Grammar

Montessori offers so many wonderful hands on tools for teaching grammar to children.  The subject of grammar can often be dry when presented through traditional worksheet means.  I have collected a number of free online resources and purchased materials to make grammar fun and engaging here at the Middle of Somewhere.

When we started our grammar education I started a wee bit backward from the Montessori method.  In a typical Montessori environment the farm is used first to introduce each part of speech.  Our farm was all set and ready to go but I was drawn to the wooden grammar symbols and sentence strips, so that is where we started.  I bought this set of symbols from Alison's Montessori and printed off sentence strips for free from Montessori Materials (look under the purple words grammar box materials.)  Montessori Materials also has some other great and free grammar and language materials, so take some time to look around  Montessori Primary Guide also has some great free lessons for introducing the parts of speech (look at the left side bar under total reading). We spent quite a bit of time working our way through the sentence strips and labeling them with our symbols.

Then, I introduced the grammar farm.  The farm we use is a Fisher Price set purchased as a gift for our oldest daughter 10 years ago.  Don't get sucked into believing that you must have a "Montessori" farm set for this, you don't, use what you have or what you can find.  We keep a basket of collected farm animals next to our farm and a sets of word cards for every part of speech.  The word cards would be easy to make yourself either on the computer or by hand but I purchased a set from Montessori Print Shop.  This has been a fun material to work with.  For our first grader the farm work has been an introduction to the parts of speech and reading practice.  For my older 2 children, ages 10 and 9, the farm has been hands on review and often times a creative outlet for silliness.  Also close to our farm set I keep a bucket with blank word cards and a pen for when the children need to write their own words rather than use the pre-printed materials.

So where will we go next with our parts of speech?  Well I think some worksheets will be in order and of course some books.  I am always drawn to picture books that can teach a concept and be engaging with its pictures and language at the same time.  We own several of the Ruth Heller grammar books, look for other titles by her as well.   I would also like to add some Words are Categorical grammar books to our collection. For the worksheets, I think a membership to Super Teacher Worksheets is necessary.  It would be nice to combine the books and worksheets to do a mini unit on each part of speech for review and deeper digging.

Happy Learning and today is Montessori Monday, go visit and see what other Montessori homeschoolers are enjoying.

Learning with Centers and File Folder Games

I have been a long time fan of File Folder Games and Take It To Your Seat Centers and over the years I have made and collected quite a number of books, folder sets and websites.  Yet, I found myself not being able to fit them into our schedule but this year I decided to dedicate one morning a week to these great learning tools.  I think Centers and Folders are great tools for learning both new material and reviewing old lessons.

The children know that Wednesday mornings are folder and center mornings.  Each child has their own box full of appropriate materials to work on.  The children are required to pick one folder or center from each of these subject areas: Language Arts, Math, Geography and Science.  They are to complete their selections and call me over to check them before they clean-up.  At this point, all the children have to do is complete the folders but in our winter term I am going to ask them to also record in their learning journals what they have worked on.  For Example, in this picture E is working on a Science Layers of the Earth Folder and I would ask her to make a  notebook page for her journal.

I also think having a folders and centers morning breaks up our week, so we don't get bored or run down in our daily lesson routine.  The folders and centers also meets my goal for providing as many hands on learning experiences as possible and cultivates independent learning.

Here are a couple Math examples of folders:

Martian Multiplication

Turkey Feather Addition with an added number line. (It has been so long but I think both this folder and the one above are from File Folder Fun, a site full of free folder games.)

And a couple of Geography Examples:

World Continents from Take it To your Seat Geography Centers.

Land Forms--also from Take It To You Seat Geography Centers.

Here are a few of the Take it to Your Seat Centers we use:

Take it to Your Seat Phonics Centers
Take it to Your Seat Science Centers
Take it to Your Seat Geography Centers
Take it to Your Seat Math Centers
Take it to Your Seat Writing Centers

The Take it to Your Seats come in many grade levels so I did not include them all so be sure to look for the level that is appropriate for you child.

