We actually do get some work done...

We really do still homeschool the girls.  I swear.  We actually manage to get work done.  I know, crazy, right.  Yesterday, Bijou and I did some math with Cuisenaire rods and diagrammed some sentenced with the grammar symbols.

I am pretty sure that I have talked about these symbols in a past post, but I'm too lazy to look for it.  Each symbol represents a word function (noun, verb, etc.).  The big black triangles are nouns, the medium dark blue triangles are adjectives and the small blue ones are articles.  Together they form a kind of family.

Her sentence was - A green dog on a yellow tree.  See the pattern of the symbols (article, adjective, noun)

This is the first time that she got to use the green crescent.  The crescent is the symbol for prepositions.  So far she has learned nouns, adjectives, articles, verbs and prepositions.

I started to try and retouch this picture and digitally clean up all of the junk in the background, but, hey, there's learning happening here and sometimes it's messy in our house.  Anywho...we did some place value work with the rods and some triple digit addition.

This is my place value chart that I made on the fly.  We just worked up to the hundreds place.  We will start thousands next week.  Once she has mastered adding thousands without regrouping, I will introduce regrouping.

Bringing my work home

I spend a good portion of my day working with toddlers and guiding them through the fine art of practical life skills.  This includes dressing themselves, using the bathroom, washing their hands, cleaning up after themselves and various other tasks.  All of these things have a process that the kids follow.  I try to incorporate some of these same processes at home (sometimes).  This is especially true with my younger two girls.  All of the kids have chores and the older girls have been doing chores for years, so the novelty of work has worn off.  But the younger girls, especially Zion, are still intrigued by doing big work.  This week, one of Zion chores is to clean the dining room table.  This chore includes clearing things off the table and putting them away, sweeping up crumbs and scrubbing the table.  Zion really LOVES scrubbing the table and has mastered all of the steps.  The steps to scrubbing a table (because I'm sure you are wondering) are as follows - 1.) gather materials (a small sponge, a small scrub brush, a clean cloth, a small bar of soap, a bowl of warm water) 2.) wet the sponge in the bowl of water, squeeze out the excess and dampen a 1' x 1' area of the table. 3.) dip the scrub brush into the bowl of water and apply the soap. 4.) scrub the dampened area of the table in small circles making bubbles. 5.) use the dampened sponge to wipe up ALL of the bubbles. 6.) use the cloth to dry the table. 7.) repeat until the entire table is clean.  She is very proud of herself when she's done.  Now if only I could get the older girls to be as thorough.

Update on the Lady Clan

I know, I know.  I shouldn't even consider myself a blog owner these days.  Life has certainly increased its pace here in the last couple of years.  Work takes up time, schooling takes up time, the kids are all in extracurricular activities (which take TONS of time), so there's very little time left for me to do anything except eat and sleep.  And I really don't do either of those very well anymore.  Anywho, life has been good, despite the level of business, so I thought I'd share a little update.

Three of my four girls are performing in the Nutcracker this year.  Jena will be Clara!  The show opened last night and was a success.  The entire weekend is old out.  I've finally gotten comfortable with doing the girls' makeup (thanks to a few years of crazy face painting for Halloween).  I still can't believe how much older they look now.  I mean, Ashni still has that childlike face, but Jena?  When did she start looking like an adult?  Fortunately, she is still a big goofball, so maturity is a long way off I think.

This is my classroom.  Generally it is full of busy little toddlers.  There's nothing in the room that is taller than 15 inches, lol.  Well, maybe a couple of things.

We've become part of a great little homeschool co-op.  Jena finally has girl friends her own age.  Not that she has ever complained about having boy friends, or friends that are younger, but I know that she is enjoying it.  We meet weekly for rotating lessons (nature study, geography, art, science, PE).  We also have field trips and social get togethers.  We went on a trip to a National Park here in Mississippi and hiked.  Zion  is showing off her mopey stance as we finish up the trail.

Ashni is still fencing and we are all very proud of her.  She just returned from Houston, TX competing in a youth circuit.  She won a bronze medal!  So far, she has medaled at every competition she has entered.  She loves it and we love seeing how proud she is of herself.  Her coaches envision great things for her fencing future.

Adn, although it doesn't seem like it, we still manage to get some school work done.  I printed this giant map ages ago (and pieced it together on the wall) for the girls to map the countries that they research for geography.  It is also been helpful with the younger girls learning the continents and oceans.  Bijou is labeling the seven continents while Zion names them.

