Our Adventures with Parts of A Flower (with links to freebies!)

First thing in the morning, we notice our bulb has finally flowered!!  Everybody gently touches it.  It is so beautiful, it was almost glittering with new flower sheen.  They were waiting for this day, because once it bloomed, I had promised to take out the Amaryllis puzzle and cursive parts cards.  They were full of anticipation!

A tiny finger points out the stamen

The first puzzle customer

Bean immediately traces the pieces and begins labeling the parts using the chart on the wall.  Links to that chart below.

Pumpkin builds the puzzle outside the frame of the puzzle (just like big sis did).

Parts of a Flower, cursive cards.

Bean poses for me, as she shows off her cursive reading skills.

Click here for free cards, control charts, and felt templates seen above.  



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Mom Bloggers Talk Montessori

This is very exciting!  Deb Chitwood and John Bowman have collected a bunch of ideas from Mom Bloggers for Montessori, and they included this blog!  Click the button for a free ebook!!

What a wonderful collection of Moms who love Montessori :)

Monday's Montessori Moment: A Botany Cabinet Extension

Click here to see the full article on Mommy Moment!

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Saturday Hike

At this point, the girls discussed that this park is WAY better than any playground they've seen. Ah, I love Saturdays. We are now pouring over our leaves we found on the ground, matching them to our botany charts. THAT'S Montessori Science for you!

Parts of a Bulb Plant

This is an activity I made using a flower press on a bulb my daughter found in the garden. She was immediately attached to it, wanting to bring it to the nature table.  After pressing for two weeks, I laminated and scanned the image.  It pressed very nicely, so I added words to name parts. By printing it twice, I made a simple nomenclature work to go along with our botany studies and gardening afternoons. Feel free to save the image for yourself.

The Archimedes Test

Click Here: Volume Experiment for Kids

Testing out the volume of rocks.

Butterflies In The Making

Bean and I made our own butterfly lifecycles to decorate our room. I read a book about lifecycles to her, and the next thing I knew- she had the circle metal inset out to create her own lifecycle! I made one, too. I'm still finding my girls to be much more independent if I make myself busy :) Both of our papers match our models of each stage, so we'll use it as a matching for Pumpkin and Peanut!

Nature Hunt, Beach!

Today the tots and I snuck away for a special Nature Hunt. We went searching for shells and rocks for our nature collection. We even found a dead fish, not taking it home! We ended up finding a lot of wampum (our area's Native Americans used it as money) , great for our Waldorf Summer Swap at One Hook Wonder.

My favorite part was sitting with them both on my lap watching the tide come in. Ah, relaxation.

Tot Tuesday & Amaryllis Love

Boy oh boy, we were active on this rainy afternoon! I never sat down until after bedtime.
They chose painting, and counting, and flower work. We also spent time in the peace place and snuggled a ton and read our spring and Easter books.

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Happy Solstice

Today we read my favorite book about the first day of winter, called The Shortest Day:  Celebrating The Winter Solstice.  I love how it told of the different ways the world has celebrated and recorded this particular seasonal change.  The illustrations were beautiful, and there are actual experiments noted in the back, like measuring the length of a shadow like the Chinese did over 3,000 years ago.

We were lucky enough to have a dusting of snow, and a snowball fight!

We sang the Birthday Celebration song, with a twist ending for today.  If you have a candle and a globe, you can travel while you sing.  Be sure the child only travels 1/4 of the way around the sun, one trip around would be one year.

The Earth goes 'round the sun
The Earth goes 'round the sun


It takes twelve months, fifty-two weeks, three hundred sixty-five days.
And now it's winter (we ring a bell, our favorite from the Christmas Tree).

Here is a link to a wonderful site about this day:

www.candlegrove.com/solstice.html

Milkweed Seed!

We found this outside, flying I'm the air!!  She recognized the type of seed and its travel from her book, The Wonders Of Nature.  It's always wonderful when literature links up with life.

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Inside A Pumpkin....

The girls loved getting their hands all slimey while soaking and seasoning our Jack-O-Lantern's seeds. Big sister spend some time afterwards making a Parts-Of-The-Pumpkin booklet with 3-part matching cards from Montessori For Everyone. I undercooked them a bit (I couldn't wait!) but they were good!!!!

Get Out There! A Neighborhood Nature Walk

Our girls love to collect. We first went on this walk today because the little ones are really into the moon. They couldn't see it, so we set out to find it. At 3pm, it was nowhere to be found. We will check again in the morning, I promised. However, we made some great observations. The brush is starting to disappear and we can see part of the walking trail we take in the winter. Leaves are on the ground and the leaves in the trees are turning beautiful colors. We put our collections on top of our backyard boulder for keeps.

Snake Skin

Look what we found outside this afternoon! We think it is from a milk snake.

