300 Picture Books - the list so far

These are all the books I have written down towards our 300 Picture Books challenge for 2015. I think there are a few more, but this is my starting list!

 

1. The Nature Year: January

2. Abby the Alligator

3. Bubble Bear

4. Copycats

5. The Cat in the Hat

6. Gorilla, Be Good!

7. Jaguar's Jungleberry Jamboree

8. Winter

9. The Lamb Who Loved to Laugh

10. We're Going on a Bear Hunt

11. Olive the Octopus's Day of Juggling

12. The Pig's Picnic

13. Worm's Wagon

14. The First Day of School

15. The Nature Year: February

16. When Tilly Turtle Came to Tea

17. The Story Blanket

18. Hungry Caterpillar

19. New Baby

20. Frozen Storybook

21. Kangaroo Kazoo

22. Teeth are Not for Biting

23. Rosie Rabbit's Radish

24. The Yak Who Yelled Yuck!

25. Monkey's Miserable Monday

26. The Nature Year: March

27. Seal's Silly Sandwich

28. Zack the Lazy Zebra

29. Hide and Seek Hippo

30. The Nicest Newt

31. Umbrellabird's Umbrella

32. Ten Little Caterpillars

33. Enormous Elephant Show

34. The Quiet Quail

35. Tortuga

36. Fifi Ferret's Flute
37. Owl's Winter Rescue

263 to go! 

Happy Birthday Dr Seuss!

One of the presentations in developing spoken language is to read and learn about poetry. This was meant to be an Interval 1 presentation, but we have been too busy reading about winter, so we are covering it this term.

We were bought by my gran a whole Dr Seuss set last year, and we haven't read any yet. The Poems Presentation is one we have planned for this week, and last night I decided we should start reading Dr Seuss, unbeknown to me that today is Dr Seuss's birthday!

So, Happy Birthday Dr Seuss! We will enjoy reading your books this week!

Sound Games

In the Keys of the World language album, Sound Games, learning to identify beginning, then middle, then ending sounds, is done fairly early on.

Initially you start with different objects, and play a game similar to I-Spy, and the child gets to start to learn to hear the initial sounds. Initial sounds are then looked at through pictures. 

We started off with the objects game (with a little 'help' from Bear, as you can see!)

However, Addie was actually finding it very different to grasp the concept of beginning sounds at all. The only two she could recognise, and only with her name and Jay's name, were 'c' and 'j'... 

I have been looking at other Montessori blogs, and I actually decided that for Addie, she needed repetition of each sound to start recognising it, so the sound games are almost a little too advanced for her at the moment. 

Following what some other Montessori homeschoolers do, we ordered Alphatales:

These are American English, but they have been working so well, and Addie loves them! We do one new one each day, and try to do something related to it. (We are doing 'm' on Monday)... 

Here was our 'b' experience:

BUBBLES!

 

We then went and looked at some of the objects I had tried earlier in the day and we found these:

bucket, balloon, bauble and.... yep... block! 

I was confused when she chose the cube from the Pink Tower, but when we were looking at it, she called it a 'block'... I hadn't even thought of that, but it is a great example of something Jessica says - firstly, you do not have to go out and buy these objects, you can find them around your house. Secondly, one object can be several sounds. The 'cube', can be a 'block' or also 'pink', for example. 

So we are about a third of the way through the alphabet, but also adding other sounds (sh, ch, qu, etc), which is amazing and so logical (in my training, these sounds would not be covered until a child was reading CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) or CVCC/CCVCC/CCVC words! 

It makes so much more sense to include all sounds at this stage, because we as adults are able to distinguish between different sounds, but for a child, why should we not teach them the sound for 'i' (as in I did this), or 'ea' as in 'eat', or o-e, as in 'phone' - all of the words they know and sounds they are hearing at this age as well as 'a' as in 'cat', or 'i' as in 'pig'...

We also play I-Spy a lot, and I can really see her beginning to actually get this!

More to follow soon!

Our most productive day yet!

In our new classroom, we spent 2.5 hours this morning (just under our planned goal of 3 hours a day). Wow! So much work was done, and a large variety of things, more than with our old way of doing things.

A cool extension I made loosely based on the geometric cards that go with the geometric cabinet!

Looking out the window for the horses, Addie says "Where neigh gone?"

Every child has a huge potential if we let them develop it!

I tend to spend a lot of time (probably way too much) surfing the internet looking at educational things that inspire me. I came across a homeschooling website, and it had some examples of self-directed work that children had done. This is not necessarily Montessori work, but I love the way it demonstrates how a child can really get their teeth into something they love and learn at the same time, without the constraints of a prescribed and timed curriculum. If they are given the freedom to learn, look what they can produce! Here is an example of Ella, aged 9, who undertook a year long study on foxes, completely her own choice, and produced so many wonderful things including a 30-page Fox Encyclopaedia which she word processed. Think of all the skills she has developed in that one year.

http://pbhkids.tumblr.com/post/55635090139/fox-encyclopedia-by-ella-age-9

The skills I can think of are:

Zoology - study of animals, their habitats, different types of foxes, lifecycles, habitats, endangered species (if you look closely she includes this information on her pages)

Geography - where animals come from, the biomes/continents they live in

Language skills - writing a table of contents, alphabetisation, the format of books, note taking etc

Practical skills - word processing, book binding, using a scanner, typing skills, referencing and citing references, research skills, sewing, decision making, presentation skills

Art - sewing, using clay, photography

There are probably loads more that haven't automatically come to mind, but how amazing is that? This is what is possible in Montessori elementary (primary in the UK, or ages 6-12 approx)... I can't wait for this time!