Copywork and Journal Writing

Copywork is not something that I have used until very recently.  I have not read a whole lot about the Charlotte Mason method (which, I think, is where this idea comes from).  I know that it's something that is encouraged in several classical models of homeschooling.  I had a visit with a homeschooling friend recently who expressed that she does not think a child should do "free writing" until they have had a strong background in copywork so they can learn and understand the mechanics and tools of written language before trying to apply them to expressing their own ideas creatively in writing.  I have to say I tend to disagree with this a bit.  I do feel it's important for children from an early age to begin to express their ideas in writing, even if those ideas are not perfectly executed in terms of spelling, usage, punctuation, capitalization and grammar.  Writing is a means of communication and I would hate to see children being discouraged from communicating their ideas in writing until they have mastered all the basics.  With that said, I'll share what I'm doing right now with my first grader who will be seven in about a month.

We started the year doing a minimal amount of writing because he was reluctant and skeptical about his own abilities.  Now that he has a better grasp of some basic phonics rules (we used Explode the Code 3 and just finished it) as well as some spelling rules (we use All About Spelling), he is in a better frame of mind to do some writing on his own.  So.......about a month ago I gave him a spiral notebook to use as his journal.  I have him write the date on a new page each day and require him to write at least two sentences about a topic of his choice.  I often suggest ideas if he's stumped, but the thoughts he writes are strictly his own.  If he needs help spelling words, I either help him sound it out, remind him of the rules he knows, or just write the word in a word box at the top of the page.  Here is a recent entry he wrote about a Lego Universe he is building in his spare time.

In the top left corner you can see the box where I wrote "Lego Universe" and "vehicle".  The next photo shows the sentences he wrote.  I think he's doing a great job!!   I can see I need to give a lesson on contractions soon, though!!  :-)

In addition to writing in a journal each day, we have just started  doing copywork each day.  My first grader is reading Frog and Toad books now, a chapter each day.  So.......I've been choosing one sentence from the chapter he reads for him to do as copywork.  He just finished doing his Handwriting Without Tears book, so copywork is replacing that and this is one of his main ways to practice his handwriting. After he writes the sentence (you'll notice that I draw a line for each work with a red colored pencil to help him with spacing), we talk about various aspects such as, "What words are nouns?" (and he draws the Montessori noun symbol over them), "Why are these words capitalized?"  or "Why is there a question mark?"  With a simple conversation like this we are able to target several skills in a very short amount of time.  Below is a photo of a recent copywork passage.

Grammar the Montessori Way

OK..........I LOVE the way grammar is taught in the Montessori method.  Again, once I had my A-ha!/Duh! moment, I didn't know why I hadn't decided from the get-go to teach grammar the Montessori way.  I tried Easy Grammar for a while with my oldest son, and First Language Lessons with my youngest for a while.  I cannot really find fault with either of those resources, and I'm sure they are a great fit for many a homeschooling family.  However, I am really excited to delve into the Montessori way with both my sons.  I could not do it without having these free online albums for reference. My Montessori 3-6 year old training online very lightly touched on grammar.  The online elementary-aged albums go into great depth and provide a wealth of activities for teaching grammar.

In addition to the online albums, I ordered a few materials.  I purchased THIS STENCIL from Alison's Montessori.  And I purchased this set of wooden grammar symbols from Caliber Montessori.  In future posts I'll be able to show you how we'll use those materials. 

The first lesson I gave the boys was to just explain to them that words are classified into various types which we call "parts of speech".  Each part of speech has its own special symbol, and we used the stencil to record those symbols in our grammar notebooks.  Future lessons will focus specifically on the various parts of speech.

Fourth grader's notebook page

First grader's notebook page

Learning about the Six Kingdoms of Life

One thing I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE about Montessori education is the "cosmic" approach which teaches children to see the big picture.  Since I've decided to incorporate more Montessori principles into our homeschool, I have looked extensively at the free online Montessori Biology albums to decide how to teach about scientific classification of living things.  After studying the recommended sequence of presenting these concepts, I purchased the Six Kingdom Chart from Montessori For Everyone (I have a feeling Lori at MFE is going to get LOTS of business from me in the near future.  Her materials are so beautifully done!)  I also purchased the Six Kingdom Nomenclature Cards.

I presented the chart to both of my boys (although my oldest son was somewhat familiar with it from his first and second grade years at a private Montessori school) and they each recorded the six kingdoms in their science notebooks.  My older son used some of the cards from the chart set to write a bit more information about each kingdom, but I just had my first grader list the six kingdoms.  After all, I'm pretty sure no public school first graders are learning about the six kingdoms of life!!  Interestingly, Lori has recently modified her charts to include a sixth kingdom.  Apparently for a long time (and in the online Montessori album), scientists had been using only five kingdoms.

