Love

Well here we are, it's Montessori Monday and I still can't get the pictures off my phone so I thought I would share with you one of my focus areas for 2013.  I know it is late for all of the New Years Resolution type things but I need time to think and not react to a tradition of goal setting.  So I have thought and I will be thinking and praying some more but for now I want to share about love.  Love as a focus area? Dosen't loving my family come easily, they're little ones, don't you love them?  Of course I  love them.  However, do I love them the way the Lord says to love them and do they love one another the way God wants.  I'll be honest, I have to say NO I don't love them and they don't love one another according to God's word.

I know what I want it to look like and this is it:

Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  it always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  Love never fails.
------- 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8

When I measure up love next to these words, I don't love even though I want to in my heart.  So in 2013 I am focusing on this verse for myself and my family.  I know where I want to go but I don't know how to get there, I guess God will have to guide me on that one.  So for now I wrote 1 Corinthians 13 out on our kitchen chalkboard (I'd show it to you but the whole phone thing ya know), I'm praying it daily and we are all memorizing it.

I have a Valentine's Day Pinboard where I am pinning my favorite ideas to put love in action as well as just fun V-Day activities if you want to check it out and here are a few of my favorites that I hope to do in the coming weeks.

Put notes on everyone's doors to tell them why I love them (there was no link when I checked back on pinterest). I want this to be a habit more than just a holiday to do.

I love this idea by the dating divas

This blog, Little Wonders,  has several posts about how to tell your children you love them on the cheap:

So for now would you please specificly pray for me, my family and yourself to love the way the Lord describes in 1 Corinthians 13.

I'm linking up with Living Montessori Now.

Fractions

Well, this was our first week back to official lessons and it has been tough.  I don't know why, after 5 years of homeschooling, the transition back to an education focused routine always takes me my surprise in regards to mine and the children's attitudes.  For our lessons we are using Beautiful Feet"s Learning Character Through Literature, the Montessori Grammar Farm, Arctic and Antarctica calendar cards and revisiting geometry.  The children also have their own copywork, math practice books and phonics/spelling lessons.  E has additional history reading and a states notebook she is working on.  For our read aloud we read Stone Fox over the break and started Jack London's Call of the Wild.

I wanted to share with you a look at our fraction work because I know there were some moms working with their children in this area as well.  We move slow in our school because mastery is important to me so a lot of our fraction work was review with a bit of new games and materials mixed in.

 We used our fraction circles to build fractions, add fractions and subtract fractions. The fraction labels are from here and our fraction circles are from the Montessori Outlet.

Then we started recording everything in our math journals, the children really liked this part because of the tracing and coloring.  I think there were even several fraction pictures that were drawn into some other creation.  Does anyone else seem to have that creativity problem during journal time?

We played a lot of fraction games like Roll a Fraction from the book Shoe Box Math.

.We also played another easy game from Lakeshore Learning called Fraction of the Pizza Game and practiced building fractions with Lakeshore's Building Fractions Activity Center.

We also used these free 3 part cards to understand numerator and denominator.

When we return to fractions in February we will be reviewing and working on equivalent fractions and multiplying fractions.


We will be using the Lakeshore game Fraction Contraption and other games from the book 25 Super Cool Math Board Games.  I will also be printing out a lot of free materials from Sparkle Box.  If you haven't checked them out, you may want to, not only for fractions but for other subjects as well.  But I'm warning you, you may get lost there for awhile.

If you are looking for more fraction ideas check out our Pin board for elementary math.

Have a great weekend!

I'm linking to Montessori Monday.