Mommy's Beloved - Closet Organization

Our classroom has been more than a little under-utilized in the past few months. (Click here to see more of our classroom) I finally decided that it was a lack of organization that was keeping me from being the best homeschool teacher ever.  OK, so maybe that's wishful thinking, but more organization certainly can't hurt!  So we got 2 drawer systems from Home depot. They are pre-fab cabinets, intended for things like a laundry room, but they fit better than the closet organization systems, so we went this way instead.  Also, since we are renting, this has the advantage of being stand-alone.  So we can always take it with us if we move. And at $89 each, they were cost effective too.

I also needed some slotted organization for things like paper.  After some searching, I found the Recollections set at Michael's. And I love this set.  It was simple to put together, connects to other pieces easily, was a decent price (around $30 each) and looks great.  We got two sets and they are put side by side on top of the drawers. For a real craft area, I would have loved to have done it all in Recollections since it divides areas into smaller sections, but the drawers we started with are also useful for a future closet (for a future baby) so it was a good fit for us.

Anyway, here is the final product:

I couldn't bear to take a before shot.  Imagine all the contents of the drawers and sections piled on the floor and you have a good idea of the before.  This is 1000 times better, trust me! :)

OK, back to being the best homeschool teacher ever...

Oh Christmas Tree: Bella's version

I was thrilled to discover over Christmas that Bella likes to draw something other than circles.  I figured I would just see what happened, so I gave her a piece of paper and I took a piece of paper and I drew a Christmas tree.  I went one step at a time and she did the same thing on her paper after watching me.  I think it came out pretty great, and she still got to use her wonderful circles! :)

The circles next to the tree were going to be a person but she got frustrated when it didn't look right and gave up.  Maybe next time...

Real Montessori - Seasons Folders

While I was going crazy printing stuff out for the continent folders (see them here), I thought I would go ahead and make the folders for the seasons. 

Each season got its own colored folder with similarly colored construction paper inside.  There are photos in the folder associated with each season.  When she shows interest, we talk about the photos and that season and I give her the option to paste the photos on the paper.  Once the photos are pasted, I'll 3-hole punch them and put them in the folder as a booklet for her to keep.

You can always look your own photos up for each season like I did, but I thought I'd show you what I used to help get you thinking about what photos you might want to use.

Spring

Winter

Fall

Summer

Real Montessori - Continent Folders

As part of our study of the continents (which includes our globe seen here and our continent puzzle seen here), I created photo folders.

There is a colored folder that corresponds to the color of each continent with a little shift.  There were no pink folders (which is the color for South America), so we went with a purple folder.  And we couldn't find a white folder (for Antarctica) so we went with a black folder.

Each folder contains color appropriate construction paper and a variety of pictures pertaining to that continent.  I tried to make sure I had photos of people, landmarks, money, music, animals and plants.  You can always find your own photos using google like I did.  I just thought I'd give you some types of things to think about.

The idea is to talk about each photo in the folder when your child shows an interest in it and then they paste the photo on the construction paper and make a scrapbook for each continent.  I got folders that had 3 hole brads so that I can turn the folders into little booklets easily.

So, without further ado, here is each of the folders.

Antarctica

North America

Europe

South America

Asia

Australia

Africa

Gettin Jiggy Wit it - How I made a wooden puzzle

Many of the activities we do in our Montessori home school classroom require little investment, since they use things we already have.  But from time to time, an activity calls for something that we don't have and that isn't particularly easy to make.  Usually we head over to Alison's Montessori (their link is here) and just bite the bullet.  But when we started doing our continent study (see the globe we made here), I was loathe to spend almost $50 on a puzzle that Bella's only likely to use a few times.  This is the puzzle in question:

The curriculum suggested creating this out of foamboard if you didn't want to buy it.  But if you've ever tried to cut foamboard...particularly if you've tried to cut foamboard accurately...you know that it's easier said than done.

Since I recently discovered the wood hobby shop at Camp Lejeune, I decided I wanted to try to make one myself out of wood.  I had already used the bandsaw for my laundry project (see that here), but this involved using the scrollsaw, which is able to make the much tighter turns required for this project.  This whole thing was made even more daunting by the fact that I only had one shot at the cuts.  If I messed up, I could go back and trim a little bit more off, because the pieces had to fit together like a puzzle.  I got to practice with the scrollsaw when I did the areas on the inside parts of the laundry room letters (like 'A' and 'R') and it didn't really go so well.  I managed to break a blade and give myself quite a scare in the process (it's loud when a blade breaks).  So I was very nervous going in.