I had done a Google search about "six kingdoms" to learn more and came across a fabulous online resource called BrainPOP.  We are currently doing a free trial of it, but I may end up subscribing.  I found a video on the BrainPOP website that explains about the six kingdoms.  It also has separate videos (and correlating quizzes and activities) for bacteria, protists, fungi, plants and animals.  Pretty awesome!

The day after I introduced the six kingdoms with the chart, I had the boys watch the BrainPOP Six Kingdoms video and also the Bacteria video.  Then they recorded some info in their science notebooks.  We also played a VERY cool game on BrainPOP which required us to create our own bacteria, choose a virtual "host" to infect, and allowed us to "spray" our bacteria on various places in the hosts home so we could ensure contamination.  It was hands-on learning at its best!

The Six Kingdom Nomenclature cards are shown below. (Two of them, anyway!)

 Six Kingdoms Chart..........

Fourth grader's notebook page of the Six Kingdoms.

First grader's notebook page of the Six Kingdoms.

Apparently fuzzy photo of first grader's notebook page about Bacteria (with some help from mom on the written info.)

Math with Golden Bead Material

One of my favorite Montessori math materials is the Golden Bead Material.  This manipulative is used for helping children understand place value concepts in a very concrete way.  I decided to bite the bullet and purchase some of the bead material since I know that I can use it for many concepts for years to come.  I checked around and found that the best prices to be had were from Caliber Montessori.  I ordered 27 unit beads (sold in sets of 9), 2 sets of 10-bars (sold in sets of 9), 2 sets of 100 squares (sold in sets of 9), one thousand cube with golden beads, and a set of wooden thousand cubes (sold in a set of 9).  The photos in this post show my youngest son doing 2-digit addition (without regrouping or trading) using the bead material.  In addition to purchasing the beads, I printed out some decimal cards.  I cannot find the source for the ones I have, but these small decimal number cards are available from Montessori Print Shop for 99 cents.  You can print the large decimal cards there for FREE.   It's a bit hard to see in the photo, but the cards are color-coded for place value, tens are blue and units are green.  I realize now I should have taken a photo of the whole layout, but I forgot.  I'll take one the next time we do this work.

For the work shown in the photos below, my son was solving the problem 42 + 26.  This problem was one that I purchased in a set from Montessori for Everyone.  First, he had to find the correct decimal cards to represent 42, then show the numeral with the beads.  You can see he's done that in the photo below and is getting the beads he needs for 26.

Now the beads and matching decimal cards are laid out to represent the problem.  At the far right in the photo you can see the equation card he's working from.  That's the one from Montessori for Everyone.

We used a ruler for the "equals" sign.  I showed him to put the units together first, count them, and find the large decimal card for the total (8 in this case), then he put the tens together, counted them, and found the correct decimal card (60 in this case).  When the cards are stacked, they show the correct answer, 68.

Finally, I had him write the equation on this paper that I downloaded and printed from Montessori Print Shop (for free!)

This work was fairly easy for him, so our next lesson will be on "dynamic" addition equations which will require regrouping.  We'll start with 2-digit, then move to 3 and 4-digit.  

The "A-ha!" moment.........(or was it the "Duh!" moment?)

I cannot really explain why I haven't blogged here for so long.  If I am completely honest, I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I haven't felt for several months that my homeschooling with the boys is quite how I wanted it to be.  Without making this post just about that topic, let me just say that for quite a while we've been getting our "basics" done every day, but we haven't delved much into the more "meaty" curricular areas such as history and science as much as I'd wanted to.  When I decided to homeschool my sons, the idea of learning with them was one of the things that really appealed to me.  I got off to a great start at the beginning of the year planning all kinds of enriching activities and projects, then after Dad passed away in October, pretty much all I could manage for a while was getting in the three Rs.  I'm not trying to use his death as an excuse, though, because I'm sure that could have happened anyway since in addition to homeschooling the boys I'm teaching 12 piano lessons and 2 Kindermusik classes each week to bring in additional money for our family.  Anyway........for quite a while it's been weighing heavily on me that I wanted to be giving the boys "more" in terms of content.........so over the past few weeks, I've been researching and planning and I now feel like things are coming back together again the way I'd envisioned.