I've also been painting quite a bit.  I've had some portrait work and currently have a show hanging!  So things are going well.

Bijou learns about nouns and verbs

Today, Bijou and I worked on the function of words.  Today's words were nouns and verbs.  I wrote various actions onto slips of paper and she got to act them out with her sisters.  I also wrote various nouns on slips of paper for her to bring to me (she thoroughly enjoyed nouns like kitchen and sister).  Then we used our grammar symbols to mark the nouns and verbs in various phrases typed on slips of paper.

The little ladies doing some work

Just thought I'd share some pictures of the little girls doing some school work this morning.  Zion is really, REALLY good at coloring and loves coloring this same page of shapes almost everyday.  I'm really impressed with her ability to color neatly within the lines.

Bijou wanted to do some math this morning after her reading, so we pulled out the addition strip board and she worked on adding numbers to nine.

More homemade Montessori

So, on occasion the little girls come spend the day with me at work.  They love visiting the school and getting to use the materials.  I try to watch and see what things they enjoy and figure out if I can recreate them at home for little or no money.  Last weekend I made a decanomial.  It's made from craft foam (cheap, $5, and easy to cut).  Ashni (who HATES math) said, as soon as a demonstrated it for her, "Oh, it like multiplication."  I think the universe must have opened up and rained down joy on me!!!  It's like this method is what she has needed (particularly for math) for the last couple of years. 

Tonight I made some insets for Zion and Bijou.  They both love the metal insets at the school, so I decided to make a set from mat board to have here at home.  I traced the set at work to use as templates and the knobs are just wooden beads that are hot glued on.  Total cost of this project $0.

Bijou loves the object boxes at work.  She likes being able to read the words and match them to their object.  I could not imagine having additional tiny objects in the house, so I printed some pictures of objects and labels for her match. 

Homemade Montessori

So, in my last post before my blogging hiatus, I mentioned that I was going to start working again.  Well, I've been working at a small local Montessori school.  It's a great job and I love it.  I miss being here with the girls for their schooling, but I love Montessori and am really happy to have had the opportunity to take this job.  (I am also happy to have a regular paycheck again.  Yay, income!).  Over the summer, before school officially started here, we had the opportunity to go observe a Montessori school in Memphis.  I was already pretty familiar with the method for preschool (we wanted to send our older girls to Montessori school when we still lived in St. Croix, but we could afford it, so we incorporated a lot of the ideas and materials into our homeschool then and with Bijou and Zion now), but hadn't had the opportunity to see an elementary aged class.  I have to say that I fell in LOVE!!  I wished we lived in Memphis just so we could send our older girls to school there.  BUT, since we don't live in Memphis, I decided to incorporate some of the ideas and materials into our soon-to-be-fourth-and-fifth-graders school day.  The director of the school where I work was gracious enough to give us some of her old materials when her new ones came in.  I was immediately struck by how enthusiastic Ashni was to do pages of subtraction problems using the subtraction strip board (if you follow us, then you'll know that Ashni HATES math).  I really think that Ashni could excel in a program like this (and I think it would take some of the pressure off of my husband who, despite our homeschooling for the last 5 years, is very new to actually having to school the children).

So I guess a new addition to this little blog will be some of the Montessori type materials that I make for the girls to use (because the materials are terribly expensive, and we just can't afford it).  Today, i will leave you with a picture of Bijou making a list of words that she can spell.  She has the attention span of a flea right now, so after about 5 minutes, she was over making words.

Please excuse my husband's giant shoes that I didn't notice until just now...

Sorting with Bijou

Tuesday is supposed to be our day off from school so we can spend some quality time with Daddy, but Daddy is a night owl and still asleep. So we got some work done anyway. While the older girls were finishing up their definitions for their spelling/vocabulary flashcards, Bijou and I did some sorting. Both of her sorting activities temporarily made me forget that it is only 30 degrees outside. The first was sorting sea glass that we painstaking collected the last few weeks of living in the Virgin Islands.


I loved watching her hold each piece up to the sun so that she could see their individual colors.


The other activity was sorting buttons. I really just enjoy seeing objects sorted by color. Roy G. Biv was really my first love and it's been hard to shake him (don't tell my husband...)