Scientific Classification Unit

 
We did a two day review of scientific classification.  Since science is so big in our house (my husband is a scientist) this comes up a lot but not in any organized fashion.  We did a little mini unit on it last year but it definitely needed repeating.  The prompt was the great free tiger lapbook we did from Homeschool Share for India week.  One of the activities was writing out the full classification for a tiger.

I downloaded the scientific classification materials from Montessori Print Shop.  We used the Six Kingdoms of Life Charts, Six Kingdoms of Life Classification Concepts, and the Six Kingdoms of Life Information Cards.

We also played the Strange Sightings game from Great Map Games.  Since geography is our larger theme this year, this was the game in the book about animals.  As we talked about where the animals were from, we talked about how they were classified too.  

Wildlife Fun for Kids did a GREAT post called Hop, Stick, and Jump into Animal Classification.  I adapted two of her activities to learning the kingdoms and general classification.  

I took some of the Kingdoms of Life cards and taped them to the trampoline.  This is not as pretty as hers, but I didn't trust myself to actually draw Protists or Eubacteria correctly.  

The boys bounced in the center and had to jump to whatever kingdom I said.  Then I made it harder for older Toad by asking him a fact about the life forms in each kingdom.  He had to jump to the right answer.

After we did that for awhile, we played classification hopscotch.

I put genus, species at the end as the double since those are the most common ones you see, which I explained.  We used little rocks to move up and down the court.

Younger Toad was so cute.  He'd jump along and not necessarily remember every word but when he got to the end he'd hop with both feet and yell "GENIUS, SPECIES" (that's spelled how he said it).

  These two activities were a big hit and very effective.  Eating dinner that night, younger Toad was telling Daddy about his day and was able to list the classification categories in order, and help his brother out when he was forgetting to list the Protists.  They're clearly great memory building devices that we can use to cover other subjects.

We read these two books on the subject:

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Fall Footy Sensory Bin

The in-laws were just in town.  We took them to Selby Gardens for a day and the Toads collected an interesting collection of nature cast offs from the ground.  I thought they'd make an interesting collection of objects for our footy bins.  We had seed pods, shells, feathers, and acorns in this one.

There are lots of Montessori blog posts with sensory bins that are meant to be used with your hands.  Rarely do they mention you can use the same bin with your feet for a totally different sensory input.  I used to have a yoga teacher who included a foot component in every class.  Those exercises really emphasized how much we take our feet for granted and how neglected they are.

Footy bins are the same as any other sensory bin but the idea is to retrieve items with your toes instead of your hands.  In the past we've done dinosaurs, cars, animals, and shapes.  This is our first seasonal or nature themed bin so it was a fun, new thing.  I've always used rice as our background material - I keep a bin labeled, "Foot Rice - DO NOT EAT!"  There are, of course, other materials you could use for variety.  I use a try with high sides to help keep it all together because this is a bit messier than hand bins.

Older Toad is really funny about his feet.  He has to touch everything he can with his feet.  It's largely unconscious but if we don't pick up the floor well he can get between point A to point B and step on every object.  If you were to point it out he'd deny it or agree he stepped on the last thing.  It's been a hard thing to break.  We have seen improvement, but the one that personally drives me crazy is his need to rub me with his feet when we sit on the couch together.  It really bugs me.

This weird quirk is probably related to Sensory Processing Disorder.  In the past we saw an Occupational Therapist for sensory issues and we've debated if we should add it to our mix again.  For now we're considering his quirks as that and letting him grow up.  Homeschooling helps as we can incorporate accommodations as needed .  We do try and work some exercises into our lives as part of his 'sensory diet'.  

These are activities the therapist suggested that we continue to do, things from the books below, and things from a sensory parenting class I took.  Currclick offered a sensory integration class with Christie Berry that I found very helpful.  The class was designed to help you customize sensory activities to your child's needs.

I came up with the footy bin because none of the resources mention feet at all.  All those posts about sensory bins got me thinking.  Remember this activity as something different next time you do a sensory bin.  It's fun for kids of all ages!
 

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Quiet Space

We've been having good results from our quiet space.  I put this package together after a rough week in April when it became clear we needed a fresh idea for all of us to blow off some steam.

Counting Coconuts blog has a great post about their family peace space here that I found inspiring.  There is also a very informational blog post about Montessori inspired peace education activities here at Living Montessori Now.

I designed the space with older toad in mind so I was really focusing on sensory activities that can be calming for him.  It's in no way a bad place to be sent.  It's an alternative where he can go and take some time to come up with some better choices.  He has both chosen to use the space of his own accord when he could tell he was escalating as well as taken advantage of the suggestion that it might be something he could benefit from before things got out of hand.  He's even done it with younger toad, mostly peacefully.  Daddy toad has benefited from it as well.

He has a rug and pillow to sit on.  For visual sensory activities he has Moody Cow Meditates by Kerry MacLean.  We've had the book for awhile before it was reassigned to the quiet space.  We tried several handmade Moody Cow jars (meditation tool that Moody Cow uses) but they all broke open after being dropped on our tile floors so for the quiet space I bought a commercial one.




For large motor sensory calming he has Mindful Movements by Thich Nhat Hanh.

For aural sensory calming he has a MP3 player with his music loaded on to it and I changed the file name on this to quiet place so he can find it.

For fine motor sensory calming I put together two activities.  One is a finger labryinth.  I did a google image search for a labryinth I liked and printed it out.  I enlarged the image I used to be able to fit a finger between the lines well.  I cut it out and glued it to a cardboard backing.  We sat down with some glue and a bag of mixed bean soup mix from the grocery store and glued the beans on.  I finished it with Modge Podge to hopefully make it last a bit longer.  Older toad did his all by himself in 2 sessions, younger toad tired quickly and only did some but we only needed one in the end and everyone participated.  You can use your finger to trace over or between the beans and both provide more sensory input than just following the path printed on paper.

Our other fine motor activity is a shell collage kit.  The larger shells were collected in Spain and the smaller ones in France.  Both are sort of leftovers from a project but still special and that was conveyed.  He thought they were neater than shells from our beach because of it.

For oral sensory calming I went to the dollar store and got a pack of little windmills.

I buy my lavender here because I lived on Whidbey Island for 10 years and if I'm going to pay to have it shipped anyway I might as well support the island economy.  Lavender is a calming scent and cloves are stimulating.  I explained that to toad and he gets to choose what he's in the mood for.

I just wish I had more time to use the quiet space!

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