Thursday, October 1, 2009

Our New Work

The World Stamps Work is something I ordered from the For Little Ones store off of Etsy.
Both Big Bro and Little Bro enjoy doing this work! The box is well made and the stamps are very interesting! Stamps are sorted by continent.

As Little Bro completes this work, he LOVES to sing our versions of The Continents Song and The Oceans Song:

Both songs are set to the O, My Darlin' Clementine...

North America, South America, Asia, Africa
Antarctica, Australia, and Europe.

Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean,
Arctic Ocean, Southern Ocean...
All the Oceans!


We also ordered the Montessori Books Complete Series Bundle 2 from the For Little Ones Etsy store. The books in this series include The Red Bug (correlates with the Pink Series), Matt and the Muffin (Blue Series), The Raccoon (Green) and Chip and the Chestnut (Green).
The story illustrations are well done and they work great in a Montessori inspired homeschool. They would also work well in a Montessori 3-6 classroom*.
The books have a little pocket on the inside of the back flap of each book.
The word cards in the pocket are the sight words for the story for the non-phonetic words.
*If you were to use them in a classroom, I would probably laminate the little non-phonetic cards.

To extend this work, I took all of the verbs from the story and wrote them out on paper, in red marker.
Then, Big Bro reviewed the words and came up with some synonyms for these verbs.
I then made some grammar boxes similar to the ones Miss Patty has in her Montessori classroom.
Thank you, Miss Patty, for posting your lovely photos, as they inspired me to make these boxes!
Went and bought two wooden shaped boxes at Michael's Craft Store...covered the lids with sticky foam felt. To make the boxes look more finished, I took wood markers and colored underneath the edges and along the top portions of the boxes.
For the black box, I just focused on the character of the story, Matt. I kept it very simple and just focused on the idea that for the black box, for this lesson, the word card in this box answers the question "Who?"
For the red box, I explained that these words answer the "What?" question...in this case "Does What"?
Big Bro then came up with his own new sentences using the cards from the two boxes.
We talked about how you can build upon a story you have heard and make new stories, as long as you give credit to the person who came up with the first story.

Big Bro liked this idea...he came up with enough new sentences and through in a few new ideas...enough that we will now have another story for the character, Matt.

Big Bro liked doing this so much that he also took this idea and came up with a new story based on the Bill Martin, Jr. and Eric Carle Book, Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See?
We had read this book as we are starting to focus more on our continent of North America.
Big Bro made his own seasonal version of this story, for fall and harvest.

2 comments:

  1. You have been very busy! Thanks for sharing the books. I have seen these on Etsy too, but didn't want to purchase them without a little more information. I just want to let you know that I bought my grammar boxes from Amy Kuhl Cox. She has a shop on Etsy and sells several Montessori items. One day, I will get her Continent Map and Land, Air, and Water Mat. I also just posted pics and wrote about what we have been studying in the classroom. Check it out!

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  2. I love everything that amy has for sale on her Etsy page! Thanks for sharing! I would love to buy those mats, too.
    She is very talented!
    Your new photos are great!
    Hope that you are doing well.

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