Changing

I’ve been thinking ahead about things I’d like to do with Ender in the next year, specifically since he will be old enough to attend preschool. This past fall we started our experiment of sorts. Brian and I knew we wanted to educate our children at home, but we were unsure of what exactly that would look like. As I read more and more about different philosophies of education (and gave Brian the condensed version), Montessori is mostly where we landed. I suppose technically we would be considered eclectic, since there is a lot that I appreciate about other philosophies, specifically Charlotte Mason.


In the last 6 months I have:

1. Worked on providing a learning environment in our home

2. Tried to have a definite work period in the mornings

3. Learned to observe the boys in order to know where to take them next.



Lesson planning is one of my very favorite things. I get to take my observations from the previous week or two and decide where the boys should go next. Some work stays on the shelves as-is, sometimes someone is ready for the next stage or an extension on a work, sometimes they are ready to move on to new work. The difficult part is that I sometimes get so excited about planning lessons for the boys that I get so far into planning to the point that we would be having sit-down school all day! Hardly the thing for a peschooler, much less a toddler!


So I think I’ve found a system that is working for all of us and I thought I’d share our slightly new direction.



1. Montessori Time Daily. This is usually 45 minutes, and I’ve been doing a lot of presenting (and re-presenting) of math works lately. Ender is working with our own version of the teen board and a lot of counting work. Ezra is keeping busy with practical life and farm play. He is in love with his animals!


2. Table Time. This time is often art, but includes working with dough, making books, specific crafts (like our butterflies from the other day) and other structured activities. We’ve been having a lot of collages lately now that Ezra can dip a q-tip in white glue without licking the end.


3. Books. We’ve always included a lot of books in our lives. We read several times a day and Ender is starting to enjoy listening to longer books. One of the changes we’re making for summer is to add themed book baskets to our learning area. We are blessed with an excellent library system and I take advantage!


4. Outside. As we head into summer this is where you’ll most likely find us.


Another idea I’d like to experiment with over the summer is to have a special center set up that will be changed as the boys lose interest. My starting ideas are to be job centric- postal worker, veterinarian, doctor, farmer, firefighter, etc. I’m curious to see what they think about that.

Weekend Redux

Wow- I'm glad the weekend is over! Our grand plans to clean out the basement were kind of thwarted- we only got about half way through. Our dear friend Sarah gave birth to her first child Friday evening so after I got out of the recording session Saturday morning (that ran over by an hour!) we went straight to the hospital to visit Sarah and her new daughter Juniper.

 

 

My parents were also moving over the weekend and they called us because they discovered a few things of ours that we needed to take back (they are moving into a small duplex from their big 5 bedroom house). So we went to pick up several boxes and moved them into storage, then back to the house to finally start on the basement storage room. We managed to get about half way through- about 25 boxes went to storage (mostly books and baby items) and about 10 boxes to donate. Superman finally parted with some very old software, and we both were able to get rid of some of our childhood stuff that wasn't worth keeping. We're going to try to finish up over the next two weekends, but it's going to be tricky since Superman is working both Saturdays.

 

 

The excellent things that came out of this? My parents needed to get rid of their bigger freezer so that came to us! I'm so glad to be able to take advantage of some sales now that I don't have to worry as much about space.

 

 

Also I'm going to be putting in shelving in the basement storage room for all of the extra baskets, work and other activities for the boys that I don't have room for while it's not in use. I'm most excited about this extra storage space. The only things staying in basement storage are our Christmas boxes, my teaching materials for the studio (bulletin borders and things like that), and the clothes that Ezra has yet to grow into. I'm so glad to have this project started so I'll have the extra room!

Seven Quick Takes

~1~

Farmer's Market tomorrow! It's the first morning of the year, and I'm excited to go. I think Ender will really enjoy the experience now that he's a year older, and I hope it will be a good opportunity to talk with him more about how we get our food.

~2~

So is there a correlation between age and number of pages read at night? I swear I can only make it a page or two into any given book before I start falling asleep at night. Fiction, non-fiction, doesn't matter. The other night I got into bed to read around 8:30 and don't remember falling asleep. Superman tells me it was before 9:00.

