Funschool is done on a shoestring budget around here.  We use mostly what is on hand, online, or at the library. For that reason, while I was intrigued by the Waldorf letter stories plans I didn’t invest in any curricula this year.  I do think you can learn to read just fine without them. Still, you wouldn’t believe the fun we have had since finding Curious George Learns the Alphabet by accident.

Background here – my kids have all loved Curious George. Long before he hit the big screen he was a favorite around here. My aunt gave Aidan a stuffed "Monkey George" 6yrs ago. He is now enjoying his third owner.  Brendan never fails to pick a ‘hoo-hoo’ book (as in monkeys say: hoo hoo, ha ha) when Daddy sits down with them to read. During one of those sittings we worked through an anthology and ran across the alphabet story.  I don’t know whose wheels were turning faster, Kieran’s or mine. He was all over making notebook pages of the letters. He would like to make them all.  Tonight. : ) 

The letter pictures are all very sweet.  Nothing objectionable and George figures into each scene. The featured letter is highlighted in color every time it appears in the explanatory story.  The scanned pic is one of Kieran’s recreations.

So, can you learn to read without this activity?  Yep. But, boy letter pictures make things fun and HA Rey makes it painless and simple and (cheap!)for the teacher.

H is for hearts and hands and home.

H Template

ASL – h, happy, house

Cover the letter template with hearts or hole punch holes into it.

No preschool program is complete without some handprint art. Our big project this week is to make this handprint calendar. I admit to being a smidge concerned about trying to pull this off with four families of children but I really hope to finish these for Christmas. They are way cute.

Montessori Practical Life – sorting clothes in hampers. Housekeeping is a major focus of Montessori practical life work. Using child sized tools is highly recommended.  The link takes you to labels for your hampers.  Even very young children can  learn to sort and  keep their laundry off the floor.  Or so I am told. I think they lose this skill later. Must be a brain chemistry issue in adolescence. Maybe my big boys will like these labels. <g>

Sensorial/Sorting:  Hot/cold game – google images of hot items such as hamburger, fireplace, candle, teapot and cold things like ice cubes, ice cream, snowman.  Glue them to cards and sort.   You can also purchase or make thermic bottles I would suggest making, unless of course you had $200 laying around you didn’t know what to do with.  Actually even if you do, don’t buy them anyway.  Call me.  I can use it. ; D

Math: A Hundreds Chart teaches and reinforces many math skills in the early elementary school years. This site suggests lots of extension activities.

The concept of 100 can be taught using the long chain manipulatives such as these from JMJ Publishing.

Shape: heart

H is for handwriting. We are using this book from Handwriting Without Tears to teach letter formation. We really love the little chalk board and then the transition to the shaded rectangles. 

PE – hopping.  Play hopscotch this week and you can reinforce numbers (counting up and back down again) and balance at once.  Hoola hoops are a great tool as well. You can use them to hoola which is a skill in itself. You can shoot bean bags through them. You can hop inside-outside-around them thereby working on positional directions. This book gives more ideas. Play Hokey Pokey.

Snacks for this week: hamburgers, hotdogs, ham and cheese, hot chocolate, hot cross buns, Ho-Ho’s (did I say that or was I just thinking it ; ) and candy hearts

Lit/art:
The House That Jack Built  etext   to go with some house and home  fun like this. You can save oatmeal and other boxes, cover them with construction paper and black window squares to make a whole village of houses.  Take a large poster and make a house of large rectangles.  Cut out pics of furniture and appliances appropriate to different rooms and laminate. Have the children match them to the rooms on the poster. They can simply glue them on for a one time project instead.

Songs/rhymes:
Hickory Dickory Dock

If You’re Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands
He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands

My Hands by Aliki
Handrhymes
Ho for a Hat by William J Smith
Hop on Pop

Bible/Saints:

Discuss halos and their use in sacred art. Look through any art appreciation book and note the halos in images of holy men and women.
The Holy Family.   
As For Me and My House coloring page.  This memory verse would be nice to write on one of the box houses you make this week.
Holy Holy Holy song. 
For Catholics: Immaculate Heart of Mary and Sacred Heart of Jesus. Practice the Hail Mary and/or Hail Holy Queen prayers. This online color book has both prayers along with songs and lots of activities.

