Transferring Rice.

Alhumdullilah, today I decided that it was time for Professor #3 to start doing some dedicated Montessori work of his own with me, in separate lessons from his brothers. He has shown interest in doing work in general, by hanging out with his brothers as they do their lessons, Masha' Allah, and he often wanders out of the playroom looking for something to do, well before I would like him to. So, I pulled out one of my favorite Montessori books, Teach Me To Do It Myself, by Maja Pitamic, and looked up an easy first work for him. The first one she had listed, and the one we chose, was transferring rice.

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Getting Started

This activity is as simple as the picture looks. Fill one bowl half full with rice. Have the child transfer the rice from one bowl to the other using a spoon. I showed him how to complete the activity until he said he was ready to try it.

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Working hard

He got discouraged, and a little distracted when he spilled the rice. I reminded him that his focus was to transfer the rice from the pink bowl, to the white bowl, and not to worry about the spilled rice, that's what the tray is there for. He felt better about things, and continued on, Alhumdullilah.

Almost done!

Masha' Allah, he worked hard, and you could see the concentration on his face. He worked on this, with a few distractions, for about 15 min. which was great. When he had a little left he asked me if he could dump it to the white bowl. I let him go ahead, Masha' Allah, he had resisted doing it earlier, and listened when I said to use the spoon. Alhumdullilah, it was a great first lesson.

Sightwords with the Moveable Alphabet

To continue building on our bingo sight words, today we used the moveable alphabet to literally build them.

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 Getting Started

Just as we built our word family words, I jumbled up the letters, of the words we know, from Board 1 of our Bingo pre k sight words game.

We first reviewed the letters of the word, and their sound. Then we sounded out, and built the word. I tried to let them do as much as they could themselves, and Masha' Allah they did pretty well. Here is a look at some of their work.

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Professor #2:

He did well sounding out the words, then arranging the letters as he sounded them out.  

 

Professor #1:

With the larger words, he wanted me to call out the letters, as he verified on his worksheet, then built them on the tray. 

Professor #3:

He was very adamant about having a turn too. I started going over the worksheet with him. He read the letters of the first word 'in' then said 'See, I did it!'

That work progressed to this:

Then finally, this:

Masha' Allah, he was happy with his work, and insisted I 'take a picture!'

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Baby Professor

Baby Professor kept busy with two different activities this session. 

He stared off with this puzzle, which he is getting quite good at Masha' Allah:

When he was done with that, and getting antsy, I gave him the tray of sandpaper letters Professor #3 discarded yesterday:

Masha' Allah, his face lit up with a big smile. He was so flattered that he was getting to use the big kid stuff! He did well with it Masha' Allah, until after awhile, Professor #3 decided that no, it wasn't good for him anymore, he needed a new activity. Baby Professor felt otherwise, but mercifully for him, it was story time. 

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We'll continue building our sight words with the moveable alphabet till we get through all four bingo boards insha' Allah. 

Sight Words Grab Bag Bingo

We have been bobbing around in many subject areas this preschool year in preparation for Kindergarten in the Fall insha' Allah. We do have a loose schedule of things to focus on, but the main direction has been guided by the Professors interest. After spending a few weeks on writing in sand, and writing their names, we are back to reading. They want to read and be read and to, and are constantly at the fridge with their alphabet magnets creating words, then sounding them out and reading them, Masha' Allah.  This last week we have been learning some new Pre-K Sight Words. I am staying away from rote memorization, until we have learned the majority of the words we can sound out and spell, insha' Allah. A printable on education.com popped up in my Twitter feed recently, and we got to work on our own version of it, all last week.

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Because Baby Professor and Professor #3 could not participate in this lesson, I set them up with some busy work. 

Flip Board Alphabet

Sorting and Filing Sandpaper letters. 

These were left out from our sand writing, and since Professor #3 can't get enough sorting and filing in with these Masha' Allah, I thought it would be fun for him to sort through them and find the matching upper and lower case letters, then file, file, file.  

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Sight Words Grab Bag Bingo

The game consists of 4 Bingo boards, matching pages of sight words for each board, and a few sheets of 'free space' pages.  You play the game you would any other Bingo game, however the Professors are not ready for this step yet, so we put a small twist on things. 

I went back to my Grab Bag Numbers game roots, and decided to play this a similar way. I went through each board and picked out the words I knew the twins could sound out and spell. I separated the words in to corresponding sandwich bags and labeled them 1, 2, 3, 4. 

 I had the Professors sit with me one at a time, and placed Board 1 in front of them to start. They opened the sandwich bag and placed the words inside the brown bag, and shook them up. I didn't tell them to close their eyes, but they did anyways, Masha' Allah. They grabbed a word out, and first thing was to try to find the match on the board, once they did that, they had to sound out, then read the word. 

The first day we played, I used each word in a sentence afterwards. Masha' Allah, they LOVED this, and quickly started making up their own sentences, and by the second day we played, they did the sentences automatically. 