~3~

Have you seen this beautiful Montessori space? I love this infant room! And while we're looking at gorgeous Montessori inspired rooms, have a look at Jennifer's Learning Room.

~4~

Superman has a rare day off tomorrow and our boys are going to be hanging out with their grandparents so we're taking the kid-free opportunity to clean out the storage room in the basement. I know- we're big party animals. I have to record in the morning so Superman is going to work on a school paper until I get home. Then it's all about the cleaning, baby.

~5~

We visited with our pediatrician about Ezra's speech (or lack thereof) on Tuesday last week and we're delaying any intervention. I just don't feel it's necessary yet, and our doctor was willing to wait until he's two before we pursue this further. Since the appointment Ezra added the word "No" to his vocabulary, and he's making attempts at the word "cracker" so I think we're fine.

~6~

So, I've had a few people ask me to post my recent knitting. I really would but there hasn't been any. Crazy, right? My poor needles have been stuck 3 1/2 inches into the cuff of a sock for probably two months now. I've been mostly busy with Reed's Quilt and some clothing for the boys in my limited crafting time, so knitting is on hold. I promise to get back to it soon!

~7~

Consider this a little hint at the quick weekend project I'm planning. It had a former life as a table cloth. It sooooo won't be a table cloth when I'm done with it. It also may not go as plannes and may end up being a total wash, so we'll see.

Graphing

We did our first work with graphing the yummy way- with M&Ms! I demonstrated how to make columns by color (we were working with Easter colors, so we had blue, green, pink, lavendar and yellow) and Ender did a great job sorting. He had a hard time with putting just one M&M per box, so that took a little bit of practice.

 

Ezra wanted to help too.

After Ender had formed the columns, we used another graphing chart to color in the same amount of boxes as M&Ms in each color.

 

 



The M N M at the bottom of the page was his idea. :)

 

And one last note. I swear we do make it out of our pajamas at some point during the morning. Superman pointed that out the other day- so many of the pictures I post here are from when the boys are still in their jammies. They do own clothing other than pajamas- I promise!

Butterflies

We saw so many butterflies on our morning walk yesterday that we came home to make some of our own. I remembered seeing some butterfly crafts over at The Crafty Crow not long ago and we used one of those examples as our inspiration.

First the boys finger painted on paper plates. This is the first time that Ender has really filled a page with color instead of just painting the center.



After the paintings dried, we cut little triangle notches out of the plates to make wings. I cut for Ezra, and Ender cut his own. I had precut the butterfly bodies so we stapled them on and the boys colored the bodies.





 

When we finished with everything, we hung them on one of our windows.

 



 

Summer plans?

Want to help me out?

I will be working a lot less over the summer so I have been making a list of things I'd like to do with the boys over the summer. You know- the things all kids should do in the summer? We have a few local day trips planned (like we're going to visit the dairy we buy our milk from) but I'm trying to also to think of the little summer things like having picnics, playing with sidewalk chalk, making our own ice cream, looking for fireflies, and spending a lot of time in the water. The boys will be 3 1/2 and 2 over the summer, so we're not quite old enough for things like lemonade stands.

Any ideas?

Seven Quick Takes

~1~

We have an odd relationship with sleep around here. There's some unwritten rule around here that SOMEONE has to be sleepless- because of the 18-month sleep regression it was Ezra for the longest  time, then for the last two weeks it has been Ender waking and needing extra cuddles. If it's not them, it's me. The nights everyone else sleeps I'm wide awake until all hours- like tonight. I'm estimating a 2 a.m. bedtime for myself. The boys were in bed around 8, Superman passed out from exhaustion around 9:30 after a strenuous viewing of half of a Deep Space Nine episode.

~2~

Wanna know why I'm not sleeping? Because the studio has it's yearly formal recital on Sunday- 43 students performing, plus me on one piece. Everyone is as ready as possible, but I have all the details floating around in my brain about punch bowls, napkins, microphones, music stands, sheet music . . . lists are made for all these things but my mind can't leave it all alone. Plus there's the whole "dreaming about the recital" aspect that makes the prospect of sleep that much more fun. Really- how many times can you dream about performing a never-ending piece?

