Tot School~Montessori Style

~Ladybug is currently 23 months old~

I have always been drawn to the montessori approach and tried to incorporate montessori or montessori-like activities in our Tot School. However, I would like to be more consistent with this and decided to set up montessori inspired tot tray for Ladybug.

Here are the activities that were on our trays this week:

Ocean Stickers...

Scooping sea shells... (the little buckets are from the Target dollar section)

Wooden Beads (a HABA toy)...

A wooden screw toy...

Wooden cutting food (Melissa and Doug Toy)...

Pouring pasta...

Preschool ~Ocean Part IV

It has been incredibly hot here this past week, in fact, it has been of the hottest weeks (if not the hottest week) of the entire summer! As a result, we haven't quite felt up to jumping into our fall theme just yet and decided to continue with our ocean theme, which is okay since I have quite a bit more planned :) We integrated our Ocean Theme into different academic areas, but also did some other work in reading, writing and math...

Reading...

Smiley continues to do a great job with his Hooked On Phonics Program. We're half-way through the Kindergarten program. This week, we learned the sight words: with, what, has. I printed them on paper and Smiley decorated them with candy, his favorite sight word activity ;)

(I took the picture before we shook the candy off)

We also continue to like a word family pockets. This week we worked on -op and -ox.

Math:

We continued in our Singapore Early Bird Workbook and came to the number writing. Smiley did great with number one, but struggled with number 2. I really don't want to push him too much at this age and handwriting is the area that is most difficult for him... He grasps math concepts easily and the Early Bird book is too easy for him in this regard; however, the writing part is tricky. I saw that numbers are actually covered in our Handwriting Without Tears pre-K program, and decided to just skip the numbers for now and work on it once it is introduced in HWT, so it all happens in a more step-by-step fashion :) I think a math program that is more hands-on will be a better fit at this time, and I am looking into purchasing some montessori manipulatives for Smiley... In the meantime, we're doing our own hands-on math activities, here  with sea snails and shells :)

Writing:

As I mentioned, handwriting is the most difficult area for Smiley, so we are focusing a lot on fun fine motor activities, and keeping the worksheet activities to a minimum for now. 

We had lots of fun making a sea urchin from play though and spaghetti, also incorporating pieces of a real sea urchin and a glass eye :) Smiley adored this activity and spent about an hour playing...

 We also continued to work on our Handwriting Without Tears program, which we both really enjoy. Smiley built a mat man with the wooden letter pieces :) He LOVED this!

He also learned how to write the letter L and did really well with it.

we did some extra practice in shaving cream, which, of course, was a big hit. 

 Hours upon hours have been spent playing Legos this week. The boy is obsessed ;)

 Science:

 We learned why it is easier to float in salt water than fresh water. Read more about our experiment here.

 We continued to learn our daily ocean facts during calendar time. You can find Carisa's awesome Calendar Connection cards here.

 We read tons of books about animals and looked at our ocean posters daily (which was part of an ocean book that we got from costco a couple of weeks ago).

We spent lots of time playing with sea shells....

 We spent lots of time in the kiddie pool :)

and did a float or sink experiment while we were at it ;)

EGGSperiment

We are continuing our ocean study and did a fun sink or float ocean experiment today. 

We hypothesized if it is easier to float in the ocean or in a swimming pool/lake? And why?

To test this hypothesis we filled one container with tap water (1.5 cups). In the second container, we added 1/3 cup salt to 1.5 cups water to make our salt water. Stir until all the salt is gone. I explained that the salt water is like the water in the ocean. We talked about how "salt gets in the ocean". One way is through rivers, which run over rocks containing salt and then carry it into the ocean. Another way is through volcanoes, erupting under water and releasing salt into the water.  

 Smiley sampled from both containers to make sure one was saltier ;)

Smiley then predicted what will happen when we put an egg in each glass...
We added a raw egg to each container.

 We talked about why the egg floated in the salt water, but not in the fresh water... Salt water is denser than fresh water; therefore, an egg will sink in fresh water because the egg is heavier than the fresh water. However, the egg will float in salt water because the egg is lighter than the salt water.

 In the end, you can slowly pour the fresh water into the glass with the salt water and floating egg. The egg should be floating in the middle of the cup. The fresh water is lighter than the salt water, so it should float on top of the salt water. I had Smiley pour the water in and I think he poured it too fast, causing all the water to mix together and this part therefore didn't work as nicely for us...

 I got this idea from homeschool share, where this Float or Sink is part of their Hello Ocean Lapbook. 
They have a fun little lap book component to go with this experiment that you can do with your child after doing the experiment :)