Magnetic vs. Non-Magnetic

As you can see I've been banging out a lot of posts lately! With just a handful of weeks left in the pregnancy, I'm trying to squeeze in as much as I can before I sign off for a few months. Plus, I have a feeling this cute little babe is going to make an early appearance!

Ok, onto the activity: magnetic vs. non-magnetic is a very common Montessori activity and I'm sure you've seen it all over the blogosphere, but it's something new on our shelves and I thought I'd share it anyway. :)

We had a lot of fun using our jumbo magnetic (from Learning Resources) to determine which items were magnetic, which weren't and which were a bit of both. I credit The Adventures of Bear for using the Venn diagram in her presentation. I created the diagram and the labels in Word.

I set out to find LOTS of things for James to sort through because I knew this would be an activity he'd enjoy. I did not purchase this as a kit, I simply searched through my manipulatives and alphabet box items. Some of the items I chose:

Magnetic
:: Safety pin
:: Nail
:: Nut
:: Lock
:: Key
:: Little wagon
:: Spoon
:: Cookie cutter
:: Bottle cap
:: Paper clip
:: Bobby pin
:: Earring
:: Staples

Non-Magnetic
:: Pine cone
:: Bit of leather
:: Wooden cube
:: Piece of wax
:: Scrap of paper
:: Dice
:: Sponge
:: Crayon
:: Eraser
:: Felted ball
:: Feather
:: Small Plastic toy
:: Tiny tea kettle

Both Magnetic & Non-Magnetic
:: Scissors
:: Clothespin
:: Tack
:: Pipe cleaner

Most of the magnetic things I found were shiny, so I made a point to choose some shiny materials that were non-magnetic just to prove that not all shiny things are magnetic.

This work was a HUGE hit with James and he's done it several times this week.

Here's how it looks on our shelves. :)

~Thank you for your comments!~

On Our Shelves - July & August

This is my last "On Our Shelves" post for a few months. The baby is due is just 5 weeks (!) and I'm now shifting my focus toward preparing for her arrival.

Our theme is summer. Keeping the theme broad like this really allowed me to put pretty much anything on our shelves, so long as it looked summery! :) As always, there are a few activities that aren't theme related. Click here and here to see what was on our shelves last summer.

Practical Life
Water Transfer. When James is ready to do this work he'll need to fill the bowl of little sponges with a bit of water. Then he'll place one sponge square into the garlic press and squeeze the water into one section of the ice cube tray. Oops - I now realize I need to add another bowl to the tray for the squeezed sponge squares. To remove the water from the ice tray, James will simply put the squeezed sponges back into the section to absorb the water and then transfer them back to the bowl.

Pencil Sharpening.

Pouring Sand. This is sand from one of our local beaches. I added a funnel to make this work a little more exciting. :) The bottle on the left is in a basket to keep it from falling off of the tray. James is really careful about transporting his work to the rug or table, but this tray just isn't that great.

Paper Punching. This is something new for us and I think James will really like it. The blue container (from Mexico) holds small paper squares of various colors, textures and weight. The silver container will hold the punches.

Tweezing & Transferring. We've done something similar to this several times before, so this is nothing really new, but I know James will enjoy it. The mason jar is what I think he will find most interesting - there are two parts to the lid and they have to go on in a certain way in order for them to fit properly.

Sensorial

Sensory Tubs. We have two available right now: Pond & Transportation

Sandy Playdough. Same as last year. :)

Creating Polygons. These colored popsicle sticks have been used for so many activities in our classroom! I printed out this chart from the internet and James will use it as a guide to create some basic polygons. I provided a control of error by using a single color for each polygon.

Still on our shelves: Knobbed & Knobless Cylinders, and The Pink Tower.

Language
Poetry Basket. I found this poem online and modified it a bit. I needled-felted the water and grass, and knitted the little fruits in the basket.

Summer Bingo. I made this myself using graphics from here. The small bingo cards are in the little box, and the colored shells will be used as card markers. (Btw, I did not color the shells - I found a bag of them at our local thrift store.)

Sequencing. These stars are filled with water (meant to be reusable ice cubes). We'll use them to create various patterns.

Tracing. James finds worksheets a bit boring, so I try to liven this kind of work up by adding fun writing utensils to the tray. You'd be surprised how often this works to entice him. These printables came from abcteach. (Btw, since a few people have asked, yes I do have a membership to this site and yes I do find it well worth the price - I use it quite often).

