Montessori Homeschooling - Day 4

*pant!*

No mean feat trying to put up (upload pics, share videos, share lessons and templates where available) for the many different activities we are doing daily!

Budsy will try Budsy's best to share as much as possible, so those of you who are just trying the Montessori method out for the first time or are currently homeschooling your children, can save some time from the bulk of lesson planning.  Budsy hopes these sharings help relieve some prep work for you. 

We went easy on Day 4. We even took a day off on Friday, so Budsy could bring the boys out for some outdoor fun!

1st week of homeschooling was superdee awesome and we are looking forward to do more fun stuff together in our humble abode. We welcome everyone to follow our learning adventures!

Note : Budsy will usually upload the pictures first. Scroll through each picture to read about the activities and (where available), Budsy will update templates in the comment box below each picture.

Lots of love,
Budsy.

Budsy woke up hearing two cute little voices having a very cute conversation.

Lil' dragon_boi : Hurry chubs! The school bus is here.

Chubs : Wait for me, baby! I'm trying to carry my Thomas bag.

Lil' dragon_boi : (in a draggy voice) Wokayyy... but we're gonna be late for school, I tell you...

Chubs : Okay okay... I'm done! Let's go, baby.

Both boys : Say bye to mommy first.

Pretended to close my eyes like I was still sleeping.

Chubs : Ssshh, mommy's still sleeping.

Lil' dragon_boi : (kisses me on my nose) Bye, mom.. we're going to school. Goodnight.

PS. I bet the boys are gonna bawl their eyeballs out when they really go to school next time. Lol!

We got out our /c/ box that was filled to the brim and worked with it again. The boys enjoyed exploring with the objects in greater detail. They shared their new observations with Budsy. 


Chubs was asking how come it was dark when he peeps through the window. We talked and played with the shutter for a bit. Then, he asked/talked about the car - where he normally sits, about seat belts, the engine, the bonnet, of how the petrol goes into the car and more!

Budsy bought this book via a spree at Singapore Morherhood Forum (SMH). Budsy likes how simple the exercises are and can be used to complement Budsy's Montessori Phonics lessons on phonemic awareness.

Budsy loves the layout of the book, the fat square grids, the beautiful illustrations and the hollow letter tracing sheets, closely mirror Budsy's own Rainbow Writer Worksheets. 

Budsy got chubs and lil' dragon_boi to work on the Thinker's tracing worksheets using a /c/, crayon.

For the activity sheet, instead of getting the boys to simply cut and paste the given cut-outs, Budsy laminated them and added self-adhesive fasteners (velcro) to turn the activity sheet into a play-mat. Budsy can't wait to jumble the pieces up after we have covered more letter sounds and get them to sort them out on the specific play-mats. 

Budsy went through the 3-period lesson using the geometric solids again and happy that the boys still remember them. So, we proceeded to work on the extension activity - which was identifying the different objects that had a conical shape to them. Budsy had a party hat, a small yellow cone Budsy used at home to teach the boys how to dribble the soccer ball and a real ice-cream cone.

We discussed further on the other uses of cones, apart from traffic cones and soccer cones. We also covered a little on safety -where cones are sometimes placed to signal a no entry zone or stopping for the traffic police during routine road blocks, etc.

There almost wasn't an ice-cream cone left to see through to the end of the session because when Budsy passed it to chubs, he chomped off a big bite off it! Natural tendencies of a child.  No harm done except the fact that a slightly tilted ice-cream cone was left for conclusion, at the end of the lesson.

Our craft activity for the day was making a party hat using cut-outs of a star. The boys glued the stars and pasted them on the template of the party hat. Budsy carefully opened up the Pororo hat and traced out a nice pattern for our craft.

The boys brought out a lizzie that they said it looked like the chameleon from Eric Carle's, The Mixed-up Chameleon, during story time.

We discussed more about chameleons and briefly spoke of what /c/, camouflage, means. Some facts you can share are :-

(1) Chameleons are reptiles.

(2) Reptiles have leathery skin and are cold-blooded creatures.

(3) Chameleons have long tongues which they rapidly extend from their mouth, too fast for human eyes to see properly.

(4) Chameleons generally eat insects.

(5) Some chameleons have the ability to change colour. This helps them communicate with each other and can also be used for camouflage.

After story time, all of us had a break and had /c/ /c/ /c/, as in Crunch ice-cream (vanilla, chic and choc bits like maltesers, me thinks) in our ice-cream /c/ /c/ cones.

Day 4 has been another wonderful homeschooling experience.