Extraordinary Ordinary Life: Week In Review

School Stuff Prepared

I don't have a lot of space so I can't do traditional Montessori because I do not have a separate spare room to use as a school room. We use the Expedit shelves that is in our dining room and I put things on the trays to be used for the week. Plus I have the workboxes I use for my oldest.

This is our writing tray that the boys use. The 4 year old is just beginning to write so he does numbers and letters. The 8 year old needs more time with cursive so the rest is for him.

This was a counting Thanksgiving card activity that my 6 year old and 4 year old did.

This is for my 8 year old - read, build, write - he used it for some Thanksgiving spelling words. I have the word cards and the movable alphabet as well as the dry erase marker and the form.

We are studying the 5 oceans this week and here is our tray for that. We do that work all together but each has their own activity or two work together sometimes too.

With the writing I now have them do 4 steps. Step one - trace their finger over the letter or number. Step 2 - trace it in the salt. Step three write it on the dry erase board. Step 4 - write it on paper.

School Stuff

He was not a fan of this. I think it was because it required too much time but it is good for his hands to feel the letters. It helps his dyslexic brain remember things longer.

He was also not the biggest fan of this but when he did all four steps in order his handwriting improved quite a bit.

I had a grammar tray also but did not photograph it before. Here he is doing some review of proper and common nouns as a game.

Here we are starting with the Montessori grammar symbols.

This girl loves these things. Here she is doing the teen counters with the Thanksgiving cards and paper clips.

She LOVED this printable. It had two pages and she wanted to do them all at once. It is CVC words using Thanksgiving pictures to figure out the words.

I was able to volunteer at her Montessori school one afternoon and I taught the kids sewing! They did their hand and made it into a turkey.

Now this guy, he needs the most convincing to get started but once he gets started he pretty much likes it.

Especially if we get a little messy.

I did this pink series printable and used the phonics phone so he could hear the sounds and it helps with words he is already familiar with but with new words he often guesses after he sounds them out correctly. My daughter did this too.

He also used the counters but did the early ones.

He still loves to get this out and we work on the beginning sounds but now he is picky which animal we use because he only likes certain ones - 4 year olds:)

We do morning work together such as geography and there is enough on there for each age. I get books out for my oldest to dive deeper into a topic and we pull of videos too. This week we are working on the 5 oceans.

The little two still love to play with the animals in the water while we learn.

I printed these 3 part cards (they are fantastic) and I had him locate the ocean on the globe and match it to the card to make it more real. I asked him what he observed and what continents were nearby.

We watched a video about the arctic ocean.

He matched up the cards.

He looked up information about the animals that live in the cold oceans.

Co-op

This week we The Lost City of Mohenjo-Daro with tootsie rolls and rice crispy treats. Yea we did. We try to make as many edible things as possible because where are we going to put this stuff. We know where to put rice crispy treats.

We watched a video while we did these too.

We then did a salt water density straw experiment (since we talked about oceans this week) which the kids LOVED. Not because the experiment worked for us (it mostly didn't) but they loved the color mixing and everything.

We also learned about bands in music as well and ate lots of rice crispy treats - I mentioned that right?

Life Stuff

I saw how low my gas tank could get until I could get gas. The answer is zero. I made it. I promise to not do that again.