Our Schoolroom

I have one lone shelf for my Montessori set-up.  The only items that you will find there are set out daily, and as usual, the story-telling bag is already gone and in use.  

• Our local vertebrate classified cards
• Zach's known sandpaper letters
• A base ten bead set ('limited bead material' to Montessorians) 
• Zach's object boxes for sorting by sound (matches the sandpaper letters)
• Callie's object boxes for word building ('moveable alphabet' to Montessorians)
• Our storytelling bag (read:  13 peg people plus all the leftovers that didn't make the object boxes)

This is the only section of our homeschool with more than a one-week life span.  The rest of the house looks like this:

Trays on the tables, floor, and fireplace.  Changed weekly.

Great Store-Bought Centers

Snap circuits are by far the best toy we've ever had.  To present it, I pulled out enough pieces for the first couple of exercises and turn him loose.  Soon he comes begging for more pieces so he can keep going.  I made him play with it for a week before I allowed him access to all the pieces.  

I love this one more than the kids.  I love puzzles.  I've seen them play with it a few times, but usually only want to if I'm already doing it.

Much more beloved are the $1 tangram puzzles from Michael's. (Just be sure to take a picture of the puzzles BEFORE you open it or you might never get them back together!)

 They get taken apart, put back together, and then made into characters.

No Stress Chess is GREAT.  Mostly because my nine year old nags me to play chess and it takes SO LONG.  But no stress chess limits your options and really teaches the kids the possible moves.

Anything magnetic is popular in our house.  Magnetic Match Rings is a great activity.  I set out a few cards each day.  They do the puzzles and then play freely....  

really freely...

Bendaroos are also fantastic.  Middle Kid is really into braiding lately and bendaroos stay put for her.  However, most days, the bendaroos are shaped like people or stuck to the walls as decoration.  No mess.  I love them.

Supermind is another game that I like way more than they do.  Little Kid likes to put the pieces in the tray, but is uninterested in the cards.  Big Kid did a pile of them the first day and hasn't touched it without incentive since.  However, anything that I can make into a competition (Mama did five, how many did you do?) or let him take pictures of, immediately becomes popular again.

Place Value: Base Ten Blocks

This is the FIRST time my daughter understood what ones, tens, hundreds meant!

To play this game, you need two boards (laminated paper) labelled as you see in the picture, preferably NOT the same color as your blocks.  You also need base ten blocks and three dice.

It's usually played as "Race to 100", but I found that we didn't get enough practice making change for that to help.  We race to three hundred, hence the third die.  With one die, we'd be there all day.

The first player rolls the dice, calculates how many one blocks to pick up, and then makes any necessary exchanges if he has too many blocks in a column.  Play continues until someone reaches 200.  We played this every day for a week.   She still couldn't "carry" on paper, but at least she got the place value idea.  And kicked my tail at this game, lots.

Variation:  When we started learning borrowing, we played this game BACKWARDS.  Start with three hundred and race to zero.

Classified Cards for West Tennessee

I've seen plenty of sets of cards for kids that have species from all across the world, but I realized that I didn't care how much they knew about species in Zimbabwe if they couldn't tell a vole from a shrew in their own backyard.  (Now mind you I probably couldn't either before I made this set for them, so don't think I know so much.)  All of these species are native to our area, but I'd like to share them just the same.  If, however, the people who's pictures I used want more than a photo credit, I shall be forced to immediately remove these links.  Get ALL my stuff here.

1.  West Tennessee Reptiles (almost all photos from here)

2.  West Tennessee Mammals:  (all photos from here or Wikipedia) 

There are lots...

So many, in fact, that I didn't list all of the species of rat, mouse, shrew, and bat.  

They were all brown and looked alike.  And how many times have you been close enough to a bat in the day time to identify the species? (*Edit 1/16:  I will probably go back and make these with all of the species, as the children are very disappointed with these generic cards.)

3.  West Tennessee Fish:  (almost all photos from here)

And though we didn't do all 12 bats for our area, I did think it necessary that as children of an avid fisherman, they know all the species of bass Papa catches.

4.  West Tennessee Amphibians: (all photos from here)

5.  West Tennessee Birds: (photos primarily from this gorgeous site and the rest from here)

Wow, there are a lot of birds.

I only did ones that live here year round or there would have been a 100 more.

And while I was at it, I made a bunch of shell cards for my daughter who is currently obsessed with them.  She has a card for every shell in her collection.  These are, of course, not local.  And she doesn't want me to cut them apart yet as she sorts all her shells onto the mats. (Photos from here, here, and here)

DOWNLOAD IT ALL HERE

I used whatbird.com for the year round birds, and the Smithsonian North American Mammal site for the Mammals.  But for the fish, reptiles and amphibians, I used local site that would be of no use to you.  However, but you may be able to find your own local species by zip code here.  I will warn you, though, that it will generate more species than are truly local for you.  We only have a few salamanders here but according to the local field biologists, we only have two that are common enough to care about.

Motor Development: Stapling, Punching

This was a mistake.  I have to learn over and over again that limiting the choices is KEY for my kids.  Later in the week, I cut it down and split it into two trays.  And, this is also one of those activities for which that Dollar Tree supplies WILL NOT WORK.

Punching tray:

Use 1 DECENT hole puncher, like the one pictured above, leftover strips of paper from other projects, Dollar Tree Zen garden tray for a trash tray and a paper liner.  You see the froggy punch out on the left?  Dollar tree punchers are HARD and don't line up correctly.

Variations:  other decent punchers (one or two only), a three hole punch (a good one that actually releases the paper and does stick on one or more holes.

Stapling and UN-stapling tray:


Same tray, paper, and liner set-up.  A DECENT stapler, a staple remover, and box of staples. Demonstrate for child how to load and unload stapler, staple two sheets together, remove staples, and put the tray to rights.

*Note:  Child WILL want to staple without paper or hold like a gun and *shoot* staples.  I allowed it as long as the staples remained on the tray or were *shot* into the trash tray.  It's up to you, but know that it WILL come up.

Motor Development: Playdoh and Golf Tees

This activity was best for my 5-year old. It's an old stand by, but since I let them use real hammers and nails, the hammering part wasn't that exciting.  However, my five year old did really enjoy cramming every single tee into the dough at once and balancing all the balls on them.  (Wish I had a picture of that..  It looked like an inside out porcupine.)

To set it up:

Materials needed:   tees, Dollar Tree(DT) dough,  DT boot tray, DT mini-bouncy balls or marbles, hammer from some other toy

Demonstrate activity for child from beginning to setting the tray back up for the next kid.

Motor Development: Zen Garden

This is a 100% Dollar Tree activity!  One Zen Garden, a piece of felt for a liner to catch errant sand, and a Dollar tree cookie sheet. (The shell is from Middle Kid's collection) The rocks and rakes you see are actually a combination of two $1 gardens, as I use the other tray for sandwriting words.

All three kids (5-9yrs), loved this activity.  They used the rakes on the sand and arranged the rocks and I think there might have been a transformer battle in there at one point.

Not very Zen.