Montessori School Plan 2012- 2013

Well, school is starting soon as we all know and I have promised to share with you my plan for the girls school year! Here is that post! If you follow along here regualrly, you know that we are going to continue Montessori schooling for Bunny as she enter's first grade! This has left me really having to research and learn a whole lot this summer to be ready! So far it has been really good and what I have learned has changed how I look at Bunny and her capablilties. The difference between the elementary classroom and the Primary Classroom is HUGE! This has left me with the need for alot of materials in the same of amount of space as before! That is a work in progress, I will let you know how it works! Now on to my plan! I will start with Bunny.

Bunny's Plan:

We are going to be starting out year off with the Great Lessons for Bunny! These are 5 lessons that help give the child a great appreciation of the universe and helps inspire them to dig deeper and learn. The first one is about the creation of the universe, the second one is about the coming of life starting with the smallest of organisms and progressing through evolution history to the human. The third story is about the coming of man where we talk about how man was created differently, with a heart and soul to love. Next we talk about the things man has done. The fourth story is the story of letters where we talk about how writing and reading progressed and finally we end with numbers and how started using them! This is where so much of the Montessori elementary work begins! These stories are meant to inspire the child through their imagination! They are the core of everything! I am really excited about these and they do require alot of prep work since there are time lines, experiments, and charts that go with them! This is where the majority of my work has come! Thanks to a very dear friend, I have a better shot at getting it all done!

Another key element is "going out". The elementary child really NEEDS to go out and experience the world. They need to start to be in society and find information in places that are not in the classroom. It is a huge part of their development at this age. So we will be doing alot more of this. I also hope to get together with out homeschool group alot for some group work! In the elementary Montessori room, group work is almost a constant, and at home we dont have that. So this will help her meet that need!

Math is going to start with some remedial work to help her quickly learn the math facts that we never got to last year! We have the Montessori Finger Charts that I bought from Montessori Print Shop. All she does is use some equation cards and the charts to practice her math fact until they are memorized. After that we will jump into the elementary albums and start working on those. The things that I think we will get to this year are: hierarchical numbers (million and higher), using the 4 operations to work with problems with long numbers. After that we are heading into the Large Bead frame, checker board for multiplication, and the racks and tubes for division! Whew! I also know that we are going to do a lot of fraction work, since Bunny is really interested in that, and I know that we are going to try to hit the degrees of the fractions as well! Oh and I also bought the Melissa and Doug money set so we can start to learn money value.
We are also going to start working on elementary geometry really soon too. Bunny loves the idea of all the insets to teach angles and congruency. She really is excited about that! I also bought the geometry sticks, so there will be a lot of fun with these too!

Language work is going to be learning to read! Bunny really wants to do that, and I know that if we follow the supportive plan laid out in my albums for remedial reading, I think she will get it soon! There is also a lot of writing that will happen with the reading too. As we work on that we will be really working on Grammar! When I got my Montessori order, I got the grammar symbols, so we are going to jump right in there! Then there is grammar boxes and lots of writing too!

Geography is going to be tied up with the Great Lessons and I think there will be alot of pin maps too! I also read in Maria Montessori's book From Childhood to Adolescences, that map reading and compass work is such a great way for the child to start to gain some Independence. So maybe it will fun to learn that and take some walk in the park.

History is greatly tied in with the great lessons and those time lines. We are going to play it by interest at this point beyond that. There are alot of stories and resource at the library that we can use according to her interests.

Botany will be a little lighter this year since we hit it really hard last year. I really think that we will be working on it as the interest hits! I think that there is some cool stuff there too that she will want to do!

Art is going to be rather fun too! I want to try Drawing with Children for her since she is so art oriented. We are also going to do some of the art studies from Adventures of Bear. All of that is combined to make it a rather fun art year. I try not to bog down the year with too much of a plan since interest may change and so will we! :)

Pup's Plan:

For Pup I will be starting at square one to make sure that the work that we did this past year is really covered now that she is older. I think we did ok, but review will be a good thing! We are going to really be sticking to the basics, hitting really hard on practical life work and the sensorial work! I want to make sure that we do the basic work well.

For math, I know that she will want to keep learning her numbers, but we are only going to start that after we make sure we have done the proper sensorial work!

Language will see us start some sandpaper letters. She is really starting to get into a sensitive period for letters and I want to make sure that we take advantage of that!

For the cultural work, I think that Pup will get alot of the same things that Bunny will be getting in the Great Lessons. I will have most everything ready and Karen Tyler's Albums cover so much of the same things at her level. It will help stream line some of the prep work I will need to do! I think that we are really going to be trying to go by interest the most. She is young and will let me know what she needs to learn!

Finally both girls are going to be working with the Montessori Bell exercises for music! I found two sets of hand bells to paint just like My Boy's Teacher over at What DID We Do All Day. So far they look good, and Bunny is really excited about them! We are going to use these to listen to the notes, match them, and also to learn to what the notes look like written. I am hoping that we can all learn together! I dont read music, so I really do hope we can ALL learn!

I think that this covers all of areas for out plan this year! It looks really intense written out, but I think that it will remain rather simple as we go! I still plan to make some fun trays for Pup, but I dont think that I will have the time or space in my school room for all the ones I used to do. I really love all this Montessori planning! How about you? What is your plan this year? Do you plan to do some Montessori or are you going to do something different this year? I would LOVE to hear your plans! You can share them in the comment area!

I am linking up to Montessori Modnay and 4th Annual "Not" Back to School Blog Hop. Be sure that you stop by for some awesome ideas and posts from the homeschool bloggers!!!! Happy Schooling!