The first step was to put the outline of what I was cutting onto the wood so I had a guide to work from.  I started with some cutouts of the actual puzzle.  I blew them up so they were close to 8 inches wide.

See that black stuff in the photo?  That's carbon paper. (How many of you had no clue?  Seriously now!)  Carbon paper (for the young whipper snappers) is coated on one side.  When you press down on it, you push that coating onto the surface under it.  So...if you put a piece of paper on top of it, and a piece of wood under it, and then trace over the outlines, it leaves the same outlines on the bottom wood.

Like this:

You can see that, for sanity and utility reasons, I approximated some of the edges.  This ended up being fine since I was going to paint it in the end.

The wood here is about 1/8 inch thick.  This is oak because that was what the wood shop had that was wide enough.  Then I took it to the saw and started cutting...very carefully.

I'm not gonna lie, it wasn't easy, but I did settle into a rhythm by the end.  I technically could have avoided the cut marks from the edge to the cutouts by drilling a tiny hole and threading the saw blade through it, but I was worried about leaving a drill hole in one of my pieces, so I decided to live with the cut marks.

I didn't want the pieces to slide through the cutouts into nothingness though, so that meant putting the wood with the cutouts onto another solid piece.  I sanded the edges of the cutouts prior to this to make sure the edges weren't sharp.

Then I used some wood glue and glued the piece with the cutouts onto the solid piece and I clamped it together.

Even with these 4 clamps, the inside areas started to curl up after I left, so the wood shop guys put some bigger clamps on all over it to make sure it didn't get ruined.  Whew!

Then I painted the oceans and islands, sanded the puzzle pieces, and painted them so they matched the colors of the continents on the globe (see that here) and on the continent folders (more on that soon!).

Here is the finished product:

I decided I sort of liked seeing the grain of the wood through the paint, so I only did 1 coat on the oceans.
I used the carbon paper again to get the exact outline of the continents onto the pieces (as opposed to the pretty vague outlines that I cut out). I also painted the names of the continents under each one on a last minute whim.

Many wooden puzzles have little knobs to pull out the pieces with.  I had bought some wooden push pins to use, but then I decided I liked it better with no knobs.  We just have to turn the puzzle over to dump the pieces out.

So, what do you think?  Would you ever try making something like this?  Does the thought of cutting foamboard overwhelm you too?

Cleaning house sucks, but it's more fun with friends

I'm so glad that Bella is in a phase where she loves to help.  As much as I hate housework, it is much more fun when you have a sidekick like this:

Onslow County Partnership for Children

We have been hearing lots of good things about the Onslow County Partnership for Children, and we finally managed to get over there and check it out.  It was all we had hoped for and more.

There were two smaller areas at the front with books, costumes, doll houses, puzzles and games that you can play with there.

Then an arts and crafts area where you can do projects with your kids.

An area with die cut machines, and tools for parents and teachers.

And in the back, box after box of themed learning activities.  

You can go in and play for free and you can check out up to 8 items that have barcodes.  A book could be a single item, or one of the huge tupperware containers could be one item.  You are allowed to keep each item up to 30 days.  If you want access to the crafts, you can get an enhanced membership for $25 a year.  With that you can use everything in the center and you can check out up to 15 items instead of just 8.  There are additional fees if you want bulletin board paper, poster board, or laminating, but the die cuts and all craft supplies are included.  

I was thrilled to find some activity boxes that had to do with plants and seasons (which are our current focus) and a few fun things too, like alphabet circles for the floor, felt mats with things to arrange and rearrange, and a princess and the pea stacking game.  Anyone in the eastern NC area with kids or those who teach should really check it out.

It's a Small World

We're getting ready to learn about the continents in our homeschool classroom.  It is recommended to have a globe with the continents in different colors when starting this topic.  We bought a globe with the land and the water differentiated already.  Here it is in the classroom (or you can click here to see it on the site where we bought it):

The greenish-brown areas are rough to show land and the blue water areas are smooth.

Rather than buy a whole new globe, I decided it was easier more frugal to paint this one with the colors for each continent.  I did two light coats of paint (crayola paint that I had on hand for Bella to paint with) on each continent.  The colors aren't super bright, but you can definitely see the colors, and I like the muted effect.  You can also still feel the texture of each area, which is great.  But best of all, it didn't cost me anything to make the switcheroo to a continents globe.  Yay for free! (it's listed at $55 for a sandpaper continents globe, so I'm happy)

Real Montessori - The Purpose of Roots

We have been studying plants, working on a booklet about the parts of a plant, planting seeds in a root view container, checking out roots while planting flowers, and watering every flower we can find.  As part of our studies, we started an experiment about the purpose of roots.