~3~

That sweet boy "smelling" the flowers? He's actually blowing on them. He has watched us all smell them a dozen times so to make the sniffing noise he blows on them. It's the sweetest little gesture! Oh, and flowers can only be properly enjoyed if you're sitting on top of the dining room table.

~4~

I'll resume posting Montessori work and other work for three year olds next week. I know I've been leaning toward crafting and toddler-ness for the last few weeks, but there's also the simple fact that I haven't presented very much in the way of new work to Ender in the last few weeks. Would it possibly have to do with the wee bit o' exhaustion I've been experience after getting up with Ezra 4+ times each night for a few months (curse the sleep regression!)? One might suspect that . . . Ender has been working with Explode the Code and the pink series each day,  but other than that we haven't had a regular work period. The plan is for that to resume post-recital-craziness.

~5~

Head over to Chasing Cheerios to see the felt button board Melissa made for her daughter to use in practicing buttoning. I'm thinking I could make something like this with cars and trucks for the buttons . . . hmmm

~6~

You know that stash I told you about the other day? I chopped into it last night. The beautiful Red/pink Jennifer Paganelli fabric is going to be an apron for myself and the green Anna Maria Horner fabric is mostly going for an apron for my soon-to-be sister-in-law. Speaking of Anna Maria Horner, did you see Soulemama's throw she made from Horner's Good Folks line? I may be a little jealous.

~7~

One more big thing on my mind? Ezra has to return to our pediatrician next week for a follow-up from his 18-month visit. They want at least 5-10 words at 18 months, my son had 0, unless you count grunting. The child can certainly get his point across with a few well timed grunts! He now uses four words regularly (Mama, Dada, Bubba, Baby), but I'm sure they'll expect even more from him now that he is 21 months and I'm sure he'll be his stubborn self and refuse to demonstrate any language for them at all. He thinks that's funny, you know. What a cheeky sense of humor, my little boy has. Superman and I are quite sure that Ezra can speak and just refuses to do so since he knows it would please us if he would spill a few words.

I expect that they'll recommend speech intervention. A large part of me is saying that he is way too young to be worrying about this. He's a boy after all, and many boys are later to talk. He is able to communicate with us in other ways and follows directions when he feels like it, so we know he can hear and understand us. I suppose we'll have to wait and see what the recommendation is and go from there.

Be sure to visit Jen's place to check out more Quick Takes.

Little Drummer Boy

I'm rehearsing to go into the recording studio in a few weeks. Last week when my baby sitter canceled at the last minute and none of the grandparents were available the band graciously agreed to meet at my place. Ender loved the djembe (and I love the drummer for thinking it was cool for my son to play on his instruments after a quick lesson on how to treat them!). Ender helped us out on a verse or two until his aunt was able to get here half way through rehearsal.

Stashed

So . . . I made it to those new stores last Friday. There was a lot of hobbling and my sisters lent me their shoulders a few times to get up and down stairs, but the important thing is that there was shopping done. Good shopping.

The four pieces at the top of the picture are for Christmas stockings. Yes, I'm already planning for Christmas and I'm trying hard not to cast on any Christmas knitting until at least July. Okay- maybe June. Seriously- my Christmas handmades list is already ridiculously large and there is NO WAY I can get it all done. But the rule is that I don't have to whittle the list down until Thanksgiving is staring me in the face.

The green and pink/red prettiness at the bottom is for aprons- one for my future sister-in-law who is joining the family in May and the other for myself since I seem to make aprons in pairs like that. Not sure why, but I do.

I also did well at the most amazing yarn shop, but I can't share my stash- my mom took it! I intended to buy 5 skeins, 3 for a baby gift I need to knit this summer and 2 skeins of Claudia Handpainted yarn that I want for socks for myself. I went to the counter to buy it and my mom took over, told me it was my birthday gift and I could have the stash in June.  Actually it's good- I have all kinds of sewing that needs to be done between now and early June and if I have that yarn hanging around I will cast on NOW. The sewing is of the "must-be-done" variety (pajamas for the boys, summer shorts, etc.) so I suppose it's good that I not be tempted by yummy yarns.

