Our School: Work Trays Instead of Boxes

I think it's most correct to say that "I" use work trays.  Or work boxes with trays instead of boxes.  Whatever.

Anyway, each child's crate has a set of dollar store cookie sheets and the individual subjects stacked on each.  Since the kids do most of their work with me, I find that the stack of trays keeps me organized, not them.  I do, however, send them out to do they're "alone" work with a stack of trays.

Trays just take up so much less space!  Above you can see that I have six subjects stacked up for my nine-year-old and it barely takes up more space than the one subject I have set out for my second grader.

Below is the oldest, doing his reading.  His tray has a book, chart, and timer.



Here's another shot of the trays spread out.  This is memorization (Latin, history dates), cursive, and spelling with a flip camera to make it more entertaining.  I don't force a certain order, in fact, I just stack the trays according to ease of transport.  That one with the camera would be on top since the stack would tip unattractively.

More trays all spread out.  Big kid loves to take pictures.

Motor Development: Little Chains and Links

This activity is popular from my nine year old all the way to the ten month old.  She can't do the links but LOVES playing with the finished product.  Little ghosty!

Materials:  6-1 foot lengths of cheap chain from Depot (~$.60 per foot), a pile of unused "quick links" from grampa's garage, caribeaners (optional)

This takes very little presentation.  The kids just run with it.  

Auntie's Coloring Book

My sister-in-law is SO TALENTED!  Look what she made for my kids for Christmas.  She's an artist in Asheville, NC at Woolworth Walk.

By far the best coloring book we've ever had.  The kids are so careful to color it well.

It just goes to show if you give children something special, they treat it with care.  

I hope we get one every year!

Literacy: Picture Books For Fluency

There is a big push to get kids out of picture books and into chapter books.  As a picture book writer, I can tell you that's silliness.  Picture books are not just for babies!  Since they are designed to be read BY AN ADULT, the language can be quite challenging.  Plenty challenging to assign to your third or fourth grader.  Unless your child abhors them, I find picture books to be a great way to build fluency.  Since my third grader reads only 20 minutes a day in school, a chapter book would take him FOREVER, whereas a picture book "rewards the reader" in much smaller increments.

So, here's a list I've worked up of great classic picture books ordered by AR level, so you can judge their reading level.

Skip Counting: Bingo Markers

Just print out a hundred chart and use a dollar store bingo marker!


Thi

Grading: Mini-Knobbed Cylinders

I would love to buy the giant knobless cylinders, but I can't justify the price yet.  Especially when my heart is set on a $128 mass kit.  And an $80 tessellation kit.

Anyway, these were $25 and get the point across. They are challenging enough to hold my nine-year-olds attention if you get them out all at once.  The four sets are as follows:

These are popular every time I get them out.  They aren't as sexy as the big ones, but we have a storage issue and the mini set doesn't take up much space.  

Motor Development: Table Lessons

Little Kid got bored doing his school work, so we took a break for some practical life lessons.

First, we went over the names of something nearby. 

Cord, plug, socket (or outlet), floor lamp, bulb, lampshade (none of my kids knew "lampshade."  Huh.), table, table legs, table leaf (WHAT?).  He didn't understand "table leaf" so...we learned how to table apart.   

  And put it back together. 

 And take it apart. And put it back together.  You know how it goes. 

After all that work, his muscles were all tuckered out.  So, we had a lazy susan lesson.  He'd been curious about this little gadget for ages.  We set up a tiny dish part and practiced using the lazy susan and our good manners.

Then, of course, since I'm an old waitress, I showed him how to "bus" the table.  Then he did it.....about ten times.  HA!

Teaching 1, 10, 100, 1000 with beads

Of all the materials I've tried from the land of Montessori, this particular bead material is my favorite.  I got it for $15 from Alison's Montessori.  It contains nine unit beads, nine ten bars, nine hundred squares, and one thousand cube.  They are connect nylon beads, not near the same quality as the individual bead sets, but they are sufficient for me.  They are far superior to the base ten sets at Amazon due to the weight of the material.  A typical thousand block in conventional base ten material is hollow and doesn't FEEL like 1000.

My favorite Montessori album is the one at http://www.montessoriworld.org/.  I love the simplicity of the outline.  Montessori has such interesting ideas that it's a tempting to proliferate material in her style and clutter up the curriculum.  Montessori World does not make this mistake.

Decimal quantities is taught directly after the numerals and quantities of 1-9 are mastered.

Exercise 1:  Introduce the quantities 1, 10, 100, 1000.  Encourage the child to feel the quantities and say their names, hand them to you or move them around the mat when the names are said, and finally identify them when presented alone.  What is this?  Hundred.

Exercise 2:  Once the quantities are mastered (without numerals), demonstrate going to the next hierarchy every time one passes nine. Ten units is actually one ten bar.  Ten ten bars are one hundred, and following until we get to the thousand block.  The is repeated on subsequent days until the child has mastered it.

