School - Fall Themed

Ace is loving this latest installment of school: fall!  We're learning about pumpkins, leaves, skip counting, and a smattering of other fun filled things along the way.    He's really enjoying all the colors!  

One of Ace's trays is sorting.  He has leaves and pumpkins and he puts them into their respective bin using the tweezers.   It takes him a few tries to really be able to do it properly with the tweezers but he's working on that fine motor skill with great determination.   Always has his tongue sticking out while he works.  *All these supplies can be found at Hobby Lobby*

Ace really enjoyed the matching game last month and so I wanted to reincorporate that into this month's trays as well and along with the simple matching game I wanted to pair it with some science and teach him why the leaves change color, so I ordered Why Do Leaves Change Color?.  It is a bit too detailed for him, but he can grow into the book and understanding - which I prefer to an over simplistic version.     I then found some free leaf printables from PreKinders (along with a lot of other great resources!)  They were a bit more detailed and Ace had to pay a bit closer attention to really match up the different ones.

We took a walk that day and also gathered leaves to look at the various color (which here in Mississippi isn't a terrible color variation since it doesn't get very cold around here.)   We collected them and brought them home and decided to see if we could match them to the ones in the book.   On another day we did some leaf rubbings and that was met with minimal excitement.  Well I enjoyed it.  ;-)

We are also learning about how pumpkins grow and in general how things grow from seeds and into plants/flowers/etc..   I located some nomenclature cards for the life cycle of a pumpkin via The Wonder Years  and the cards are free from Montessori for Everyone.   I coupled that with the book From Seed to Pumpkin - which was more at Ace's level of understanding and he really enjoys that story.    I wish that we were staying here longer so that we could plant a seed and watch it grow.  Perhaps we'll do this next year!

Our focus on 'math' this month was on skip counting - getting Ace one step closer to counting to 100.   He can do 1-10 pretty easily and 11-19 are a bit touch and go.  So this month I introduced to him to counting by tens - he figured out pretty easily how it works which is why he after saying 'forty'  says 'fivety' and 'one-y' (100)   He's not got them memorized but he's doing well.   He's not quite got that once he's got those down that counting to 100 will be a breeze, but he will.  :)

There are other fun items still to come including an introduction to the mayflower and the first Thanksgiving!  Looking forward to being back in the NW for a more colorful backdrop to our fall themed school!