Montessori Monday~ Engery

Today we continue with our Waseca Biome Study and we are discussing energy! I did the first couple of presentations today for Pup and Bunny. The first one was a simple discussion on how the earth travels around the sun once a year and spins on its axis each day. This presentation was something that wasnt really new to them since we talk about it each birthday with the celebration of life. The second presentation was one I did for Bunny only since it was for 6-9. We talked about how the rays of the sun were stronger at the equator, making hotter, then at the poles, making it colder there. She got the idea, but I think she may have been a little young for it. It required a bit of measuring and she hasnt gotten that yet.

I was also able to make a couple of sun energy themed trays for this week! They were of course well received! The one with the tweezers is very tricky and I made it for Bunny. I was hoping that I would be able give her something fun and challenging!

Open and close with counting!

The colored dots tell the girls what color and number to put in each container.

Tweezing Suns

These are actually small confetti and it makes it tricky!

Both girls worked really hard today. Bunny was having a hard time working for a longer period of time on things. This happens alot lately and I'm not sure if we are moving too fast or if she just doesnt want to work too hard. We really had a lot of crying over a few easy words I wrote out for her and when we moved on to math, she couldnt get into it. So I thought that I should make sure that she had covered all the right things with the Golden Bead. I started right back at the beginning with her. I represented the introduction to golden bead and realized that she still gets the hundred square and the thousand cube mixed up (she says the hundreds cube, and thousand square). So we reviewed this over and over. Then I moved onto the the cards and we played go fetch! Several times and she got them all correct. I then changed the go fetch to the stamps in the stamp game. She also did well with this. So I had her get one number and then another. Then we added those numbers together. She did this easily. Next I made a number for her to subtract for the addition problem. She did this well too. I also had her read out the numbers each time there was a new one. She read them all, but still hesitated when she would see the thousand and hundreds. I did point out the fact that there was colors to the numbers and she thought that was cool, but I'm not sure that it helped or not. I guess we will keep working on this,  but at least she gets alot of the work! Now I just need to make it fun for her! Anyone have some thoughts or ideas on this? I am thinking that maybe some of this attitude is due to Tadpole's passing. She really doesn't show her deeper emotions all the time and this is something she has never had to feel. Maybe that is what some of this is.

After we got through the math work, I pulled out all of our sounds! That's right I pulled them all out. We were on a role and I asked her the sounds about 3-4 at a time. She got 90% of them right! I did single and double letters so I was really proud of her. I was thinking that she just wasn't there, but she has most of them. Now I think we need to practice reading words with all the sounds in them. So I guess that leaves me to make an object box for her. So that is my next task. Whew! It was exhausting for both us to literally test what she knew, but I was feeling unsure of where she was at. It is good to know that she is retaining most of the information!

Pup worked really hard today too. She pulled out the puzzles and worked on those again. She also tried out the new work and I was amazed that she was able to do the counting for the pompom work! We also pulled out the number rods and she was able to line them up properly. We also practiced counting the segments on each rod. She really liked this! I hope we repeat it soon. She is growing and is defiantly thinking like a 3-6 student! :) When I was working with Bunny, Pup pulled the cylinder block off the shelf and took the cylinders out. She then lined them up to make a stair! She even corrected the mistakes she made! I was so proud of her! Here are some pictures of her working!

So that is how our week started! It is tiring, but it is good! I hope that we are headed for another good week! If you want to see some more amazing Montessori work, be sure to stop by Living Montessori Now! She has a great post showing outdoor Montessori work and Bunny and Pup's picture is up there! Happy Schooling!