Patterns

At the start of every lesson in Saxon K, we revise the pattern of the month. This is currently an AB pattern with green and orange.

Nicholas immediately memorised the idea of a green-orange pattern. He could recite it over and over, but struggled at first to reproduce it. The pattern revision in Saxon is restricted to colouring the next square in the right colour for the pattern. This wouldn't have been enough for Nikki.

We do three exercises to revise the pattern. First, I printed out a table with 6 columns and 13 rows. This is our pattern sheet, as the pattern changes after 12 lessons. I coloured the first row in as a reminder of our pattern and numbered the other rows 1-12.  This is also how I keep track of which lesson we are on.

Nikki colours in one row every lesson - spot the one where I helped him! He rarely makes mistakes (usually when he's not paying attention to which pen he is holding or which square he is colouring).

We then have a handful of linking cubes in green and orange that he makes a tower with - this one gets skipped sometimes because he struggles to link the cubes on his own. He then separates the linking cubes and sets out 'garages' in a green-orange pattern, in front of which he 'parks' his green and orange transport counters. This is, of course, the best bit.

When I was choosing the vehicles, I picked them out at random. I didn't want there to be a clear set of all the same/all different - I wanted the focus to be on the colour for this activity.



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Not Another Maths Program!

Yes, I have found yet another maths program that I have started using with Nikki.

If we do Little Math it takes all of 2 minutes and he just isn't all that interested in doing JG dot work at the moment. Because of his current temperament I am not giving him Montessori materials - he would just throw them or find a way to destroy them - and after reading some reviews of the later books in this series (and after finding the teacher's book at a real bargain price) I decided to try out Saxon Math level K.

We are now on lesson 7 of 112 and Nikki is really loving it. In fact, I would say as a maths program for 5-6 year olds it is probably too repetitive and boring. The early lessons focus a lot on playing and getting familiar with the materials. It takes almost the first month to get to counting to ten using 1-to-1 correspondence.

We are not following the lesson schedule - so far Nikki has been happy to do a lesson every day rather than the planned 3 lessons a week. It is very repetitive, which I really think he needs at his age, but each lesson builds on the ones before and the material is covered slightly differently each time (eg. counting out 5 bears rather than 5 cubes).

I am actually quite impressed with the topics covered - every day we practice a sequence (right now it is an AB colour pattern) and we're supposed to do a calendar discussion but I skip that as we already have our morning calendar time. In lesson 5 we drew a pictograph of the boys and girls in our family - Nikki is so proud of his 'family graph'.

It looks like every new thing we learn will be re-visited often in later lessons - I can see the word graph in six of the first 24 lesson titles, for example. This should make sure that he gets a thorough understanding, rather than forgetting the topic when it's done and having to re-learn it again later.

We are really enjoying the lessons right now. They are fully planned and scripted. I generally follow the text as a guide rather than simply reading the script, because I want to make sure I am focused on Nikki rather than the book. In all, using the manipulatives to practice our pattern and covering the day's lesson takes around 10-15 minutes. Sometimes it is even less. Most importantly, Nikki loves his maths time. 

Reading Bear

We have been using a new site for reading - Reading Bear. It is comprehensive, simple and free!

It teaches how to slowly sound out the letters and blend the sounds to read the words. There are fifty lessons, each covering a different phonics sound/rule, from CVC through to multi-syllable words.

We have been using it for only the last week or so (he's seen four of the short-vowel presentations twice) and already Nikki is reading independently!!!

Ok, so he still has to sound out each letter first, and they are only CVC words, and he has known all the letter sounds for months, but I still think that with maybe 10 minutes 'work' each day it is tremendous progress! Now that he has finally figured out how to put the sounds together, I hope this program will really help with my target of getting him reading simple books on his own by age 4.

The only single flaw I can see in Reading Bear is that it is American and thus the short 'o' sound sounds more like 'ah' and they teach words like 'gas' and 'pants' rather than 'petrol' and 'trousers'. Not really a major worry as the sound can be turned off and Nikki recognises that a picture of a pair of trousers is not the same as his underwear so I can easily explain the language differences when they come up.

This is the first time he saw the word got. We haven't done the short o words because he wants the voice over but I won't let him have it because the accent when sounding out is so different to how I have taught him. He worked it out all by himself!


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Back again!

