Bird's eye view

So, I've been wanting my youngest to be able to do the bird's eye view or 45 layout of the Montessori golden bead materials for some time.  The Montessori golden bead material includes a golden bead representing one (a unit), a string of ten golden beads representing ten, a square (10 ^2) of one hundred connected beads, and a cube (10^3) of 1000 connected beads.

 The bead material is very expensive, so wooden squares and cubes can be used as well.

The wooden thousand cubes, although a lot less pricey than the beaded thousand cubes, can still be costly ( a value price, when shipping is factored in is about $30 for 9 cubes) and there are not many works for which you will actually need 45 of them.  I didn't feel it was practical to buy three more sets so that I can have 45.

So.....I did what any homeschooling mom would do.  I searched online and found a diy alternative at mummy's homeschool.  Paper cubes!  To print your own,  click here .   I just printed the remaining 27 paper cube pages.  I cut each individual square, laminated, then cut them out again.  Then I taped the pieces together into a cube.                                                   

   The 45 layout helps the child to visualize the quantities of the decimal system from 1 to 9000.  The layout requires that you have at least 45 of each golden unit beads, forty-five tens bead bars,  forty-five hundred squares, and forty-five thousand cubes.  I had all the materials except for the later of which I only had 18 wooden cubes and one golden bead cube.

Taping both sides adds more support to the cube.

one down, twenty-six to go!

Making the 27 cubes took about three days.  Of course this was not a none stop project, this was a do it when I think of it sort of thing.

Like I mentioned in a previous post, my middle child is always in the mix when it comes to Montessori works.  So, she kept a watchful eye on her younger brother as he set up this work and she made sure she was in the final picture!

So, what's a co-op anyway?

       When we decided we were definitely going to homeschool here in Nairobi, our next concern became how to plug into the homeschooling network here in Nairobi.  Searching on the Internet for information about homeschooling in Nairobi yielded little results in the way of finding a homeschooling community.  Mostly we found information about tutors who could come to your home to tutor/teach your children.

       There was one predominant name that I kept seeing online.  Mary Muriuki's name was in one article after another on issues dealing with homeschooling in Kenya.  I knew she would be the person to reach out to for information regarding a network of families who were homeschooling in Nairobi.  Try as I might, I could not find an email address, or Facebook page for her anywhere.  It wasn't until we arrived in Kenya that my husband got a hold of her number and called her.  From there things moved quickly.  My husband spoke with several families who were homeschooling that very day!

        We found out about a co-op group that was having their first meeting of the term on that Wednesday and another that met on other days during the week.  We chose the co-op meeting on Wednesday's because of it's location.  That Wednesday we went to the co-op.  The kids loved it, we loved it, and we have been there ever since.   The co-op itself does not have a Facebook page or website, but there is now a Facebook page for homeschooling families in Nairobi.

       So....what is a co-op you ask.  A homeschool co-op is a group of homeschooling families that in cooperation come together to provide social and educational activities for their kids.  In our case we meet weekly.  However a coop can meet twice per week, every two weeks, or even once per month.     During this term the older children had a drama class, for which they prepared and performed a play, a Kenyan history class, a gym class, and a bible study class (optional).  While the kindergartners and preschoolers have art, story time and gym.  The classes may change a bit for next term.

      There are many benefits of taking part in a co-op.  First the children get to meet with other children regularly and in this way they are able to develop friendships.  We parents also are able to socialize and develop friendships as well.  Secondly, resources are pooled, so the cost is relatively low when considering the cost that these classes and activities would cost per individual family.  Another benefit is having your child be taught by another adult other than yourself.  Although we tailor our teaching styles to our children's needs, a major benefit of homeschooling, sometimes they may find someone else who teaches perfectly to their learning style, no tailoring needed!

      Co op is currently finished for the term, but we will resume in January.  The children have really enjoyed the coop experience and are looking forward to starting again in the new year!

