It seems like I just bought math materials, and I thought they would last a year! (Then again, I did get a late start on presenting some of those works.) I'm getting ready to present the Tens Board, which leads in to counting to 100 using the boards. My MBH album has "Linear Counting: 1,000 and 100 Chains" listed as the next presentation. It seems to me that the 100 Board would be in there somewhere too, but neither Gettman nor MBH list it. We could probably be working on these for two months or so. In any case, I don't have either of these materials, so I'm going to have to make another order!
Time to make sure I have a better understanding of the math periods before I make this order. Last time I didn't understand how they overlapped. I think I'll make a separate post dedicated to that! At least this time I feel as though I am committed to the Montessori approach to math, so I feel more comfortable about making a bigger purchase :)
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
(Forced) Progress!
Link is finally making some progress with the teen boards and beads! He does fuss about it every time we do it, which is not ideal. One thing I've always liked about Montessori is that it fosters self motivation and self-directed learning. This just isn't happening in our house though. I have to choose the work and I have to tell Link that he has to finish it. Usually that means I say "we can't do any other fun things until you have finished your school work." I only require two works every day! I alternate between the Collective Exercises and the Teen Boards with Beads for math. Then we do at least one lesson from Logic of English. Link enjoys the lessons and sometimes we do more than one.
He is (in my inexperienced opinion) doing well with reading. He is slowly starting to differentiate p, b, and d. He can read cvc words, and words with blends like bl, gr, sl, tr. We haven't learned ch, sh or that type of blend yet. He is still at the point where he has to say each sound, then think about what the word is with the sounds blended together. So I try to get him to practice as much as possible. Soon I think I'll start doing some matching activities with pictures. Next week he gets his first LoE reader and he is very excited. The first readers he will actually "build." They have the words and pictures separate and he can cut and glue them in. I actually laminated the first one and put velcro on the pictures so that he could take them on and off. After that one I'll just let him cut and paste. So they are pretty much matching exercises, but in a book format to make it extra special :) He is writing well in cursive too!
Bumblebee manages to keep himself pretty busy while I'm working with Link. I just put some toys in the room for Beya, and Bumblebee spent the entire time yesterday playing with those.
He knows most of his letters already, but cannot blend words. So I work on sound sorts with him. He's also working on the number rods and cards right now too. Sometimes he'll choose the number spindles or some other work as well. Sometimes we plays letter games with me and Link.
Beya isn't joining us in the school room much. But if we aren't finished with our two works when he wakes up, I am now letting him come in. I used to just stop and leave when he woke up, which was a little disruptive.
So what about music, geography, botany, zoology and all those other great Montessori subjects? We get to those when I get around to putting something new on the shelf :) Otherwise, we do a little of those when we go on walks or are hanging around the house!
He is (in my inexperienced opinion) doing well with reading. He is slowly starting to differentiate p, b, and d. He can read cvc words, and words with blends like bl, gr, sl, tr. We haven't learned ch, sh or that type of blend yet. He is still at the point where he has to say each sound, then think about what the word is with the sounds blended together. So I try to get him to practice as much as possible. Soon I think I'll start doing some matching activities with pictures. Next week he gets his first LoE reader and he is very excited. The first readers he will actually "build." They have the words and pictures separate and he can cut and glue them in. I actually laminated the first one and put velcro on the pictures so that he could take them on and off. After that one I'll just let him cut and paste. So they are pretty much matching exercises, but in a book format to make it extra special :) He is writing well in cursive too!
Bumblebee manages to keep himself pretty busy while I'm working with Link. I just put some toys in the room for Beya, and Bumblebee spent the entire time yesterday playing with those.
He knows most of his letters already, but cannot blend words. So I work on sound sorts with him. He's also working on the number rods and cards right now too. Sometimes he'll choose the number spindles or some other work as well. Sometimes we plays letter games with me and Link.
Beya isn't joining us in the school room much. But if we aren't finished with our two works when he wakes up, I am now letting him come in. I used to just stop and leave when he woke up, which was a little disruptive.
So what about music, geography, botany, zoology and all those other great Montessori subjects? We get to those when I get around to putting something new on the shelf :) Otherwise, we do a little of those when we go on walks or are hanging around the house!
