Our Pre-Reception Class Curriculum

Since Nikki is going to be home with me all year, I thought it would be best to make some plans about what we are going to do. Curriculum is quite a strong word for what we will be doing, but 'vague plan with a couple of textbooks' just doesn't sound very professional!

There are four key subjects that I want to cover this year: Maths, English, Russian and Music. I have not made any proper plans for any other subjects, though we will certainly be covering other subjects in an informal way. I want to keep the formal stuff for the mornings and have afternoons free for outdoor play, arts and crafts etc.

So, here's my plan for now:

Maths.

I want to re-start our work with Saxon. I don't know how I really feel about this book, since it goes so painfully slowly and Nikki already knows a lot of the material, but since we can do a lesson in 5 minutes I thought it would be a nice pain-free way of including Maths into our daily routine.

I also have a collection of Montessori materials, board games and other Maths-related activities and hope to play at least one of them every day.

English.

Reading: we haven't really made any progress with reading lately. Reading Eggs got too difficult (not reading-wise, but in terms of computer and coordination skills) and so we didn't pay for a subscription and haven't had much luck progressing beyond CVC words. For this year, I have bought a new book, designed for early readers, called The Reading Lesson. I am impressed with the format (despite American spelling) and it promises a second grade reading level in 20 lessons. The lessons should take around 5-10 minutes and be covered in 1-2 weeks each. So we might even finish it this year if Nikki can get over his fear of reading sentences!

Writing: We have our amazing writing course Write from the Start. I am completely in love with this program because it is completely focused on fine motor control in a fun way. The worksheets take literally a couple of minutes - I swear he takes longer choosing his pen colour than actually doing the work! We will practice letter forms separately (jumping straight into cursive) and I hope to get to the point of writing words this year, too!

Story time: The most time-consuming part of our Language curriculum! I am currently putting together theme packs of 5 books to do a Five in a Row type reading program. The plan is, simply, that I will read the same five books every day for a week and we will talk about the books and find more themes and deeper understanding over the course of the week. I will probably use these books to base our arts and crafts and science experiments on, too.

Russian.

Nikki will be going to Russian school again this year. I also plan to make Russian lessons a part of our daily routine.

Reading and Writing: Use a combination of his school reading textbook and games to learn the letter sound and forms. I want to use last year's textbooks for daily Russian practice. His class is progressing to multi-syllable words this year, which means he might actually be reading fairly well in two languages by the end of the year! (Russian is much easier for learning to read because you just learn 33 letters - no funny rules or letter pairs making completely different sounds, there are only a very few exceptions)

Comprehension: Again, use games and his school language textbook to revise and get the topics into his active vocabulary.

Story time: Same as for English, except the goal is more to encourage understanding and narration than discussing themes, since someone is reluctant to actually speak in Russian.

Music.

This is our final set subject. Nikki is so musical that I really want to make it a daily lesson. We have our Little Musician lessons for theory and Soft Mozart for learning the piano. I have no goals other than to keep him loving music and getting familiar with the sounds of notes and instruments, and maybe learn a couple of musical terms.

Nikki is reluctant with piano lessons - he likes to play as if he's in a band, dancing to the music and pretending to play a tune. Very occasionally I can stop him for about 30 seconds of practicing "proper" playing techniques (finger exercise or note-recognition games). The best I can hope is that he picks up a couple of bars of Jingle Bells in time for Christmas!

The End.

So there's my vague plan / curriculum for this September. My goal is to do lessons in Maths, Reading, Writing, Russian and Music for at least 5 minutes every day. That is maybe half an hour plus story time before lunch - not too much for a nearly-4 year-old, I think. Story time will probably need a maximum time limit to fit everything into the morning, though...

Practical Chinese Lesson

Using our Moveable Alphabet

I put a missing-letter CVC word worksheet in our lesson packets but the text is small and so I had to write in the missing letters for him to be able to read the word - what a perfect point to introduce using our newly-boxed moveable alphabet!

Nikki and I worked through the sheet together, and I still filled in the missing letters for him, but then he got the fun job of finding the letters and making the word all by himself!

He liked to trace the letters with his fingers first, practicing - and explaining out loud - how to write them:

His current phrase of choice is "I really love..." and guess what - he really loved his new box of letters!

