Montessori Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication Tables

I am a huge resale, garage sale gal. Check out our recent find! These vintage tablets have addition, subtraction, and multiplication problems on opaque white plastic. When you push the button down the answer is seen. Great self checking, right? We have had these in the car for a week or so. They go in and out of our bus and home. The other evening I left my 6 year old in the car with one per his request. He started pushing the buttons for the multiplication tablet while we were driving home from an outing and he wanted to finish all the buttons before he got out of the car.

 

John Wood and Paul Harrison Inspire Action and Art.

We met a friend at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville this past week and stumbled into an exhibition by John Wood and Paul Harrison. We brought along our three little guys, dragged them through beautiful, colorful paintings, and then stumbled into the black and white videography of John Wood and Paul Harrison. Their art form is very clean, striking, interactive, and moving. Our boys LOVED it, copied it, laughed at it, and didn’t want to leave the room! They were surrounded in a room of TVs showing short films of very interesting short movies, please click on the link below for a better introduction. I must say, even for us moms it was pretty funny to watch some of them. I just wanted to mention this exhibition because if you would like your boys to “get into” art, show them this.

John Wood and Paul Harrison

 

Spring Cleaning

For a while now I have been offering my two cents about Montessori, books, traveling stops, and unschooling. I didn’t want to change my beautiful background, but in order to move forward I needed to declutter. In the coming weeks I intend to reorganize files to be found more easily with page buttons at the top. I hope this makes it easier. Thank you so much for reading my blog.

In the meantime, if you enjoy 3readers, please take a look at my sister blog www.pioneerkids.wordpress.com. It’s about outdoor country living (in the country AND city), Waldorf inspired ideas, and a lot of nature.

Also, I’m so excited to introduce my newest endeavor Pail and Pie, my Etsy store which is all about inspiring play.

My intentions with 3readers are to continue to add awesome traveling hot stops, great books, Montessori patterns, files, and ideas. I would love any feedback you have, as I don’t want to bore, but rather inspire to explore.

Thanks for listening,

Brenda

 

Birthday Plate.

We have a birthday boy coming up this month and he gets a special plate for the day. I was invited by a friend to a paint it yourself pottery place, and found this cute cupcake plate. I decided to decorate it for our family special birthday plate. The boys helped paint, I stamped Happy Birthday at the bottom, and I put the sun, moon, and stars on the outer ring to celebrate Montessori style. We always have the boys go around the sun with the planet Earth, one trip for each year old they are. Now, we will have a Montessori inspired birthday tradition at the table.

 

 

Enter To Win a Free Lucy Hammett Games Educational Bingo.

Congratulations Lynn. I hope you enjoy your bingo game.

 

I found a bingo game my boys won’t put down, it’s called Tractor Bingo and perfect for my farm life boys. Lucy Hammett Games is going to offer one winner a game of their choice. (I have NO paid advertisers. We contacted them because we love this game and they were gracious enough to offer a free game.)

The games are great because they have cards with great pictures and tons of information. Our tractor bingo includes information on when the model was made, why it was revolutionary, and more. The dinosaur bingo would be awesome for The Montessori Great Lessons. Your child could pull cards themselves and put markers on to match, or just play regularly, it’s amazing how much you’ll learn.

AND for their 30th Anniversary, Lucy Hammett Games is offering 3 games for $30 plus $10 USPS priority mail shipping. So, you can scoop up some extra great games.

HOW TO ENTER.

1. Go to http://www.lucybingogames.com/

2. Click on their contact us tab at the top right.

3. Enter in your mailing information and in the “comments or your suggestions for a Picture Bingo Game” enter 3READERS

That’s it:)

Ask me any questions.

Notes:

The winner will be chosen April 14, 2012. US Entrants only. Must be 18 years or older. Winner will be notified from Lucy Hammett Games, who will select a random winner. Void where prohibited.

 

Drippy writing creates a name story.

