DIY Sandpaper Numbers

I decided to make a set of sandpaper numbers for my two year old. When my older child was using the sandpaper numbers, we made them out of notecards and glitter glue. They served their purpose, but I wanted to make something more lasting this time around.

The cost to make these wass negligible, as the only item I had to buy was an eighteen inch square of balsa wood from the craft store (and I used a 40% off coupon so it was less than $2). I already had dark green spray paint and extra sandpaper lying around the garage.

Cut the wood into rectangles about 3''x4'' and sand them.

Apply one coat of spray paint and then sand again.

Apply the second coat of spray paint.

Trace and cut out numbers from the sandpaper. I used a font called MontessoriScript that I found here. I made it bold and increased the size to fit my cards.

Use glue or Modge Podge to stick the sandpaper numbers to the wood.

I'm pretty excited about how these turned out. I'm hoping they get a lot of use.

DIY Montessori Felt Parts of a Tree

The girls really love them some science! I would love to purchase all of the botany puzzles and cards, but unfortunately as a homeschool family I not only can't afford them, but I also don't really have the space to store the entire set of materials. I decided to make a felt tree to stand in for the parts of a tree puzzle.

The quality of these drawings is pretty low, but I thought someone else might benefit from having the pattern ready to print. Perhaps someday when I have lots of spare time I will make higher quality patterns. I will also try to add other simple patterns as we go along. The pattern can be found here:

• Parts of a Tree Pattern

Please link to this page!

DIY Montessori Pink Tower

The pink tower is such a classic montessori material that I knew we had to have it for homeschooling. It and the brown stairs were my older daughter's favorite "work" for the better part of a semester and I'm sure her sister will love it too.  We already had a set of the cardboard nesting blocks, and those are great, but they lack the weight and flexibility of the pink tower.

My husband made these for us on a Saturday afternoon. He used a scrap 4x4 that we had left over from building our house. The pink tower is made up of ascending cubes, 1cm x 1cm x 1cm up to 10cm x 10cm x 10cm. He used a combination of the table saw and the mitre saw to cut them to the right size and then sanded them.

The hardest part of this is cutting and sanding the 1 cm and 2 cm blocks. They are so tiny!

Our 'pink' tower is still the natural wood color. I think we will paint it someday, but I really like the way the raw wood looks.

Our next project will be to make the brown stairs.

Curriculum Choices 2014-2015

I have put SO much effort and research into our curriculum choices for kindergarten in the fall. I think I've finally got it all figured out.

History and Reading

We will be using the Build Your Library curriculum for kindergarten. It's a fabulous, inexpensive, literature-based curriculum. I really debated between Bookshark and BYL and decided on BYL for a few reasons:

1. It is much less expensive, so if I end up not sticking with it I'm not out a bundle.  
2. My daughter is only four, and the curriculum is a bit less intensive than Bookshark. 
3. I really like the activities/art/ideas that are presented in the curriculum. Bookshark really didn't have much in the way of "extras" and my daughter absolutely loves her arts and crafts. 

Art

We will be using Artistic Pursuits for our art curriculum. I got a great deal on this from another homeschooler who was finished with the book. My daughter loves art so I wanted to make sure that I picked out something that was very thorough. This curriculum is great, it gives a sort of tour of the various art materials and styles. 

Math

We will be using Singapore Math Essentials for our main mathematics program but we will be using Montessori materials like the golden beads to supplement the text. The Essentials Kindergarten A text is very basic and probably better suited for a three year old. I think we will move through it very quickly and move onto the next one. I will keep updating posts about how we combine montessori and Singapore Math.

Phonics

We will continue using the Primary Phonics system this year. We finished their K book a few months ago (the consonant book), and we are now starting to use their Level 1 workbook and reading series. My four year old wasn't too excited to begin this work a few months ago so we put it aside. Last week she brought it to me and wanted to try again!  I'm also using the Explode the Code Level 1 workbook from the same publisher. This seems to be a nice bridge between the two primary phonics level. 

Science

The BYL curriculum that we are using has some science, but I will definitely be adding more. I plan on incorporating Montessori science and possibly getting the Singapore Science - My Pals are Here book for even more extras. Science is the most challenging curricula to find for this age group. Most of it really jumps around or is just purely experiment based. I will be posting updates about the materials I put together for our science. 

Handwriting

My daughter is only four and I really don't see handwriting as a necessity yet. She loves to do the Draw, Write, Now! books, so we will stick to those for the year.

And there you have it! Questions/Criticism/Concern always welcome!

Learning Our Colors

I realized that Little Duck, who is two, doesn't yet know any of her colors. I attribute this to "second child syndrome". When our first was little we were constantly talking to her and pointing out colors and shapes, but we just haven't done as much of that with Little Duck. I decided to make it a goal to spend at least an hour a day "working" with her. She's started really looking forward to "working" with mommy and that makes mommy happy too.

We started with the Montessori color tablets (Montessori Color Tablets #1). I introduced them the first day, saying "this is red" and placing the red one on the rug, then "this is blue" and placing the blue one on the rug, then "this is yellow" and placing the yellow one on the rug. Then I just let her play with them!