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Making Materials: Moveable Alphabet Storage

I bought a cheap set of plastic letters ages ago (I just can't justify the expense for the beautiful wooden Montessori ones) and they have been stuck in a box because I just couldn't figure out how to store them in a way that all the letters would be separate and visible.

So, today I googled and came up with a rather obvious idea using a craft supplies box - just perfect because know that I have a spare one!

Obviously, it was nowhere to be found now that I had a purpose for it. However, whilst searching for it I came across an old display box of watercolour paints that was just the right size. The paints were moved from the plastic holder into our arts and crafts box and the plastic was ripped out to leave an empty box.

To make the dividers, I cut up some card runners to fit the length and width of the box and cut notches to slip them together.
                 
The final grid fits fairly well into the box and keeps the letters separated - so long as the box is kept nice and level. I don't expect the letters will ever look this neatly arranged again, though!

And yes, I measured the spaces to be equal and that means that the m and w letters don't fit in horizontally, so they have to be put in sideways. It was far easier to put a couple of letters in wonky than fiddle about re-sizing the grid to make them fit!

Making Materials: Music Manipulatives

Our Little Musician program teaches colour-coded notes, so I decided to make him some colour-coded notes and a staff to put them on!

I bought some mounting boards (I wanted something sturdy and cheap for the staff) and wooden disks for the notes. I was intending to string several boards together to make a super-long staff, but unfortunately, I was picturing the disks in inches and not centimetres  so they are a lot smaller than I intended and will soon be replaced by nice big ones!

For the smaller notes, I used just the one board to make a mini-staff. I simply drew on lines around an inch apart (the width of my ruler). The space between the upper and lower staff has a faint smudge where I turned the ruler over to double the gap, but this works as a nice subtle reminder of where to put middle C.

The notes are simply painted wooden disks.

do = red   re=orange  mi=yellow  fa=green  so=blue  la=purple  ti=pink

I also made some chord cubes. These can either be placed on the staff or stacked to make the chords we are learning (in the picture there is do-mi-so, fa-la-do and so-ti-re). I had ten blocks, so seven are one colour and the rest have a different colour on each face.

Staff with moveable notes and chord cubes

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Lesson Planning and Montessori

I have spent the last couple of weeks researching and planning lessons for the next term. In this respect, Montessori is the complete opposite of what I want. I like to make a plan and then make another plan on how to go about completing the first plan... I like to have timelines of when each part of the plan should be finished...

To help me cope with my transition to Montessori, I am making plans. Frustratingly, I can't set dates for when and how Nikki will master each lesson, and I refuse to try for fear of subconsciously rushing him to do what I think he should be doing. So, I am focusing my planning energy into writing lesson scripts and presentation orders, and researching all the subjects I want to cover and roughly when I want to do so.

I find that writing a 'lesson script' is a great way of focusing on the Montessori way of teaching. If I write out word for word what I want to say at each stage of a presentation, how I want to answer all the questions I think might happen and how I want to help Nikki with self-correction, I am much more able to keep a Montessori mindset when I am working with Nikki. I don't necessarily follow what I have written to the letter, but having thought it out so precisely makes me far less likely to turn into the nagging, correcting teacher that my own school experiences tell me is 'normal'.

Because we have little space, and Nikki seems to loose interest in the materials when he has too much choice, a part of my planning is also focusing on what materials to have out when. I plan to rotate materials and only have two or three on the shelf in each area at any time. I am trying to work out what order to present the sensorial work - all other areas have a fairly obvious progression, but all the sensorial bits we have are things he is ready to be presented. For now, I am going to try and offer similar activities in rotation (ie. pink tower or brown stair; knobbed or knobless cylinders) - at least until he is ready to do the work that combines materials. Hopefully, once term begins and we are able to keep a more steady routine, he will build his focus and interest and I won't have to keep taking the materials away when he starts pretending they are guns or telescopes or violins...

I'm also researching other topics - I want to be prepared for when I eventually introduce science, geography, art etc. to Nikki. I want to know what materials I need, what I can make and what I want to save up for. I am also really interested in giving Nikki the spiritual foundation I wish I had grown up with and when I started looking for a Montessori approach to do so, I found Godly Play. I have absolutely fallen in love with the concept and want to buy the material sets even more than I would love a full-sized Montessori classroom stocked with Nienhuis materials... well, almost!

So, this is what I have been doing instead of blogging! Plans within plans within plans - I might even follow some of them... 