Easter Bunny Baskets

I hope your Easter was great! We had a lot of rain here so we ended up hunting eggs inside. Ezra got the hang of the egg hunt pretty quickly, but once he realized that there was candy inside of some of the eggs he was done searching! Ender was determined to find the most eggs and even the mention of candy wouldn't slow him down.

The Easter bunny brought us:



And inside Ezra's basket:



And inside Ender's basket:



The Easter bunny doesn't bring very much candy to our house because he's busy carrying it all to the grandparents!

I found the pattern for the bunny baskets at The Crafty Crow and altered it to be exactly the size I wanted. I used not quite 2 fat quarters per bunny basket, though you could also line the baskets with muslin. This is also the first embroidery I've ever done. It's not the most wonderful looking thing in the world, but I liked it well enough to learn to do more.

The little froggy in Ezra's basket is a pattern from the purlbee.com What a super fast project- maybe 30 minutes from cut to finish stuffing? It took longest to get the stuffing all the way into the bottom of the feet. The pattern calls for lentils or other bean bag type material, but we have a lot of bean bag type toys around here so I opted for stuffing.

I hope you all had a happy Easter!

Procrastination

I'm still alive.

My knee still hurts, but I'm braving the mountain of laundry today and sewing Easter baskets in between loads . . . and hopefully finishing Easter gifts by tonight! I'm such a procrastinator about this little stuff.

Pictures to come!

Down for the Count

And I was so good today. I caught up on laundry in between students (which is a big deal since Wednesday is my full day in the studio), got everything vacuumed, sorted out summer clothes for the boys . . .


All I had to do was put away all that folded laundry (which was all sorted out into piles on my bed), but I thought I'd get the boys into bed first so I could put away laundry and watch American Idol at the same time- I'd be all efficient and stuff. I had changed Ezra into his pajama and was helping Ender when Ezra climbed up onto the rocking chair and promptly jumped off. All 28 pounds, straight onto my kneecap.


So, um, I may have cried a little, which kind of scared Ender, but I think he's okay- I don't think I've ever been hurt in front of him before. Ezra rubbed my cheek and patted me- it was so sweet. I couldn't move my leg at all, and my husband was still at work (45 minutes away, no less!) so one quick call and my parents came. Ender was so brave about going to the door to unlock it and let them in, even though the hallway was dark, and he went to get the "boo-boo pack" for my knee. What a sweetie!


I imagine it will be pretty ugly in the morning- it's not so good right now. I'm not trying out any walking until tomorrow, but Brian is home to work on term papers, so he'll be here if I'm useless. I still have to teach tomorrow since it's the week before the recital. I'll just try to keep it propped up and stay sitting, which is harder than it sounds.


And the truly disappointing part? I'm supposed to go see a new fabric shop on Friday that is next to a new-to-me awesome yarn shop with my mom and my sister- I have to be able to walk by Friday morning!

The Pink Series and Cotton Balls

Ender is working on the pink series right now. Last fall when he first brought this up he already knew all the sounds for the letters so we worked on listening for beginning and ending sounds, then talked about sounding out words. He worked at that for a few weeks then lost interest, choosing to go back to spelling with the moveable alphabet using pictures and words in the pink series.

Now that he has worked through the spelling obsession and wants to actually read, we went back to using the pink cards in conjunction with Explode The Code 1. I printed and laminated the cards found here. I'll state right here that this is not a 100% Montessori way to teach reading- I also particularly like the way Elizabeth Foss talks about teaching reading in her book Real Learning, which is very Charlotte Mason.

Ender has a word box that holds 10 of the pink series cards and a few extra words- Mama, Daddy, Ezra, Nana, Pop, Grandma, and Papa. Those are the important people in his life, and those are the words he asks to spell again and again. Ender brings the word box to me when he wants to work on reading and he tells me how many words he'd like to read that day. Usually he'll choose 3-5, occasionally more. He has 10 words in his word box so far, and he cycles through them at his own pace. When I've observed that he's ready for more words I've added two to his box. For the words he's not as familiar with he's able to sound out the short vowel words in his head and then say the word. For familiar words he often has to look at them for just a second or two before telling me what it is. This week I'm adding 1 rhyming word for each of the 10 words that are in his box and we'll stay on those until he's ready for more.