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Texas State Board Evolves

Evolution sometimes happens right before our eyes. There's been a coup d'etat of sorts in Texas.

The San Antonio Express-News reports ("Senate ousts creationist as head of state ed board") that the Texas State Senate, in an all-too-rare rebuff of Governor Rick Perry, has removed the State Board of Education chairman who has led the charge against evolution in the Lone Star State.

In a rare rejection of an appointment from the governor, the Senate on Thursday ousted Don McLeroy as chairman of the State Board of Education as his supporters claimed the Bryan dentist was the victim of his strong religious beliefs.

McLeroy is a devout Christian who believes in creationism and the notion that the Earth is about 6,000 years old. He has steadfastly argued that Texas students should be taught the weaknesses of evolution.

Background here and here.

Evolution Lives

On a tie vote, it appears that the creationists on the Texas State Board of Education failed in their attempt to prevent the teaching of evolution in science classes. However, they managed to make some mischief, requiring science teachers to evaluate critically a variety of scientific principles like the Big Bang, for example.

Here is additional background, as reported here on Wednesday ("Will Darwin Take It On The Chin In Texas?").

The New York Times ("Defeat And Some Success For Texas Evolution Foes") and the Dallas Morning News ("Split vote upholds Texas education board ruling to ax evolution 'strengths and weaknesses' rule") have the full story.

Board members deadlocked 7-7 on a motion to restore a longtime curriculum rule that "strengths and weaknesses" of all scientific theories – notably Charles Darwin's theory of evolution – be covered in science classes and textbooks for those subjects.

The tie vote upheld a preliminary decision by the board in January to delete the strengths-and-weaknesses rule in the new curriculum standards for science classes that will be in force for the next decade. That decision, if finalized in a last vote today, changes 20 years of Texas education policy.

Because the standards spell out what must be covered in textbooks, science educators and publishers have been monitoring the Texas debate closely. As one of the largest textbook purchasers in the nation, Texas influences what is sold in other states.

Now if they could only agree on how old the earth really is.

Will Darwin Take It On The Chin in Texas?

The Washington Post editorial page ('Strengths and Weaknesses') weighs in on the creationism debate in the Lone Star State.

Starting today, the state's board of education will consider whether the phrase "strengths and weaknesses" should remain deleted from the state's science standards. Debating strengths and weaknesses of various scientific theories might sound reasonable until you learn that those are supportive buzzwords for people who doubt evolution and want creationism taught in the classroom.

The force behind restoring the "strengths and weaknesses" language, which was stripped from the science standards in January after two decades, is Don McLeroy. He's the chairman of the State Board of Education. He is also a "young earth creationist" who believes the Earth was created by God no more than 10,000 years ago. Never mind plenty of scientific evidence that the planet has been around for a few billion years. The scary thing is that what's happening in Texas is by no means isolated.

So, in a state of 24 million people, this Mr. McLeroy is the best candidate that Republican Governor Rick Perry could find for the job of chair of the State Board of Education? Scary. Purposefully scary, I'll bet.

For more background, see here (6/3/08), here (7/21/08), here (1/22/09), and here (1/23/09).

A Win for Science

The Texas State Board of Education yesterday voted down an attempt to weaken the teaching of evolution in public school science classrooms. Read the full account in the Dallas Morning News.

In a major defeat for social conservatives, a sharply divided State Board of Education voted Thursday to abandon a longtime state requirement that high school science teachers cover what some critics consider to be "weaknesses" in the theory of evolution.

Under the science curriculum standards recommended by a panel of science educators and tentatively adopted by the board, biology teachers and biology textbooks would no longer have to cover the "strengths and weaknesses" of Charles Darwin's theory that man evolved from lower forms of life.

See yesterday's post ("Onward, Christian Soldiers!") on this some topic - prior to the Board's vote.

Winners: Science, Students, Teachers

Losers: Governor Rick Perry, Social Conservatives

Creationism Redux -- We're Not in Kansas Anymore

Last month, I took aim at Florida and Kansas for prostelyzing through science standards.

Today the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the standards front is not the only place where the battle between creationism and evolution is waged. It is also waged in the classroom. According to a recent Penn State survey, one in eight high school biology teachers report teaching creationism as "a valid, scientific alternative" to evolution. Further, one in six believe that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so."

Yikes. I wonder if evolution is taught in theology classes?

Evolution in Question

The Kansas State Board of Education circa 2005 retains the gold medal for Wackiest State Policymaking Body based on its creationism of science standards that promoted intelligent design and trampled upon the theory of evolution. (Those, of course, were overturned by the subsequent Board.)

But the Florida House of Representatives circa 2008 is a strong contender for the silver medal based on its passage on Monday of the "Evolution Academic Freedom Act," a piece of legislation modeled after one drafted by the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute.

Any other nominees? Who should get the bronze?