Moveable Alphabet. I collected a bunch of images from Google and made these cards to accompany our moveable alphabet. James will spell out the name of image. In the case of the card shown in the photo, he can opt to spell either 'shovel' or 'pail'.

Memory Game. This is one from last year when we focused on Independence Day.

Books. On The Seashore by Anna Millbourne, The Sun Egg by Elsa Beskow, Bermuda 123 by Dana Cooper, Summer (Series) by Nuria Roca, America a Patriotic Primer by Lynne Cheney, L is for Liberty by Wendy Cheyette Lewison, Coral Reef by Marcus Phister, The Scrambled States of America by Laurie Keller, Swimmy by Leo Lionni.

Still on our shelves: Dry Erase Spelling, and the Grammar Farm.

Math
Buying Water Balloons. Put on your creative hat, go into the dollar store and you'll be amazed at what you turn into a learning activity! In the past, I would have made a simple sorting/matching activity with these balloons, but since that's a bit old hat for James, I decided to go this route instead. James will need to "buy" these balloons for a penny a piece/25 cents for the lot. I provided various coins that equal that amount and it'll be up to him to decide which combination of coins to use. This activity falls in line with our recent Money Matters lesson.

Cards & Counters. It's true we're a bit past this kind of work, too, but if I've said it once I've said it a million times - repetition is a good thing. Plus, I have a bazillion of these fruit counters and I've been dying to use them. :) I bought them at a garage sale a few months ago, but I think you can buy them from Lakeshore Learning.

Less Than/More Than/Equal To. I chose sea glass for this work and I think James will really like the look and feel of it. The less than/more than/equal symbols come from this magnetic set.

Lego Math. You can read more about this here.

Skip Counting. I made these bead bars out of pipe cleaners and pony beds. Super easy. The tiles come from our Hundreds Board.

Still on our shelves: Telling Time, and Sandpaper Numerals.

Science & Culture
Discovery Tray. It's been a while since I created a discovery tray for our shelves. This one is full of ocean treasures - shells, coral, sea glass, and bits of pottery washed up after a hurricane a couple of years ago.

Examining Sand. My husband found the idea for this activity here. We'll put some sand on the white paper and make note of what colors and particles we see. We'll do the same with the black paper and see if we notice anything different. We'll use the jumbo magnet to see if any iron-rich minerals stick to it. We'll also talk about why Bermuda sand is pink!

Still on our shelves: (Parts of) the Africa Continent Bag.

Water Experiments - coming soon!

Art & Music

Composer of the Month: Verdi. I often get asked what exactly we do with our COM. Right now I'm keeping it really simple - I download that composer's music onto my iPod and we listen to those songs during our schooltime for the entire month. I also print out a photo of the composer. At some point we'll likely spend more time learning about the composer and the style of music, but for now it's just not something James is interested in.

Coloring Book. I printed this mini coloring book from abcteach.

Circle Time Songs. I can make these available, just let me know if you're interested.

Line Art. The idea here is simple - James can use the ruler to create lines in various lengths and angles. He can color the shapes in if he wishes to.

Happy summer!

~Thank you for your comments!~

July Sensory Tub - Pond

I've had this one on my "to make" list for well over a year now! One of our mini-units is going to be a pond theme, so I thought I'd make a full size tub for James to enjoy as well.

Here's what's inside:
:: Multi-colored aquarium rocks
:: Flat glass marbles, large and small
:: Fish net
:: Jar (for collecting pond specimens) :)
:: Mini frog and turtle erasers
:: Little green fish (I cut these from felt) - you may need to click on the photo to see them more clearly.
:: Plastic duck, turtle, and dragonfly
:: Multi-colored purler beads
:: Lily pads (cut from fake plant leaves)
:: Letters

These chip board letters are from my scrapbook stash, which I've had for years, but I *think* I purchased them at Archiver's. I added the entire alphabet to the tub and James will need to dig them out. He can use them to spell the following pond-related words:

Duck, dragonfly, fish, pond, water, turtle, net, frog, lily pad, and rocks.

Click the button below to see a full list of my sensory tubs or click here to view my slideshow on the Counting Coconuts Facebook page.

~Thank you for your comments!~

Island Scavanger Hunt

I saw this fun idea on The Creative Homemaker (via a friend's pin on Pinterest) and immediately set to work creating something similar for James. We won't be going on our hunt for another week or so, but I know it'll be a big hit. We recently went on a nature walk/hunt with our homeschooling group and James had a blast looking for and finding the items on the list.