Yesterday morning my older son was lying with me in bed for snuggles and gazing out the window. No sooner had he snuggled then he jumped back up and stated, “I am going to draw.” So, he wrote his name in the water droplets condensed on our window and then, feeling satisfied, snuggled back up. We then watched his name start…dripping. The L had drips at each bottom corner that ran down the window, the U had slenderer drips. Each letter had a unique drip stand propping it up. We started seeing things in the letters, like pictures in the clouds, and there and then came up with a story.

L looked like a chair, “once upon a time a man was sitting in his chair,” U looked like a wine glass, “having a drink,” C was deemed a stamp (?) by my son, “who needed to stamp some papers,” and on we went. It was genuine, name story fun. My younger son quickly jumped up to write his name (he drew a lowercase i and a capital O and no his name is not Io, he’s just 3.) And we made up more stories.

Here is our drippy name, and if you don’t have a condensed window, I think it would be awesome for a child to have really drippy watercolors on an easel and watch the name create its own story. In fact, I hope to recreate the same in watercolors for posterity:) What will your story say?

 

 

Gum paste as natural, edible playdough on our spring cake.

So after many episodes of Cake Boss my family has decided we need to upgrade our cakes. We’ve done some fun ones, but frosting eludes me and I once made fondant that was more like goop. I usually walk away, shake my head, and apologize to the guests for what I will be serving. However, their enthusiasm is making me try harder and here is what I have found. You can buy gum paste which is a corn syrup, sugar, mix and when mixed with water becomes basically an edible play dough. So, for an alternative to play dough we used gum paste  and made up a fun spring cake. You wouldn’t believe the lessons that go into in naturally, measuring, chemistry, art, and excellent fine motor skills. We’ve been baking with the boys since they were born, and it’s really paid off. They have learned why we measure, what ingredients cause what reactions (rising and such), what looks pleasing to the eye, how to be really helpful in the kitchen, and how fun it can be to make your own food. Gum paste, who knew?

 

Illustrated Wildlife Treasury found for 50 cents!

While I am sharing an excellent resource, this post is more about sharing where I look.

First of all, I recently fell into an excellent resource called the Illustrated Wildlife Treasury. I know very little about it, only it was a 70′s or 80′s thing where one could sign up for and receive a collection of cards about living things. This box is LOADED with cards, they each show what continents that living thing is from, what environment they live in, what kingdom they are in, and a short paragraph on the back about the living thing. Excellent, right? Now here is what I am really excited about, I will not have to make any living thing Montessori cards again! All I will have to do is sort these for the lessons we are talking about and make a control list, or I could scan the pics and make a matching game, etc. It cost only 50 cents, and I couldn’t even begin to imagine how much it would cost to duplicate in paper and time and research. I wanted to share the title of it so you could possibly search it out yourself.

Here is more what I want to say, I found this resource at a garage sale. It would be pretty weird if you found the exact same thing for 50 cents. I’m not telling you you will find this one item so go scour garage sales. Instead, I know there is something I would salivate for at YOUR local garage sale, and alas, sigh, I’ll never know what I’ve missed. I’ve learned how to look for good school tools while garage saling and wanted to share my tips>

1. Go townwides, or at least subdivision wides. I’ve learned driving for one is nuts (gas costs and that adds into the so-called cheap finds). I go for townwide sales (I live in a very rural setting) and then I’m bound to discover something and not waste my time. We go for a little then we go to the park and play. We all are happy that way. Save your time and save your gas money, garage sale where there are a lot to choose from. You can usually walk to many sales which saves the buckling/unbuckling insanity.

2. Establish rules for the kids. My kids have been going since I was pregnant with them so we have established ground rules to prevent kid whining for broken, plastic toys. The kids may look at anything they find interesting. I WILL not buy something we already own, like trucks. We have enough. I will not buy battery items as they usually don’t work. I will only purchase something they do not have, is not broken, does not take batteries, and most of the time is not plastic. They know these rules and don’t whine which makes shopping easier. If we do purchase a new toy, an old one is picked out and donated by them.