The idea is to get a plant with white flowers, water it with food-colored water and watch the flowers turn colors. So I got a white phlox flower, we planted it and have been watering it with blue colored water for a little over a week now.

Before:

After:

I should have known better to touch plants.  I have such a brown thumb.  Guess Bella will have to be content with pictures of what it should have been.  Good concept though, if you don't kill everything you touch. :)

Have you ever set out to do a nice science experiment with your kids (or by yourself) and have it go terribly wrong?

Real Montessori - Object Boxes mixup

Now that we finally have objects in all of our object boxes (See our post about that here), we have started introducing all of the objects to Bella.  Most of them are fine, though we sometimes come across an object that just doesn't seem to work for her.  For instance, the antelope is always called 'cantaloupe' no matter how many times I say it.  Alligator is sometimes said "A-A-crocodile."  She's really starting to get the sounds and understanding the letters though, and that is really exciting.

Our newest use of the object boxes is to take 3 boxes with letters that make very different sounds and mix all of the objects together and then try to sort them into their correct boxes.  The sorting doesn't always happen as efficiently as I like, but I'm working hard on take a step back and letting her work at it with her own process.  Which sometimes means that she goofs around with the objects.  Exhibit A (B and C):

Anyone else having Michael Jackson flashbacks?

Ice Ice Baby

Since it has been so hot this summer, we've been trying to do things to keep cool.  When the folks over at NAMC suggested working with ice, it sounded perfect.  So we got out 7 cubes of ice (enough to fit in the tray I had on hand) and headed out to the porch.

Bella started off trying to move the ice cubes with the tweezers, but that was pretty tough, even for me, so I suggested maybe she try some other ways of picking it up.  

So she tried a teaspoon, and a tablespoon and finally, her hands. Which was still fun, and helped us cool off.  We counted, we laughed at how slippery the ice was.  She giggled trying to fit the ice cubes into the tray right.

We also played around using a sponge for each segment of the tray too.  Which was nice because it worked in the fine motor skill of squeezing in order to ring the water out of each piece. Definitely an activity we're continuing to modify and use.  Soon, I'm hoping to make her a big block of ice with little objects inside that she can get to by chipping away with a hammer.

How are you keeping cool?

We Give Books

We love to read.  Since I got the nook, I get through about a book a week.  So, at that rate, I'm happy to find ways to read on a budget.  The obvious choice was the library.  In addition to the standard paper books, most library systems have an online literature area now, where you can check out electronic books for various e-readers.  And there is more and more content now for kids as well.

Our library also has a connection with a system called Tumblebooks, which is semi-animated versions of kids books that are read aloud as each word is highlighted.  We've gone through lots of those.  Some books even have attached learning games and coloring pages.  It's a little hard to sort the books by age group, and occasionally one of the reading voices irritates the heck out of me...but overall a good option.

Then, I ran across a company called 'We Give Books' (the link here).  

These are online books, but unlike Tumblebooks, there is no animation or sound.  So it's basically a way to virtually flip through books.  And the best part: for every book you read to your child (or your child reads for themselves), they donate a book to a charity that you get to choose.  When you get to the end of a book there is a button that appears saying 'give a book,' and Bella likes clicking that button.  There aren't a ton of books, but we certainly haven't read them all yet, and there are many recognizable titles.  They even have the Skippyjon Jones books, which we love (see our post here), so we've gotten to read the ones that we don't own.  And I get to teach Bella how we're part of a global community and about caring for others.

So check it out!

Where in the world is...well anything?

We realized, not so long ago, that we don't own a map of the world.  Almost trivial given the age of the internet, but sometimes it's cool to look at a giant map of the world and see the relationship various countries have to one another.  And I think that's still important for our classroom.

Bella's Grandpa offered to get her one and it came in the mail and boy was she excited!

Here she is demonstrating where we live:

Josie and Pippen have apparently decided to mark the poles.

And it took both of us, but we finally got it onto the wall in the classroom!

Sea Turtle Hospital

We got some random magazine in the mail last week from our electric company.  Now, normally, this would have ended up in the trash without a second glance, but we've had a severe lack of random magazines and catalogs since we've moved (they haven't found us yet), so I was desperate enough to pick it up.  There was a little article in there about a sea turtle hospital in a town south of us, Topsail Beach.  It sounded pretty neat, so I checked out the site and we made plans to go. (Their website is here by the way if you're interested)

It's was about an hour and a half ride, which we did during naptime, perfect.  We got there about 10 minutes before it was set to open, excellent.  Then I parked and walked around the corner....eek...there was already a MASSIVE line.  And being the perfect mom I am, I chose a day when the heat index was in the triple digits, and I didn't bring sunscreen.