H is for Hugs. Distribute them freely this week.  : ) 

Just occurred to me that it is the end of Thursday already and I forgot to post about this.  We will have an altered Funschool schedule over the next couple of weeks. This week two moms are out of town.  Brendan has his tear duct procedure next Thursday and two appts before that. We have All Saints Day the week after.  My goal is to do one Funschool sometime between now and Nov 2nd.  I can’t promise yet which day that will be. Funschool has been just that – lots of fun. To keep it that way we try to be reasonable and meet when we can without making ourselves crazy.  It is hard to learn when you are rushed and mom is grumpy so we avoid those two things wherever possible. : )

Our little people have been spending their days exploring the new games we have brought out each week. The geoboards have had a lot of use. We have circle and square boards so the possibilities are endless. The soap grater – huge hit! We found if you wet the shavings and wad them together you get a new bar of soap too once they dry. 

I wanted to share this too. Brendan is 2 and a half now and moving closer to 3. He has been quite a busy boy, always into something and not one to sit still for long.  Even with years of Montessori theory stuck in my brain I could not rearrange the circumstances the first half of the year dumped in our laps. (you might recall power lines) Goll, that just ate up HOURS every week. Hours I didn’t have with a newborn in tow. Our prepared environment …. wasn’t.  His behavior responded accordingly.  I am happy to report that after two months of very gentle, very sporadic exposure to the homemade manipulatives, stories, and group work Brendan is a new boy.

It is amazing to see ‘normalization’ happen. He is still a firecracker <g> but no more does a grocery store run with him strike fear in my heart lol!  He is visibly more relaxed and engaged with whatever project is at hand.

You don’t need to do all these activities.  You don’t even need to do most of them.  However, if you do one or two each week, while truly being present with your little person, and then keep him close by the rest of the time, I promise you that little person will respond in amazing ways. : )

I have absolutely loved the photos and posts from the Montessori by Hand blog and Flickr. You can find one of the clearest outlines of practical life activities in this post. There is a yahoo group set up as well. and embroidering Montessorian.  It doesn’t get much better than this. : ) 

Jen sent me links to Mr Nussbaums interaction sites this morning. What a find!

G is for Goats (you didn’t think I could pass this up did you?)

G template covered in gold glitter glue.   

ASL G and Goat and Girl

Color: gold

Craft: This glitter bracelet is nothing more than masking tape and glitter.

DLTK has a number of goat themed printables . They suggest printing 3 of the goats and the troll on heavy paper and adhering to popsicle sticks to reenact the Three Billy Goats Gruff story they will hear this week. It would be fun to have a little "bridge" to set up with a board on some cinder blocks for them to tramp over. Games like this do double duty as dramatization and phys ed (balance).

PE: Speaking of which, golf is a good game for this week. There are kiddy sets available. You can improvise with a coffee can set on its side. 

G is for Peggy Kaye’s Games for Learning. The book series (Learning, Writing, and Math titles) target K-3rd graders but many games are well suited for preschooler, especially those familiar with letters and numbers. The Grasshopper Game and many others are online now.

Math: G is for Geoboard.  If previous preschool co-op experience is any indicator kids LOVE geoboards. We had two and they were in constant use. We had the square board but I would very much like to add a circle geoboard to the mix. Here is a pattern if you would like to make one or make up your own patterns for the children to reproduce. There are so many possibilities. You can make shapes of various sizes.  You can progress to simple outlines of objects. You can make half of a picture and they can do the other half. Mirror images. Older kids can figure area and perimeter of figures. There are books available to get you started but you can easily take off with this on your own. Here are some pics of geoboards in the classroom.

G is also for geometric solids. Honestly, we don’t get a whole whoppin’ lotta use out of these. They are a Montessori standby though so I have them and we refer to them. I made up command cards such as find the solid that has x number of faces or x  number of points (corners) or looks like a can or whatnot. This site has printable cards to use with them. Preschool geometry is really very simple. A great game when sitting in waiting rooms is to find something shaped like a rectangle or count how many circles are in the room (ie doorknobs, buttons etc).

Number: 7  Introduce the seven days of the week with this song (sung to the tune of Clementine):

There are SEVen days,  There are SEVen days, There are SEVen days in the week – Sunday MONday, Tuesday WEDnesday, Thursday FRIday, SATurday.

