Pictures from Week 2: Preschool

Painting with watercolor paint

Super doing Play-doh. Probably his favorite activity.

Tonging with apples.

Pouring. I got this cute set at the thrift store for 59 cents. It takes so little to thrill me. LOL

Drawing with markers. One of her favorite activities.

The sandpaper shape, sandpaper letter, and sandpaper number we are working on. These are right in front of the modeling clay and sand tray.

This pocket chart also holds our helper jobs. There is a job on a seasonal paper (this month is apples) with a name card at the bottom. Each week, the name is rotated to the next job.

The sand tray. This student is doing more sensory work than writing, but that's o.k. too.

Knobbed Cylinder A.

I invested in these the first year I taught preschool, and I've never regretted it. The new 3s always love them, and the 4s love to do them all at once or put all the pegs in a bag and pull them out, etc.

Preschool Week 2: What We Are Up To

Theme of the Week: Letters and Colors
Letter of the Week: A
Number of the Month: 1
Shape of the Month: Circle
Color of the Month: Red

• At the art table, we have red play-doh.
• At the sensory table, we have the sand tray and modeling clay.
• At the paint easel, we have watercolor paint and red paint.
• On the practical life shelf, cutting food, locks puzzle, nuts and bolts, sticks in a shaker, pouring, tonging, and button dressing vests.
• On the art shelf, we have a Letter A color page, cutting strips, rubbing cards, and then our free art supplies (paper, cardstock, construction paper, scissors, crayons, markers, pencils, tape, glue, stapler, and paper punch.)
• On the sensorial shelf, we have color tablets 1, red rods, the brown stair, block tower, and knobbed cylinder A.
• On the geometry shelf, we have the circle puzzle. There are also the insets, a geoboard, shape sorter, and geometric solids.
• On the letter shelf, we have sandpaper letters (lower case and upper case) alphabet cards, and leap frog letters.
• On the language shelf, there is calendar matching, fall letter words, and the farm.
• On the writing shelf, there are dry erase letter pages, a letter A page, moveable alphabet, and the red level language materials.
• On the science shelf, there is mammal puzzle – horse, plant puzzle – tree, and land and water cards.
• On the geography shelf, there are the continent globe and the sand and water globe and the continent map puzzle.
• On the math shelf, we have sandpaper numbers, number puzzle, number bears, bead matching, fraction puzzles, and spindles.
• We are reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, White Rabbit’s Color Book, One Fish, Two Fish, Do You Know Your Colors?, Dr. Suess’ ABC, and The Crayon Box That Talked.

Elementary Week 3: What We Were Up To

Literature: Scooter - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Flower - The Little Princess, Helper - Charlotte's Web, Jelly Bean - The Wizard of Oz.

History: Story of the World 1 -

Spelling: Scooter and Flower - Spell and Write Grade 6, Unit. Helper - Spell and Write Grade 3, Unit. Jelly Bean - Spell and Write Grade 2, Unit.

Grammar: Scooter and Flower - God's Gift Of Language, Unit 1. Helper and Jelly Bean - Beginning Wisely, Unit 1.

Writing:
--------------------

Math: Scooter - Saxon 6/5 Lesson , Flower - Saxon 5/4 Lessons , Helper and Jelly Bean - Math U See Beta - Lesson 3

Botany: Apologia Botany. Lesson 1 - Vascular and Non Vascular Plants
Astronomy: Apologia Astronomy, Lesson 2 - The Sun

Geography: Olders - North America Continent Study - Draw and label North American Countries. Youngers - Alabama. Study in Atlas and color Alabama quarter from H.I.P Quarter Lesson Plans.

Picture Study: Museum ABC - B is for Boat

Poetry: R is for Rhyme - B is for Ballad

Art Study: M is for Masterpiece - B is for Brush

Music Study: The Story of the Orchestra - Bach

Instruments: Olders - Keyboard (Learning the location of the notes on the keyboard and on the staff) Youngers - Recorder (Learning location of notes on the staff and playing the letter B)

Shakespeare: Biography about Shakespeare

Montgomery Academy Preschool - Our Schedule

9:00 AM Preschool Starts.

9:00 - 9:15 AM We do "quiet reading" (the children pick a book off the shelf and look at it, or I do have one emerging reader, so she does some actual reading.)

9:15-9:30 Journal Time. The students draw pictures in sketch books. We use the top spiral Pacon sketch books from Target. I've learned the hard way that doodle pads do not hold up. The students are encouraged to write their names on the page. I date stamp each page, and I label the picture.

9:30 - 9:40 Snack. Usually something like raisins, grapes, oyster crackers, etc. and a 3 oz. Dixie cup of water.

9:40 - 9:50 Potty Break. (I have two newly trained preschoolers, so we have a formal potty break as well as letting the children go when they need to.)