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Logic of English - Reading, Writing, and Spelling Curriculum
I mentioned before that I bought a curriculum to supplement my Montessori reading and writing materials, but I haven't talked much about it since then. I noticed over at What DID We Do All Day that MBT is going through a writing bootcamp with Me Too, and then I read her comments here. I was surprised to see that we had similar reasons for purchasing curriculum to supplement. She used Handwriting Without Tears, All about Spelling and Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. Since I'm lazy resourceful I decided to also use HWT and OPG to supplement. However, I found that I wasn't able to put lessons together efficiently enough to keep forward momentum. Thats where Logic of English helped me so much. We are doing the Foundations Level A book right now.
Instead of having two or three books to pull from and create activities, it instead gives you prepared lessons that integrate all three areas - reading, writing and spelling. I did NOT want a traditional workbook, as Link is usually not interested. There is a workbook, but it is not something that he does on his own. Rather it is an aid that he uses while we do the activities together. Each lesson has maybe one or two pages that we use for phonics and one page to practice his writing. (In case you are wondering, the OPG does have lessons, we just weren't crazy about them.) I will still use HWT, because I do want him to learn print too.
The main thing I'd like to say about it is that he likes doing it! We still do sound boxes and sound sorts, but I'm not under as much pressure to constantly change those out. I do them when I can. He really only liked doing them because of the Letter Box books anyways. So sometimes we just read those. The lessons are short, but fun. So we are actually progressing! He is reading slightly ahead of the book right now, simply because we learned some of the phonograms using the sound boxes. The LoE curriculum has helped him to make the step from phonograms to blending words.
He is also especially interested in the writing part because we are doing cursive. Link has a terrible time with letter reversals and I'm hoping this will help. He learned to write some letters in preschool, but they were terrible. He writes so much better in cursive!!
The biggest negative, is that it is pretty expensive when you see that you'll have to buy four levels to get through 2nd grade. It'll end up costing almost $300.
I'll probably do the Advanced Schedule with Bumblebee next year, when he turns 4. He joins us sometimes, but isn't ready to start yet. He's doing the sound boxes and sorts right now. He probably knows his letters better than Link. Link may get through Level C this year, it just depends on how well I do at keeping our routine going. We do one lesson a day, 3-4 times a week. We still have 30 weeks left in the school year right now. Somehow, in 7 weeks, we have only done 13 lessons :) Not a good record, but for a while we were only doing sound boxes.
As a side note, you should check out all their FREE paper! They have such a variety and in the past I have had such a hard time finding the different types. They also have all the spelling rules and phonograms in a nice list.
Instead of having two or three books to pull from and create activities, it instead gives you prepared lessons that integrate all three areas - reading, writing and spelling. I did NOT want a traditional workbook, as Link is usually not interested. There is a workbook, but it is not something that he does on his own. Rather it is an aid that he uses while we do the activities together. Each lesson has maybe one or two pages that we use for phonics and one page to practice his writing. (In case you are wondering, the OPG does have lessons, we just weren't crazy about them.) I will still use HWT, because I do want him to learn print too.
The main thing I'd like to say about it is that he likes doing it! We still do sound boxes and sound sorts, but I'm not under as much pressure to constantly change those out. I do them when I can. He really only liked doing them because of the Letter Box books anyways. So sometimes we just read those. The lessons are short, but fun. So we are actually progressing! He is reading slightly ahead of the book right now, simply because we learned some of the phonograms using the sound boxes. The LoE curriculum has helped him to make the step from phonograms to blending words.
He is also especially interested in the writing part because we are doing cursive. Link has a terrible time with letter reversals and I'm hoping this will help. He learned to write some letters in preschool, but they were terrible. He writes so much better in cursive!!
The biggest negative, is that it is pretty expensive when you see that you'll have to buy four levels to get through 2nd grade. It'll end up costing almost $300.
I'll probably do the Advanced Schedule with Bumblebee next year, when he turns 4. He joins us sometimes, but isn't ready to start yet. He's doing the sound boxes and sorts right now. He probably knows his letters better than Link. Link may get through Level C this year, it just depends on how well I do at keeping our routine going. We do one lesson a day, 3-4 times a week. We still have 30 weeks left in the school year right now. Somehow, in 7 weeks, we have only done 13 lessons :) Not a good record, but for a while we were only doing sound boxes.
