Halloween

Sakura and Rei worked so hard making these beautiful Halloween puppets. Well done girls xx

Izumi paints

All 4 one and one for all!

For a while the world was at peace while the 4 Kabei kids played together. X

Sorting Beans

This was a fun activity that all the children enjoyed.  I love the pictures of cai holding the tweezers. x

Izumi 18 mth. Halloween

These are Pumpkin seeds with drawn on ghosty faces (thanks to chasing cheerios for the idea ). Izumi has loved spooning them from dish to dish and I will put on a video tmr. To interest the other children I gave them the challenge of finding some winking ghosts and other different facial expressions. The 6 and 8 year old loved it. So 1 activity to interest 3 children. Whoo hoo

Izumi age 1 to 18mth

These are all activities we have been using for the last few months. Izzy is about one and half now. Some are instant hits, some never and some she takes her time getting to know. I do not change all the shelves, I just keep an eye on how she moves among the shelves and change activities if she has used a lot and moved on.
I am trying to build up her eye hand co ordination, pincer grip and wrist flexibility also to engage her in interesting and meaningful activities to encourage concentration and order.

Sorting marbles out in metal, wood, plastic and clay pots; Touch and Hearing senses.

Pouring with freshly picked acorns from the park.

Wooden beads in a plastic ice cube tray..very sensorial.

Threading with chunky beads.

Again making the most of our park visits, sorting chestnuts.

Pairing with plastic animls.

Sorting lids and placing each into the next largest.

Shape sorting

Izumi's shelves

I am trying to give her a bit of everything.

Izumi working hard...

Rei...New School

Rei has just started her first official school...Year 2

Rei spent a year with me in Treehouse Montessori in Japan and worked well, but unfortunately the Erthquake came a few weeks before she was supposed to start Japanese school ...

Rei was very shy starting school but only took a few weeks to settle...she is loving everything from pack lunches to spelling tests....

They are learning songs at the moment and Rei has a great ear for music so she is blooming... "Bassez down"  a traditional carribean song is a clear favourite at the moment. 

Sakura..New School

Sakura is now in year 4 and is settling well.  I am very proud of her because the move from japan was huge for her, losing her best friend and everything important to her. 

She has made a lot of new friends but not a best friend ..Yet...She does like to have that 1 special friend.  She spend quite a few days in tears as being the new kid is not something exciting for Sakura, but she did so well and has now settled okay.

They are reading the wonderful book "The miraculous journey of Edward Tulane" by Kate DiCamillo and she is loving it,  I bought her a copy for her to keep in school so she can keep up at her own pace . 

Also they are working with a poem book called "Hot like fire" by Valerie Bloom...such a great book

At home Sakura is building up her spelling and time tables....
She enjoys working with the Montessori multiplication and Division boards we have...

Cai....New School

Cai is now in year 6.....He is so far behind the rest of the students but he is so smart and so interested in life I have no worries.  He has just started his first English book by choice.....Jason and the Golden Fleece....He is gettting so much support in school.

He is working on the Second World War and the school just went into London to watch The War Horse written by Michael Morpurgo which they are also reading in school.  Also I took Cai and his friend to watch the play  Friend or Foe also written by the same Author.

They are also working on The Highway Man by Alfred Noyes...very exciting for me to watch Cai reading this amazing book and the illustrations by Charles Keeping are beautiful.  This is a very powerful book that is set in a world that Cai knows nothing about but he is enjoying it so much, even writing a love poem to Bess.

Izumi.... 1 1/2 year old... Mini Knobbed Cylinders

New Beginnings 2011..........

Hi Blog,  Okay its been a while.....Wow what a year 2011 was...we sadly got caught up in the Earthquake in Japan this Year, an absolutly life changing experience for me.   We are back in the UK and have spent the last 6 months starting over......

The Earthquake was on a Friday and Rei and Izumi were at home with me and Cai and Sakura were on their way home from school alone (In Japan after the age of 6 they go and return from school alone or with other children).......We were all safe and spent Izumi's first Birthday at home in a very wobbly house with a small cup cake and 1 candle....By the Tuesday my nerves were shot with all the large aftershocks so we went to the South of Japan for a week.  We spent a few days in out friends hotel in Osaka and the were graciously looked after in a Temple in Shiga...Many thanks to all.  
Being away from the aftershocks gave me chance to clear my head and we made the decision to go to the UK the next week, so back to Tokyo where within a week we managed to empty our house but unfortunately could not bring most of our possessions due to storage and money...nevermind we were all alive...So April saw us back in the UK.

