Recent Works Selected by the Boys

The boys have chosen a variety of works lately so thought that I would share a few with you...

Both boys have been selecting Learning Palettes for the last few days.
We have these for grades 1-3 for both language arts and math. Let me tell you, the boys just love to use their Learning Palettes!
Learning Palettes are great, in that they focus on a particular skill set at a time, are colorful and interesting to use, have a built in control of error, and are a self checking - self correcting work.
The math ones in particular are great, in that they correlate with the NCTM standards for math. We also like the reading ones, in that the skills covered are similar to how Montessori covers reading and language with children.

Big Bro has been having fun learning about caves and caverns. He has been working with the Caves and Caverns Elementary Work Pack by Laughing Star Montessori, a material that we were sent to review. He has enjoyed not only learning the terms and seeing the photos that tie in with caves and caverns, but also, playing the Who or What Am I? game that goes along with this work.
What a great pack of Montessori inspired materials!
So interesting and very challenging to boot!
This work goes way beyond stalactites and stalagmites.
Big Bro loves this work!!!

A work that has been a keen interest of both boys is the Road Trip USA Animal Unit from Confessions of a Homeschooler. They have enjoyed matching the animals to the cards, finding the various states on the map, and researching animals that are new to them since doing this work.
They have done some of the work together, some in tandem, and some separately.
Thanks so much to Confessions of a Homeschooler for this lovely work!
My boys really have gotten so much out of it! It continues to be a family favorite in our home.

Little Bro has been also selecting to do a fun twist on language objects work. One variation  / extension to his regular Montessori inspired language work is a work made by Lakeshore Learning called Mystery Word Builders. The work features round balls that can be opened by the child. Inside each colorful ball, there is a language object, along with foam letters that spell out the name of the object. There is a control of error built into this work, in that there are only the exact letters that a child needs to spell the word, but then, in addition, the actual word is spelled on one of the two halves of the interior of the ball for the child to be able to self-check.
Even though we have a huge tub of language objects, and many different Montessori-inspired language works, this twist from Lakeshore Learning seems to be a favorite with Little Bro.
He loves the colorful balls, how they look and feel.
Plus, it adds another element of interest to be able to shake the balls first and to guess what might be inside of them...

Big Bro has been selecting to work on his cursive. He has been using a wonderful wooden movable alphabet set of cursive letters from Alison's Montessori.
He chose to have this set in dark green so he practices writing his cursive words in dark green pencil or marker.
Big Bro enters them into a dark green notebook.
So very like Big Bro, as everything goes together so well!
In addition to the cursive practice with the movable alphabet from Alison's Montessori, he also has been enjoying doing work from Laughing Star Montessori's Beautiful Handwriting Series.
The work he creates from these books turns out so nicely!
The Laughing Star Montessori Beautiful Handwriting Series has really helped to improve Big Bro's handwriting.

We also updated Little Bro's bedroom recently, as he had outgrown some of the decor from his original room. He wanted to have a dinosaur theme room, so we switched things around and voila! Dinosaurs galore! One of the things in his room now is an activity table where he can play with dinosaurs. We have a nice collection of plastic dinosaur figurines.
Several of his dinosaurs are from the Safari Ltd. Carnegie Collection. They are attractively hand painted, interesting, and detailed. Little Bro loves to play with these dinosaur figures in his room. He also has enjoyed reading about dinosaurs, so we have been doing just that, for pleasure reading, bedtime stories, and as homeschool reading too.

Last but not least, since the temps have been slightly cooler than normal, the boys have spent a great deal of time at the park playing, riding bikes, checking out insects and other interesting critters, and climbing trees. What a great way to take in the sunshine and to enjoy the cooler temperatures!

Here are some photos of the work and play times here in our home:

Little Bro doing his language work, Mystery Word Builders from Lakeshore Learning.

Big Bro doing Road Trip USA Animals Unit from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Here, the boys chose to work together on the Road Trip USA Animals Unit ...they worked hard and matched up all of the animal cards!

Little Bro is working hard by himself on Road Trip USA Animals Unit here...