Now for the cotton balls:



This is Montessori on the cheap. The wood bowl came from Target on clearance for $1 (I bought 2 for Montessori work), the board is from the game Mancala. I played that game all the time as a kid, so when I found one on sale for $3 at Target back in December I grabbed it! Ezra isn't old enough to use the marbles that come with the Mancala game, but cotton balls have been a fun replacement. He's very into texture right now so the cotton balls keep his fingers interested. For now I've presented this to him as a one-to-one correspondence work. In a week or two I'll re-pesent it with a spoon, and then later with tongs. Ezra hasn't used tongs yet because I'm not sure he has the patience for it  quite yet. However, he has surprised me with his persistence on recent work so he may be ready in another few weeks.

Another use for the cotton balls? Blow them across the table! We've been talking a lot about wind lately with all the spring storms we're having here. We had a great time blowing cotton balls across the table. It took Ezra awhile to figure out how hard he had to blow to get the cotton ball to move, and Ender figured out quickly that he could control the direction of the cotton ball by blowing from different angles and with different amounts of air. I never would have thought we could spend 30 minutes blowing on cotton balls!

Yesterday

1. I drank way too much coffee, but I only had 5 hours of sleep, so  that justified the over-indulgence in my mind.

2. Because of said sleeplessness, we did *nothing* yesterday morning- no laundry, no school- nothing but meeting immediate needs until we finally HAD to get dressed so that I could work and the boys could have an afternoon with their grandmother.

3. I realized yesterday just how much Ender has changed in the last few weeks. He's starting to look like a 4 year old, even though his birthday is 6 months away. His 3T pants are just a tad too short, he's outgrown his tennis shoes, and he's passed on a few of  his old favorite toys to his brother. He's certainly growing up.

4. When Ender came downstairs yesterday morning Ezra practically mugged him. That's the scene every morning- Ezra is up around 6 and Ender often doesn't wake until after 8. Ezra cannot wait until his brother comes downstairs each morning. Ender doesn't wake easily (wonder where he gets that from?) so he hangs out on the couch for the first half hour or so in the mornings. Yesterday Ezra very gently climbed onto the couch with him, scooted as close as physically possible and laid his head on Ender's shoulder. Above everyone else Ezra loves his bubba.

5. Lesson learned yesterday: black sharpie is a lot easier to remove from white piano keys than it is to remove from a certain toddler. His belly will be covered in black scribbles for at least a week.

My Mom's Materials

Erin asked me yesterday to share a little more about what I was gifted with from my mom's school teaching days. My mom homeschooled me and my siblings for most of school, but depending on where we were living at the time we sometimes attended school. My mom started to teach in a private traditional early education program after my youngest siblings made the decision to stay in private school for several years. (I think 3rd through 9th grade- they were homeschooled for the last 3 years of high school). My mom did not start teaching the Montessori method, but that is where she finished her teaching career. She retired in 2008 and in going through her things she passed several items on to me. I taught at the same private school where my mom taught- I was with the traditional early childhood program in the mornings, and the 5th-12th grade strings program in the afternoons for 5 years.

The most useful thing my mom donated to me is her file crates. She has files by topic and also seasonal topics organized by the month. My mom is so much more organized than I am! This makes it easy for me to pull the monthly file and look through for ideas or when I'm planning more of a unit study on a topic I can pull her topic files. The ideas in these files are in the same vein as those found on My Montessori Journey. She put a page or two in most files listing materials she had that she could use for that month or that topic- I obviously don't have room for an entire classroom full of materials, but she gave me a pretty good amount, and these lists help me think more creatively about how to teach a concept without the actual Montessori materials. There are also master files for paper materials like sight word cards.

As far as actual Montessori materials, we have spindles and the box, geometric solids, numbers and dots, the moveable alphabet, the binomial cube, a one hundred board, the pink tower and color box #2. She passed on a few mats to us as well, though I need to make some bigger ones. From her pre-montessori days I have a few things also- a see-and-spell kit, several alphabet matching games and a giant set of 1" cubes. She had a stash of felt too, so I have some of that, and all of her acrylic yarn.