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Learning Music part 1

We've been doing a lot of music this week. Music has always been something I've wanted to do with Nikki, but since I haven't really learnt anything music-related since giving up the violin at age 11 (I scraped past my Grade 1 exam) I don't really have the skills to teach him  more than note-sounds on the bells or xylophone.

When I realised that Little Musician had finally been released, I was thrilled. From what I had heard from discussions during beta-testing it was just what I needed to offer Nicholas a more rounded music education.

We started on the trial Monday and I am speechless. It is so much better than I hoped. Most importantly, Nicholas loves it. He asks to watch the lesson many many times in a day. I try and keep it down to 2 or 3.

The whole lesson for each day lasts around 5 minutes and is split into many parts:

Chord Recognition - a chord is played, named and then sung in solfege. This is repeated for two chords.

Solfege - the note sounds and solfege names (do re me etc.) are taught for three different notes.

Note Sounds - a simple scale is played.

Musical Knowledge - either three instruments are introduced, including the sound and how they are played, or pictures of three composers are shown while one of their famous compositions plays.

Music Appreciation - an excerpt from a famous classical piece.

Clap-Along Rhythm Lessons - Nikki's absolute favourite. A nursery rhyme tune (so far we have seen Mary had a Little Lamb and the ABC song) is played while an animated baby claps the rhythm.

At the introduction to each section, Nikki announces 'I like... !' He happily sings the notes that are played, and enjoys listening to all the music.

I've decided its worth investing in the full version - I think Nikki would melt down if the trial ended and he couldn't have any more! I really like the program: it is fun, quick and full of information with a year's worth of lessons pre-loaded (the software and lessons are both for life).

There is a free 14-day trial available for Little Musician at the Brillkids website. If you are thinking of buying, please use my code to get a 10% discount! BKAFF49125

This post has turned out a lot longer than I anticipated, so I'll write about our other musical adventures separately...

Apple Tree

Nicholas was eating an apple the other day and started asking about the seeds. He wanted to know what they were (apart from yucky, meaning inedible) and I told him that when the seeds are planted in the ground they grow into a new apple tree.

Since he was showing an interest, I decided that we would plant some seeds in one of my window pots. This is what we have now:

At the moment, he is quite fascinated. He is really amazed at how the bigger plant is changing and was excited when the smaller one popped up this morning. I was intending to buy him a plant for him to look after, but I think these little guys will be even better, since he has seen the process from seed to plant and is quite taken with them!

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Our Montessori Space, Final Version

I have spent hours planning, re-designing and  re-organizing our Montessori Space. I have finally cleared and sorted out the extra shelving I had planned to use for materials and now have four defined 'stations' for our Montessori work. At the moment, these are each dedicated to one of what I see as 'core' subjects: Practical Life, Sensorial, Language and Maths. Later, I will have to make space for materials from other subjects.

Our Practical Life Station

Practical Life shelves

This unit is in my kitchen. I have dedicated the bottom four shelves to PL and art activities. Nicholas enjoys being able to peep through the handles of the trays to see what the activity is. The rest of the unit stores spare games and puzzles.

Our Language Station

Language shelves

This unit holds all our language activities, including pre-reading and pre-writing and Russian. Directly opposite these shelves is our reading station - a lovely wooden magazine rack which holds all the books I have out for daytime reading this week.

Reading station

Our Sensorial Station

Sensorial station

This area is dedicated to sensorial materials and puzzles. Depending on what is out, it can hold a lot of different activities.

Our Maths Station

Maths station

Our maths area is not the most easily accessible area, being that it is located under part of my desk... I often have to help Nicholas remove the activities until he is safe to stand up, but otherwise there is no problem. There is also a shelf ideal for storing one of out rugs.

Overall, I am surprised just how many different materials I can have set up at any one time without losing a whole lot of space - the language and PL shelves were already being used for Nikki's things, and the other two areas previously held books which I have managed to find a new home for.

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What's on our Trays

Here are the tray activities I've put together for this week. Normally, I'd have a few more Practical Life activities, but since I am in the process of re-organizing the PL shelves to be more Montessori-friendly and we are introducing lots of new Sensorial materials, I thought one might be enough. If not, I'll add more later in the week...

Sorting Fruit - with so many new things, I wanted to put in something familiar. Although he has mastered this as a whole hand activity, he hasn't seen it for a couple of weeks and still enjoys playing with the fruit.

