Operation Christmas Child

I've been trying to model civic responsibility and giving. It is a challenge when the household budget is tight and some months it is more than tight.
I also have been waiting for the time when Sean would reach an age of understanding. He can now relate to children his own age, look at his toy room and see that he has been very blessed with friends and relatives who give. He can also see that he has more than enough of everything, and through studying other cultures, knows there are children who have nothing.
We are Christians, and he knows that as Christians we care about people, all people.
I offered him the opportunity to shop for a child in another country, and give what could be the only gifts they will ever receive. He was excited about it, so I gave him $5 to shop with and we headed to Target. He carefully chose some gifts and I had some of the Happy Meal toys, etc. in my closet. I like to keep any extras on hand as gifts.
We wrapped the box, and he filled it with all of the toys and some candy. We included a Christmas card and picture of him. He asked who would get the box, and I said there was no way to know exactly. He wants it to go to South America.
So in typical Marsha fashion, we made it to the drop-off spot on deadline day.
He was very excited to take the box in. He normally doesn't like his picture taken, so I asked if I could take a picture of him at the drop-off, and he agreed. Even reminded me when we got inside as he was about to hand the box over to the lady working there.
We have another service project planned for the first week of December.

More freebies

Just found a new place for 3-part cards, booklets, and more!! Much more!  Go to
www.etcmontessori.com ETC is a non-profit organization, and I just downloaded 3-part cards, etc. on almost 18 different subjects for FREE. These cards are beautiful, high quality photos. Getting to the download part was a bit tricky for me. I clicked on add to cart before I realized you have to click on the title of the item to get to the area for the free download.
So load up my Montessori friends. And for those of you who aren't yet certain about Montessori, take a look at those cards. Specifically, take a look at the planets chart, and the leaf cards. Beautiful.
This site also offers a lot of books or albums for teaching specific subjects, and it also lets you take a peek inside these books before you buy.
Check it out. Let me know what you find, and what you think.

South America is where it's at

Sean is very interested in South America. We read a book about Venezuela that we got from the library, and in that book Oscar D'Leon was mentioned. I suggested we could look for his music at the library as well, and Sean said, "Let's look on  iTunes." So we found him on iTunes, Sean was very into that music, and we have one of his CDs on order at our local library. He loves snakes, and one of the books is about the Fer-de-lance snake, which lives in parts of South American.
He has been exploring a book about world cultures, and seems to be heavily interested in all things culture, history and geography right now.
This week, I very informally read to him about the history of numbers. One of the pieces of information talks about how the Egyptians alternated from left to right on one line as they wrote numbers, then from right to left on the next, in the same way they would plow their fields. I found it fascinating, because Sean tends to do that as well. Until late in his third year at Montessori he did this, and still sometimes will start to do it.
For a while he also wanted to write right to left instead of left to right, and read the right page first in a book. My mom used to say he would do well to learn the Urdu language, which is written right to left.
While some would likely see this as a problem, I find it interesting and wonder why he would find that to be a natural way of doing it. He used to write his numbers across a page, and when he got to the end, he would just drop down to the end of the second line and start writing backwards, until he reached the end, and then drop down and go left to right again, like this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
15 14 13 12 11 10
16 17 18 19 20
and so on.
He does it the way the rest of us do it now, but he asked for a grid paper one day last week, and said he wanted to write numbers. He began to do it again.  It must still be a way that is comfortable to him...
I'm not worried about it, I just find it interesting.
Has anyone else encountered this with their children, or children in their classrooms?

The rain is here

We put together the weather station on Monday and set it out where we could watch it as the wind whipped up and the rain came. It doesn't tell us the wind speed, but it has these cool anemometer cups that spin like mad when the wind blows, and a wind vane. And it has a compass, a thermometer, and a tube that catches the rain so we can measure rainfall.
Sean went out today to take a look, and we had almost 3 inches of rain since Monday.