The second day I decided to focus on just one color. I brought out the color tablets, saying "This is red. Can you find me another one that looks just like this?" She was able to do that so we moved onto coloring with red crayons and talking about things that are red. Before nap time, we read a few books, and I had her find the color red on each page.

Each day we will add one color until she is able to identify each color in the Montessori Color Tablets #2 box.

One of our favorite toys for learning colors (and shapes) is the Lauri Toys Color and Shape sorter. My older daughter loved it and would carry it around for hours pretending that it was a birthday cake with candles. She loved stacking and dumping the rings. I brought it out for Little Duck the other day and she loved it too. It's amazing to me that the most simple toys are often the most popular with my children.

Here are a few of our favorite color-related books:

• The Color Kittens by Margaret Wise Brown - My children love this book!

• What Makes a Rainbow by Betty Ann Schwartz - The text in this book doesn't do much for my children, but they love playing with the rainbow ribbons. This is a great book to keep a very small child entertained.

• White Rabbit's Color Book by Alan Baker - This is a really great little book. The kids love the pictures of the little rabbit playing in the colors and then taking a shower.

• Clifford the Big Red Dog by Norman Bridwell

• Green by Laura Seeger 

DIY Montessori Color Tablets

The color tablets are one of those materials that children use for only a short time between the ages of two and three. My two year old doesn't yet know her colors so I made her a set to help with that learning.

These tablets are made from balsa wood cut to 2 inches x 1.5 inches. The hardest part was cutting the balsa wood. I read somewhere that you can just score it and snap it, but that certainly didn't work for me. I ended up having my husband cut and sand them with his table saw and mitre saw. It took him about 30 minutes and I didn't cut any fingers off. 

Once I had the tablets cut I used Modge Podge to attach some paint chips that I picked up at the hardware store. I've never used Modge Podge, and it was a little tricky to make it look right. If I applied it to the paint chip, it didn't stick to the wood. I found that using a foam brush to apply it directly to the wood was the best option. I used a cloth to smoosh the paint chip down evenly. I was still seeing the edges pull up a bit so I just stacked the tablets and put a heavy book on top of them until they were dry.

Here's an image of the completed color tablets (set 1). I didn't make the entire set of color tablets because I don't think that is necessary in a homeschool environment. I just made enough for the first and second set of twenty two tablets (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, black, white, grey, and pink).

The total cost of this project was about $4 for the balsa wood. The total time for this project was about 2 hours.

To Homeschool?

The decision of wether or not to homeschool has been one of the most difficult decisions of my life! When I tell people that we are considering homeschooling for our children, they look at me as if I had suddenly sprouted a second head. We are not religious and do not have a community of homeschoolers to which we can easily attach ourselves. (I think homeschooling for religious people is much more widely accepted. There are more support groups and more curriculum choices available...Things are changing for the secular homeschooler, but it's still a pretty taboo topic in most of our circles).

Our oldest daughter attends a wonderful montessori preschool. She is four now and we couldn't be happier with her teacher and all that she has done for our daughter over the past two years.  We now have a second child who is two and we would love to enroll her in the same preschool for the coming year...but preschool is very far away from our home and also very expensive for two children.

We have been looking into homeschooling options for our older daughter once she finishes kindergarten.  There are a number of reasons for this:

1. We live quite far away from even our neighborhood school. Driving to one of the charter schools in our area would require me to be in the car for over two hours a day.
2. School days are so long! Add a seven hour school day to our two hours of driving to ten hours of sleep for the girls and there's really not much time for anything except for eating!
3. Our school board has been taken over by political extremists. Yep, it's really very scary...
4. I really like being with my kids (most of the time)! 
5. Time. Homeschooling families generally complete their school material in a few hours in the mornings and then have the rest of the day for family time and extracurricular activities. 
6. I don't believe in a one-size-fits-all education. Children learn different ways and someone who is managing 30 children and jumping through hoops for the school district is not going to have the time, energy, or resources to tailor their teaching for each child.
7. I want to be able to take my children hiking and skiing and to the beach and to museums and to other countries! Experience is the best teacher. 
8. I can pick my curriculum. I can use Singapore Math and Montessori methods. I can augment our science curriculum so that it is accelerated and challenging and fun. I can follow my child's interests.  (Also, I don't want to have to augment a public school education at home. After a 7 hour day it would not be fair to her to make her do more work at home.)
9. Bullying, negative peer pressure, etc. These are things that every child will have to deal with at some point, but I think it's far better to ease a child into these situations with the tools to handle them than to throw them to the sharks at five years old as a kindergartner. 

Our original plan was to let her finish her three year montessori cycle and then to pull her, but we've made some great friends who are starting to homeschool their children next year. Also, a new secular homeschool curriculum was just released (Bookshark, I will go into more details on it in a later post) that will fit our family very well. It feels like the right time to start our homeschool journey.

I plan on keeping this blog updated with what's happening in our homeschool. I hope you will keep checking back for updates!