As a side note, you should check out all their FREE paper! They have such a variety and in the past I have had such a hard time finding the different types. They also have all the spelling rules and phonograms in a nice list.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
"It's Too Hard!" says Link
I have been working with Link all week on the teen beads, really! Link just has a hard time remembering the names of 11, 12, 13, and 15. We've taken the "three period lesson" to the "100 period lesson." We can do it 10 times; the first 9 times he'll get all three correct, then the 10th time, he'll tell me something different! If we keep going he starts saying "I hate school" or "this is too hard!" A few times I've told him, "Just do it a few more times and we'll stop" but the last few times I just put it away. He seems to be able to point to the right number when I say the name, but remembering the name is very hard for him. He does the first correctly 99% of the time, the latter only 75% of the time. I should also mention that even though he has been counting for some time now, if I ask him to identify "6" he'll say "1,2,3,4,5,6 its 6!" Like he just can't recall the word "six" without counting it out. He does the same thing with "9."
I re-checked Meg's albums (from Montessori By Hand) to be sure he has progressed far enough to be doing this work. She says "The child should be comfortable reading numbers the other way, specifying the categories." We've gotten through dynamic addition and he seems very comfortable with that work. She also says "Many children skip a teen when counting. They often skip 13 and a 17 or 18. " Haha, Link counts 11,12,13,17 :) And "11, 12 and 13 are the most difficult because we don’t say oneteen or twoteen. The child can’t use the language she already knows to fill it in." No kidding! Link can come up with the word "eleven" if he counts all the way through one to eleven. I try to get him to just see it and say the word, but he can't. (He can look at the color beads and identify 1-5 by sight, but not 11-15)
So what do I do? Hold him here until he gets it right? Maybe I'll move on to the teen boards and see how he does. Then let him match them. Maybe that will help him.
I re-checked Meg's albums (from Montessori By Hand) to be sure he has progressed far enough to be doing this work. She says "The child should be comfortable reading numbers the other way, specifying the categories." We've gotten through dynamic addition and he seems very comfortable with that work. She also says "Many children skip a teen when counting. They often skip 13 and a 17 or 18. " Haha, Link counts 11,12,13,17 :) And "11, 12 and 13 are the most difficult because we don’t say oneteen or twoteen. The child can’t use the language she already knows to fill it in." No kidding! Link can come up with the word "eleven" if he counts all the way through one to eleven. I try to get him to just see it and say the word, but he can't. (He can look at the color beads and identify 1-5 by sight, but not 11-15)
So what do I do? Hold him here until he gets it right? Maybe I'll move on to the teen boards and see how he does. Then let him match them. Maybe that will help him.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
School Day - New Math!
This weekend as I was preparing to present a new math lesson to Link, I realized that I needed to get Bumblebee going on math! I used to have all kinds of things on the shelves - pink tower, brown stair, red rods, cylinder blocks - but I had to put them all up because Bumblebee was constantly making huge messes out of them. But, he's ready to get presentations on these things, so I have to make room again!
Today I first attempted to give Link a presentation on the teens using the bead stair. Right now he counts like this - 11,12,13,17,18,19,20. He's very consistent, he always counts this way. So I was trying to be very careful in this presentation so that he would learn it correctly. After I presented 11, 12, and 13, he said "Can we stop this now?"
So then I gave Bumblebee (who is 3 1/2) a presentation on the number rods. He can already count pretty well to 10, don't ask me how. This ended up being just the right difficulty for him. He did not get it right the first time. He had to move a few and fill in some spots, but he ended up getting it right in the end. He was very enthusiastic and put it away when he was finished.
After that Link asked for a presentation on the number cards and counters. I knew this would be an easy work for him, but he asked, which was great! I wanted to use that time to talk about odd and even anyways, and it was good for Bumblebee to watch.
