread! For the recipe, CLICK HERE.

Monday, February 24, 2014

Homeschooling Journal: January 2014 Part 5

Montessori-Inspired Language Arts: Forming words and pre-writing

This activity is a Melissa & Doug birthday gift that K got last year. He is enjoying it very much and is really getting into it.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Our 2014 (Jan-June) Homeschooling Journal

Homeschooling Journal: January 2014 Part 1

Our new header! This is such a beautiful design! I had a beautiful new friend help me with this. She is such a kind and gentle spirit and feel so blessed that she took the time to help me (without even knowing me!).

Friday, January 24, 2014

Homeschooling December 2013 Part 5

Gym/Ballet Co-op

I gave my girls a laminated poster printed on both sides. On one side, there is an image on the five positions and on the other, I put two pictures. One says "Keep Calm and Point Your Toes" and the other has a ballerina in her toes and a little girl wearing a tutu admiring her.

Monday, January 20, 2014

January Printables Packet Review from The Little Natural Cottage

Saturday, January 18, 2014

How Nightcrawlers Taught My Toddler the Alphabet

Friday, January 3, 2014

Our 2013 (July-Dec) Homeschool Journal

Our 2013 (Jan-June) Homeschool Journal

Friday, June 21, 2013

Homeschooling June 2013 Part 3

Music: Intro. to Music

Today we practiced a "hello" song.
We learned the words and have to add in their own action item each week. It will be the repetitive feature.
We talked about how animal sounds can be used in music and sang Old MacDonald Had A Zoo.
Then we did a song with birds where we each sang a part. When combined, the sounds make a song with a beautiful melody.
We then played a bird hunt song and walked around following the instructions.
Finally, a slow song where we rested and then danced slowly to the beat. Again, a lot of fun!

Spanish: Review and Zero

We practiced:
-hola (hello)
-buenos días (good morning)
-las vocales (the vowels) with sign language
-los números (the numbers) 1-10 with sign language
-introduced "cero" (zero)
-stamped on paper matching numbers
-and played the kids' all-time fave: The Flyswatter Game" to practice the numbers. I'd say a number in Spanish and the child swats it. It was fun.

Baby Girl's Homeschooling

Sight Words

Shapes: rectangle, star, oval, heart

Shapes and matching items with the same shape.

Cards I made with body parts

Desk Work

Today, K chose the Spiderman activity book (what a shocker, right?).
We were supposed to count the shapes in the two boxes and then circle the ones that have fewer shapes.

Word Families: -en, -at, -ar, -ip

Montessori Practical Life: Learning to Pour Water Into a Smaller Container

It was fun using all kinds of pitchers and cups. Originally, the Montessori uses blue food coloring to color the water. It makes it easier for children to see and notice when they are getting to the top of the cup. I confess, I could've/should've colored the water, but didn't. I will next time, though.

Montessori Language Arts: Sandpaper Letters (Upper Case)

We started out with the vowels (on blue boards). We said their name, their sounds, and we traced them with our fingers.

Then we traced them on the magnetic board.

He did a great job.

We really enjoyed this activity. He wanted to keep going and going.

Tracing the letters before writing them.

After the vowels, K wanted to keep going, so we started tracing a few consonant (on pink boards) and then writing them out.

Montessori Mathematics: Spindle Boxes

This activity is pretty simple. You get all the spindles out, go through each number (starting with 0) and put the correct number of spindles in each box in front of the number.

To go a step further, we used pipe cleaners to bundle the spindles together.
Learning to twist the wire (pipe cleaner) was like a whole new world to K.
He kept practicing over and over and it seemed to be his favorite part in the whole activity.

Art: Father's Day Trophies

For the past two weeks we've been working on Father's Day Trophies for the world's best dads. K decorated his trophy with pasta, rice, wheat, beans, beads, glitter and gems. It was spray painted gold. Very pretty and worthy of a special owner (dad). Happy Father's Day! Keep an eye out for pictures of the trophy and other Father's Day gifts in the next post.

My husband had to travel for work. While he's gone, I kind of have a hard time sleeping at night (you know, holding down the fort alone is hard work, wink), so I left this note on my door to let him know where I was. He found me in the morning, no problems. :) Smart reader!

Music: Solfege

We learned about the "Solfege" Musical Scale. Also known as, Do-Re-Mi.
We learned the song from the movie and talked about how the notes rise and fall.
We used our bodies to indicate if the notes were going up or down.
We also used the Solfege hand signs to show each note.
Next week we are going to talk about actual notes (what they look like, how long each one is, etc).