We have managed to find a flat in London and the children are back in the Amazing School they attended 4 years ago....

I attended and passed my Apparatus Course this summer with MCI London and met the most brilliant people (Teachers and Students)

So as of today 17 October 2011

Cai       year 6
Sakura year 4
Rei      year 2
Izumi  Mamas Montessori
Me   I am preparing for my written exam in December and starting Teacher Practice hopefully in January .......................

So I hope to be able to blog a little more......

1 Month gone so fast

I just realized I have not posted for a while, the kids have been sick and of course they do this seperately.  So we are all still working hard with the Pink and Blue series.　We are just about at the end of the Pink series so I am going to introduce the Green series after Christmas.

We are doing some Christmas activities so I will post these in the next few days.

Izzy discovers her world!

  These are a few videos of Izumi who has started to crawl this week.  The first where she is concentrating on a small wooden ring and the second video she is climbing on a chair.  She has discovered the world is hers for the taking and is determined to explore everywhere and everything within her reach. 

This may be my number 4 but the pressure is still on when it comes to babies and small objects. AGGHH

Rei and Missing Middle

Here Rei is working on putting the correct middle letter onto the word and picture cards.  The noise you can hear at the beginning is an aeroplane overhead.

I love that when Rei has finished her work she quietly just packs away and places it back on the shelf.

Cai's school show

Today we went to watch Cai's school show, I know this has nothing to do with his English learning but I hope you enjoy. He is in the back row on the right side and second in.  You can see that he really enjoyed himself.  He speaks at 3.20.

Weaving

Rei really enjoyed this activity yesterday. 

We used thick Blue paper folded in half, we cut lines to about 3cm of the edge of the paper.  Rei opened the Blue card flat and began weaving her colored paper in and out.

Blue series - Cai

Cai is using the top part of the shelves, he can use the lower pink series shelves also if he wants but he tends to stick with the top Blue series shelves.  We do not have much space so I am using 2 little set's of draws to keep Cai's Blue series in.  They are very beautiful as well as handy.

The brown pot on the top contains 4 and 5 letter words and is used for reading and also with the movable alphabet to spell the words.  The 3 draws contain beginning, middle and ending cards.

The top yellow basket contains Blue series spelling cards and the white basket contains frequently used words written on hands and the children can call out the words as you hold up each hand (I will demonstrate later).  The 2 lower trays contain 2 letter missing beginning and endings.

The top 2 draws contain word and picture match, the third draw contains pictures and 2 letter sounds like pl, cr,fr and Cai will match the pictures to the beginning sounds.  The last draw contains pictures that end with double L, Cai spells them out.

Pink series = Sakura and Rei

So these are the shelves that contain the Pink series, Sakura is working 3 times a week with these shelves, she gets to choose the order in which she does them but she completes all the activities.  We have a work sheet with a list of all the activities on the shelf and when an activity is competed we put a stamp to show it has been competed. 

There are sentence cards and spelling cards all using phonic 3 letter words.  There is a basket of 3 letter words that is used with the movable alphabet.

This top shelf has a basket containing  phonic 3 letter pictures cards which the girls will spell out using the movable alphabet.  On the tray are spelling cards and the dish contains the letter cards for them to spell out the pictures on the cards.  The lower shelf baskets contain missing middles and missing endings.

The top shelf contains Rhyming cards and a Domino set.  The lower shelf contains missing beginning cards.

The top draw of the box contains colors and their written names, the second draw contains numbers to ten and their written names and the lower draw of the box contains the months of the year.

The new shelves

Okay so the new system seems to be working, I am only using Montessori's method.  Sakura and Rei are using the Pink series and Cai is working with the Blue series.  Here are some photos of the shelves.......

I wish I had more space but our room is so small I can only use this space.  Luckily Montessori's style is so organised with everything having it's own place I think it is working.

Bizzy Izzy

I was very happy to find this activity for Izzy, It is a small wooden ball that she puts into the hole and it comes straight back out through the holes in the side.....well she is supposed to put the ball into the hole, but here is what actually happened............

Okay...a ball and a box...

 UUGGGG don't want eat this...

 OOHHH this looks good....

 BORING MUM......

 Okay, the ball is cool...thanks Mum