Insha' Allah, this week we are going to take the game a step farther, and build our bingo sight words with our moveable alphabet, and I'll do a small, separate post on that later. We are also going to start checking out decoder, and easy/beginning reader books from the Library, to see the words in print. Fun! 

FIELD TRIP....

That was the headline of two of the first emails I set eyes upon this morning. The teacher in me got all excited, and jumped up and down (mentally) and quickly tried to engage my dh in discussions about how we could work it all out. The trip we most really wanted to attend included studying the life cycle of strawberries, viewing Strawberry blossoms, a hayride, and a bee polination station. At the end, you get to plant your own Strawberries and take them home. Super fun!

The morning went on, we did errands, ate breakfast, and the realization that we just weren't going to be able to attend either sunk in.

Plan B.

I am insha' Allah going to do some digging, and try to find some printables, and a Montessori Unit study on the subject. I am going to see if we can find some Strawberry seeds to plant here at the house (I did it myself years ago before kids, and got great results Masha' Allah). We will also go Strawberry picking at the same place we picked Apples in the Fall when the season enters, insha' Allah.

Alhumdullilah, at first, I came up with this plan to soothe my own disapointment, but realized that my guys are much more interested in climbing on jungle gyms, racing big wheels and making sandcastles than sitting through a 2 hour long program. Insha' Allah this will work out just fine....

Bird Feeder: Settling In.

Alhumdullilah, it's been one week since we set up our replacement bird feeder, and added some new mix in with our 'no fail' first batch. It's busted alot of squirrels, some coming in gangs of four at time. Think they're going to outsmart it. So far, so good, Alhumdullilah.  Throughout the week we've been enjoying a daily abundance of feathered friends, from sunrise to dusk. The Professors have been teaching us parents how to tell the difference between the, Black-capped chickadee and the Northern Nuthatch, birds none of us even know existed two weeks ago.  We've also finally seen some Cardinals, and Professor #3 witnessed a tender moment of one Cardinal feeding another from its beak. Masha' Allah.

Happy bird watching!

Bulletin Board Project Complete.

Remember all those Mommy Projects I wanted to get done in a single weekend? Alhumdullilah, just checked off number 3 of 4 yesterday afternoon. The project was to make Professor #3's bulletin board in his room. I ran out of materials while making the twins boards, and just replenished last week. He was much more interested in watching Calliou, than helping me make it but, Masha' Allah he is happy with how it turned out.

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Professor #3's Bulletin Board

As with the others, I went back and personalized it with his name. I also hung up all the art work he recently did. Masha' Allah, he was really impressed with that. I had promised him I would hang it all up on his board once we made it, but that was so long ago. Poor guy. I made this one lower to the ground according to his height. 

 Since Baby Professor is not doing any art work or scribbles just yet, instead of a board, I gave him some decals above his crib

He's ok with them now, but at first he was so angry he could not reach them!

I put the remaining two hot air balloon decals on the Professors bedroom doors. Masha' Allah they loved this!

I have three book decals left, and plan to put them over the reading corner in our classroom, Insha Allah. 

Project number 3, complete! : )

Homemade Ice Cream.

Masha' Allah, about two years ago we purchased an ice cream maker from a friend who sells on ebay.They had slashed the price considerably, so although I wasn't sure what to expect, I thought, at least the kids would enjoy the process. The maker is a style that you freeze the inside canister, and turn a crank at the top to mix the ice cream, then freeze again until done. We've mainly made plain vanilla ice cream, that is the easiest. Two of the Professors are lactose intolerant, and Lactaid milk freezes well in the no cook ice creams. We use regular whipping cream.

This year, our first batch was vanilla, with fudge swirls (Hershey's syrup).

 This early spring weather, and our success with the banana sorbet (which by the way you don't need an ice cream maker for), has me pulling out my bucket list of ice cream recipe's we haven't gotten to over the years. Among them, blueberry, and french vanilla, insha' Allah. I don't have any recent pictures of us making ice cream, so I will post some below of the first batch of vanilla we made, and the recipe we followed.

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Ice Cream Pictures

Ingredients

Mixing up the batter

All ready to go in the ice cream maker

Starting to look like ice cream : )

Yum!

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Recipe for Vanilla Ice Cream

I will type the modified recipe we use, then post the original. The recipe comes from the 1976 Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book.

Our version:

2 eggs
1 1/4 cup sugar
3.5 cups whole milk
1.5 cups heavy whipping cream
1 1/4 tablespoons vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt

Beat eggs till light. Add sugar gradually, beating till thick. Add remaining ingredients; mix well. Freeze in ice cream maker, in freezer. Makes 1/2 gallon. Store in freezer safe container.

Original Recipe

4 eggs
2 1/2 cups sugar
7 cups milk
3 cups whipping cream
2 1/2 tablespoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt

Follow above instructions. Freeze in 5 quart ice cream freezer. Makes 1 gallon.

As you probably figured out, I halved the recipe, and even that fills it to the tippy top. I also use whole milk and heavy whipping cream. It makes a difference in the taste.  We hope you enjoy giving this a try at home insha' Allah : )

Enjoy!