Bumblebee was disappointed that he was not actually given a presentation and allowed to work with the counters. I'm pretty sure he isn't quite ready. He really, really wanted me to give him a presentation that involved beads. So instead of the counters, I gave him a presentation on matching the bead stairs to number cards. He did pretty well up to 3, but when he couldn't immediately tell which was 4 without counting, he started messing around. Probably not ready for that one either. Maybe counters would have been better after all :)
After that I could not convince Link to choose any more work as he was complaining about being hungry. Bumblebee, on the other hand, chose to work with the geometric shapes for quite a while, building rockets I believe, but I was okay with that. I went upstairs to make Link lunch and heard some bells ringing randomly as well.
That pretty much wrapped up our school "day" and only lasted about an hour. After that my Aunt read probably every single letter book from the Sound Box Series. I'll call that phonics for the day :)
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Stuck in a (Math) Rut
Why can't I wrap my head around Montessori Math? It shouldn't be that hard. Really. But I tell myself, "I'm not a teacher by training, I'm not used to this sort of thing. " Sometimes that makes me feel better, sometimes.
**Edited to Add**
I'm thinking of buying the Montessori R&D album or the Keys of the Universe album, hoping one has more information than my Montessori By Hand album. Can anyone who has any of these say if that would be helpful or not?
I have a manual. It's pretty good. It tells me what to do and when. For some reason I am finding that its not enough.
I'm reading these posts and thinking, why don't I know more about this?!
I chose these because they either organize the primary math sequence or are referencing something from about a year ago, which is about where we should be. We are not where we should be, probably because I'm not introducing the works correctly.
So MBT teacher organizes math into threads:
I divided the math up into what I call "threads." My threads are: linear counting, operations, memorization, fractions, and story problems/equation formats. By the third year of primary the boys do 3-4 math works daily, each work from a different thread. So, we don't get to every thread every day but we do get to every thread every week....Me Too is further behind him in the sequence. So, on Monday he would choose counting a bead chain (linear counting. spindle boxes, 100 board, teen boards, etc., are past works in this category), golden beads (operations), subtraction snake game (memorization). On Tuesday Me Too might choose the subtraction finger board (memorization), counting a bead chain, and a packet of story problems. He has not started fractions yet (he did the typical primary work, but I waited to start fraction equations until elementary).
We are even farther behind, since we are just doing the collective exercises. But in this post, Me Too is still working on static division with the golden beads. So, it seems like he has been doing the later collective exercises for some time. (I don't want anyone to think I'm comparing my kids to other kids. Its not that. I'm just using other kids as a rough guide to figure out where I should be heading.)
In the free Montessori By Hand album that I use it says to wait to do the Teens and Tens until we are into the collective exercises a bit. I would not say that we are since we've only just done addition. So I feel like I'm stuck with only the addition collective exercise. Should I also be on some other thread?
My other big problem - setting the work up so that it can be done independently. Shoot, I can't get him to do it with me, much less without me!
**Edited to Add**
I'm thinking of buying the Montessori R&D album or the Keys of the Universe album, hoping one has more information than my Montessori By Hand album. Can anyone who has any of these say if that would be helpful or not?
**Edited Again to Add**
Ok, I'm starting to get see my problem - I'm just slow :) I am not into the collective exercises much, but Link is still ready to start the "Linear Counting" thread (or Group 3 from MBH). First that means the Short Bead Stair. Link was probably ready for this a long time ago, but I've been holding off because I haven't gotten far into the collective exercises (which is my fault for having a hard time presenting them.) I got some help from MBT that should make this go better. She left a great comment on how she does these exercises with one child.
Ok, I'm starting to get see my problem - I'm just slow :) I am not into the collective exercises much, but Link is still ready to start the "Linear Counting" thread (or Group 3 from MBH). First that means the Short Bead Stair. Link was probably ready for this a long time ago, but I've been holding off because I haven't gotten far into the collective exercises (which is my fault for having a hard time presenting them.) I got some help from MBT that should make this go better. She left a great comment on how she does these exercises with one child.
Math With One Child?
How do you do the beginning collective exercises with one child? I feel like we're pushing it just doing it one time! We made three people with me, Link and Bumblebee. When we did static addition, Link was like "Yeah yeah, we added them up, is that it?" So are there any variations I can do to encourage him practice this? Or should I just move on?
I also felt like it was rather cumbersome to have all those number cards out! We didn't do one large set and three small ones. I just did one large and one small, and chose the numbers carefully.
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