Probably the second most important thing I've been given is the use of her library. My mom has a library of hundreds and hundreds of children's books that she collected over her teaching years. Pretty much any book that is considered a "staple" in early childhood literature is over at her house. So about once a month I shop through her books for things that fit our topics for the month and return the ones we used the last month. We still use our local library weekly, but grandma's library is always open and a trip there is often accompanied by cookies and milk.

Seven Quick Takes

"Project Edition"

~1~

So around here we say Mama has "projects". Not Mama sews or knits or writes or anything like that- Mama has a "project". I suppose that particular word is a little more universal, a little easier for my kids to manage instead of trying to figure out exactly which craft I'm working at.

Ender is starting to ask for his own "projects" so I put together a box of random things for him- yarn, ribbon, fabric scraps, bottle tops, paper, etc. I'm interested to see where he goes with it. Ender is calling it the Making Box, so I'm pretty sure that's the official name now.

~2~

I'm working on an Easter gift for the boys- A crayon pouch inspired by this tutorial. I'm trying to sort out a way to fold it in half, one side with a steno pad and the other to hold crayons or markers. Math is not my friend, so it's going to take me awhile to plan it all out.

~3~

Plans for this weekend include a few more of these crate covers. I was gifted with several file crates of curriculum that my mom used at her last Montessori school before she retired along with many of her materials. I'm tired of looking at the plastic crates, plus I have this really yummy Anna Maria Horner fabric that I *must* use. Here's the first:

~4~

I bought several skirts the other day at the thrift store- at 50 cents a piece how could I pass them up?  I think I'll be making bags out of all three.

~5~

I think I might pretend I'm adventurous and not buy shorts for the boys this summer- dare I make them myself? Ezra has plenty of hand-me-downs from Ender that are in great shape, but Ender is in this awkward "need the length of a 4T but the waist of a 2T" situation. If this doesn't happen in the next 6 weeks it ain't gonna happen, but I do have a ton of denim hanging out around here that should get used somehow.

~6~

And the project I've been putting off . . . My house needs curtains. We have owned this house for 7 years and the only room in the house with curtains is Ezra's room. Everywhere else has el cheapo plastic blinds. I have the fabric and they won't be hard to do, I just need to do it. I'm so lazy about "non-creative" crafting- the stuff that kind of just needs to be done. Hemming? Not so much. Ripping apart clothes to make other experimental clothes? Hurray!

Curtains that really need to be done? The 1 kitchen window, the front door, and Ender's room. The master bedroom windows have some funky sheers that I need to think about before I cut into those.

~7~

I'm planning an apron for Tie One On this month! I've started a bit of cutting, and I'm using scraps from old projects since the theme of the month is to spend nothing on the apron. I love this theme! We'll see how it actually turns out- sometimes my ideas run amok.

And to finish the post off with something pretty- this is a pic I took back in January on one of those bizarre 60+ degree days we had-  cute boys with Daddy hiding behind them!

Pink Tower Work

I presented the pink tower to Ezra a few weeks ago and it is his favorite work right now. You'll notice from the pictures that he's only working with five of the blocks. I chose to leave out the  3 smallest blocks since he still puts small things in his mouth and I left out the 2 largest blocks until he has a little more control over carrying the blocks to and from the mat. He's doing a great job carrying the blocks back and forth.

Each day when he pulls out the pink tower to work I re-present the work by stacking it properly one time. I then take it apart and he practically starts rebuilding before I'm finished. He constructs the tower at first by picking up whatever block is closest to his hand, but quickly notices that it isn't stacking correctly.

Try to ignore the gigantic amount of static in his hair. He has looked that all winter long, no matter how much I try to get his hair to lay down.



Once he notices that the tower isn't going the way it is meant to be stacked, he usually knocks the whole thing over and tries again. In the last few days though he has been trying more careful and only removing the blocks that need to be changed. It's been fun to watch the progression in his thinking, but at the same time it has been hard not to help him along the way.

Sighted: Table-Top Toddler

I'd love to say this is a rare occurance in our home, but this is where we find him at least three times a day. And yes- he's usually stuffing his face.