Puzzles - I have put out a single 4-piece puzzle. I will probably add a second soon, but am rather fed up of picking up box-fulls of puzzle pieces so have limited the number to make it easy for Nikki to tidy away himself.

Sandpaper letters - our first three letters - Nikki is used to seeing capital letters in print (very un-Montessori) so it is taking him a while to learn that these lower-case cursive letters are the same as the ones he knows...

Sound balls - we haven't had these out for a while. Nikki was very excited to see them!

Bead chains - we are focusing on learning quantity. Nikki is great at counting, but hasn't 'got' that each number has a specific quantity. We're working on 1-4 with our numeral board, so this should reinforce what he's learning.

Our School Space

There is not a lot of space in our flat. Montessori materials need a lot of space. The compromise - Nikki will only ever have a few materials out at a time. The most space-consuming are the sensorial materials; I plan to keep them out until he masters the presentation and then swap them out for a while before adding the next presentation for that material.

At the moment, I have only converted half of the available Nikki-height shelves for our materials. I am slowly re-organizing my storage to clear up the other shelves, which will eventually hold materials for the subjects I will introduce later.

This is how I have transformed Nikki's 'corner' into our Montessori area:

Sensorial, Maths and Russian activities.

The tall bookshelf has taken the place of the play kitchen, which has moved around the corner for easier access. There is just about enough space to roll out a rug between the bookcase and the shelves, though Nikki generally doesn't. He is, of course, free to put his rug anywhere he pleases - as long as it isn't under my feet!

Sorting, Language, Maths and Puzzle activities.

 The books on top of the shelves are for our artist and composer of the month. I have also hung an art print in the hall at Nikki-height, which I'll change once or twice a month.

Tomorrow, I hope to finish the Practical Life/Art shelves in the kitchen...

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Cooking

Nicholas has just got to the age where he is not only willing but also able to help me cook. Today, he really wanted to prepare the broccoli for our lunch. I wasn't sure that he would manage, but he insisted on trying.

He managed to saw off one head using a dinner knife, but soon acknowledged that it was too hard and settled for putting the cut broccoli in the pan for me.

He was much more successful peeling carrots. I watched him very closely with the sharp peeler, but he followed to my instructions to be safe and hold one end while peeling the other.

I did have to finish up the peeling and chopping, but he was very good at picking up every scrap of mess. He even cleaned his table for me!

Moving on to Montessori

I've been neglecting this blog somewhat lately. This is because I've been delving into the fascinating world of Montessori teaching and have decided to move on from our past dabblings in Montessori-style learning. I am diving headfirst into setting up as much of a Montessori homeschool as I can afford the time, money and space to create.

While Nikki has spent the last week in Russian immersion, I have been sanding spindles and re-designing our  home. It is very much a work-in-progress, and I will be making space for materials where I can and as the need arises.

The hardest thing I have found, is that I need to completely change the way I communicate with Nicholas. I have always talked him through all his activities and been a firm believer in the 'naughty corner'. The Montessori  approach to teaching and discipline are both encapsulated in the quote:

"Teach by teaching, not by correcting."

This is something I am having a hard time teaching myself to do. It is just so easy to fall back on the old friends no and don't - and I suspect it will be a long time before I am fully comfortable in the role of Teacher rather than that of Corrector.

Using Chopsticks

I bought Nicholas some new training chopsticks and they arrived this morning. Unlike his other ones, these have specific holes to put your fingers in to learn the proper way to hold them. I was amazed at the instant improvement in control they gave him - this video is the first time he has ever used them (barring the pompoms he has already transferred before I started filming).

He can't quite figure out how to get his fingers in the right holes on his own, as you can see at the end of the video, but that should come with practice.

Now I have a craving for Chinese food...

Making Materials - Red Rods

I decided that red rods should be easy enough to make myself. Since the emphasis of this material is length, I really don't think that the size or shape of the rod is too important. The 'official' rods are 2.5cm square, but it was a whole lot easier (and cheaper) for me to use 1.2cm dowelling.

I started by cutting the 10cm and 20cm rods, and then made my measurements by placing the 10cm rod on alongside the longest-cut rod until I had cut all ten rods. Using this method, I could ensure that when we came to using the smallest rod as a comparison of the length-difference between adjacent rods, that it would make them both the same. This is more important for the work than 100% precise lengths. Overall, I gained around 2mm for each rod, which I think isn't bad considering that the cuts were not perfectly straight (and thus the dowels don't fit together with perfectly flat edges) and all the tools I had were a 30cm ruler, a tape measure, a hacksaw and a pencil!

