Montessori Monday–Knobless Cylinders

Last week, I introduced Dora to the knobless cylinders. Though she has expressed absolutely no interest in working with the knobbed cylinders, she loved working with the knobless cylinders. They are the perfect tool for teaching about variations in height and width, as well as the accompanying descriptive labels, such as “wide”, “thin”, “tall”, “short”, “large”, “small”, etc. We also did a lot of what Montessorians call “extensions”. The use of the word “extension” in regards to the Montessori Method seems to refer simply to using materials for anything other than their original intended purpose (please someone correct me if I am wrong, I could not find a definition anywhere). At our house, we call this “playing with blocks” and it is something that we excel at. We combined the cylinders in various fashions, created patterns with them, and made designs with them. I even had fun creating “math problems” for myself while Dora was doing her own thing, but refusing to let me go anywhere else. Here are some photos of the work we did:

Here are my “math problems”. I decided to create various numbers of stacks of the blue cylinders while having as few blocks left over as possible. After finally deciding to assign each block a value (the shortest block equaling 1, the next shortest block 2, and so on), it was much easier to do. I found that the total number represented by all ten blocks is 55. Therefore, there would be one block left when I created 2, 3, or 4 stacks, but none leftover if I created 5 stacks, thereby using knobless cylinders to illustrate the concept of factorization. Now that I have amazed and stunned you with my incredible math prowess, here are the photos of the towers that I built to support my hypothesis.

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Preschool at Home–Sense of Sight

Though the week started off a bit rough, it finished on a really good note in regards to homeschooling. Dora and I looked at the sense of sight this week and did some really fun projects. The biggest hit, hands down, was the light box. I had read about several bloggers using light boxes with younger kids, but had wondered if Dora would be too old to warrant the cost. Then a few other projects came up where a light box would be really beneficial for us to have, so I took the plunge and bought the Porta-Trace 10" x 12" Stainless Steel Lightbox with Two 8 watt, 5000°K. Lamps. Once it arrived, I realized that we didn’t have a lot of the fun stuff that I have seen other bloggers use with light boxes, because I am slowly, but surely, trying to purge our house of plastic. So first I brought over our marbles, which looked really cool and were just fun to roll around on the lightbox.

We did have some plastic color paddles left over from last year’s study of color, which worked really well with the light box. The colors came out really true with the light box, so when the paddles were held together, they blended perfectly. This really helped to cement Dora’s knowledge of mixing primary colors.

I also got out some acrylic gems that I have for collage work, as well as some wooden buttons. Dora felt that those needed to be studied with a magnifying glass.

Dora then asked for a pitcher and some glasses and ended up turning the experience into a light-filled pouring exercise!

Finally, we used the Haba Kaleidoscope Blocks. I just love the way Haba blocks are so consistently made. We have a variety of their sets, plus some of their marble runs and they all mix and match perfectly. After we played with the Haba blocks on the light table, we took a red, yellow, and green block and stacked them on the floor like a stop light. I then proceeded to shine a flashlight through the various colors while Dora drove her bus around and sometimes obeyed the “traffic signal”, while other times preferring to repeatedly “break the law” so her bus would be “put in jail” (which the bus would then proceed to crash out of – which I guess is what I deserve for building a bus-jail out of wooden blocks, what was I thinking?).

We were supposed to go to the eye doctor for our “fieldtrip”, but the exam had to be rescheduled, though we did go to two eye glass stores looking for glasses for Primo, where Dora begged me to buy her some glasses (little realizing that her wish may soon come true and she’ll have her first lesson in being careful about what you wish for). For our new literature selections this week, we read three books. Our first selection was Elmer by David McKee, which is all about being yourself. At first, I was little worried that it was going to be too preachy as several books with that theme are, but all of a sudden, a surprising and silly event occurred that had both Dora and I laughing. The book finished on a light-hearted note, reminding us all to be ourselves, without hitting us over the head with the message. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this was our favorite read-aloud for this “school” year, thus far.

