As promised I have a plan for the other part of my school year! I will be doing the badges with Bunny, but Pup is not interested in them, and I dont think Bug will be either. So I came across this really sweet idea from Elizabeth Foss over at In the Heart of My Home.She has created a school plan called Along the Alphabet Path. She has written a little story for each alphabet letter that goes with the flower fairy alphabet book (by Cicely Mary Barker)! Now this idea is not really Montessori, but it will offer at lot of fun in addition to the Montessori work that we are going to be doing all year. I am hoping that this Letter a week plan will give Pup an intro to sounds (I can play alot of eye spy with the letters we do learn), it will help Bug start to learn her sounds, and I hope that it will allow Bunny to really have a chance to cement the sounds in her mind. Not to mention it will be fun! Each week will will read the story one day, Present the sound and the sound basket another, and I also want to use a few other alphabet books to read during circle time each week too. So this should give us a alot of fun ideas for each circle time. In addition to our alphabet books, Elizabeth has a whole list of books that go with a theme that she made for each letter (A is for Apple). So I will also have a science theme for each week if we would like to use them. This will really be helpful for those weeks when I cant think of something! :) Backup is awesome! I know that this sounds like a ton of stuff, but some of it will happen, some wont! But that is the best part about homeschooling, there is room to flex.
Now to make our Montessori work together with this plan, I will have a shelf set up with our weekly letter and the letter basket. I also will have the trays that are in the Karen Tyler albums that correspond to the theme that we pick for each letter. For example, if we do a is for apple, we would have apple life cycle cards, making apple sauce Practical life, apple prints with paint, etc. I think that this will be fun and pretty easy to work with. Like I said, this looks like a lot, but we arent going to do it all every week. Alot of this will change as we go I am sure! :) Besides that we may spend more time on a subject if it is something that we feel needs more exploration. This will allow Bunny to work on a badge each week, but still allow her to learn longer if she wants, or do something different if the interest strikes! I hope this will allow me to have a structure for our days while still having the freedom to be what they want to be! Let me know if you visit Along the Alphabet Path let me know what you think!
What is your plan this year?
Those are great ideas! I have gone through the alphabet in several different ways in my preschool class -- one way I used for years was the letter-a-week plan. I really liked it! We learned a song for each letter with the letter name, sound, and picture and did a "project" for each letter. Here is an example of the song we would sing for each letter: "A is for apple, apple apple, a is for apple, /a/, /a/, /a/. /a/ being the sound for A. I used the alphabet flash cards at www.makinglearningfun.com for the song/sound/pictures. She also has do-a-dot letters, road letters, and lots of other ideas for using with the alphabet and lots of different themes. Everything she makes is free and downloadable. I have found so many great resources on her site over the years! You should check it out if you haven't already.
ReplyDeleteI also made up an "Alphabet Project List" of items that start with each letter that you can glue, stick, etc. on to each of the alphabet letters. For example, for letter A, we would glue little paper apple punch-outs onto the letter A. You can put all of the letter projects together and make an alphabet book! If you would be interested in my list, I can email it to you. Just let me know!
ReplyDeleteI was looking at the Alphabet Path, but J-jo just wouldn't be interested in fairies:-P lol I loved it though.
ReplyDeleteMieke~ Thanks so much for all the ideas!!!!! That is awesome! It will be so helpful! You are the best!
ReplyDeleteTGWPT~ I think that you are right! Jo-jo would probably rather do something different! I'm gald you liked it! You should look around at her other ideas, I think she has other alphabet themes! Thanks for stopping by!
Thank you very much. This is great post.
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