They WILL learn the names easily this way! If you hung up the wall calendar a few weeks ago you can make 7 bears (copy to a word document and size to fit your wall space; add eyes and mouth) labeled with each day/name on the belly and 3 moveable hats that say Today, Tomorrow, and Yesterday on them. Everyday when you review the song you can place the hats the correct day bears. Hands on Math has printables and directions for a calendar wall.

And G is for Graphs.  This is an area that is easily overlooked at home but very easy to incorporate. PAge 4 of this document has a simple graphing game to print and play with dice. It is one of several ideas found in one of my favorite math programs – Mathematics Their Way which is a fortune on Amazon. Many similar ideas are found in her other books like the Workjobs linked at left which can be had for pennies.

G is also for Grace and Courtesy lessons.  Montessori recommended going over things like how to blow one’s nose and introductions and such. We take for granted that everyone knows these things and get annoyed when children mess up.  You can help prevent frustration by having reeeally brief little sessions about these things.

Other trays: cutting work – cut grass! make a scissor tray with strips of green construction paper for them to cut into fringe like grass. Bend some of the ‘grass’ and glue onto blue paper. (thank you Jean Warren!)  Make a grating tray.  We got a 6 sided grater at Walmart for less than $3. Add a bar of soap and they will keep busy discovering what happens when grating over each size opening.  Discovery Bottle – Glitter Bottle

Golf tees! Buy some this week from your sporting goods section. We will have another manipulative using them next week. We made a great game with a remnant of pegboard leftover from a garage organization project. Put some large wooden beads or scrap 1by 2 wood on the bottoms so it is elevated a few inches when it sits on the table or floor. The children make pictures, letters, patterns with colored golf tees dropped into the holes. HOURS of fun. Like the geoboards I found the kids go back to this game over and over over and…….  I will get pics uploaded this weekend.

Science: G is for growing. Growing grass is a very satisfying preschool room project. You can fill a shallow box with potting soil and sprinkle wheat or barley or regular grass seed over it, tapping the seed down lightly. Keep a mister nearby. Children will love spraying the box to keep the seeds moist. A spray bottle is a better bet than a watering can given their enthusiasm. ; )

Bible/saints:  This is the month of the Holy Angels for Catholics.  We will read through the Catholic Children’s Treasure Box set’s continuing story about a Guardian angel and make this simple Guardian angel craft with doilies and geometric shapes from our math work. We will learn or review the Angel of God prayer and add it to our binders. We will likely read about the angel Gabriel this week and add the picture of the Annunciation to our binders with their narrations. This site has some puzzles etc the big kids can work on.

Lit:

Beatrice’s Goat

G is for Goat – Polacco (I love this ABC book!)

Catch that Goat

Aesop:  The Goatherd and the Wild Goats

Snacks: graham crackers, grapes, gummi candy

And finally, G is for Giggle. Be sure to do some of that this week. : )

My friend Cheryle hit the jackpot with this site. If my printer was working I would totally be doing the happy dance. Actually I am still happy with anticipation knowing all this great lit is here waiting.  Catholics note these two links.

F is for Fish

ASL: F  and  fish

F template: glue on feathers or use a stamp pad to fill with fingerprints   Speaking of fingerprints, don’t miss this opportunity to share the fun of Ed Emberly’s fingerprint book!  It has a 5 star rating for good reason. Even little people can make great designs with a bit of help from your pen. The look on their faces when they see what happens to their fingerprints is priceless. : )

Lit:

Saint/Bible story:

St. Anthony preaches to the fishes or the story of Jesus and the Loaves and the Fishes (a boatload of lessons for this story at the link – pun intended ; )) or the Fisher of Men story. We will print this classic art image as well as one of the Loaves and Fishes for Art appreciation as well.

Montessori Trays:  fabric basket, felt board – there are lots of premade sets available or you can get books like Fun with Felt from CHC to make felt saints to go with your studies(can’t find it online so will try to track down a resource later!), feely bag – we took a large ziplock bag, tossed some foam fish into it and filled it with blue shampoo to make a fish ‘pond’. Another feely box option is to put one of a pair of objects into a medium sized can with a large sock pulled over it. The child can reach in but not see the objects. They must pair by touch.  I will upload the pics of both to the Funschool Flicker next week. The sensory box can have feathers this week. (this is our take on a sensory table which is bigger and more expensive) Discovery bottle – ocean (blue food color in water for half the bottle, oil in the rest) Foam work  One of my Montessori homeschool mom friends has made file folder type tray games with craft foam figures like this. Darned if I can find her or her pics!  If you are out there please send me your link!