At least I managed to grab an umbrella before sprinting walking quickly to grab a place in line.  We were lucky that we had some nice folks in line with us for decent conversation and they were a big enough group...so one of them ran to their car and got sunscreen and offered it up to my poor fair skinned child so she didn't roast...yay, back on awesome street.  Well, til maybe an hour into waiting.

At that point I certainly wasn't getting out of line, but Bella was (almost literally) melting down.  I tried the ipad.  I tried snacks.  I tried a drink.  I tried holding her.  I tried suggesting that she check out the really interesting gravel at her feet.  Actually, that last one sort of worked.  In all we waited about an hour and 15 minutes, but boy those last 15 minutes were painful.

They take people in groups of 6 so that there is room for everyone around the tank as they tell that turtle's story.  While we were waiting in our group to go in, they laid the big bummer on us...no photography.  Not even 'no flash photography,' but no photography, period.  Sadface.  So you'll have to do with my descriptions and we'll have the memories.  This was the best I could do:

Then we went around the building and inside where they are currently caring for 21 turtles.  They showed us the 5 tanks on the edge, where the walking area was for easy access.  The first turtle was bigger than Bella in length and I was already pretty wowed.  They can get to be 500lbs or more.  I think that guy was around 400.  He was a loggerhead who got tangled in fishing nets and beat up pretty badly.  Apparently, these wounds are very slow healing.  They said he was doing well and they were hoping to release him in 1 to 2 years.  Yeah...years.  The next 2 turtles were Kemps Ridley turtles, some of the most endangered in the world.  They were significantly smaller, but were still probably 150lbs or more.  One had her front fins cut really badly by a fishing net, estimated time to recovery: 2 years.  The second was a male who had been beaten in the head when fishers tried to get him out of a net, cracking his poor little endangered skull and rendering him blind.  No recovery for him.  He's expected to live at the rescue center for the rest of his life: 80-100 years.  The 4th turtle was the smallest by far and was a green sea turtle who had a case of hypothermia.  She's expected to be released in September.  She was about the diameter of a medium beach ball.  The last guy was a big loggerhead named Boater.  I guess they wanted to leave a lasting impression with these big turtles at the beginning and end...or maybe they were too heavy for the middle...who knows.  Anyway, Boater had 3 big cuts in his shell from a boat propeller.  They screwed metal plates over the openings to let his shell re-grow and the plates have now been removed.  Now the long process of letting them fully heal is in progress.  He still has about 2 years left in the hospital.  All that took about 5 minutes.  Bella didn't want to leave.

I appeased her by offering a stuffed sea turtle from the gift shop.  There was no entry cost, donations only, so that was ok (Don't get the wrong idea...we still donated too).  She chose one from the various ones they had and I also picked up a pack of sea turtle erasers to use as counting objects in the classroom.  She happily patted him on the back and tossed him in the air and caught him all the way back to the car...after one last goodbye to Boater.

On the walk back I asked her what her turtle's name was, expecting Boater, or Josie, or Pippen, or Turtle.  And she responded very precisely with, "Bushy."  It took me most of the ride home to determine that Bushy is a boy, since Bella is still working on her pronouns and went back and forth calling him a "he' and a 'she' interchangeably.  I think my favorite moment on the ride home was the moment I realized how much she had learned about respecting wildlife and how special turtles are:

Bella: "Mommy, can I eat Bushy?"
Me: "Um...no"

OK, maybe we still need to work on that whole respecting nature thing.  I'll get back to you :)

When did your kids start really naming their stuffed animals?  Any idea where their names came from?  Ever seen a sea turtle up close not through aquarium glass?

Nature Table - Cicadas

Rather than create a nature tray for Bella, I'm letting ours evolve naturally.

It all started when I found a few cicada exoskeletons in the bushes.  For those of you who live where these guys aren't native, they shed their exoskeletons in the summer and it leaves behind a perfect little model of what the bug used to look like.  They also make crazy loud noises in their mate search.

It surprised me that Bella wasn't squeamish about touching them once she saw me do it.  Here's the video of her seeing them for the first time:

And for those of you who don't want to do video, here are some stills:

Though from time to time she squeezes a bit too hard and a piece breaks off and she gets a little worried.

How were you with bugs when you were a kid?  Did you love em or hate them or did it depend on what it was?