Rosh Hashanah

L'shanah tovah!  This evening is the beginning of Rosh Hashanah.  We're not Jewish.  In fact, there's not one religion/spirituality that could encompass our beliefs and thoughts.  But we do respect and appreciate others' religions and practices and we hope to pass that on to our boys.  So tonight we honored the celebration of Rosh Hashanah with a little learning and celebration of our own.  We read a couple of books (pictured above) that explained briefly what the holiday is about and then enjoyed apples and challah dipped in honey for hopes of a sweet year.  While we ate we each discussed something from the past year that we would like to improve on this coming year.  Bean said he wants to help more animals, like bugs :)

My Body unit

At the start of our homeschooling year we decided to do a unit on "My Body".  Although this had been covered last year during his learning co-op, he was not able to finish the unit as he got sick with the flu and missed a couple of weeks of class time.  I knew that he would enjoy the topic and that there were projects he didn't get to finish that were worth reviewing. 

We started by reading the books "My Hands" and "My Feet" by Aliki.  We made a fingers book (not pictured) where we traced Bean's hand 5 times on different pages and then had him color thumb, pointer, middle, ring and pinky finger, one on each page.  He also got to take his fingerprints and we discussed how everyone's fingerprints are unique.  He made his footprints and then we labeled the parts of his foot.  We discussed how hands are useful for a larger variety of things then feet.  To prove this point I had him try drawing a picture with his toes...not as easy as you think! (he managed a few lines but they are hard to see in the picture)  This was also a great time to review right vs. left, although Daddy taught him that during bath time for the past two years when he would say "Give me your right leg, or your left arm".

 

This was the project I knew Bean would love to finish from last year.  He made a body tracing and decorated his face last year, but then got sick with the flu during the time the rest of the kids learned about their organs and put them on their body tracings.  We used the series of books above to teach about what each part of the body does.  Once he had glued the organs/body parts onto his tracing I went back and typed up clues for each of them.  I would read the clue and then he would decide which one I was describing and glue it in the proper place.  Although we are officially moving on from the body unit I think we'll leave "Bean" up and add to him as we continue to learn about different part of our body.

 

I've always loved the Rookie Readers series and was happy to find they had some at our library that discussed how our brain, heart and lungs work.  We also used the "Hear Your Heart" book to discuss our hearts in a bit more depth.  Bean used his stethoscope from his doctor's kit to listen to his own heart and Mommy's.  "The Skeleton Inside You" was a good book about bones and I was able to score a cheap, plastic skeleton at the Dollar Store (Halloween season!) to have him identify different bones named in the book.  After we read these we kept them in our bookshelf for him to read on his own or at bedtime with Daddy. 

We also discussed the outside parts of his body although this concept has been mastered for some time.  To follow up he colored a person and a face and then glued labels on the correct part. 

First Day of Autumn

Nature education was one of the areas I have been most excited about sharing with Bean.  We hope to instill in our children both an appreciation and a respect for the natural world.  Living in a climate where we get to experience four seasons, our boys will have the opportunity to see Mother Nature transform the outdoors four times a year.  I had been trying to think of some way to celebrate all the changes that each season brings.  I decided that seasonal nature journals might be what I was looking for to help me do this.  I even took it one step further and thought that it would be neat to assemble a kit we can take with us on our nature walks that included his nature journal, a twig pencil, magnifying glass and his binoculars.  I'm sure we'll be adding to this kit as we think of more things. 

To assemble the nature journal I took two pieces of brown foam and punched three holes in each of them.  I then cut drawing paper to the same size and hole punched that as well.  I used small rings to finish assembling the journal and then used some old scrapbooking sticker letters to spell out "Autumn" on the front.  Today was the first day of autumn and so I presented Bean with his new nature journal and let him decorate the front cover with an assortment of autumn themed scrapbooking stickers I had in my stash.  I explained that a nature journal will be a great place for us to keep all of our observations about the season.  For autumn, we can do leaf rubbings, glue in interesting leaves or seeds we find, glue in photos we take of trees changing colors, write down (dictate to Mommy) what we think animals, plants and people do during the season and draw pictures of things that we observe during fall.  He was so eager to use it he asked if he could start drawing autumn nature pictures right away.  Below are some of his pictures he drew today.  It's a good thing I have the ability to add more pages to this journal as I think we just may need them!