3. Go with “schooling” on the mind, not just looking for a particular thing. Inevitably we find good books and you’ll mostly likely do the same. We find mostly good non-fiction books, early readers, and resource books. We have also found the illustrated wildlife cards, wooden bowls for transfer work, beads, fabric bags for storing our unused at the moment Montessori materials, tons of baskets to store Montessori work on the shelves in, animal matching games, wooden dominoes, plastic red and blue blocks to create our red/blue number rods, etc. Practical life materials are dripping off of the tables for mere pennies. I don’t look only  for a certain thing, rather I try to figure the potential of the thing for sale.

4. Don’t pre-judge. I’ve learned that some of the sales I would glance at and pass up were good! I found the complete Laura Ingalls Wilder collection with supplement books at a sale I was pretty much walking past. It turned out to be a homeschool family selling many resources, I walked out loaded. I went to a house with my sister once, I practically dragged her in there, she kept saying let’s just go by this one, and she walked out will a whole new wardrobe for her son to grow into! My husband scored Snap-on high quality tools, and I found a new, Eddie Bauer wallet. My point is this, don’t pre-judge. You don’t know these people, it takes just seconds to graze over what they have. I have stumbled into quite a few Spanish books in what looked to be non-Spanish speaking houses, something I have a hard time finding.

5. Go to many, look often, but don’t just buy just because. My mother in law will ask me where I got something and then finish her sentence with “at a garage sale.” She knows we garage sale often and are hence rewarded. If you go to a lot of sales, you will do better. I have been to a lot in a row where I found nothing. I am okay with that. When it’s nice weather and we’re walking through town, I enjoy the walk too. Going to one sale this year won’t do it, when you go to a lot, you find more to choose from and more that will work. On the contrary, if you do go to one sale, don’t just buy something because you’re so invested in the sale now, it will end up at Goodwill. The times I do find something useful easily are worth the sales that didn’t yield for us. My illustrated wildlife cards are easily worth 100 sales of nothing to me. And, I have the discipline not to buy when there is nothing for us, because I’m not just trying to fill up the house with junk, rather have fun searching and finding used items to repurpose.

6. Don’t buy projects because they’re cheap. Don’t buy broken things you need to fix unless you will actually do it. It will just sit there in your way otherwise. Don’t buy sweaters with holes if you won’t mend it. Don’t buy a puzzle missing a piece you can’t fix. You are supposed to be saving time, not spending it in projects you don’t need. I’ve been there, done that, I am a scrutinizer now. I don’t buy broken, I don’t need it. Inevitably I found it better somewhere else. I don’t buy books with writing in them, I don’t buy items with holes, I don’t buy broken zippers, etc. I wait for it to be in very good shape. Just be patient.

I love garage saling because it’s environmentally sound and fun. We reuse things, we save money, we save tons of plastic packaging and truck fuel that are expended and wasted for new goods to get on store shelves, and think of the extra tax my husband doesn’t have to work to pay:) We don’t think used things are gross, because we don’t think our used things are gross. We don’t care if people see us buying used things. Most of the time I find we find higher quality items from garage sales than the Wal-mart shelf. Happy sales! I hope you find some awesome Montessori and schooling materials this summer!

 

Reluctant Writer Felt “Mail” Project

My son is 5 and I know it’s hard for him to write. So, I try to make it fun. I had some left over felt and decided to make some reusable letters and envelopes with a bonus button on stamp. I cut a rectangle of felt for the envelope, serged all the edges and then serged two sides together not all the way up, making an envelope shape. I also left that top flat. For the “letter” I used plastic for one side and just some pink felt as the backing for the letter to be sturdy. I serged them together in a size that would slip in the envelopes. Now I have a basket with wipe erase markers that we can create mail for each other too. As a bonus for working on buttoning, I sewed 4 unique buttons onto the upper right hand corner and cut little stamps with slits to attach. They are making writing and reading notes very fun around here.

 

Scribbling With Light at Night

We recently had the opportunity to camp lakeside in Texas. There were lines of yellow and white lights across the water from us so we brought out the camera. All we did was put the camera on NO FLASH, and let the little hands guide the camera around while the shutter was open. The kids had so much fun moving the camera around and the “light” drawings turned out so interesting. I just wanted to share because this might make a fun summer night project for you.