Has it really been three weeks?! After our two weeks of Russian/birthday madness, we went away for the half term holiday. Ok, so we've been back ten days now but I just haven't been in the mood for blogging. It has been a nightmare of re-training routines and discipline and failing to get the little temper tantrum to sleep in his own bed!!!

So, I'm tired and losing control of my temper far too often and generally struggling to return to the calm Montessori atmosphere of six weeks ago. It almost doesn't seem worth it as I can't imagine the routine-less Christmas period having any kind of positive effect...

Enough. Tomorrow (because I am too sleepy right now) I will post all about the progress we have made the last couple of weeks - some very exciting news!

Russian Immersion

For the last two weeks, it has once more been Russian immersion in our home. Pretty much all structured learning went out the window while Nikki spent time with his father, practising his second language.

He has made another massive leap forward in his speaking and comprehension skills. He has learnt loads of new vocabulary and uses it. He now can speak in sentences, though he often needs prompts to make him do so.

I wish it were possible for me to keep up the same level of Russian by myself. I have determined that I won't let him lose the knowledge and confidence he has gained, and will try to be more consistent with actively teaching him new things. 

Music and Our Calendar

Nikki still loves his calendar. We haven't done it very much the last couple of weeks because he's been in Russian Immersion while his dad visits.

I thought I'd show a bit more of how we practice our music.

Every day we choose a musical note to practice. Today was G.

Nicholas rings his 'g' bell (I forgot to take a picture of that!) and we sing the note. At the moment, I lay out the necessary cards and he finds the 'so' or the piano key card and sticks it on the board. For every note, we have the solfege and letter cards, the position on the keyboard and staff, and our Soft Mozart solfege prompt. They are all colour coded to the scheme we are using with Little Musician

Later, I'm going to make him find the right notes for himself, starting with 2 options and building to all 7.

We then sing the song we are learning in Solfege. I still plan to change this weekly, but its been a hectic couple of weeks and so I decided to wait until our routine is back to normal. Nikki still enjoys singing Twinkle Twinkle, despite having memorized it three weeks ago!

I print off a large staff and draw on the notes in our Little Musician colour code. This is a big help for musically-illiterate me! When we sing, I point to all the notes - Nikki is usually busy dancing or standing ready to hit the last three himself... 

Organization

A while ago, I saw this great way of organizing toddler books using magazine files and had to have it in my house!

So, I planned a day trip to Ikea (where you can get 5 boxes for less than the usual price of one) and slipped 5 packs into my trolley...

I have now sorted most of Nikki's story books and the top of my shelving unit looks much more organized! Instead of wobbly piles (and piles and piles...) of books, we have this:

What I hadn't counted on was the number of of books that were just too big for the files. Seriously, the majority that didn't fit were less than half a centimetre too big! Frustrating, but they stacked up nicely under the board books at the end of the shelf:

It might be no easier to find some of the generic story-books but the general themes make finding non-fiction books a doddle.

Linking up to Montessori Monday

Writing Numbers

Off to Africa...

Nikki is a huge fan of Andy's Wild Adventures on cbeebies. He doesn't get much TV, since I avoid most of the nonsense programs they seem to think toddlers enjoy and stick to dvds - often in other languages.

This program, despite the annoying theme music and humour, is usually watched multiple times every day. The core 5-7 minutes is a very informative nature program with real footage of the animals in their natural habitat. Nikki can't get enough.

Recently, he has been going to Africa in his car (my laundry basket) several times a day. He put an empty loo roll tube on his wrist for the 'gizmo' Andy uses, which we later decorated with a couple of bits of coloured paper to give it a screen and a button. We turned another empty tube into a telescope.

His imagination has been going wild - he has spent a lot of time swimming with hippos, watching elephants, playing with baboons...

Rest Time

Today, I managed to convince Nikki to have a rest in his room. Not sure how, but he agreed!

It was great! We set 1 hour on his timer and I put the timer just out of reach on the other side of his gate, so he could see (but not adjust) it.

Amazingly, he stayed in his room the whole time! This coming from the child who has done everything to avoid resting in the afternoon for 12 months or more! I don't know if he slept, since he shut the door, but he was silent for all but the last ten minutes, where he made a lovely house for his donkey.

Fingers crossed this will become a regular feature of our day - this afternoon has been so much calmer...

Learning Moments

Today, we had one of those moments where learning just seems to happen.