Snack: Goldfish crackers, fruit rollups, fruit salad (yummy yummy – sorry, I broke into song for a minute ; )) fig newtons, and fish sticks

Math: Fewer/Less than (see lit list) Throughout the week look for opportunities to compare amounts of similar things. Are there fewer apples or oranges left? Are their fewer pennies or nickels in my purse? Are there fewer socks or towels in the wash?  You can have the same discussion about full/empty as an alternative or addition.  Use a ruler to introduce "foot" measure.

Shapes: review previously learned shapes with pattern blocks or geometric solids

Science –  If you are a brave mom you can dissect a whole fish from the grocery store. Its smelly but cheap and memorable.   You can learn about all sorts of fish at enchantedlearning and print out pages to color for the binders. Betta fish make excellent low maintenance pets for the preschool room.  Flower fairy F – Forget me not  You may want to explain to your students that in Victorian days the Forget Me Not was a popular image for embroidery patterns, especially those given to friends.

montessorimaterials has a few different fish card sets to print. Montimats has free fruit and flower cards here.

Lit:

Swimmy

The Fisherman and His Wife

Goldfish and Chrysanthemums  sweet story about a girl who creates a tiny koi pond to cure her Chinese grandmother’s homesickness

Surrounded by Sea by Gail Gibbons

One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish

More, Fewer, Less

Fish for Letters game: label paper fish with a letter and paper clip. Fish with a magnet on a string and have the child name the letters he catches. You could ‘fish’ for fridge magnet letters too.

for beginning readers this little fish rebus style story is good fun

Art:  Chinese fish mobile craft or the paper bag fish or the paper plate fish or this very nice Japanese koi fish project   DLTK has even more fish crafts to go with the Fishers of Men verse from Scripture and from the Jonah story.  Footprint craft ideas found here.

Drama – Face painting

Fingerplay (starts with F and is another preschool mainstay:

Fish Story

One, two, three, four, five
(Hold up fingers while counting)
Once I caught a fish alive.
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten
(hold up additional fingers)
Then I let it go again.
Why did I let it go?
Because it bit my finger so.
Which finger did it bite?
The little finger on the right.
(hold up pinky on the right hand)

Ta Da!  I figured out how to set up a Funschool Flickr badge dealy this morning. If you go to the right sidebar you can find images from Friday Funschool here at the ranch. The images are several weeks behind the plans at this point due to camera woes but they will be coming as time goes by. Meantime you can check out B and C images. We have had a really good time. : )

Elizabeth and Katherine have had a really good time with their little people as well. They are sharing their letter adventures on Serendipity. These stories mesh very well with Funschool plans and in fact they are using some of those too. It is a beautiful thing when moms put their heads together!

Another resource I am very excited about are the TLC Lessons books. (Not to be confused with the TLC Life lessons on tv lol!)  I ran across references to Kaye Espinosa’s series of project books on several early learning sites and was intrigued. When I unearthed some samples I was sold. These books fit my criteria for large-Montessori-family friendly materials. The instructions are written to the student and the results are satisfying.

After the teacher/mom creates the pack of materials, the student can self select a project and complete it fairly independently (assuming he is a reader. Otherwise he may need a bigger sibling to help with direction reading). They help children learn to follow directions, perfect their fine motor skills, and practice spatial awareness. Students learn to make circles, ovals and triangles by cutting off the corners or halves of square papers. They then assemble the pieces according to the instructions. While Mrs. Espinosa is a kindergarten teacher it seems as though these projects would work well through the early elementary grades. In fact a slightly older child could probably do a bang up job very independently.

I love both the concept and the end results. These projects are very much in line with the type found in Natural Structure, a guide for implementing Montessori at home. The NS authors recommend making trays with all the materials needed to independently complete a lesson. TLC will help you do that. They tell you exactly how many papers and in what size and colors to include in your ziplock bag. I would think this would make a good project for a mom’s night.

My children are independently moving furniture at the moment so that is the end of this review. <g> Gotta go help with the room swapping. Check these out and let me know if your family implements any of these project books and if you have a favorite. Once we run through these samples I am going to have to lay down some cash. : )