I Love You 100 Board!

I know I said I was done for the year, but I just had to express my love for the 100 Board while it was fresh.  We've been working on the Ten Boards, but only have the patience to count through about 40.  I was pretty sure Link understood, but just didn't have the endurance to continue counting.  I decided to introduce the 100 Board and boy am I glad!

At first I used the golden beads to emphasize how we were counting and what happens when we get to the end of a row.  Then Link kept saying "I get it now!" and "this is fun!" while he and Bumblebee fought over who got to put the tiles in.  I had to change from letting them take turns, to telling Bumblebee that he could work on it after Link was finished.  Then Link would explain to me how the numbers changed, and how he saw patterns in the numbers.  It was great!  I think he can start on the number chains after Christmas!

As a side note, I'm wondering something about my bead cabinet from Adena Montessori.  They include the long bead chains, cubes, squares and no short bead chains.  Instead, they include individual bead bars.  Are those supposed to be in there, or should those have been bead chains instead?  So I have five 5 bars, and ten 10 bars, etc.  Should I buy some little connectors and connect those into chains?  I'm pretty sure that if I needed the bars, I could just use the ones from the Decanomial box.

Reading!

This will probably be our last full week of school for the year and I definitely won't be posting for a while.  I just wanted to post a quick note about Link's reading.  He is doing so well, and we are really enjoying the Logic of English curriculum!  He is about to finish the first level and can read (in my untrained, motherly opinion) GREAT!  I can't say enough good things about LoE; it has worked so well for us, and it has cut down on my preparation time dramatically!  It's so easy compared to my Montessori plan, but is obviously not Montessori.  I would have liked for him to be a bit more self-taught, but it just wasn't happening.  I will post a movie soon of Link reading his last reader, I'm so proud!!

Happy Holiday's everyone!

Concepts of Energy - Download

I've started using the book Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding: A Science Curriculum for K-2 with Link.  We are working on lesson C-1: Concepts of Energy this week.  I put together some pictures to use with the lesson, and thought I'd upload them, so here they are!

Wordless Weekend :)

My Adena Montessori Shipment!

Bumblebee at Home Depot

Link at Home Depot