Last week we went for a playdate at the Children's Museum. They had free first Friday, and we even found a free parking spot - Yay! We met some other homeschool families there and had a good time. There were great exhibits that focused on two Trickster Tales from our region. They had beautiful costumes for the kids to wear, and even had a light board where they could trace figures from the books to make their own little book. He had a great time doing that.
Sean said his favorite thing was the shopping game. It was a game that gave the player 10 acorns, and a list of items to buy. The goal was to have enough left over to either put into savings or buy something you wanted.
It gave me an idea to come up with a board game for him here at home. I've been looking for games that encourage working together toward a common goal, but I think it could be neat to make one. Instead of just a savings account and items to purchase that we really want, I thought it would be nice to have some charities to choose from also.
Since he is learning more and more about money, we could use real dollar and cents amounts, but keep it simple.
This week he has been looking in the snake books to find more snakes that live in Africa. Library books are due this week, then we move on to the next continent.

Africa, oh Africa

So Sean's plan in studying the seven continents was to begin with the African continent, and in typical "follow the child" fashion, we started with Africa.
Here are a few of the things we've done so far.
I bought some maps way back (feels like a year ago now, but only a couple of months ago really) and he has traced the African continent and labeled it.
We watched "Born Free," which I LOVED as a kid and he totally enjoyed as well. And at the end he yelled out, "This was a true story!"
We went to the library and checked out a bunch of books on Africa.
I bought a CD online for a great deal called, "Acoustic Africa." This CD was available in his Primary room at the Montessori school and he mentioned it often. I was happy to find it. He frequently chooses it for the CD player.
His interest now is with snakes and as he reads his snake books from the library we find out where there homes are, and some are found in Africa.
Here's where this turns a corner.
I bought a set of African continent cards through an eBay seller. This pack includes pictures of kids, animals, instruments, landmarks, etc. They're nice. Not laminated, not three-part cards either which bothers me now, but nice.
Sean couldn't give a rip. He hasn't shown the slightest interest in these cards, except when he was listening to the CD. I had all of the cards on the floor and he recognized one of the instruments as one that was used in a song on the CD.
I have been printing and cutting like mad, and let me just say, I have a JOB and I WORK and at some point the clicking and downloading and printing and cutting just gets to me. So I decided it was worth it to buy a few things.
SO GLAD I DIDN'T BUY CARDS FOR ALL 7 CONTINENTS!
It would have cost me $100, and I almost did it. I know NUTS. Luckily I decided to sample them by starting with the African cards.
Maybe other kids love these things. Not Sean. He just doesn't have any interest in them.
I'm going to try one last African continent work this week before we move on. I printed out all of the flags of Africa, but I am going to make them into three part cards and see if he goes for it. If not, I'll just put it all in the box and have it for next year. Maybe he'll suddenly have interest.
His taste seems much more sophisticated. He wants to plan a trip to Africa. He believes that would be a good idea. And of course I do too.
South America is next, he says. Stay tuned.

"Oooh, what is this?"