 We also read Sight (Five Senses) from the senses series that we have been reading. Once again, the book conveyed the topic simply and enjoyably. Finally we read Spotted Yellow Frogs: Fold-out Fun with Patterns, Colors, 3-D Shapes, Animals for math, which is one of the weirdest books that I have ever read and that I can’t really recommend. I’ve decided that this whole “Living Math” approach to math is just not for us. Honestly, I’d rather use workbooks than read unenjoyable books in an effort to teach math. Many of the books that are recommended to teach math using a “Living Math” approach are either really hard to find (and sometimes very expensive as a result) or just not enjoyable. The author will decide to teach a math concept and write a book around the concept rather than have a story, from which a math concept evolves. In my mind, this difference is what distinguishes a book from being just a “book”, as opposed to literature. So I am just going to start sticking with using the Montessori approach to teaching math and if I find a book that looks good and happens to teach a math concept, great, but I’m not going to exert myself trying to find “Living Math” books anymore.

How about you? Have any of you used "Living Books” to teach math? If so, did it work well for you and if it did, do you have a good list of recommended books?

Disclosure: Several item links in this post are affiliate links. I will make a small amount if you click on them and make a purchase. All opinions expressed, however, are 100% my own.

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Getting Hacked

I’ve been a bit quiet this week as I have been very busy trying to prevent all of our accounts from being hacked. I mentioned last week that my husband’s e-mail was hacked. Well, the hacker learned some information through that e-mail account that enabled him to greatly complicate our lives. Fortunately, we’ve managed to stay one step ahead of him and protect our financial information (at least we think so, this may come back to bite us in the butt in a couple of months if/when the hacker sells our information). Our hacker has even taken to trying to extort confidential information about my husband’s company and threatening our family. I’m not sure if our hacker is just kind of lame or what, but he bragged a lot, publicly. This allowed me to figure out who he was. I really know a lot about him and his family, more than I should know about anyone that I am not directly related to. At first, it was so easy to track him down, I thought that surely I was wrong, but time and time again, we have had his identity verified.

Another interesting thing that I’ve learned is that no one seems to give a rat’s ass about the fact that I have tracked down a crook, which is probably why our hacker doesn’t feel the need to better conceal his identity (that, or he’s really stupid). We have not been this hacker’s first victims and we will not be his last. He also steals/sells credit card numbers, does/deals drugs, and so forth. I guess he is just too small time, but multiple reports to the police and FBI have been ignored (realizing that I have already done all the footwork and handed him to them on a silver platter). Calls and e-mails to the large companies involved in the hacking have resulted in nothing but frustration. Essentially the companies don’t seem to care, unless you know how the hacker hacked your account (meaning that you do their work for them). I really have found the lack of accountability of certain corporations to be incredible and the lack of any police presence in cyberspace is just scary. The whole incident has left me feeling incredibly vulnerable and both my husband and I have contemplated removing ourselves from cyberspace rather than risk dealing with this type of event ever again.

If my experience hasn’t convinced you that cyber crime is becoming more of a problem every day, take a look at these scary statistics from Wikipedia:

A survey of college students in 2010, supported by UK's Association of Chief Police Officers, indicated a high level of interest in beginning hacking: "23% of 'uni' students have hacked into IT systems [...] 32% thought hacking was 'cool' [...] 28% considered it to be easy."

I thought I would share a few things that I have learned from our experience.

1. Understand that you are pretty much alone if your are attacked by a hacker or other cyber criminal. The cops won’t come help you anytime soon and software company tech support employees are infamous for their inability to help you (heck, face it, you’re lucky if they speak your native language in a comprehensible fashion). For all intents and purposes, calling tech support is generally a waste of your time. Sometimes tech support employees will even make matters worse. If you have to call to get your account closed, check up on the account. Don’t assume that because an tech support employee assured you that the account was closed, it was.
2. Read up on cyber crime and keep abreast of the latest trends in regards to cyber security. Maybe even attend hacker conventions and join their forums (under assumed names with e-mail accounts created solely for the forums).
3. Only get your e-mail accounts from companies that use a 2-step verification processes. Gmail and Facebook are the only ones that I know of that use this process at this point in time. I realize that Facebook is not really an e-mail account, but it is a similar means to communicate. (This option can found on Gmail by going to account settings/”accounts and import”/”change password recovery options” and on Facebook under account settings/security.)
4. Make sure that you use the 2-step verification process! Yes, it’s a pain. It makes it difficult if you want to read e-mail or login into something on another computer or your phone, but that is the point. A hacker cannot hack these types of accounts, because they cannot be used on any computer, but your own without a specially generated password. A hacker cannot lock you out of your account, because he cannot change your e-mail contact information without a code from a text message sent to your phone or other e-mail account. (Realize that within two years of me writing this post, a 2-step verification process will probably be old hat for hackers, you will always have to keep one step a head of them).
5. When using Facebook or Gmail online, view them using https only. (This can be found on Gmail under account settings/general and on Facebook under account settings/security.)
6. If you or your kids engage in online gaming, have a special e-mail account just for gaming. Post as little personal information as possible on these accounts.
7. Do not use credit cards or Paypal to pay for online gaming accounts. Buy pre-paid cards from local retailers and pay for your membership with those instead. Yes, it’s a pain, but if someone hacks your gaming account, they can run up all sorts of charges if your Paypal or credit card information is stored in your account.
8. Be sure that your or your kid’s gamer tag is not part of your e-mail address (i.e. gamer tag is joesmith and e-mail is joesmith@hotmail.com)
9. Make your passwords difficult to hack. Not only should you use capitals, numerals, and special characters, but try to make your passwords as long as possible. Longer passwords are harder to crack, because of the sheer number of permutations that exist compared to a shorter password. Never use your name as part of your password!
10. Do not use your name for login names. This way, if someone hacks your e-mail account, he still has to work hard just to get your login information, much less your password.

