Introducing The Dragon Man

A while ago I picked up a colouring book from Flying Tiger (I love that shop!) anyway, back to the book, it has characters drawn to colouring one side and lines to write a description on the other.

Ebi-Kun is loving this and has been coming up with some great characters! There are some blank pages at the back so you can make your own characters too. we have been talking about all the different people in the book and think it would be fun to write a story using a couple of the characters as the main part of the story. 

It'll be an interesting story considering the people he has already come up with!

Using Songs For Poetry Inspiration

Ebi-kun and I decided to dissect some song lyrics, one of his favourite songs is Beautiful Day by The Levellers (who he got to see live back in the summer).

The song isn't really about lovely sunshine and skipping through meadows with the wind in your hair... or whatever. It's actually very political so it turned out to be a very interesting lesson.

We started by going through the lyrics a few times and then picking out a few key sections. We talked about what each bit meant, was it literal or did it have a hidden meaning? Why did they use the 5th of November as the date in the song? Was it significant or did it just sound good?

It was interesting to listen to Ebi-kuns ideas and point of view about it all. 

I had to finish up to get dinner started but Ebi-kun felt inspired to write a poem, not connected to the song at all, just how he felt at the time...

Make Your Own Montessori 3 Part Cards - UPDATE

Update!

I know I have mentioned this before but I just wanted to give you a quick update. When I launched this a lot of people had problems logging into the course - unfortunately this was down to the course software and I couldn't do anything about it, which made me as mad as anything. Aghhhh.

Anyway, I've finally had time to set it up a bit differently so it's easier to sign up for! Which means you now just need to pop your name and email addy in the box and you will be whizzed off to start the course! Full disclosure, you will get my totally awesome weekly playbook too - I know, more free stuff, I must be nuts! Nuts but I love you ♡

You don't need any fancy software, just an internet connection and an idea of which set of cards you want to make. Simple tip there - what is your child interested in right now? Use that as your cue, easy!

In the mini course you will learn:

• The foundations - what you need to do before you get started
• How to set up the template so you save yourself time next time you want to make a set
• How to legally source high quality images

And yes, it is all free! 

Feel free to share the post with anyone you think might be interested and I have added a button in the sidebar so it's easy to find in the future.

Montessori Introduction To Language - free webinar

Deb and I are hosting a free webinar next week, we will be talking about the introduction of language in a Montessori setting.

• We will go over the sensitive periods for language
• Scope and sequence
• What you can do to help your child before they start reading and writing to make it easier for them
• An overview of the different materials
• And what you can do at home without having to buy all the specialized equipment
• Plus an introduction to Montessori Crash Course

If you are interested in helping your kids learn to read and write this will be useful, even if you have no clue about Montessori or if Montessori isn't your 'thing'

I know a lot of parents struggle when it comes to helping their child to read and write, especially if you don't come from a teaching background.

The live call is 

July 20th 6pm PST

July 21st 10am JST

As long as we don't have any techie hiccups it will be recorded and a replay available for a few days, you DO need to be registered to attend live or get the replay. Sign up HERE

Please feel free to pass on the link or share with your friends!

Breaking Out The Grammar boxes

The Montessori approach has a pretty neat way of teaching grammar using manipulative symbols. They get introduced in the Grammar Farm (which is still one of my favourite Montessori lessons) - I show you how to introduce the grammar farm HERE and the printables are HERE. It is a while since we have done any grammar work so we started off really just doing a review of the parts of speech.

First matching the symbol and the part of speech...

black triangle - noun

small light blue triangle - article

dark blue triangle - adjective

purple triangle - pronoun

green crescent - preposition

red circle - verb

orange circle - adverb

pink rectangle - conjunction

gold keyhole - interjection

Once he had got the hang of that, I introduced sentences and he had to match the symbols with the words in the sentence. It's amazing how quickly he picked it up again.

The next step will be for him to write the sentences and draw the symbols and I am hoping he will also make a grammar book. I'll share the printables to go with this soon (like, when I finished making them!)

Ebi-kun did ask me what the point of learning grammar is - I have no idea! Do you?

Introducing Morning Papers

We are embarking on something new over spring break. I really want Ebi-kun to write more in English as he doesn't get as much practice as he does in Japanese. So I asked him if he'd like to try doing "morning papers". 

For those who don't know, morning papers is a practice often used by writers or creatives to get the rubbish out of your head and the creative juices flowing. You set a timer for 30 minutes and just write. The topic isn't important, it is more about the process.