This was a day of creative geometry - mostly. I brought out the isoscelese triangles that I printed out sometime last month. Sean had gone into another room and came back to find the triangles on the floor. "Oooh, what is this?" he said. I said, "Let's see."
He created a figure out of them and said to me and an imaginary audience, "would you like to raise your hand if you have a question about this?"
I raised my hand and asked some questions. Turns out the figure was a robot, that could transform, so the triangles that were the feet could flip and instead of having the point, could have the short side down, etc.
I started to feel that pang of, "This is not what the material should be used for," however, I didn't have a real plan for the use. I wanted him to explore with them, find things he could make with them, and how certain things wouldn't work with them. So I let him go, and he seemed so satisfied with his work and interested in using them that I decided it was best to encourage him to continue.
I asked the question, "What shape are they?" He said "Triangle." I asked what type of triangle, and that led to looking at some types of triangles and finding that they were isoscelese. (I have these in three-part cards, along with the other shapes, hexagon, etc.)
He decided this robot should have a friend, so he took our change jar and used coins to create a figure with a head, arms, and legs.
He is mesmerized by money these days. He loves to handle the coins.
Yesterday he used the jar of change to count by 5s, 10s, 1s, etc. and he has learned how many quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies it takes to make $1. On that project, I was completely out of the picture because I was on deadline and working. He periodically reported to me his conclusions, "We have 100 pennies, so we've got a dollar!" or "There's 100 cents in dimes, there's a dollar," and I would ask, "So how many 10s does it take to make 100?"
We went through the "ai" words today, which he pretty much breezed through. I have them printed and cut out into little cards. I will present a different work with those that will include the symbols for the parts of speech, which I hope will reinforce the learning of the "ai" sound, and take it a step up in the spiral of learning and incorporate grammar.  He loves playing our word game. I'll say, "Can you give me a noun that rhymes wiiiiith....__?" It is his favorite game. We play that one in the car. We also change it up and use verbs.
He is very interested in cursive letters. I have those in a moveable alphabet, but they are just cardstock. I still have to get a suitable box for those too. I think I will try to find them larger, or try to make my own, so he can continue to trace with his finger.
Snakes and other reptiles and spiders, frogs, etc. are still the main research topic. His reading is improving, but he still enjoys recognizing the snakes from the pictures in the books. He can tell if a snake is a Python, a Boa, or a Viper, etc. by looking at it. He sometimes asks to get on the computer to do some research. I stand with him by the chair as he searches Google, and Youtube to see videos and pictures of snakes. Yesterday he wanted to look at Green Tree Pythons. He typed in "pithon," and then caught himself and said, "wait, that's not right," and deleted it and spelled it correctly. I don't correct him unless he asks me.
Probably not the typical spelling word on the first grade spelling test list, but there you go.
And I find it interesting, because Google will bring up a page with a suggestion of, "did you mean..." with a correct spelling. Not sure what Maria would say about it, but I think Google has an interesting way of gently correcting in a sort of self-correcting way. I'm sure some would argue it also would not encourage kids to get it right because Google will just do it for you. So far, I don't see it that way.
I did realize that though he loves books, and enjoys reading, we don't really have "readers," for him-- those children's books for early readers, etc.
We just recently started getting Easy Readers from the library. I wanted to see what level he is at according to their standards - i.e. Level 1 K-1st grade, etc.
He is easily reading Level 2, in some of the books. We got a couple of Level 3 just to see, because I like to have tiny bit below level, at level and above level so he can see where he is and where he wants to be.
I feel like I'm always at least a couple of steps behind. I'm trying hard to let him lead, but I have days of panic and guilt thinking he, and especially I, haven't done enough.

Socialization

It's a dirty word for homeschoolers I've come to learn. They resent the mention of it, insist that their homeschooled kids are actually better socialized than their away-from-home-schooled counterparts, and readily provide an array of examples to prove it.
Myself, I see the benefits of a child learning alongside peers. Of course I believe it should be in an accredited Montessori school, because it offers so many opportunities for a true socialization. It is one of the elements I wish I could somehow provide for Sean here, and one that I believe he misses too. He often talks about his friends at school, and his teachers there. And at this age, they are collaborative learners. I love that about the Montessori elementary classroom, because collaboration is a natural part of it.
We are trying hard to find others to socialize with, and we attended a homeschool group meeting today. We've only been formally homeschooling for a little more than a month now, but it is tough when you believe the method of education you're using is the best one for your child and yet no one else is using it.
It presents challenges, because their ideas of things to incorporate, such any sort of co-op instruction are opposite of how my child learns and how I want him to learn.
I notice there are a lot of claims: such as how much their children know, how their children are advanced, and even ahead of other homeschooled kids. I know that for a lot of people it is really important to believe they have a gifted or advanced child. It feeds that need to be "better" than others. And we are all proud of our children.
I just want my child to be happy, and love to learn. I want him to grow up knowing we live in a diverse world, and I want him to know how to interact with all types of people, and be tolerant of all types of people.
So today was a part of the curriculum called "socialization." (That is a joke really, because we don't  have a set curriculum.) We socialized for about an hour. Then we went to the grocery store in the city, and that is where the learning took place today.
"There are a lot of people speaking a lot of different languages," he said as we pushed the cart through the isles.
We saw Muslim women with a little baby girl wearing the Muslim head scarf. We saw rich people, poor people, and lots of different types of food. We read labels to compare the amounts of sugar in each cereal, and opted for the plain Cheerios, though he really wanted Fruity Cheerios.
We loaded our groceries into the car and were happy to come back to our peaceful home.