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Sunday 19 April 2015

Montessori Homeschooling - Day 6

At Budsy's, we move on to letter sound /f/ to kickstart our second week of homeschooling.
Good mainstream preschools normally select a theme for a month or term (3 months) for integration of lessons. These themes can be different categories of animals like zoo animals, ocean creatures, rainforest animals, pets, prehistoric creatures and a host of other animal categories.

Themes can also be adapted from good story books for children like from popular authors like Eric Carle, Eric Hill or Julia Donaldson. Story themes mirror our primary schools' language programme called STELLAR.

See here for post on STELLAR programme. 
http://budsjuice.blogspot.sg/2013/04/stellar-programme-primary-1.html


Themes can also be about countries, people, numbers and the list is honestly endless. The sky is the limit to your creativity. A plethora of ideas are sprawled over the internet be they from blogs, educational websites, Pinterest and more.
Selecting a theme for our young Montessorians however, includes not just in the academic sense of lessons. Lessons are holistically planned so our children can learn both soft skills and the needed academic requirements.
The 5 areas in Montessori Education are :-
(1) Practical Life
(2) Sensorial
(3) Cultural & geography
(4) Language
(5) Mathematics


It takes more detailed planning to incorporate the essence of Montessori into our lessons, especially since we cater to mixed group of children; in age and abilities. This is why Montessori caters for individual curriculum. Unlike mainstream schools that group children by their age (the year they were born), we believe every one of our young Montessorians, has a different pace and there is no need for conformity in a Montessori classroom.
There may be group presentations where children congregate like for story telling sessions, music and movement and some Montessori presentations. However, directresses observe each young Montessorian on their pace of learning. There will be a specific order of activities in each child's individual check list where Montessori directresses detail their development and their individual progress.

This is precisely why Montessori education is wonderful. Each child is respected as an individual and allowed the freedom to progress at his own time. This allows them to develop confidence, gives a positive capacity for learning and most times the non-threatening learning environment helps them accelerate in their progress. The small class size in Montessori is an equally wonderful advantage.
For chubs and lil' dragon_boi, they currently big enjoy awesome class size and due to this advantage, they have opportunities to do even more if they want to.

As much as possible our home lessons will centre around the 5 areas of Montessori Education, so Budsy can replicate the holistic learning programme carried out in Montessori schools.

Here are the activities we did on Day 6 of homeschooling. As usual, Budsy will put the pictures up first and share the details of the lessons during the day. Where possible, Budsy will also share craft templates, worksheets and other activities as well, should time permit. Look out for them either in the comments or in the accompanied descriptions to the photos. For now, here's sharing the work we've done. 

We used 4 objects for today's 3-period lesson.

(1) fan
(2) float
(3) frog

(4) fish

Chubs was able to read fan effortlessly. He used his knowledge on phonetic sounds to try reading the other three words. Very pleased.
Budsy used this template to create this fish tank. Chubs used paint to colour the tank and the fish. Once dry, Budsy laminated the template and cut out the fish bowl for counting activities. You can also clip paper clips on the fish and make a magnetic fishing rod to play fishing game with this craft.
Budsy used this template to create this number puzzle game. Chubs used paint for this craft as well. Once dry, it was laminated and cut into vertical strips. Very easy game and can be used for bigger numbers as well. Control of error is when the last strip does not match/complete the picture of the fish.


You may print this Rainbow Tracing worksheet for your children to carry out tracing activities just like chubs and lil' dragon_boi! 



The boys reinforced their knowledge on the names of the parts of a fish using our Montessori cultural puzzles. 
We love these puzzles very much!
Budsy had to run some errands at the market, so Budsy brought the boys down to see the fish. They had fun distinguishing the different parts of a real fish!


Budsy got the boys to carry out their worksheets after they worked with the puzzle of a fish. If you'd like to replicate similar lessons with your children or your students, you are welcome to print these off for your personal use; either to create your own DIY puzzle of a fish or to make them like activity worksheets. Enjoy!







We went down to a neighbourhood pet store to look at the array of fish offered as pets. Chubs was somewhat horrified each time a fish came near the glass so it was just lil' dragon_boi and Budsy, who went in to check the pet store out. 


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