First, you have to know that we live surrounded by volcanoes. There are 3 of them easily visible from our house, here in Guatemala, a country home to over 30 volcanoes. So, they are part of the landscape. Peanut enjoys watching volcanic eruptions from our house, whether they are just puffs of smoke and ash or fiery night-time displays.
So, what can you do to study volcanoes?
Make Your Own Volcano
There are a few ways to do this, and it makes a great opener to your unit. You’ll inspire your little one for sure.
Montessori math for kindergarteners is an exciting world of impressive, well-developed manipulatives. This is a material intensive area of the curriculum and one that is often a bit intimidating for those who aren’t familiar with the materials.
We started out with very few of these materials in math, and so far are doing just fine. But, if my Peanut made this subject area his favorite, then I’d have a lot of work to do making more materials!
What did we start with?
Spindle Boxes – A Variation
The traditional Montessori math spindle boxes lay flat and use rounded sticks. But, with a lack of resources, we went ahead and made our very own set featuring toilet paper rolls and popsicle sticks! Simple, yet effective.
Montessori language for kindergarteners is an addiction of mine. It’s one of my favorite things to have fun with, adding in new activities and shaking things up as much as possible. Lucky for me, Peanut loves it too! He’s been flowering, really showing interest in learning letter sounds and even starting to write them on his own.
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To be honest, we started working on this months ago. You can see how we started learning the ABCs in this post here.
So, when I started homeschooling more officially, I knew Peanut would be into it. Here’s what I included to get started:
Montessori geography for kindergarteners is such fun! Kids love the hands-on approach to learning about their world. Montessori designed the primary or preschool program to help answer children’s questions about the world we live in.
Quick note – this is part 2 in a series about how to begin Montessori Homeschooling. Click here to see part 1!
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Peanut has really enjoyed our first geography lessons. What did we start with?
We are in week two of Montessori Homeschooling! It’s the beginning of what will surely be an amazing journey. As I’m just getting started, all of the preparation is fresh in my mind.
I taught for several years in a primary Montessori classroom and still found it hard to put together the materials I wanted to use to start homeschooling with Peanut (age 4 – born in January)! So, I decided to put together a series about how to teach your child at home, with a focus on how to start Montessori homeschooling, in hopes to help others as they begin.
I’m a member of a few Montessori groups on facebook, and it seems common for people to worry about which materials to purchase or make, how to set up the classroom and what to start with. It makes sense. After all, these seem to be the main tools for learning. I, like many homeschoolers, started by thinking about what to use in our classroom space and it seemed like I needed all of the Primary Montessori materials at once. I wanted the pink tower, brown stair, sandpaper letters, spindle boxes, geography puzzles, zoology puzzles and much, much more!
Quickly, I realized that this wish list wouldn’t be possible financially or practically (we live in Guatemala…no online shopping here!). But, I also started to realize that it’s actually not necessary either.
Start Montessori Homeschooling by Following Your Child
Before I get into what I decided to include in our homeschooling beginnings, I want to say that as a Montessori teacher I LOVE and see value in all Montessori materials. I took a less traditional approach when putting our classroom together because I believe it’s more important to follow the philosophy than it is to provide all of the materials.
Kids love stamps. There’s something so satisfying about creating a perfect drawing on paper using stamps. They can be combined to create something fantastic and unique. Somehow, kids never grow bored using stamps.
It’s hard to find regular old stamps around here (in Guatemala). Most of them are made for teachers and have something like “Excelente!” written on them. So, I decided to put together some DIY stamps for kids…specifically for Peanut with some of his favorite things. I put them together for his birthday. He was thrilled!
These DIY stamps for kids are ideal for throwing into a busy bag for church, a meeting or long car ride. You could also break them out when you need a bit of quiet time at home. Peanut loved getting these out while his sister was napping – which was perfect timing. He was quietly busy, and his sister didn’t get in his way trying to destroy play with them as well.
It must be some sort of rule. All toddlers seem to LOVE water play. And have you ever noticed how at a certain stage, babies become determined to move on their own, struggling until they achieve the ability to walk?
These are examples of sensitive periods.
Throughout childhood, children experience a number of sensitive periods. Some last for years at a time, and others may only last several months. Montessori coined the phrase “sensitive periods” to refer to times when children have an especially strong motivation and interest to learn about a particular subject or master a certain skill. In her observations, she discovered that many children share a lot of the same interests around the same time in their development.
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How Can You Use Them?
As parents and teachers, we can take advantage of these sensitive periods to help guide our children’s learning. A perfect example is language. Montessori noticed that children experience a sensitive period in language from birth through about age 6.
I’m preparing some more educational materials for Peanut since we haven’t placed him in preschool yet. Maybe in 2018…we’ll see. For now, home is the place to be for learning!
If you know Peanut, you know some of his favorite things are dinosaurs and snakes. Insects and other reptiles are also high on his list. So, I decided to come up with a snake study unit. In this unit we will use or do:
Crafting and food are the two most essential pieces of holidays for me. Without crafts and decorations, I can’t quite get in the mood. And food, well, I think that goes without saying! Since our family lives in Guatemala, I have to double up the Thanksgiving celebrations and crafting efforts because I’m the only one who celebrates it! So each year I push forward, make a big meal, do Thanksgiving crafts and decorate to spread the festive feeling to our extended family.
I’ve scoured the internet and Pinterest for some new Thanksgiving crafts to add this year. Since Peanut is 3 now, he’s getting pretty handy with crafts and seems to enjoy them quite a bit! The challenge is now to keep my 1-year-old baby girl from destroying everything. She’s getting quite handy with scribbling now, so hopefully the new crayons we bought will keep her busy.
The Clifford books have got to be some of my favorite children’s books out there. Luckily, my son is also a fan. Norman Bridwell nailed it with the big red dog, his antics and constant efforts to do the right thing with a side of “oops!” These are great stories. If you haven’t read them with your child yet, I recommend you head to the library and check out a few. Then, you’ll be ready for story retelling with Clifford!
Because we enjoy so many Clifford stories at our house, it seemed like the perfect choice for story retelling work. This time, rather than paging through one of our Clifford books to retell the story like Peanut did with Swimmy, we made (drumroll)…..puppets!