Once the rods were cut, I sanded them down (using scraps left over from the sandpaper letters) and rounded off the edges.

Then I painted them with red acrylic.

Finally, I finished them off and sealed the paint with a coat of home made beeswax polish.

Now I just need to make something to store them in!

Making Materials - Sandpaper Letters

I've been studying the Montessori method in a lot more detail lately, and have found that in learning why the materials are made in the way they are, and how they work has made me really really want them all!

Unfortunately, I can't quite stretch to the £3000 for the complete nursery package. I did break down and buy a few things on ebay (mostly over half-price) like the knobbed cylinders and some number beads which worked out as too difficult and too expensive to make myself. I have been busy making other things, though!

I have completed a set of lower-case sandpaper letters. I chose a cursive script as the letters are used train the hand movements for writing and I don't think that waiting to teach cursive helps with handwriting skills at all, as this forces the child to re-learn a skill they thought they had already mastered.

I used this template for the letters, but reduced the joining tails considerably - if you watch this video, the instructor says to remove the tails completely, but I had already made my letter by the time I saw it and wasn't about to start again!

First I cut out the template letters and stuck them upside-down on the back of my sandpaper.

Template mounted ready for cutting.

Then I cut out the letters. I used a craft knife for the holes, but found that it was easier to cut out the letter shapes with scissors.

Sandpaper letters waiting to be mounted.

Finally, I mounted them on card. I didn't have any blue or pink, and was too lazy to paint them, so all the letters are on white. I may re-mount them at a later date, or add a blue/pink border, but I'm happy with them for now.

Finished sandpaper letters.

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Buttons

Nicholas is more than eager to do his own buttons when he dresses, but he isn't just can't cope with the teeny ones on his clothes.

I have seen a lot of 'button snakes' on Montessori-influenced blogs, but I didn't want to overwhelm him with lots of things to attach. So I made this:

 The button is about an inch across. It is attached to a long ribbon to make it easier to manipulate, and which can also be used as a 'button snake' once Nikki is confident using the buttonhole (or once I have made the extra pieces!).

True to form, once he listened to my instructions, Nikki picked this up quickly. He still needs to figure out how to make both hands cooperate, but he gets the button through more often than not.

Sorting Fruit

I saw this ice cube tray in a charity shop the other week and instantly thought Nikki has miniature fruits exactly that size!

Set-up for transferring fruits with tweezers

Well, I was mostly right - the bananas, which were a small bunch in my mind's eye, are single and long and don't quite fit in the tray...

Nevertheless, Nikki loves this new game and will sort his fruit for ages. He especially enjoys putting them in the wrong place, pestering me to look at what he's done and then shouting "Oh No!" or "Don't be silly!"

Improvising Montessori

I love Montessori materials, however their beauty is far beyond what I can realistically afford to spend. I do what I can with Nikki, but a lot of the more specialised activities are hard (or very time consuming) to improvise.

When I was showing Nikki the new scales I bought, we were trying to make them balance with just the weights. This was impossible, since the individual weights we have are all half of the previous one, so the best we can do is 1lb and 15.5 oz. I remembered that we had a set of weights that I bought last year, and dug them out - only to find that they are metric. We managed to estimate the number of grams per ounce (Nikki wasn't patient enough for precision) when a thought struck me. The lovely set of metric weights in their presentation box had a resemblance to the Montessori knobbed cylinders. Similarly, the imperial weights could be likened to the knobless cylinders.

They are not perfect, but since the set of knobbed cylinders I've been coveting are around £100 for the four blocks, I'm happy enough! I'd still like to buy them (eventually, when I win the lottery!) but I am glad that I can introduce the concept now!

Nikki especially loved that the knobbed weights have tweezers in the box! Once he realised, he wanted to use tweeze everything!

The ease with which Nikki matches these weights back into the box makes me think that splashing out on the pretty set might not be worth it. However, he has a lot of trouble putting things into size order (in a row or stacking), so perhaps they would be worth it? Or should I go for the much more affordable knobless cylinders? Or should I simply use what I have? My heart wants them, but my purse is glaring at me for even thinking it!

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