 

Happy International Peace Day!

In honor of International Peace Day we discussed what peace means to us and what it means to be a peacemaker.  The top photo shows the books we read and talked about today.  Bean loves "The Peace Book" by Todd Parr and I really like the "Can You Say Peace?" book that shows how children around the world say peace in their native language.  He also decorated a peace sign with rainbow foam squares that we can hang in the house.  The bottom picture shows our new mini Zen Garden!  I've had this for years and thought it would be a nice addition to the classroom.  We talked about how people use Zen Gardens to bring peace to their minds and hearts.  As he was having some frustrations this morning, he really took to this work.  He silently and carefully raked the sand until he told me he was "all peaced up, Mom"-which I took to mean he was feeling better :)  The card below is part of a peacemaker set I downloaded from Montessori Print Shop.  One side is the picture of the person and the other side has a quote that we will talk about and discuss it's meaning.  Today's quote was from the Dalai Lama and talked about having peace within yourself before there can be peace in the world.  Again, a great tie-in to how frustrated he was feeling and then how much more peaceful the whole house was after he had regained his balance and peaceful heart.  Since I have 11 more of these peacemaker cards and a bunch more peace-related activities and books to share with Bean I'm sure it will be a regular part of our work this year.

Language-Reviewing letter sounds

During his time at learning co-op Bean learned almost all of his letter sounds.  But since we had a 4 month break from co-op before we started working at home I thought it would be a good idea to do a quick review.  Each week we feature 2-3 letter sounds.  We read the sound box book for the letter, trace the sandpaper letter, identify sound objects starting with that sound (what's on the white dish) and then he may practice drawing the letter on his chalkboard if he wishes.  He's going through these quite quickly so I imagine we'll be pulling out the moveable alphabet soon.

Rainbow of children

To go along with learning about children from around the world, I put out on our work shelves a kit that I picked up from Michael's where you can take foam children in different shades and dress them in colorful foam clothes.  I was surprised at how much he LOVED this activity.  I only put a handful of people out the first day and he was eagerly asking for more people to decorate.  We ended up with quite a collection so we hung them in our archway.  This is only about half of what  he made.  They're so cute I think we'll keep them up for a bit.

Geography-Reviewing the continents

When setting up our classroom (which is by the way, still a work in progress) I was quite excited about the map cabinet I ordered from Montessori Outlet.  I know that most 4 year old kids aren't working on world geography but it's one of the aspects of Montessori education I have grown to love.  I believe children, more so today than ever, are growing up in a global community and that they need to have an understanding and a respect for it.  So with this in mind we have been working on reviewing the 7 continents.  We have the world map as part of our map cabinet and I made our own Montessori globe by painting over an old globe we had.  I figured a fun way to review the continents was to use books that teach about different people, places and things around the world.  Each day we have been picking a few of the children from the book, reading about them and then finding where they live on the map.  When we're done with this book I have ones on families, homes, clothing, food and art from around the globe.   

Our path to knowhere

This year our family started a new journey.  We have two sons, ages 4 months and 4 years old.  For the past two years our oldest son had been attending a Montessori-based parent cooperative learning group two days a week.  It was a great experience that allowed me to be involved in his early education but it came to an end this past spring leaving us with the question of what was next for his education.  After much discussion of our options (our local Montessori school, an area preschool followed by kindergarten at our public school or homeschooling), we decided to give homeschooling a try this year.  There's a myriad of reasons behind our decision but suffice it to say it felt like the right path for us at this time.

And therein lies the reason for this blog-to document this new path for our family.  We are on a path to knowhere.  Knowhere isn't so much of a destination as it is a description of our quest for knowledge.  We want our boys to have a love of reading, a curiosity for new discoveries, an appreciation for the natural world and respect for people of all cultures and religions.  As we embark on this new learning adventure together I hope that we'll be guided by those priorities and yet open to where the journey takes us.  We don't "knowhere" we'll end up at the end of this year in terms of homeschooling, but we hope to have fun as a family figuring it out.