Little Bro is having fun using his Learning Palette for this math work. Big Bro also loves doing his work using Learning Palettes. He uses the ones for older children. It is so nice that Learning Palettes are for a wide range of ages, for both language arts and math!

Big Bro is working on his Caves and Caverns Elementary Work from Laughing Star Montessori. Such a cool work!!! He absolutely loves this work!

Little Bro's new dinosaur table in his newly re-decorated dinosaur themed room. Some of the neat dinosaurs are part of the Safari Ltd. Carnegie Collection. How he loves this activity table! What fun!

This is one of the black line masters books from Laughing Star Montessori's Beautiful Handwriting Series. Such a neat collection of works for children to practice their writing! Big Bro is enjoying learning how to do cursive!

This is the map showing the Continents of the World. This is the page that Big Bro decided he wanted to practice for the day! Very highly motivating program for handwriting! Thanks to Susan from Laughing Star Montessori for creating this super series!

Fun in the cooler temps! Great days for climbing trees, playing outside at the park, and riding bikes! Yay!

What have you been doing in your homeschool or classroom? 

We would love to hear what you are doing!

Please feel free to leave a link if you wish to share what you are doing for early October work in your room.

Full Disclosure: 
We were given a set of the Caves and Caverns Cards Elementary Pack by Laughing Star Montessori for the purpose of reviewing it and using it in our homeschool. We were given some of the Beautiful Handwriting Series blackline masters books from Laughing Star Montessori, although in addition to what was given to us for the purchase of review, we also have been very happy customers of Laughing Star Montessori and their materials. 
The Road Trip USA Animals Unit is available as a free download from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  
To download this work, please visit the Confessions of a Homeschooler blog directly. 
Our family purchased all of the following materials:
Learning Palettes for both math and language arts, 
Mystery Word Builders activity from Lakeshore Learning, 
the cursive movable alphabet from Alison's Montessori, 
the activity table and all dinosaur accessories and decor featured in Little Bro's room.
We did receive some of the Safari Ltd. Carnegie Collection Dinosaurs as part of an arrangement for me doing an earlier project for Safari Ltd. and those are featured in the photo of Little Bro's room.
All opinions expressed in this post are my own. 
My boys thoroughly enjoyed all of the materials that were mentioned in this post, regardless of whether the products were given to us or whether we paid for the materials ourselves.

Reggio Emilia Wednesday: Environment as the 3rd Teacher & Giveaway #5

One of the key tenets of the Reggio Emilia approach is that the environment of the child is the "Third Teacher"...

How Dear Hubby and I have interpreted that for our family and our boys is that our home should be inviting, comfortable,  and somewhat orderly with a wide variety of materials to encourage the boys to think, to create, and to expand upon their interests...
We also have to think of the larger picture in terms of "thinking globally and acting locally"...

Since we live in Florida,we need to keep in mind the environment that our boys are in contact with day-to-day...we might try to explore other climates and other environments but our day-to-day is here...pretty tropical, sunny much of the time, loads of flora and fauna to explore.
What we are not in contact with day-to-day is the cold, snowy environment during winter time that Dear Hubby and I grew up in, went to school in, etc.
We have not been in a snowy environment in over four years.
Little Bro was a tiny baby the last time we were in a cold, snowy place during winter time. 
Little Bro really, truly does not have a concept of snow. He actually refers to Parmesan cheese as "snow". When we have gotten photos from friends showing their children playing in the snow, he comments how it looks like they are having fun playing in foam. Why foam? Well, in Celebration, Florida, which is a reasonably short road trip from where we live, they cover part of their shopping district with white foam during a few weeks in December. Then, children can play in this foam, can take horse drawn rides on the streets, all the while surrounded by this fake stuff that is similar to shaving cream. They go all out and even have cotton batting on some of the roofs to look like snow...still looks like cotton batting, but they do at least try to make it look like a northern wintry scene.
When Little Bro has seen picture books depicting children wearing scarves, he routinely will say something about "the rope around their neck" or "the extra sleeve they hang on the hooks when they hang up their jackets"...
He does not automatically distinguish mittens from gloves, snow pants from overalls, and could not properly explain how a toboggan works, what snow shoes do when you put them on your feet, or how plastic bread bags can be of any help if you plan to go sledding.