Scene from the Christmas play

Another Scene (the children painted the backdrop and made some of the props)

                                   
                                   

Gym class for the middle grades led by Ambassadors Sports

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Infinity Street

       I want to start this post by profusely thanking the teachers at Cardinal Montessori School (CMS) in Woodbridge, Virginia for the wonderful academic foundation they've given to my children.  A special shout out goes to my son's preschool teacher Mrs. Patoka.  I cannot thank her enough because she has made this new endeavour of mine super EASY!!!!  I cannot explain the gratitude I feel when I start a new topic and my five year old already has a solid grasp of what it is I'm presenting to him.

        He is already an enthusiastic reader.  He picks out books on his own to go and read.  He is usually able to sound out unfamiliar words with ease.  I can remember during one of our first parent teacher conferences being told that the students learn the letters as sounds not by their names.  So the letter B is learned as Bah, not B.  I was a bit confused, because of course that's not the way I learned the letters, but now, I totally get it.  Learning the letter sounds first has made reading come so naturally.  Of course we still do a lot of reading and phonics practice, but his foundation is solid.

       Montessori math is also wonderful.  I love all of the manipulatives.  However,  if I had to start from ground zero, I may have been a bit overwhelmed.   This is especially because I have the other two children to attend to.  I am so grateful that he can look at the brown beads and just know there are eight beads.   And he can see the  thousand cube and know there are a thousand.  I am thankful that he knows units are green, tens are blue, hundreds are red, etc.  This just scratches the surface of the ground he covered while there at CMS. This covered ground has made our choice of sticking with Montessori the best decision we could have made for him.  So again, a big thanks to CMS for this.

       Although I am not following a Montessori curriculum for my older two, I have kept a few things from the Montessori classroom that they do on some Fridays.  Also, my older two, especially my middle child, are always so eager to do the Montessori jobs that I've created or have for my son. They are also full of suggestions and have really helped me to understand some of the materials.

       Today, my son and I were on the rug working on a job.   My middle child comes over to suggest that I should present Infinity Street and the Simple family to my son.  The Simple family, I wondered.  I'd never heard of the Simple family, but it became obvious my daughter would tell me all about them.  She went on to tell a detailed story of the Simple family which consisted of a child called Unit, a mother called Ten and a Father called Hundred.  They were the sole family living in a yellow house on Infinity St.  Everyday they received mail from the mailman who knew them so well, he called them by their first names.  Infinity St. was so nice, that other families began to hear about it and wanted to move in.  So they began to build their own yellow houses and the Simple family got neighbors.

       The first neighbors to move in were the Thousand family.  They had a kid they called Thousand, a mom called Ten Thousand, and a dad called Hundred Thousand.  They decided to separate their house from the Simple family house with a mailbox (comma).  Next to move in were the Million family.  They also had a child.   They called their child Million, the mom was called Ten Million, and you guessed it, the dad was Hundred Million.  Again, they separated their house from the Thousand's with a mailbox.  My daughter went on with her story as the Billions, Trillions, then the Quadrillions, Quintillions, and Sextillions moved in.  She then explained that the street was so long that family after family moved in and it goes on forever.

       I was so impressed by this fun way of showing place value and number families, I immediately went online to search for a way to present this.    Sure enough I found numerous websites with their own versions of the story and even a YouTube video.  Here is what I decided to do.....

       First I gathered the necessary colored construction paper (yellow, green , blue, red, and black).  Felt or foam would work nicely as well, but this is all I had available.

      I drew out eight simple yellow house shapes, each slightly larger than the other.  Then I cut them out.  There is no reason why they couldn't all be of the same size.  But I liked the visual aspect of the number values getting larger and larger.

       I then measured out bars for each family member  (green, blue , and red) each family member and each set also getting gradually larger.  Again, these could be made to be the same size.

     Next, I made the mailbox commas and wrote the family names on them, starting with the Thousand family.  Since I didn't have foam or felt, I had to laminate everything for durability.  My son is five and a half, and from what I've read this should be presented to 6-7 yr. olds.  However, I think I will present it to him up to the Millions family and then gauge his understanding and interest and go from there.  More families will move in as his understanding and interest builds.

With a bit of help from his sister, he correctly read nine hundred sixty-six million, nine hundred eighty-six thousand, nine hundred seventy-five. 

He really enjoyed the story of Infinity Street and we will enjoy reading numbers to the Millions family for now.  Neighbors are waiting to move in when the time comes.