Both my husband and I have opted to maintain our cyber presence, but we have learned a lot through this incident. We have gotten lax as we have gotten older and not kept up with technology like we used to. Hopefully this post will spare someone else from the nightmare that we have been going through this week.

Stay vigilant and let’s take the internet back from criminals!

Preschool at Home–The Sense of Hearing

This week has been insane for us! Mr. Mo had to go to Whistler, Canada for a meeting for work. I know, I know, it is hard to feel sorry for someone who has to go to a ski resort for a meeting. This was really bad though, as a HUGE storm rolled into the area the very day he had to leave. Fortunately, he was able to get a ride with a co-worker that is very skilled in winter driving (he is even skilled at dodging all the bad winter drivers that reside in Seattle – majorly important here). Meanwhile, however, I was home alone with all five kids and a HUGE storm rolling. Did I mention that it was HUGE? We’re talking snopocalypse 2012 here! At first it was all pretty and nice and we played in the snow, made snowmen, snow slides, snow dogs, snow angels, etc. We even tormented Gohan and Primo by throwing snowballs at their windows, since they were poopyheads and wouldn’t come out and play in the snow. Then, the snow became not so fun. It turned to ice, not sure exactly how. Everything got covered in ice, then it snowed again, then things kind of melted, then things froze again. So we had ice on top of snow on top of ice on top of snow (got that?). In Seattle, that means “snowbound”. You know how it goes, I had no desire to go anywhere, but the minute I realized that we were snowbound, the cabin fever set in and the LONGEST day of my ENTIRE life started. Then Secunda and Tertia started arguing like they were preschoolers or something. Then the power went out. Ugh! Then Mr. Mo’s co-worker somehow managed to get Mr. Mo home from Canada. Then the power came back on. Yay! Then we learned that someone had totally hacked a bunch of Mr. Mo’s internet accounts. Boo!

We were not entirely without homeschooling during the power outage and snopocalypse. We played tons of board games, read a lot of books, and I pulled out some of the Steve Spangler science items that I keep on hand just for emergencies such as this. We made giant jelly marbles, which we soaked in water that we had colored purple with some of the color fizzers. Secunda even went so far as to experiment with poking with the marbles with toothpicks and freezing them, which Dora found fascinating.

And because we didn’t have enough snow to keep us occupied, we also made Insta-snow.

As I mentioned last week, Dora and I started studying the five senses last week. The sense of smell didn’t go over so well last week, as I mentioned in my post about smelling bottles. This week, however, the book I ordered for the smell unit arrived and thankfully that went over very well. It was a scratch-n-sniff book, which I honestly had forgot even existed. It was called Little Bunny Follows His Nose, and was originally published in 1971. According to some reviewers, they’ve removed some of the best scents, but when I read this book to Dora, you would have thought I had just shown her the secret to eternal youth or something. She thought the book was the coolest thing since sliced bread. I read that book, many, many times this week. The reason the book went over so much better than the smelling bottles is that the scents in the book are very subtle, so no headaches for either of us.

