Wimmelbooks for Early Literacy

If you’re looking for an engaging, beautifully-illustrated book to read with your preschooler, look no further than Wimmelbooks. The vivid and detailed pictures of this German series hold stories just waiting to be discovered by little ones. I received My Big Wimmelbook: Firetrucks from Timberdoodle in exchange for this review. We love it so much,…

Continue Reading

Montessori 3rd Great Lesson: Coming of Humans

“Human consciousness comes into the world as a flaming ball of imagination.” –Dr Maria Montessori After the “Coming of Life” great lesson follows the “Coming of Humans” story. We have been studying the different eons and eras, and we’ve studied fundamental needs of humans by going camping and visiting a wool farm; here’s some of…

Continue Reading

Looking for Great Toddler Books?

I don’t know if you read Highlights magazine as a kid, but I definitely did. The Hidden Picture puzzles were always my favorite activity inside (especially if I got stickers). I hadn’t thought about those magazines in such a long time, not until recently when Timberdoodle asked if Baby (ok now a toddler) Will and…

Continue Reading

Week in Review 19: The One With [Maria’s] Birthday

All Summer long we worked on reading. Lots of reading — I read tons about systematically teaching reading. The kids practiced phonics. We’ve been making such good progress. I believe when we started last school year Josie was stuck at the end of the red drawers, maybe beginning orange, and Mary was around green. Pic…

Continue Reading

Second Great Lesson, Timeline of Life and Long Black Strip

Last week we introduced Montessori’s Second Great Lesson: the Coming of Life. The Great Lessons are a series of stories designed to spark the fire of curiosity surrounding science, history, communication, numbers, geography and more. These stories along with key lessons serve as a framework for further explorations throughout the year.  Materials With the 2nd…

Continue Reading

Montessori Homeschooling Week in Review: Vol 6

Each week I look back trying to remember what we did over the past 5-6 days, and I draw a blank. I can remember that my oldest had a biopsy done to see if her “ringworm” she’s had for several years is actually psoriasis. I recall getting new eyeglasses, and I know we had a…

Continue Reading

Montessori Homeschooling Week in Review: Vol 3

Week three of our new series brings us to Holy Week and the Paschal Triduum. We stayed busy as always with our usual Montessori workload. I’m currently reading Montessori Today: A Comprehensive Approach to Education from Birth to Adulthood by Paula Polk Lillard. This book is a great overview of the whole Montessori pedagogy, and I’ve…

Continue Reading

Homeschooling Week in Review: Vol 2

Happy weekend friends! Our week was full of doctor appointments, therapies and other shenanigans. Somehow we managed to almost complete our weekly to-do list. Sensorial:  I had great ambitions this week for completing our constructive triangle work and adding some tasting bottles to the shelf, but we just ran out of time for those this…

Continue Reading