Experiencing Our First Transition in Studies

I'm like a kid in a candy store. After our first trimester of homeschooling, things have gone wildly well. Without a doubt the Montessori and Charlotte Mason road has been a successful and alluring road. The kids have been chomping at the bit to begin our butterfly study, as they watch me pull out the library books, games, posters, stickers, cards, etc. We're still awaiting more boxes, and posters for some of our studies.

The last two days have been spent reorganizing and refreshing the room for the new term. Scrounging for lost game pieces under furniture, packing away our bird study items, and renewing our table trays with new Montessori oriented tasks. We're still not done. It never seems to end as the closet is still unwalkable after a few spills (courtesy of Gracie), and the giant heap on the rocker (courtesy me).

But we are almost there!

Butterfly Of The Day

For this term I purchased a Fandex containing a large selection of Butterflies. Each card in the Fandex has a picture of a butterfly with a fair amount of interesting facts and information. For this exercise, I severed the plastic pin that holds the Fandex together so the cards could be removed individually.

The children are always keen on anything where they have a choice in the matter, so about twice a week we have a "Butterfly of Day", where Grace and Jack get to go through the butterflies and pick out which two butterflies they want to learn more about. We then sit down for 10 minutes and go through the fascinating facts about each butterfly picking out a couple of tidbits of info to hold on to (ie. this caterpillar is stinky, or this butterfly drinks from mud puddles). Then we add velcro to the back of the card and the kids get to post it on our double closet door in the playroom. For some reason, this is a really fun part of the activity.

After the two new butterflies, the kids enjoy getting quizzes on identifying the butterflies that are already on the board by the names I shout out.

This is definitely a two thumbs up activity that both Grace and Jack sit still for and remember!