We also use a variety of folder games from Lakeshore Learning:


Science File Folder Fun
Fractions, Decimals and Percents Elementary Folder Games
Puzzle Fun Math Cards

Again, a lot of these folder kits come in a variety of age and subject areas, so be sure to take some time and see if what you are looking for is available.

It is Monday so I am linking up with Montessori Monday.

Have a great week!

Grammar Shelves

Today I thought I would show you our grammar shelves.  The pictures are so revealing that I almost did not want to share them but this is our real life.  I was unhappy with the pictures for their cluttered appearance despite my work to organize the area.  I want our work areas to be inviting and appealing to the eye but sometimes I have to be practical and use what I have instead of running out to purchase things to make my vision come true or grabbing the paint can for a DIY makeover.  So even though the shelves are not visually where I want them to be, they function well for our use.  It has been quite some time since I took these photos but they remain in this condition and all I need to do is write up our work plans to go along with our materials and set-up.  I don't know about you but sometimes things can feel like larger hurdles, work plan writing for example, than they really are so hopefully during our break and more relaxed summer schedule I can write our fall work plans.

Our grammar shelves are part of a large bookcase of five shelves, we have 3 sets of these, purchased years ago from a local discount furniture store.  All three bookcases house our Montessori grammar and math supplies as well as storage for extras on the top shelf.  This is our grammar shelf area.

The full view of the shelf unit.  Grammar takes up five shelves with the very top shelf storing our extra grammar and language materials.  This bookcase is to the left of our language shelves that I shared in a previous post.

This is the bottom shelf where we keep our version of the grammar farm.  The farm is used by all the children whether for lessons or play.  The farm is a fisher price set from when our eldest was a toddler.  In the basket I can add or change out farm related objects and in the back I have brochure holders with our grammar words sorted into library pockets by parts of speech.  I found the library pockets at the Dollar Tree a few years ago and have not come across them since. 

This shelf houses our grammar nomenclature cards and sentence strips as well as various packs of grammar words for sorting different parts of speech.  I would have loved a drawer storage unit here but the old floppy and diskette holders are what I had and they work just fine. On the shelf above you can see our box of grammar symbols and various other grammar storybooks, games I have found on the internet and a binder with grammar "funsheets" as we call them.

This section is our word study work.  In the drawers we keeping materials for rhyming, antonyms, synonyms, prefix work, suffix work and compound words.  To the left in the business card and brochure holders are contraction work and on the top of the drawer are large cards with the months of the year on them for putting in order.  To the left of the drawers is a small bin with days of the weeks cards.  I really like this shelf because of the drawers and how it holds work for all of our children's ages from kindergarten to fifth grade.

This is the last shelf in our grammar area.  On the right you can see our Word Family Wheel from Lakeshore (I don't think they sell this anymore, I didn't see it on their site).  This is a fun game with a lot of different activities to work on word families for early reading and spelling for the older children.  In the background you can see The Perfect Punctuation Pop-up Book  we used last fall to learn all of the different types of punctuation.  In front of that in the brochure holder are punctuation command cards.  E ran through this set twice this school year in her journal and it was  fun to see her progress.  In the basket is more work that I have found on the internet like days of the week mats, months of the year mats or mats from Take it To Your Seat Phonics Center Book.  The basket also contains file folder and other games we have printed relating to our work.  Then you can see another binder with Word Study Funsheets and our dictionary.

I hope this little tour can give you some ideas how to organize and better utilize your learning materials and you can see it doesn't have to be perfect.  You just take what you have and use it to function well for your family.  So now, onto the work plans for this area, right?  Well actually the sun is shinning beautifully here and little people are scattered about waiting to help me with some yard clean-up.  Blessings to each of you!

I'm linking up with Montessori Monday and the Preschool Corner.