We went for a walk and Nikki was carrying his toy 'telescope' (a large cardboard tube with the bottom removed and a hole in the lid) when he stopped, looked and started telling me about how the baby elephants were playing on the grass across the road. He said they were splashing in the mud, and we ended up discussing how elephants use mud instead of sunscreen.

A little further on, we passed a fence covered in graffiti and Nikki decided to give me a phonics lesson. 'Look - P puh puh puh and S ssssssssss' and so on. It was a lovely moment, though was thankful that he isn't sounding out words yet as the graffiti wasn't very polite.

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

Linking to Montessori Mondays

Rocking with Soft Mozart

Calendar Update

This week I have added several new things to our calendar. We now do English in the morning and Russian in the afternoon, because there is too much to do at once! We now have a weekly memory verse in English and Russian, and a letter, number and note of the day, as well as a solfege song, which we do in both languages. Nikki loves singing songs in solfege.

The dinosaur pockets have been eagerly awaiting a purpose and make a perfect calendar-storage unit.

Nikki likes to get involved, so I have made sure there are plenty of activities, other than sticking everything on the board, such as circling numbers on the 100 square and writing the number on his book, finding it on his die and clipping on the right number of pegs to the number card. He also rings the bell for our note of the day and wishes he were big enough to point to all the notes on our song.

The space on the board is for when I finally finish our Russian exercise cards. I found a poem with gymnastics-style actions here and loved the idea, so I have made it into flashcards. The pictures will help Nicholas build his vocabulary (and make it more fun!) and individual cards let us pick a couple of exercises at a time - great for those moments when little boys just need to move!

First Prayer

Nikki made up his first prayer yesterday afternoon:

Thank you Mummy, go to bed. Amen.

I'm not entirely sure what he meant to say... at least he is no longer adamant that you can only say 'amen' at playgroup!

Singing in Solfege

This is two of the ten parts of today's Little Musician lesson - yes, they are that short!

Calendar Time

I've have been introducing Calendar Time into our morning routine this last couple of weeks. Nikki has got to the stage where he understands past and future in a vague sense (everything in the past was 'last day') and I wanted to help him understand the passing of time.

We started simply. I laminated the calendar, month titles and numbers, and made a week chart and some 'today', 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' cards to stick on it. First Nikki sticks today's number on the calendar, and we count all the days of the month that have passed.

Then we talk about what today is called and stick the card in the right place on the week, then do the same for yesterday and tomorrow. We sing a song that I know from when I worked in a nursery (to the tune of the nursery rhyme I Hear Thunder' )

Today is Monday, Today is Monday,
Yesterday was Sunday, Yesterday was Sunday,
Tomorrow will be Tuesday, Tomorrow will be Tuesday,
Today is Monday.

Then we read today's story in our book One Year Devotions for Preschoolers. This is an adorable book, with a very short story for each day, as well as an accompanying Bible verse and prayer. The stories are short, sweet and are just complex enough to give Nikki something to think about (being a good friend, not hurting people, saying sorry) without going over his head.

 I then saw this amazing set of books and once they arrived, I started reading the September book. The format is great - a short text on each page talking about what animals are doing in different parts of the world. Today we read about badgers in Europe, preparing their setts for winter. I do need to simplify the wording a lot to make it pre-school level, though.

This week, now that we're in the swing of things, I've added three new activities: counting our 'school' days with the 100 square and a hundreds-tens-ones board, the weather and moon phases. I'm interested to see how long it takes Nicholas to realise that the moon changes the same way every time... I found the 100 square online (can't remember where, but there are loads out there) and made the others using images I found on google. They are also printed and laminated so that Nikki gets to play with blue tack on a daily basis.

As you can see, I have made the calendar activities bilingual. I am still trying to decide whether it is better to repeat each activity in both languages, or have a separate Russian calendar time. At the moment, I am doing it all together, but I have more activities that I want to add eventually (letters, colours, shapes, musical notes, poems etc.) and I expect that it will take too long to do it all in both languages in one sitting.

So far, Nikki is loving his calendar. I have used less than half the space on his notice board at the moment, but I don't want to intimidate him by filling it up too quickly.

Linking to Montessori Mondays

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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Skating

Nikki can now 'skate' confidently and unaided on a flat surface. It still looks a lot like walking, but his confidence has increased so much!

Finally...

Summer's nearly over and Nikki has finally grown enough to enjoy the balance bike he got for Christmas...