Getting Ready to Forage

I put together some helpful activities that I found for free. Its so important that the children are able to identify and differentiate between the different types of plants. It could be one little detail that makes one plant okay to eat and another one poisonous! So below are some activities that you can do before or after to help teach the different shapes of leaves and "margins" to help train their eyes. 

Leaf Identification Power Point FREE

Leaf Identification Lesson, Leaves

			Leaf Identification Lesson, Leaves This is a 250 slide PowerPoint presentation about leaf identification (Mostly the Northeast United States but will have value if you live in another area).
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Parts of a flower Montessori Matching Cards FREE

Montessori Nomenclature - Parts of a Flower

			Montessori Nomenclature - Parts of a Flower 3 Part Cards - Parts of a FLOWER A great set to progress to the abstract after working with the Flower puzzle This 3 part cards consists of : 6 control cards
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Leaf Shape Worksheet and Poster (FREE!) 

			Leaf Shape Worksheet and Poster (FREE!) This is a poster and worksheet I made of the 5 most common leaf shapes. The 5 shapes include orbicular, elliptic, ovate, obovate, and reniform. Leaf shape is
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Links to Free botany activities  (purple links are free)

MontessoriMaterials.org 

Phonics and a preschooler

A very old version of hooked on phonics was given to us and we have been using it successfully with our 6 year old, so I decided let's teach our 3 year old too! Ha! I am sure he knows more letters then he leads on to know, but doing the letter flash cards along with the tape, over and over became tedious and tiring. I felt like he needed something more tactile while he was listening to the tape to help make it more concrete.

We do have sand paper letters, but they are a bit big and bulky to flip through during the song, so I started to look for sandpaper flash cards. I found some on amazon, but they didn't have great reviews and i didn't feel like ordering...so I came across this website and she has a very easy way of making cards! Glue and sand! Wow! I love simple and easy! Some things just don't need to be so complicated!

So I made some flash cards in pages, keeping the letters true to the Montessori colors (red for consonants and blue for vowels)

I found some glitter glue and voila!
I used my \ fiskar paper cutter, punched a hole with my hole puncher, and put a ring trough the whole. So simple. :)

So materials needed:
Card stock paper
Hole puncher
Paper cutter
Glitter glue (or glue and glitter, but messy!)
And a ring (1" is probably best)
PDF for flash cards
Website for original idea

Enjoy!

2013 Foraging Field Trip Wih "Wildman" Steve!

Yes I know, super late, but here are some pictures from our awesome homeschool field trip with "Wild Man" Steve Brill and his wonderful daughter/assistant Violet! (May 2013)

Also here is some links with more information on Steve Brill

here is more info on him

His Website: http://www.wildmanstevebrill.com

Books for sale: http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Cookbook-Wildman-Steve-Brill/dp/1558322140 

His smart phone App: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wild-edibles-full/id431504588?mt=8

His FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Wild-Edibles-with-Wildman-Steve-Brill/180012985382179

Mr. Brill playing dead, this is what happens when you eat poisonous wild food!

Digging up some edible roots!

The "Brillophone" Duo, Steve Brill and his daughter Violet

Some vine swinging! They must have been pretty high! lol

Safely landed...

Azi's turn!

Cycle 2 Week 4 Geography and Science Worksheet

Hello! Just a quick upload of a worksheet I created for my daughter that I wanted to share! Enjoy and share! Click on the pic or here is the link

Organizing our library

After a couple of days working on categorizing all of our books! We have finally finished, and our library is complete!

Mind you, all of these books have been accumulated over a few years, many garage sales and daycare closing sales :)

Here is the link for the labels that you see, thank you pre-k pages! I added and combined a few categories so we didn't have to do too many different labels.

Each category has a different color circle and a number. (Yellow green or purple, from staples)...we placed this sticker on each book cover, on the top left cover and covered with clear tape.

Categories that we added or combined:

• Added: "Character and God". This category contains books that talk about God (obviously, lol) or also talk about things like sharing, not hitting, etc.
• We combined ALL of the holidays into one category as well.
• Transportation become "Transportation and Geography"
• Abc's and numbers were combined
• Colors and Shapes were combined
• And bears, zoo, pets were all combined into "Animals"...

And it all fits nicely on this shelf! (the shelf is screwed into the wall)

Calvin hiding while we were busy sorting :)

Our homeschool setup...so far

Here is just a quick shot of our homeschooling space, aka our dining room :)

Ahhh....we love the morning sunlight :)

Our language books that are kept in this bin (arms reach) along with my daughters Daily Notebook. 

Our super organized (OCD) library

A day and night shot. The picture frame covers the white board so in the evening (and during showings, because we are selling our home) it doesn't feel too "schooly"

Biomes Nomenclature Cards for FREE :)

I surf the internet day and night for free stuff. I have downloaded so many activities from so many nice bloggers out there, so I have made something I would like to share with you all...well the very few of you all...if any at all? lol (also in case my computer crashes I can always find this file here! lol)

Our family has just joined Classical Conversations and we are super excited to have our daughter start her first grade year with other like minded families.

For our first week memory work I have tried putting together activities that are Classical and Montessori combined. There isn't a whole lot of stuff from the internet that I have found...yet. I could not find a set of Biome nomenclature cards that matched the memory work. I came across two websites that had something similar to what I needed (here and on montessori for everyone ...but it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. So I decided to stay up late and make my own....so here it is, and it is yours to use as well! Enjoy! If you are not sure how to use nomenclature cards, don't worry it is super easy...here is a link that explains simply how to teach a three period lesson...and so on, enjoy! (Montessori print shop has a whole bunch of free cards as well!)

Here is a nice and simple video on the background and the directions for giving a three period lesson when introducing new material.

P.S. If there is any typos, SORRY! Let me know and I will fix them :)

UPDATE: I JUST REALIZED THE ORIGINAL FILE WAS A PAGE FILE FOR MAC, SO I MADE IT A PDF