I don't know if this is something he will stick at or just something he will try out for a while but so far he is enjoying it and I'm happy that he is getting writing practice!

I don't correct his work but I do take note of any common mistakes and stick mini post it notes on them so he can figure out what is wrong and how to correct it. We will watch and see where this takes us...

Bananas Over His New Game

One of our UK friends George, recommended the game Bananagrams to Ebi-kun, his mom explained it was a bit like scrabble but you have your own game going on. Well, scrabble doesn't work well in this house because of the mixed levels, I always win, hahaha I don't mind but the others do!

It works much better than scrabble, we have had no meltdowns or tantrums so that is a win if you ask me. Basically it's a bag of tiles, each player takes a set number of tiles, turns them face up and tries to make them into a crossword or scrabble type figuration.

If you get stuck with a letter you can put it back but you have to take 3 more tiles and if you finish all your tiles you pull and new one from the pile and all the other players have to do the same.

The other great thing is about Bananagrams is that you can switch letters or completely change your layout. You keep playing until there are no tiles left. There are other variations of the game too. I don't like letting kids win all the time, I don't think it teaches them good sportsmanship but on the other hand I think sometimes we need to level the playing field, it's much easier to do that with this cam than it is with scrabble.

And of course, it's using words so a great educational game to boot. So a big thank you to George for the recommendation and to Di for getting it for Ebi-kun at Christmas.

On A New Kick…

Ebi-kun has got a new 'thing' with his writing. He started off with Mozart a couple of weeks ago and since then he has done Da Vinci, Sea Animals, Hybrid Cars and the latest being Andy Warhol. 

He starts off by doing a brain storm about the subject matter, using books or the Internet to find out the information he needs and makes notes as he goes along…

Then he uses the information to write a 'story' about the subject. This is working really well at the moment, as he gets to choose what to write about, he is using his research and reading skills and then writing skills. After he has finished I get to check he work, I don't correct anything, instead I will tell him I can find 3 spelling mistakes and 1 grammar error or whatever, and challenge hint o find them. Sometimes he does other times he doesn't. This helps me understand what is just a silly mistake and what he is really struggling with. Capital letters at the start of a sentence is one that he trips up on all the time, so I get hint o check and correct those before I even look at it.

He has a lined notebook with 22 lines per page and he generally fills a page with each subject, I hope as he continues he will start to write more but for now, I am happy for him to write as much as he needs to.

As long as he is enjoying doing it, that is the most important thing for me and I'm sure it will be fun looking back at his stories in a few years time!

Top Tip: If your child gets through paper like there's no tomorrow - buy them notebooks and sketch pads. Seriously, the boy draws and writes all the time and we would end up with realms and realms of bits of paper. Moving him onto notepads and sketch books has made a huge difference plus now I don't worry about throwing out that all important scrap of paper!

SLAM, CRASH, BAM!

You know I am about making learning fun, well we had a load of fun with this crafty language lesson! We started off with a sheet with the word onomatopoeia on it, Ebi-kun had to get out the dictionary to find out the meaning and then he brainstormed more words that were onomatopoeic.

Then we hopped onto google and checked out the artwork of Roy Liechtenstein and talked about his use of colour and how that played with the word, why he used specific colours and the use of bold colour. And of course we couldn't resist a bit of the old Batman and Robin, Youtube provided us with some amusing fight scenes to watch. Ebi-kun declared that Batman was a bit rubbish, that cracked me up! 

Then we set to making out own words…

First, draw you word big and bold on coloured paper, use a thick black marker for the outline and think about how the work feels, drawing a font that matches the words. So the word pop might use bubble writing or slash would be very sharp!

Then cut out the word, including the bits inside the letters…

Now stick the word onto a piece of white card…

With the marker draw on some cracks or whatever matches the word that you are using…

Cut it out and the repeat the process with another colour, red in this case…

Ebi-kun did this one by himself…

Then the extra fun bit…take some action photos! we used a bit of card and masking tape to make a handle on the back of the word so he could hold it as I took the pictures…

Electrifying!!!

Quick reminder! The registration for Clear The Clutter closes soon, if chaos reins in your home and you want to take back control, then come and join us! Click HERE to register.

***No children were injured in the making of this blog post!

If you enjoyed this post - then grab the MOC playbook and get fabulous tips, tricks and fun ideas delivered to your inbox weekly!