This week, we also studied the sense of hearing. All in all, it was a good unit. We worked with sound cubes, which Dora loved and was quite skilled at matching. We read the Hearing (Five Senses) (last week, we read the sense of smell book from the series, which is entitled Smell (Five Senses)). These books are written at the perfect level to introduce Dora to the senses, there is one book for each sense. She has been really engaged by each one, thus far. In addition, we read/sang My Favorite Things, which we both really loved (seriously, how could anyone not enjoy singing that song?).  The book has the lyrics, which can just be read as a poem, assuming you can resist belting out your best imitation of Julie Andrews. Each page is beautifully illustrated with gentle drawings and now is one of my favorite things.

For math we worked with the first tray of the geometric cabinet. I know, I know, all you Montessorians, the geometric cabinet is a sensorial work! In my mind, a lot of the sensorial work overlaps with math. Geometry is a math subject, so I am going to call some sensorial work “math work” for now on. And this is my domain, so I get to make the rules (ha ha! get the pun, it’s my “domain”, but it is also my “domain”, as in my web address! Aren’t I punny?). For you non-Montessorians, the geometric cabinet is a cabinet with six drawers of different shapes. The drawer we worked with was various sizes of circles and we just kind of introduced the drawer and discussed circles and Dora lined them up in order of smallest to biggest. Then we read 12 Ways to Get to 11, which is a highly reviewed book, but honestly I didn’t think it was that great. For one thing, counting to 11 gets old really fast, so I really didn’t want to do it on each two-page spread. Secondly I just found parts of it to be confusing. For instance, one two-page spread reads, “In the hen yard, five eggs, three cracking open, two beaks poking out, and one just hatched.” Which to me means that 3 out of 5 of the eggs are cracking open, two of which have a beak poking out, and one of which is hatched. Instead it means that there are five eggs, plus three cracking eggs, plus two eggs with beaks poking out, plus one just hatched egg, which equals 11 eggs in all. Anyway, the book just didn’t click with us. Dora didn’t even want to read it to begin with and I kind of had to bribe her to get her to let me read it to her.

We art, Dora has been doing a lot of watercolor painting with Stockmar Watercolor Paints. I’m going to say that when these arrived, I had no idea how to mix them and there were no instructions. I did some research and really didn’t find much help on the internet. I finally just started mixing small amounts of the paints into jars of water until I achieved the desired concentration. These paints are very expensive, but as everyone will tell you, they will last forever, because you use so little of the actual paint to make a jar of paint. The jars and holder were a separate item. You could just use recycled jars or storage tubs that you already own to store your paints. You don’t throw them out every time you mix up a batch of paint, though I am unsure of how long they can be stored. I’ll try to post and update about how long we end up storing ours for. Even Secunda and Tertia have joined in on the fun with these paints. I personally have been frustrated with my inability to achieve the exact color I want by blending paints (like how hard is it to make brown?!?!), but I seem to be the only one feeling that way, so I think it is just me being a bit too OCD-ish.

Dora has also been playing with the Child-size Masterpiece cards a lot the last couple of months and is already on Level 3, Advanced!

Our fieldtrip was supposed to be to go to a Seattle Symphony kids’ concert, but once Dora learned that we would be going to watch other people sing and dance, instead of other people watching her sing and dance, she wanted nothing to do with such audacity. Last week, however, we did go to Pike’s Place Market to try to smell a variety of smells. Unfortunately, the only one we really smelled was the fish market and they weren’t even throwing fish around (they are kind of famous for their fish throwing there, yep, one of Seattle’s claim to fame is that we have famous fish throwers, yep….). Honestly, I’ve never quite seen the appeal of Pike’s Place Market. It is like a giant farmer’s market, but inside. I find it kind of depressing and the parking borders on downright scary. They do have some quaint little shops, but whenever I have been there, the shops are too crowded for me to go in (we’re talking the middle of January here, so what it is like in the summer, I don’t know, maybe less crowded as everyone wants to be outside instead????). There was a used bookstore there that I really wanted to go into, but I just couldn’t get in without having to shove people aside. They had some really nice quality children’s classic books in their window though, so I gave some serious contemplation to forcing my way in, but neither Dora nor I are good in crowds.

And that, my dear readers is our week in a not-so-short synopsis. How was your week? I know a lot of other places that don’t usually get snow have been getting it, while places that usually get snow aren’t. Global warming/cooling/chaos I guess????

Disclosure: Several item links in this post are affiliate links. I will make a small amount if you click on them and make a purchase. All opinions expressed, however, are 100% my own.

I'm linking this post to The Play Academy at NurtureStore and…