9:55 - 10:20 Line Time. (The students sit on a "line mat" - a cloth placemats that they place on a line.

9:55 - 10:05 Sing our "Hello" song. Then each student gets to pick a song to sing. At the end, we go over our nursery rhyme for the month.
10:05 - 10:15 We do our "helper" jobs. Every one has a job - we have a number helper, a shape helper, a letter helper, a flag helper, a weather helper, and a calendar helper.
10:15- 10:20 I read a story that goes along with our weekly theme. (This week is Letters and Colors.)

10:20- 11:10 Work Time.

11:10 - 11:20 Have our Good-bye Time. We sit on line mats again, I read another story, and we sing our goodbye song.

11:30 - 11:45 Lunch.

11:45 - 12:00 Outside Time.

12:00 Preschool ends.

Preschool Month 1: What's On The Shelves

Pocket Chart for our schedule and weather pictures. The children's names are listed below the weather symbol (not shown in the picture though.)

The Alphabet Center. I really like this. It was a bit pricey, but I've used it daily for the past 4 years.

A pocket chart with our monthly nursery rhyme. We "read" it every day.

The calendar

The art easel. There is a chalkboard/dry erase, and we clip paper on it for painting too.

Playdoh center. I always make my playdoh and color the color of the month. The color this month is Red.

A couple of the practical life shelves - cutting food, locking puzzle, duster. Nuts and bolts, sticks in shaker, sorting by color.

Floor rugs and dressing vests.

Top shelf of the art shelves - glue, jars with other supplies, magnadoodles, and papers.

Copy paper, card stock, and inset paper.

Top shelf of the sensorial shelf - color box 1, Color sorting, and color cards.

2nd shelf - Block tower, knobbed cylinder A

3rd shelf - Brown stair

Top shelf of Geometry shelf - Insets

Rest of the Geometry shelf

Alphabet Shelf

Language Shelf - 3 part card, language cards, season cards

Top shelf of Writing Shelf - Dry erase with alphabet

2nd shelf - moveable alphabet

3rd shelf of writing shelf - Felt and magnetic letters

Science Shelf (Sorry it is all shadowy!)

Mammal Puzzle, Tree Puzzle and control cards and 3 part cards.

Math Shelf - Short Bead Stair, Fraction Puzzles, Bead Sequencing.

Spindles.

Counting Bears, number cards, Counting Apples.

Sandpaper Numbers, magnetic numbers, and number puzzle.

Montgomery Academy - Preschool Version

I am starting my 7th year of preschool year. I really can't believe that it has been that long, but I started when Flower turned 3, and she will be 10 soon, so I guess it must be true.

I have two full-time daycare students - a 4 year old girl and a 17 month old boy. I have one part-time daycare student - a three year old, and currently, two students who are preschool only. Both preschool only students are 3 year old girls. The only boy is Super, who is 4 years old.

We started preschool on Tuesday, September 7th, and it went really well! One of the students cried for a little while when she got dropped off, and the other child cried when it was done.

Here is a copy of the weekly on the shelf that I fill out and I head out to the parents every week. (Most of it is in a table, but I couldn't figure out how to import the file to blogger. So you'll just have to imagine it.) In the notes section, I name the actual works that they picked each day, and any other comments for the day.

=====================================

Name:
Week of:

Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri

Practical Life
Sensorial
Language
Science
Geography
Mathematics
Art
Music
Library

NOTES:

Montgomery Academy - Elementary Version

In the Document section, I have a document that shows the books/curriculum we will be using this year, and I did a post here about our plan for homeschooling. Most of this is still true, but I thought I'd let you know, now that we've done things for a couple weeks, what we have ended up doing.

First of all, my sister did end up joining me as my teacher assistant. Yea! She brings her two sons, Scooter (age 10) and Helper (age 8) and her daughter (16 months.) She has another daughter, Princess (age 5), who attends public school. My sister teaches Language Arts (spelling, literature, grammar, writing) and History in the morning. She teaches upstairs. The older kids sit on the couches in the living room, or around the table in the dining room. Her toddler and Little Boy, the toddler that I watch (age 17 months) play in the living room while she teaches. Meanwhile, I teach preschool downstairs in the Preschool area.

We have lunch and PE, and then I teach the older kids in the afternoon downstairs in the school room. The toddlers are napping sometime during this time, and the two preschool aged daycare children have quiet time for an hour, and then watch an educational video or work on things from the preschool area. I teach Math, Picture Study, Science (we are alternating Botany and Astronomy), Geography, and "Specials" (Art, Music, Instruments, Poetry, and Shakespeare.) I use the Penny Gardner version of Picture study.

I'll give you the Afternoon Schedule and the books we are using. When I get a copy of my sister's schedule, I'll post that too.

