School Review From The Week of 2/18

Here are a few highlights from school last week.  We continue the trend of having mostly focused days with a few crazy moments thrown in.  Overall, I'm pleased with where we are.

And I'll apologize for my blurry camera work up front.  I'm not sure what happened.  Well OK, I understand what went wrong technically. I'm not sure why I didn't notice at the time.

They enjoyed watching the birds on the water.  I keep binoculars by the window.

Elora was excited about completing the teen boards.  She counted every last bead.

William chose the hanging bead stair.  He may be not always get it correct but he enjoys it and tends to stick with it.  I'm very proud of myself for letting him doing it incorrectly.  That has been a big personal challenge.

He allowed me to remind him how to check for the control of error.  The beads should go from shortest to longest.  And yes, I asked permission before I touched his work.

Elora completed the bead stair.  It's amazing to think that I couldn't get her to touch this for an entire school year.  Now she chooses it and completes it with ease.

William learned how to carry the red rods.

The longest one was bigger than him!

Elora adores the cat and mouse exchange game.  I purchased this from Montessori n  Such.  If you are unfamiliar with the exchange game, it essentially teaches base ten counting.  You being by rolling a dice and then collecting the number of mice that is rolled.  You continue rolling until you have at least ten mice.  Then you count out ten and exchange them for a cat.  The process continues until all the cats have been collected.  Sometimes Elora and William will play it together.

Lockelan enjoys the nesting dolls.  I adore this stage because he's still surprised  when he opens the doll and finds a smaller doll inside.

Elora built letters using the letter shapes from Handwriting Without Tears.

William is on a letter treasure hunt.  Each dry erase sheet focuses on a different letter.   William seems to be drawn to all things dry erasable.

William is tracing a sandpaper letter.  The two finger tracing technique helps connect with proper pencil grip in the future.

Here is trying to draw a letter he just traced in the sand tray.

This work teaches one to one correspondence, an early math concept.  The basket contains one dozen plastic golf balls.  The goal is to place each one in a slot of the egg carton.  It's important to make sure you stop halfway through and throw all of the balls on the floor.  As an added bonus, the maraca can be used to knock the egg carton to the floor as well.

The object permanence box has remained one of Lockelan's favorite works for some time.  If I leave it on the edge of his table, he's usually stop each time he passes by and drop the ball in several times.  

And of course, we have to see if the maraca will fit.