Inside of the bag are a variety of things to assist us on our hunt:
:: A copy of our hunt list, adhered to the bag with temporary double stick tape.
:: A few small baggies - I'm sure you can buy these online somewhere, but I always just collect the ones that hold the extra buttons you get with clothing. Of course you could always use regular ziplocs, too.
:: A pair of child safe scissors for clipping - we always opt for items already on the ground, but in the event we need to further prune said items, these scissors will come in handy. I should note that I plan to have my Swiss Army knife handy as well (kept in my possession, obviously).
:: Connected to the bag is a pen on string for checking off the items we've found.
:: Magnifying glass
:: Empty containers - I purchased the white-capped containers here, but baby food or spice jars would work well, too.
:: Camera (for those items you can't/don't want to take with you).
:: Mini notepad to record thoughts or findings in more detail.
:: A drawstring bag to hold all of the kit items, making them easy to find among the natural goodies.

For folks that want to look, but not touch or remove items from their natural habitats, instead of a full-on kit may I suggest simply bringing along your list, a pen, and a disposable camera (or one you're comfortable having your child use).
For my fellow islanders, we're planning on going to Cooper's Island for our hunt as it has a beach and a nature reserve. I've made my list available to you here. (Of course anyone is welcome to use this, it's just that some of the items are very specific to Bermuda.) :)

PS: This colorful nature hunt is another fun activity we've done in the past.

~Thank you for your comments!~

On Our Shelves - June

Our theme this month is dinosaurs! Truth be told, James is neither here nor there when it comes to dinos, but I thought we'd give it a go anyway. We finished up our farm theme at the end of last week, so tomorrow is our first day with the dinosaurs.

Oh, btw, how many of you knew that the beloved Brontosaurus has been declared "scientifically redundant" and now has a slightly different appearance and goes by the new name, Apatosaurus?! I'm sure I'm the last to know about this. Sheesh, first Pluto is stripped of its planet status (I know, I know, it's a dwarf planet now... but still) and now I hear about the Bronto losing its place in the dino world. How will my inner child reconcile this information? Was my entire elementary education flawed?! :D

Ok, moving on...

Practical Life
Washing a Dinosaur. I think James will get a kick out of this, especially because it involves a cute little scrub brush.

Scooping Dinosaur Eggs. Ok, so this looks a bit like an Easter activity. You just have to imagine these are dinosaur eggs. :)

Folding. There are 2 sets of 3 different sized pieces of dinosaur material in this basket. James will fold them and match them by size.

Pin Poking. These sheets are from Montessori Print Shop. James will use the jumbo thumbtack to poke tiny holes all around the images thus separating the image from the background. We did this last fall and it was a favorite.

We'll also continue our Grace & Courtesy lessons in table manners.

Sensorial
Dinosaur Sensory Tub. What has made this tub a hit is the fact that it has water in it. Kids + water = guaranteed fun.

Mystery Bag. Inside the dinosaur bag are two sets of the same dinosaur. There's another set in the basket, which James will lay out on the mat and use as a guide for what he's feeling from inside the bag. There's no peeking with this activity - James has to really tune in to his sense of touch to determine which dinosaur he's feeling before he pulls it out of the bag. Of course this can be done with any number of objects and can be as simple or as complicated as you like. This activity is fun with toddlers and is great for teaching basic shapes.

Binomal Cube. This is a traditional Montessori material and you can read more about it here. I purchased our cube from Kid Advance.

Still on our shelves: Knobbed and Knobbless Cylinders, and The Pink Tower.

Language
Dinosaur Bingo. I made this myself using clip art from abcteach. I'd share it as a PDF, but I believe the images are copyrighted.

Worksheets & Activity Book. Skills involved: dot-to-dot (by letters), tracing, and reading/following basic directions. I printed the sheets off from KidsSoup and abcteach.

Spelling. Same idea as last month only this time I'm using these magnetic numbers.

Books. I was astonished to find only 3 dinosaur books at our library. THREE. Which is just as well, I suppose, since we're only allowed to check out four at a time. The rest are from the local thrift shop.

