Theme Units

Space Unit Planning & a Few Other Great Ideas {link love}

February 11, 2012

Our next unit is going to be studying the solar system. I’m pretty excited about it, partly because I know Joey will really enjoy it and all the ideas I’m finding on space units from other Montessori blogs. Here’s just a few of the great ideas I’ve come across: Formation of Stars Formation of Stars [...]

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How to Make a Helmet {kind of}

November 15, 2011

Once we made our knight shield and we already had a foam sword (from the Target $1 section) floating around our house, it was time for a helmet. What’s a knight without his helmet? I thought I could make a helmet out of cardboard, fabric, and hot glue. And I did…kind of. It looks more [...]

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How to Make a Shield

November 15, 2011

Materials: cardboard scissors hole-punch ribbon markers and/or crayons Directions: 1. Outline and cut a shield out of cardboard. 2. Let your little knight decorate the shield. 3. Using a hole-punch, punch two holes on both sides of the shield a few inches from the top and string the ribbon through. 4. Flip the shield over and [...]

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Knights & Castle Theme

November 13, 2011

We did a knights and castle theme at the beginning of the summer and Joey had a blast. Finally, I’m putting on the knight and castle themed activities together. I have a few “how-to’s” coming this week for a knight’s shield and helmet. Here’s a list of the activities we did in relation to the [...]

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Montessori Fall-Inspired Activities

October 9, 2011

It’s been a rough month or so with Otto teething and having an ear infection, but we’re beginning to sleep a little more around here. Thank goodness! Mama can only go on 4-5 hours of sleep so long. We’ve been enjoying our more formal school times and have been keeping up (for the most part) [...]

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Making Fossils, Food, & Extensions

September 25, 2011

This week we continued learning about dinosaurs and I’m surprised how Joey has picked up the vocabulary and used it correctly–theropods, sauropods, predators, and paleontologist. I also introduced Joey to a few sensorial extensions with the pink tower and brown stair. He seemed to really enjoy it, but I did notice some inconsistencies in the measurements [...]

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First Week of School

September 19, 2011

Last week we had our first week of school. Yay! I’ve been quiet around here, because I was planning, getting things ready, and waiting for supplies we ordered. We’re still waiting for the supplies, because there was a hang-up in our order. I wanted to wait until we had everything I had planned, but I [...]

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How to Build a Castle

June 29, 2011

One of the themes we’re doing this summer is knights and castles since Joey is in that little boy stage where everything is about knights, castles, dragons, and fighting bad guys. I thought building a castle would be a fun way to explore the subject together. Without further ado, here are the very simple steps [...]

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Tot School: Christmas

January 2, 2011

It’s been a busy and full week or two around our house with Christmas, grandparents visiting, and preparing for baby (4 days until the due date!), so that’s of pictures. More play than work, but that’s how it should be this time of year, right? Joey loves Curious George, so my mom made him a [...]

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Theme: Transportation

March 3, 2010

Our monthly theme in January/February was transportation. I had a lot of fun with this theme, though it was hard to create Montessori style “work” pertaining to planes, trains, and automobiles. What Joey did do was gaining familiarity with the types of transportation, beginning to retrieve objects by name, and discovering how wheels work (no [...]

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