In addition to not being completely happy with the breadth and depth of our content area study, for quite a while now I haven't been really thrilled with math for my youngest son.  I started the year doing Right Start for both my 4th grader and 1st grader.  I'm still happy with it for my oldest, but got to a point where I wasn't keen on it for my youngest anymore.  I ordered Math Mammoth which we tried for a few weeks.  It's very workbook oriented, which I didn't like.  He didn't seem to mind, but it wasn't what I wanted.  Then I ordered Singapore, but when I got it, I realized that what I'd ordered was too easy.  It was also mostly workbooks, so that was a negative for me as well.  I also looked into MEP which is actually very good (and free)........we used that for a while when I had the "a-ha!" moment that I refer to in the title of this post.

As many of you know, I am a trained Montessori teacher for 3-6 year olds.  I wrote a Montessori blog called My Montessori Journey for three years.  When I stopped writing that blog to start this one, I had a few comments and emails from my faithful Montessori readers asking me why I wasn't using a Montessori curriculum for homeschool.  I responded to their questions in THIS POST.  My "A-ha!" moment, resulting from my dissatisfaction with my first grader's math program, caused me to ask myself why I wasn't using Montessori math materials with him.  I have always believed the Montessori method to be excellent and the math materials/curriculum to be superior to anything else I've ever seen.  So............over the last week or so I've been digging into these great Montessori elementary teacher albums that you can access online and printing and laminating a TON of materials.  Over the course of the next few weeks, I'll be writing a lot about how I'm incorporating these ideas and materials into our homeschool day.  DUH!!!  Why didn't I do this sooner?  I am super excited to share with you all about it!

About Montessori

A few of you have asked why I haven't set up a Montessori curriculum for my sons this year as I started homeschooling them.  While I understand why you're curious, it surprised me a bit because I honestly hadn't thought about the fact that I wasn't using a Montessori curriculum for them.  After it was brought to my attention, I was forced to reflect on why I hadn't set up our homeschool environment in a "Montessori" way.  So I'll do my best to put my thoughts about that into writing here.  Please don't hesitate to email me or leave a comment if you'd like.  I love getting comments!

OK, first of all, my Montessori training is for 3-6 year olds and that is the curriculum I'm most comfortable with in regard to Montessori education.  I can assure you that if I'd started homeschooling back when they were in preschool or younger, our "schoolroom" would have had a definite Montessori vibe with open shelves and materials from which they could self-select.  That said, I don't have the training in Montessori Elementary education.  I have thought about getting it in the past, but it just hasn't been feasible from either a financial or time-commitment standpoint. 

Next, my oldest son (who is turning 10 soon) attended a private Montessori elementary for first and second grade.  It was a wonderful school and I feel he got a great introduction and exposure to the key elements of a Montessori elementary education.  If he were attending a Montessori school this fall, he'd be in the 9-12 year old class.......and that is definitely out of my realm of expertise when it comes to Montessori training.  I think Montessori is a wonderful model, even at the older age levels.  I just don't feel that I could replicate it in a homeschool setting.  As I researched homeschool curricula almost obsessively last winter, I wasn't able to come up with a resource for "doing" Montessori with upper elementary children in a home setting.  If any of you have any suggestions or references for something like this, I'd be thrilled to take a look!

From the little I know about Montessori education at the elementary level, I know that there is a great deal of emphasis placed on non-fiction reading and reading for research purposes.  While I believe these to be very valid and necessary goals for children, my oldest son excels in this area and would spend all his time reading non-fiction or for research if given the choice.   Reading and understanding fiction at a higher reading level is an area that I felt I needed to focus on with him this year.  So when I chose our main curriculum (A World of Adventure by Learning Adventures), I was looking for something that had literature at its core and which tied in the history and science with the literature components.  In many ways, I can see that the structure of AWOA actually closely matches what I can imagine would be emphasized in an upper-elementary Montessori setting:  lots of content reading from "real books", learning history in chronological order, and hands-on projects to reinforce concepts.

Finally, I think one of the basic tenets that characterizes Montessori education is to "follow the child".  This, more than any material or exercise, is what I believe to be the essential message of Maria Montessori.  Given that, I will definitely be implementing a "follow the child" philosophy in our homeschool setting as I try to build on my children's interests and strengths while simultaneously matching my support and encouragement to their areas of need or struggle.

I truly appreciate being asked this question.  It has been very thought-provoking and reflective for me to ponder.  And I hope I've adequately explained my reasoning for choosing the path I've chosen.  If any of you are using a Montessori approach with your older children, I would really love to hear about it!!  I love how blogging connects people of similar interests and allows us to learn from each other.