Covering a lot of ground

Beeper has been doing a lot of spontaneous "schooling" lately, ever since we got the library cleaned up and organized again. It is a difficult room to keep clean, because that's where my sewing machine is, so I often have art and sewing projects under construction in there. Environment definitely makes a difference, because he shows more interest in his school materials when they are organized and he has plenty of room to work.

He has been doing his puzzles a lot. He's been showing so much interest in puzzles and also maps that I decided the other day to stop waiting for the continents puzzle I ordered to get here and just go ahead and get out the two we already have - Australia and North America. (We got these off ebay, btw. Montessori Deals Store often has map puzzles up fo $10.) He has loved doing these. He did Austraili first and struggled with it the first time. I walked him through it and talked to him about looking at the shapes and the fat sides of the pieces. Something clicked for him, because after that first time, he was able to put it together pretty quickly. North America presented an even bigger challenge. It took a lot of practice and coaxing for him to figure out how to fit Canada in with its odd shapes. Then all those little countries in Central America are pretty hard for him.

We looked at his globe and an atlas and talked about how North America is where we live and Australia is on the other side of the world. I want to start a unit on Australia sometime in the next coulple of months. Firebirdluver will be going o Australia on a business trip in July, and I think it will be fun for us to learn about where Daddy is going to be. If anyone has any suggestions about good books, movies, activities, etc. about Australia, it would be much appreciated.

He's also still really into his dinosaurs. Mostly he just plays with them and tries to remember the names and what they each like to eat. W recently bought this DVD set on the advice of a friend and started watching it yesterday. It is way beyond Beeper, but firebirdliver and I found it fascinating. I would recommend it for dinosaur enthusiasts, adults or older kids. They show all kinds of things scientists are learning and theorizing about the dinosaurs using computers, other technology and new ideas. Cool stuff. It might even be a good way to teach older kids a little bit about how scientists work.

We also recently found a marble run at a yard sale, and he really loves that. We're calling it "physics" class. Actually, I think he is learning a lot from it about cause and effect and planning where the marbles are going to go. I help him sometimes with it but mostly try to sit back and let him experiment and figure things out. It's good for both of us, and I can see things clicking in his mind as he works.

Botany is also well under way, of course, with our seedling and things in the window sills. If we're not too busy with other things, we'll probably start planting things outside this weekend. I am thinking of also maybe having a window box inside this year of carrot seeds especially for Beeper to take care of on his own. The carrots were his favorite part of the garden last year, and anything that encourages him to eat vegetables is a good thing in my book.

Those are his main focuses these days. Ocassionally he gets out his other activities and plays with them for a while. Yesterday he spent some time with his sandpaper letters and rice tray, and we worked together for a while with his number basket. He had a good time matching up the numbers from the different games. He's slowly learning to identify the numbers, which is also cool to see.

I recently purchased the Bob Books. I thought they would be good to keep on the shelf and look at as he was interested in them. When we first got them, he wanted to look at them, and he and I looked through the first two, and I tried to walk him through sounding some things out. The letters in the first two books are ones he mostly already knew. He wasn't too interested in the time at trying to read them for himself, but the other day he got them out again, and he and I went through the first book again. This time he was much more focused on the words and trying to sound many of them out. He also showed great improvement in going from left to right. Have I mentioned I love seeing his learning process and how these things develop in him over time when I back off and let him figure it out for himself. I am very pleased with how much he's been learning lately. I've been feeling guilty about not being more hands on, but maybe that has been for the best anyway.

More with Geo Solids

I have found out that Beeper is much more receptive to learning the names of and matching objects to the geometric solids as a one at a time, spontaneous activity. When we would try to work with a few at a time, he would shut down pretty quickly. Yesterday, though, he was playing with a couple of cylindrical containers, and I asked him to go find his geometric solid that matched. He thought about it for a minute, then ran to the library to retrieve the cylinder. I told him they were all cylinders and asked him if he could find any more around the room. He really enjoyed this game. I would spot one and give him a clue about where to look (like, "I see a cylinder over in that corner" - I guess like in the "I Spy" game), then he would find it. He quickly got good at identifying them and kept saying, "Let's find more cylinders!" and showing them off to his dad while we stacked them up pink tower style.

I need to remember this and try to apply it to other things. Maybe it helps him focus to only think about one thing at a time.

Land, Water and Air

I decided this morning to introduce Beeper to Land, Water and Air. First we got out his Land and Water Globe and briefly talked about it again. Then I brought out cards I had made using these files from Jojoebi. I would take out one card, and we would talk about what the picture was, then decide together which category it fit in. We actually got through all of the cards, even though he was obviously getting bored with it toward the end. Water and Air were easy for him, but for some reason he had trouble with the Land ones. Although, something that we talked about obviously stuck with him, because later he was playing and pretending he was in the desert (one of the pictures we had talked about).

I imagine the land concept will become more clear to him when we get our Land and Water trays made. I think he will enjoy those. And I am thinking this would be a fun follow-up lesson on air.

One thing (of many things) I am learning from "homeschooling" a preschooler is just how much his learning is changing over time. When we started last year, there was no way he would sit down with me for fifteen minutes and work through an activity or lesson with me. Now that is the way he prefers to do things. (Except that I can't for the life of me get him to sit through a dressing frame presentation, but you can't win them all.)

I'd like to do some more of the introductory science activities sometime soon. Magnetic and non-magnetic is pretty obvious, but I am not sure how to explain the concept of living vs. non-living. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to present/explain that to a three-year-old?

This afternoon he asked if he could play with the cylinders. Afer he took all of the weights out of the box, he looked at them and announced that he was going to build a stair with them. I was so amazed, because he has only had mild interest in the brown stair (and mostly for making skylines), and he hasn't used it in a while. He proceeded to line them all up in size order (mostly) before playing with them and eventually putting them back in the right spaces. Then he worked on the brown stair for a short while.