Exercise 3:  Naming Quantities:  I call this "fetching."  Hand me two hundreds.  Good, put them back.  Now go find eight tens.  

Numerals are not introduced until these three lessons are mastered.

WTN Classified Cards Expansion Pack

My kids were really disappointed to not have EVERY species of bat, rat, mouse, and shrew, so here they are.

Grampa's Garage

Oh my, the bounty we plundered in my daddy's garage.  I haven't even gotten to some of it, but this is what we have out this week.  Fancy, huh?

Bible Story Props

In kindergarten, we work on sequencing.  

Here's my son's story of Noah:  

"Noah got out of a big boat, hit his head on a rock, and died."  

I don't remember that part, you?  

Anyway, he's very tactile so I thought it would help him to play with the characters as he listened to the story.  There are some really expensive sets out there, but here's mine:

Materials:  a few packs of peg people from Michaels, all the doubles and leftovers from making the object boxes, a leftover large makeup bag for storage (not shown), a dollar store tray, some construction paper, and a slab of whiteboard from Depot.  Ignore that last item, it's not necessary.  It was just handy.  

To use:  

1.  Pre-read your story enough to know if it's in the desert or water or whatever to choose appropriate construction paper floor setting.  

2.  Dump all your junk into a lined tray.  

3.  Assign and dress characters (Our King Saul today wore a tea cup for a crown and David had a sauce pan full of mini fruit and wooden baseballs for rocks.  Goliath wore a large rice bowl for a helmet and had a wooden bat and disk propped on him for a shield and sword. I LOVED it.)

4.  Read story.  

5.  Have children retell it using the characters.

6.  Wonder how dinosaurs and a polar bear snuck into the back of the Philistine army and if that may have turned the tide....

Mama's Box of Magic Cards

Since I don't have a dedicated school room, I keep this magic box of cards to fuel my one-on-one time with the younger kids, and once in a while, the Bigs.

My very favorite is the science sequencing cards. In our school, sequencing is the BIG DEAL in kindergarten.  First this happened, then THIS happened, and FINALLY this happened.  I HEART using science for kindergarten sequencing.  No lame-o sequencing of teethbrushing.  I want to slip in some RICHNESS.  

I won't give you ever single specific link, but if you are willing to file through the freebies at each site, I can tell you where to get them: 

1.  FREE Cicada Life Cycle at Montessori Tidbits 

2.  FREE Butterfly Life-cycle from Montessori Mom

3. FREE Frog life-cycle from Montessori Mom

4.  FREE Moon cycle from Montessori Mom

5.  FREE Season cycle from Montessori for Everyone

6.  FREE Apple life-cycle from Montessori for Everyone

7. FREE  Pumpkin life-cycle from  Montessori for Everyone  followed by a baby dino life cycle from ???.

I also like sorting and go-together cards the are science-based.

1.  (not free) Carnivore, Omnivore, Herbivore cards from Montessori for Everyone

2.  (not free) Real life Geometric object sorting cards from Montessori for Everyone

3.  (not free) Patterns in Nature sorting cards from Montessori for Everyone

4.  FREE sorting and go-together cards from Montessori for Everyone and the left from a garage sale.

5.  FREE butterfly sorting and go-togethers from the classified cards at Beautiful Sun Montessori.  Not all of the butterflies have a pupa and larva to match, but ENOUGH do to make it worth your while.

My daughter LOVES them!

Alphabet Object Boxes

The boy uses these to sort beginning sounds.  He pulls the object out of the box and places it below the glued letter inside the lid.

Materials Needed:  Dollar Tree foam letters, Walmart $.94 pencil case, glue, paint pens, and a crapload of objects from Dollar tree, Michaels, Hobby Lobby and the like.  I tried to do six per sound.  Our book (100 Easy Lessons) does the phonics in this order 

1.  The "mesa" box.  I say it MAY-suh, but it should be MEE-suh.  Anyhoodle, it's M, long E, S, and short A.

M: milk, monster, moose, makeup, monkey (ignore alligator, he belongs in the last row--quality control stinks here)

long E:  equals, easel, evil, eagle, earrings

S:  star, stapler, scissors, spoon, sea horse, school house, snake, sewing machine

A:  ambulance, antelope, ant, astronaut, apple

2.  The "dirt" box:

D: disk, dish, daisy, dragonfly, dressform (something is missing.....hmmm.  Oh, it's a dinosaur.)

short I:  insect, infant, inchworm, igloo, iguana

R:  rock, rhino, ray, record, rice, ring

T:  turtle, takeout, tree, tiger, tractor, and a missing teapot (currently serving a fore mentioned dinosaur)

*The kids don't usually use these for what they are intended, but retrieving them from the correct box and returning them to said box is kind of like sorting, right?

3.  The "CONTH", which is now the CON box since I can't find a darn thing in the word that uses the second sound of TH.  This, that, them...not very object friendly.

C:  cow, cactus, cat, crown, cookie, camel

short O:  olive, ostrich, octopus (still working on this pile)

N:  needle, necklace, nail, nickel, nuts, nail polish