Monday
Math (30 Minutes)
Picture Study – View, Turn Over, Narrate (15 minutes)
Botany (30 minutes) -
Music Study - Story of the Orchestra – Read/Listen (15 minutes)
Geography (30 minutes)

Tuesday
Math (30 minutes)
Picture Study – View, Turn Over, Sketch Black & White (15 minutes)
Astronomy (30 minutes)
Recorder/Keyboard Instruction (15 minutes)
Alphabet Art (30 minutes)

Wednesday
Math (30 minutes)
Picture Study – View, Turn Over, Sketch Color
Botany (30 minutes)
Music Study - Story of the Orchestra - Composer or Instrument Study /Listen (15 minutes)
Geography (30 minutes)

Thursday
Math (30 min)
Picture Study – View, Turn Over, Free Choice of Art Material (15 min)
Astronomy(30 min)
Keyboard/Recorder (15 min)
Alphabet Poetry (30 min)

Friday
Math (30 min)
Free Choice Bins (15 min)
Botany (30 min)
Free Choice Bins (15 min)
Shakespeare (30 min)
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Here are the books we are using:

Math
Math U See Beta (M-Th) & Saxon 2 (F) – Jelly Bean & Helper
Saxon 5/4 (M-Th) & Geometry (F) – Flower
Saxon 6/5 (M-Th) & Geometry (F) - Scooter

Picture Study
Museum ABC

Music Study
Story of the Orchestra

Botany
Apologia Botany

Astronomy
Apologia Astronomy

Geography
Continent/Country Study – Flower and Scooter (Puzzles, Continent Boxes, Continent Research Guide Form)
U.S. State Study – Jelly Bean and Helper (Puzzle, H.I.P Quarters, US Atlas book)

Art
M is for Masterpiece

Poetry
R is for Rhyme

Shakespeare
Tales From Shakespeare

Pictures from Week 2: Elementary

Our solar system model - the sun is the big one on the left, and they still wanted to include Pluto, so that

is the tiny one on the right.

Making and then flooding the Nile

We did some wood models for fun last Friday. (Oh, we also had an injury - not while we were homeschooling, but Scooter broke his leg the last week.)

Jelly Bean trying out her model

Doing the Egyptian!

The weighing of the heart vs. the feather to find out if the mummy was good or bad.

We also did math, and music, and other stuff, but these were the highlights. I'll post the actual schedule in a separate post.

Now that it is September, what did I get done?

I will post about Montgomery Academy - Downstairs version soon, and I will post pictures from our first couple weeks of MA - Elementary, and our first week of MA - Preschool, but first, I wanted to check in with what I got done from my list of things to do.

* Go through papers from last year for all three of my children. Keep only 1-2 things from each month. - DONE

* Print, print, and print. My first priority is to print out all the manuals that I've done in my Montessori Online Training Class. Then, I need to print Montessori Grammar materials, and then Geography. After that, I need to print some seasonal activities for preschool for September. Then Montessori Math materials. - ALMOST DONE. I got everything that I needed done by through September.

* Go through Theme List for September for preschool and check books that I have here and see if there are any books that I want to check out from the library. Check to see if I have all the apples that I need for various works. - DONE

* Order any books that I need for homeschooling. - DONE. The books took longer than I expected, but everything is here now.

* Buy anything that I need for homeschooling from the local teacher's store.* - SORT OF DONE. Had to make two special orders for the spelling books. Still waiting on a couple books.

* If I end up with an extra $100 that I don't know what to do with, order the Botany Cabinet and Color Box 3 from Adena Montessori. UH, DIDN'T HAVE EXTRA, but I'm hoping to have some by the end of the month. But I'm not getting Color Box 3 yet.

* Make Continent Felt Map. - DONE

* Make sensorial materials that I still want to make. - NOT DONE

* Make math materials that I still want to make. - NOT DONE

* Make language materials that I still want to make. - ABOUT HALF DONE

* Oh yea, I also want to print control sheets for the Botany Puzzles and Zoology Puzzles from Montessori N' Such freebies section. And create labels. And create felt versions of the Botany and Zoology Puzzles. - PART DONE. Printed control sheets.

* Order Montessori Geography Control Maps from Montessori N' Such. NOT DONE. The control maps are $10, and shipping is $10. I'm having a hard time paying the same for shipping as the product.

* Update Parent Handbook, and other forms. - NOT DONE

* Create bulletin board for Fall. - NOT DONE

* Buy new student folders, markers, crayons, etc. for preschool. - DONE

* Buy new notebooks for homeschool. - DONE

* Organize homeschool room. - DONE

* Organize preschool room. - DONE

* Organize playroom. - DONE

* Organize sleeping areas (for Montgomery Academy All Day students.) - DONE

* Buy and put up the new wooden playset outside - NOT DONE

Well, I still have some materials to make, and Mr. F needs to get the playset up, but I'm doing fairly well on my list so far!