Not sure if I'll do a poetry basket for this month as I cannot for the life of me find a decent poem about dinosaurs. Guess dinos aren't very poetical. :)

Reading. As if by magic, James can read just about anything now and very rarely has to sound anything out. In just a couple of months he went from sounding out basic three and four letter words to flat-out reading words with 5+ letters without hesitation. I couldn't tell you how this happened, it just did and I know I had very little to do with it. I guess something just sort of "clicked" with him. Anyway, because I'm still wary of how well he actually knows some of the reading "rules", I want to continue forward with the last bit of the green series. I also purchased some basic readers. I found this series at a local shop (Kit-N-Caboodle, for my fellow islanders). The stories aren't award winning by any means, but they get the job done and most importantly James LOVES reading them.

Still on our shelves: Green Sandpaper Phonograms and The Grammar Farm.

Math
Measuring Dinosaurs. We did a similar activity in December when we measured strips of ribbon. James enjoys measuring things (seriously, anything with numbers - he loves it). He'll need to write his results on the index cards.

Understanding More & Less. Still working on this concept. It's interesting, James definitely understands what's more than something else, but when you ask him which is less, he freezes up. I thought maybe the use of the sections in the ice tray would help him to visualize the concept a bit better. He'll need to place the little ball next to the correct answer.

Addition with "Dinosaurs Bones". Aka popsicle sticks. :) Pretty straight-forward, for example I will lay out a set of 3 bones and a set of 5 bones and place the '+' sign in between them and the '=' sign after them and ask James to add them together and show me the sum with another set of bones from the cup.

Skip Counting. Like reading, James just sort of 'gets' skip counting. I started with counting by 2's and the next thing I knew he was counting by 5's and 10's all on his own. This activity is just to reinforce the concept visually. James will use these tiles (from our Hundred Board) and put them in numerical order by 5's up to 100.

Worksheets. Skills involved: dot-to-dot (by numbers), quantity matching, determining differences, and addition. Printed off from KidsSoup and abcteach.

Still on our shelves: Ladybug Math, Telling Time, and Sandpaper Numerals.

Science & Culture
Studying Africa, Tray 1: Places. As I've mentioned before, I've opted to remove certain aspects of our continent bags and put them on trays instead of just plopping the entire bag on the shelf. James (like most kids, I think) is more interested in an activity if he can see what it is. By putting a few items on a tray not only can he see what's available, he's also not bombarded with the full extent of materials inside of our continent bags.

Studying Africa, Tray 2: Animals. I must give a shout out to my good friend, Ann, who very sweetly gave us that beaded lizard, which is from South Africa. Not pictured, but also on these shelves are a few African flags. I always display the flags of whichever continent we're studying.

Dinosaur Cards. These are from Montessori Print Shop and they are great! I love the information cards - they have just the right amount of data on them. I only wish a few of the more common dinosaurs (Stegosaurus, Pterodactyl, Dimetrodon, Plesiosaurus, Brontosaurus - er, I mean Apatosaurus) were included in the sets.

Matching & "Feeding" Dinosaurs. This is a two part activity: James will match up the plastic dinosaurs to those on the cards and then use the information section to determine if they were plant eaters or meat eaters. The little bucket in the above photo has some leaves and little squares of red felt (i.e. meat) that James can "feed" to the appropriate dinosaur.

Build-a-Dino. Just like it sounds - the skeleton comes in a handful of pieces and you simply put it all together. Another local find (Daisy & Mac).

Excavating Dinosaurs. This photo is from a couple of summers ago when we did this same project. We'll be doing it again next week - it's a great outdoor activity for summer!

Art & Music
Composer of the Month: J.S. Bach. I often get asked what exactly we do with our COM. Right now I'm keeping it really simple - I download that composer's music onto my iPod and we listen to those songs during our schooltime for the entire month. I also print out a photo of the composer. At some point we'll likely spend more time learning about the composer and the style of music, but for now it's just not something James is interested in.

Circle Time Songs. You can get the PDF here.

Buddha Board. I love this thing! I wrote a short post about it here. It's been a long while since we've used this and I think James will be really happy to see it again.

Coloring Pages. KidsSoup has a great dino set.

Scissor Practice. These strips are a bit different than usual - I used stickers, as I usually do, but this time I drew various kinds of lines in between the stickers. James is used to cutting straight across, so I think this will provide a bit of a challenge for him.

Stamping. I found this great Melissa & Doug set locally (People's) and I know it's going to be a hit with James.

Later this month we're going to try to make some dinosaur eggs. Fun!

Happy June, everyone!

~Thank you for your comments!~