I have had to do a bit of a shift since we have lived here, for my childhood environment is so vastly different than my sons here...

 Also, have had to work to get up to speed about what you can and cannot do with a palm frond, how you should not walk across the grass in your bare feet and whatever you do, you should not roll on the lawn, as it could either contain fire ants or if it is in the winter, when St. Augustine Grass goes dormant, it turns into the most prickly feeling stuff and is like stepping into a pile of splinters...ouch!!!

So, how does a northern mama who grew up used to "lake effect snow" and "wind chill advisories" as regular winter happenings deal with this environment so that this environment can be the third teacher for her southern born sons who view anything below 70 as "sweater weather"???

Well, simply put, I have to learn about our Floridian environment as the boys learn about it too...and so does Dear Hubby. 

Well, hope that you have enjoyed this Reggio-Emilia inspired post...

If you have a post that you would like to share that deals with having to shift your thinking to make your children's environment their third teacher, please add your linky. 

Or, if your children have been working on a Reggio-Emilia inspired project, please be sure to share. 

Would also love to hear from folks who try to integrate Reggio Emilia into their Montessori programs or Montessori into their Reggio Emilia programs, or any combination of these.  

For starters, I am adding the Linkys from last week, in case any of you missed these...but hope that we will get some new link ups from my readers. Am also linking up some neat information about a program that is going to be offered soon in Illinois. The presenter, JH Helm, highlights Reggio Emilia, Montessori, Godly Play, and Project Based Learning, so I found it to be an interesting read and if we lived close enough for me to easily attend, I would wanna go for sure...if any of you live or can easily travel to attend this workshop, sounds pretty cool...may wanna check it out for yourself.

Also, am providing a Linky to the Learning Materials Workshop Blog, as Learning Materials Workshop is  endorsed as an Official Reggio Emilia Resource. They have started to do workshops in conjunction with AMS. If you contact them and order from them, please tell them that you were directed from a Linky on Sunrise Learning Lab. I love their products and would love, love, love to be able to attend one of their workshops. Their Linky to the blog is in the Linky section of this post and the link to their Reggio Emilia inspired store, is in the Links in the link bar above the header of my blog. Learning Materials Workshop makes the most interesting beautiful looking block sets that I have ever seen. In addition, they sell other wonderful resources about the Reggio Emilia approach to learning.

Also, for today's Whole Lotta Love Giveaway:

Neat plane construction kit from Alison's Montessori. 

Disclaimer: 

Plugged the Geometric Solids and Plane Figures from Alison's Premium Quality Line  during the time frame of this giveaway, as they deserved to be plugged and I was just thrilled to have won them from Montessori for Everyone! 

Am providing links to Alison's Montessori Premium Line as well as Montessori for Everyone because I was impressed at how professionally this giveaway was conducted and how cool it was to win from them!

I did not have to give one of the plane construction kits away, as they actually mailed both kits for my sons, but since we have been so blessed to have won the beautiful Premium Quality Geometric Solids and Plane Figures from Alison's, I wanted to share the love and give one of the two plane construction kits to a public follower or subscriber of my blog to just say thanks for being a reader of Sunrise Learning Lab. The opinions I have expressed are my honest opinions and this is something that I chose to do and was not asked or required to do.

Update: 

The winner of this giveaway, as chosen by Random.Org,  is comment #2, Jennifer. 
Congrats to Jennifer!

Here is part of Jennifer's comment:

Well, if Big Bro loved it, I have a feeling my Ryan will love it as well. He's so mechanically inclined... LEGOS, blocks, even sculpture... he absolutely loves building with his hands! As for the environment as a teacher, we'll we've go about 3 inches of snow and counting outside... so my FL-born boys are learning about environmental differences as well...

This giveaway had ended and comments on this post are now closed.