New Page!

Well, my research side took over last night, and a bit this morning, and I have started a page with all the things I can find online that have to do with Montessori and adolescent programs. I have not yet finished--I do need to curb the research impulse to get things done today--but it's on the menu bar above or you can click here.

I can not believe how much more is available online now compared to when I looked just a few years back!

Know What I Want?

It's a little after 8:30 pm here as I start typing this. I'm dreadfully tired, but if I go to bed now, I'll either just nap--and then not fall back asleep until something like 1 am and completely mess up my sleep cycles--or I'll sleep through and be wide awake around 4 am. Or earlier. What to do? My mind can't focus on reading, I can't work on my other website, computer games are holding no interest and if I put on a movie or the TV, I'll just fall asleep.

So, I'm blogging. :D

I was thinking I would babble about how much I like the way we use Faith and Life (nope, I'm not an affiliate with them! ;) ). But instead, I've decided to babble about what I would like to see:

A Montessori homeschool curriculum or book for the adolescent years.

Yeah, I know, demanding request. It can be hard to find any real solid information about Montessori and the adolescent years. Training programs are few and far between and, afaik, don't have online options that we homeschoolers could take part in.

Maybe what I need to do is to gather all the information I can find and make myself a little book. A guide I can hold in my hands.

Of course, I could do as I always tell other people to do: Experiment! ;)

My thoughts are multiplying and jumbling together. I'll stop here for now, but I think I might babble to myself in a Word document. And maybe share some stuff at a later point!

It's Friday evening...

...and I'm working on my plans for Tuesday. Exciting life, eh? ;)

It may be the long weekend, but I've got a busy day tomorrow and Sunday:
*shopping for a birthday gift for my mom (her birthday is on Sunday; yes, I know, a little last-minute);
*grocery shopping, including specialty items at Planet Organic;
*house cleaning;
*library;
*bank;
*bake a cake;
*make frosting;
*frost the cake;
*make a regular lasagna (meat and cheese) and make a vegan or possibly gluten-free vegan (raw?) lasagna (I'm allergic to milk and can't have the regular lasagna and am transitioning to veg*nism, but my mom specially requested the regular one for her birthday :P );
*before that, find a recipe for a suitable veg*n lasagna recipe and purchase what is needed; go to my mom's with the supper (garlic bread and salad, as well!; ooh, wonder if I could find a good vegan Caesar salad recipe--I know Mimi Kirk has a raw one that is supposed to be AMAZING);
*finish making her card (I am a Stampin' Up demonstrator and make all the cards)...

So, I have a busy couple of days and I don't want to find myself Monday going, "Omg, what am I doing tomorrow??" I also have French classes to plan for for the following week and it looks like I might be doing some private tutoring for French and possibly my former student who is having to retake some courses because he didn't have the gumption to apply himself much this year! But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

My mind keeps focusing on Tuesday anyhow, so why not just spend some time this evening unloading those thoughts before I sit and relax with a book or movie or something?

My son is usually awake by 7:30, but not necessarily ready to really get up until close to 8. He reads in bed a bit first. I don't think I need for him to have a set time to get up, but rather a strong routine after he does get up! Our first day, I think we'll start of with:

• self-care: talk about what things should be done, like finding clean clothes and making sure to get fruit in with his breakfast, etc.
  
• care of the environment: discuss care of his room and what sort of tasks he could do first thing in the morning (making his bed is an obvious one; he's let it go this summer!) and also discuss things that have to be done around the house on a daily basis and have him pick something that will be his to do in the morning
  
• morning "meeting": I guess the above constitutes part of the morning meeting for Tuesday (and perhaps every first day of the week), but on other days, it won't really be part of the meeting, I hope, but just things he will do. What I have in mind for the morning meeting is having a look at what we both want to tackle during the week and that day (I know I'm likely to get attitude from him the first week because he's being asked to move out of his routine/comfort zone, so he likely won't offer anything truly helpful as an idea and I need to be prepared for that and not react negatively!). I haven't really decided how I want to guide him with this. When my daughter was early elementary and there were other kids in the mix, I was using a blank chart with subject areas along the side. Seems to me I would write in their things first about what they planned on working on and then I would add in which lessons I wanted to do with them that day. If there was something they wanted to do that would take up a few hours (like messy art or possibly baking), we would pencil it in for a day that would work better. The chart helped them see the wide variety of subjects they could choose from, but it also helped us see as the week progressed what they had worked on and what they hadn't worked on. It was a nice way to keep things kind of balanced or at least not let certain areas get neglected.
  
  Part of this first meeting will be talking a bit about the things we will cover this year for science, social studies, math, language arts, get ideas from him for those subjects... I suppose I should have at least a basic idea myself of what we are going to do! Actually, maybe I don't need to really get into all that with him. Hm. Something to figure out. I'm kind of leaning toward not getting into too much detail, but I suppose I could tell him that we'll be looking a bit at the history of North America and specifically Canada, we'll cover different things in science dealing with chemistry and physics and geology (he'll want zoology for sure; I don't have a zoology manual, but I'm sure we could do some research!), that we'll be working on handwriting and writing different kinds of things and cover all kinds of basic things in math and the grade 7 things and even beyond if he wants... I know I'm not covering all the subjects here, but I haven't really thought about too much about the others. He already knows that we will be doing more of Faith and Life this year!
  
  Some of this meeting will be to talk about the week ahead and what we will do: get going in math, science, social studies... I want to remember those three areas: self-expression (music, art, language); moral education, math and other languages; natural history, history of human achievement and technology and history of mankind. I'd like to know more about how Montessori "seminars" work at the adolescent level, because seminars are mentioned in the document I shared in the previous post.

Another site mentioned about Maria Montessori believing adolescence was a time for the child to find a place in society. I'm going to have to read up on this more and see how I can fit it in.

Onto other thoughts: I am going to work on the Great Lessons next week (eek! I haven't prepared myself yet! Guess what I'm doing Monday? lol) as the start to science and social studies, which means I also ought to work on reading the science manuals that I have and thinking about activities to present (or seminars to do? I really have to learn what these seminars are).

I got a phone call that interrupted my train of thought with all this. I'm getting too tired now to continue thinking about what we'll get done Tuesday. I think I'll go pop in a movie and curl up in a blanket. Oh, and drink the tea I made before the phone call and have now forgotten about. Oops.

I am drooling ;)

For whatever reason, I was prompted to look up Montessori adolescent preparation programmes. It led me to this pdf: http://www.montessori-namta.org/PDF/2012AdolBrochureWeb.pdf

I am loving this pdf! Something about it is just pleasing my brain in terms of organization and focus for my kids. Over the years, I somehow missed this distinction:

Montessori divided the “Educational Syllabus” into three parts. First is self-expression, which includes music, language, and art. Moral education, mathematics, and languages are the second part. The third part includes three divisions of history: natural history, the history of human achievement and technology, and the study of the history of mankind.

I never knew this! These three parts form, imho, a wonderful way to organize one's vision, planning, etc. I see a kind of balance being aimed for among the parts. (Sorry, this may be so evident to some, but it's really "clicking" with me right now!)

Anyhow, if you've got kids at the 12-18 level, even this brief document about what a training programme can help give some ideas! :)