Sometimes I feel like we're just kind of faking it, because we're not very organized, and we don't do a lot of "preschool" type activities most days, but then we have some relatively successful days like these where I can see that he is learning a lot and changing a lot, and what we're doing is working well for us.

Flowers, Colors, Water and Science

When I ckecked my sidebar early this morning, I found all sorts of great activity ideas I am looking forward to trying. I knew just which one we were going to start with, though. Melissa at Chasing Cheerios did a series of activities with O that incorporated a lot of things I've been wanting to do with Beeper and a lot of what we've been working on lately.

I started with six smallish clear glasses (because that's what I had that would work). I filled three with water and dyed them red, yellow and blue. Then we got out White Rabbit's Color Book, and I told Beeper we were going to do a science experiment with White Rabbit. We read along, and as we went, I would have him use a dropper to transer water into the empty glasses, corresponding to what Rabbit was doing in the book. This is the first time he's used a dropper, so it was tedious, and the glasses were so big that we only had a little water in the bottom of each one, but it was enough to see the colors. He enjoyed seeing how we ended up with the same color as Rabbit everytime.

We had four white daisies in our bouquet, so I let him choose four colors to keep for our display/next science experiment. He picked red, yellow, green and blue. This meant we needed to mix some more green, so I filled the glass up with water and let him add the food coloring this time, which he got a kick out of. Then I set the glasses up on the shelf and let him add the daisies.

I was also inspired recently by this post over on Good + Happy Day. When I first read it, I thought it was a great idea but that we didn't have that many vases. I remembered this morning, though, that we actually have quite a few handmade ceramic vases. I took one of those out after Beeper finished with the daisies and asked him if he'd like to do more flower arranging. I let him pick from what was left in the big bouquet and arrange it in the new vase. He actually did a much better job than I would have with the arrangement. I was quite impressed (although I didn't get a picture yet). Now our kitchen area has flowers in every corner.

Flower and Plant Cards

Our growing things in the window sill have inspired some impromtu botony lessons. The terrarium makes it easy to see the roots on the bean plants, so I took it out of the window the other day so we could look at it and talk about the parts of the plant. Then I got out the tree puzzle I bought a few months ago, and we used that to go over the parts of a plant again. At the time, it seemed the only term Beeper picked up on was "dirt" which wasn't even one of the things we went over, but this morning we reviewed, and he actually remembered about half of them.

We bought some flowers this weekend while grocery shopping, and he has been interested in those as well. I was inspired by a recent post on The Movable Alphabet (don't you love Susan Dyer's teaching style?) and thought maybe we could learn about the parts of a flower this week, then dissect one of the flowers from our bouquet.

I made some nomenclature cards this morning to go with these lessons. I know you can download similar cards in a few different places, but I wanted to make some that would match our puzzles. The puzzles came from Montessori Concepts, but they look very much like the puzzles I've seen on a couple of other websites as well. (speaking of Montessori Concepts, has anyone else ordered anything from them that never came? I'm getting pretty disgruntled, and they haven't been answering my e-mails) If you would like you can download the parts of a flower cards here and the parts of a plant cards here.

In anticipation of Spring

We most likely won't be seeing Spring around here for a couple more months, but we are already thinking about spending more time outside. Recently, when I made the diaper bag, Beeper kept asking if I would make a bag for him next. I decided the next day that we needed to make him a field bag from firdbirdluver's old pants:

When I explained to him what it was for, he was very excited. He calls it his "explorer bag." We put a flashlight, measuring tape, magnifying glass, notepad and pencil in it. When it is time to actually use it outside I may also add a little shovel and even some clippers or scissors for cutting flowers.

We also started some seeds. I may be jumping the gun on these a little, but I am impatient to get this year's garden started. I bought a tray with a lid this year, and it does seem to be working better than last year's egg cartons. The lid makes a big difference in keeping the soil moist. (sorry for the poor pictures here - maybe I should have moved them out of the window sill for pictures)

I did find that some of my egg carton cups still have unsprouted seeds in them, so I thought I would try an experiment. I have moved them to a window where they should get more attention, and I am planning to start watering them again in a couple of weeks to see if they will grow. I am interested to see what happens:

In the same window sill are our bean plants. They were growing so big so fast that we decided to try and transplant them after about a week. I made a simple terrarium using a large vase with a tupperware as the lid (very fancy, I know). The plants had already started rooting into the paper towel, so I put down a layer of dirt, threw in the paper towel with the beans attached and put down another layer of dirt. It has worked well, because all three plants are thriving.

Geometric Solids: Day 2

I found and printed these great cards from Our Montessori Story this morning to go with the geometric solids. Beeper saw me cutting them out and immediately went to get out his solids and play with them. When I had finished laminating enough of the cards, I had him get out the cube, cone and square-based pyramid (mostly because those seemed to be the three he was most interested in at that moment). I gave him a stack with about four or five cards for each solid to match, but he just wasn't all that interested in the activity. It was obvious he knew what to do, but his interest didn't hold beyond finding one match for each shape. I put the cards away, figuring he just wasn't in the mood at the moment. I thought maybe we'd try again later.

Then it hit me that maybe I just needed a different approach. He had gone off to play somewhere else, and I decided to gather a few supplies. I got a big, canvas bag and walked around the house looking for objects that would correspond to the different solids. Beeper was immediately interested again, so we went and got the solids back out and I showed him how to match the objects to them. He liked this better, as long as I agreed to take turns with him.

I also taught him the knock-knock game this morning with the sandpaper letters he has learned so far to see if it would renew some interest in them. He enjoyed that as well, and it was good practice for him as well as a way for me to see how many letters he still remembered since last time we worked on them.