We were going to start the day after Labor Day, but Jelly Bean wanted to start, and I also had ANOTHER new 2 year old (hereafter known as All Boy) today, so there just didn't seem to be any reason to NOT start and it helped us have a little more of a rhythm to our day.
Notice I didn't say structure. LOL
Montgomery Academy now has a 10 month old (crawling/pulling up/super curious/mostly non-sleeping/very cute) little girl (goes by Belle here), a 2 year 9 month old (goes by Giggles here) girl, a 2 year 6 month old (goes by All Boy here) boy, and a 2 year 4 month old (goes by Little Boy here), and Jelly Bean (8 1/2, my daughter). My other children, Super (age 5) and Flower (age 10) are going to public school this year.
(FYI to locals, I am now CLOSED to any new students, daycare or preschool.)
While I have had other 2 year olds at Montgomery Academy, I've never had this MANY of them. And while I've had an infant (either one of my own or one that I was watching), I've never had one THIS active. But that said, today was a really good day.
We had free play until 9 am, and then very short circle time, followed by the children picking things off the shelves until 11 am. Even on the first day, the children were able to put things back on the shelves before getting something else out with only a couple of reminders all morning. I don't have many Montessori materials out, but I gave individual presentations to all of the 2 year olds this morning on knobbed cylinder A, and two children had a presentation on the brown stair and open/close containers.
Then we had lunch and went outside and played for 45 minutes. After outside time, they napped for a couple hours, and then afternoon snack, more outside time, some watercolor paint, and finished the day off with an hour of free play.
And what was Jelly Bean during this time? We started the day with a few pages from her Read Aloud, A Little Princess. Then she did spelling, handwriting, and language arts at the dining room table while the preschoolers were doing shelf work. After lunch, I read from her History book, and then she did Math and Geography at the table, and then went downstairs to the Rec Room to do her free reading (she is currently reading Wizard of Oz. Again. She loves that book.) She went outside with the preschoolers when they went out after nap. We had planned on doing Science after we came in from outside, but it seemed like too much for the first day, so we didn't.
I'll make a separate post about what Jelly Bean is doing this year, but here is the brief version:
Read Alouds: Various titles
Spelling: Using spelling books from the local teacher's store
Handwriting: A handwriting book from the local teacher's store
Copywork: Various sources
Language Arts: God's Gift of Language A
History: Story of the World, Volume 2
Math: Math-U-See Gamma
Geography: Finish the second half of the United States (we studied the first 25 last year)
Science: Apologia Land Animals and Apologia Flying Creatures
Today, I had fun. I really enjoyed being around a bunch of two year olds, and a baby, and an 8 year old. It was good, fun, day.
No comments:
Post a Comment