We found a great trick for improving vocab. DD8 is an avid reader and reads texts above her age - which means she sometimes stumbles across words she doesn't know the meaning of.
Cue her new 'word book' - in an effort to appear less like a vocab lesson and more like something fun, I purchased a small pink (her favourite) polka dot notebook and made a big show of wrapping it up and giving to her at the weekend (outside of school time). It contained a little note telling her that when she came across a word she didn't know the meaning of she was to write it down and we could discuss it.
Over the weekend she found four new words and dutifully popped a word per page in her little book, bought them to me and discussed them (as instructed)
Today she found her little pink book in one of her workboxes along with DH's very large dictionary (I'm still surprised it fitted in the drawer). Although she knew vaguely what the new words meant she had to look each up in the dictionary and write the correct meaning in her little book.
I know this went down well as:
- She carries it everywhere with her.
- I now have two more children clamouring for their own 'word books', one of whom doesn't even read yet : )
I mentioned that we've discovered the Sir Cumference books - I wanted to show you what we had done with the first 2.
The first story introduces the characters - Sir Cumference, Lady Di Ameter and their son Radius - and the story shows how they relate to the circle. The girls understood this with ease and loved the way the story flowed. In the second book a tragedy unfolds and Radius has to work out Pi to rescue his father - this seemed abit harder to grasp so we set about creating notebook pages to reinforce the concept.
First they drew 3 circles with the compasses and labelled the diameter, radius and circumference.
Next they moved onto Pi. We started with a big circle and they had to cut a length of ribbon for the diameter.
they measured 3 lengths (using the diameter as a guide) and stuck them around the circumference of the circle
and finally write up an explanation.
I just love DD8's comments - 'notice Greek!' and 'diameter goes from the top to bottom (not the rude bottom)' - really made me chuckle.
DD6
DD8
Just had to share this. Yesterday DD4 vanished to the school room for about 40 mins and returned with this
obviously inspired by our 'Animals of the world' yesterday shes drawn an African landscape complete with giraffes.
I was offered the chance to review a product from Montessori Print Shop which is one of my favourite sites. I chose 'Animals of the Continents'
This pack includes colour control maps for each continent, blank maps for each continent, colour photos of 42 animals and matching animal colouring pictures.
Initially when I received the item I was surprised that the continents were not in the Montessori colours but this turned out to be a great advantage as DD6 & DD8 decided to colour the continents before they started the activity
They then decided that the blank continent pages needed to be arranged as a world map,
that done they started with the main aim of the activity - to correctly determine where each animal lived,
some were easier than others and they occasionally referred to the control sheets to help.
DD2 and DD4 decided it was too much fun to be left to the older girls and happily joined in the animal sorting. They also loved the animal colouring pages and DD4 spent a long time picking the right colours for each animal.
Usually in games/activities like this the animals are fairly obvious and well known but Montessori Print Shop have chosen a number of unusual animals (like the ocelot for South America) which created yet another use for the activity - DD8 decided that she had to research each new animal, which kept her busy for a couple of hours : )
So what did I love about this product:
- It is truly versatile and can be used in multiple ways (correct identification of continents, correct placement of continents, matching the animals to the correct home, blank maps for use in other geography activities - inc country/political outlines, colouring pages, cut and paste activity etc)
- The colour photos, as always, are amazing.
- They have chosen unusual animals to spark the child's curiosity.
Disclaimer
This product was provided free to me for the purpose of review. I was not paid for this review and all opionions are my own.
I've just finished converting the Valentine Count game into an Easter version. I've made two this time round, one in blue and one in pink.
Both are available on my download page.
