Yard Sale Profits

Our family participated in a community yard sale today and it was a huge success for us. We came home with a tall stack of bills, which is rather unique in our house because we almost exclusively deal in credit cards and electronic transfers.

I counted that stack of bills while DJ was at soccer and it occurred to me that we could use his Golden Bead material to count it and see how much it was.

(For the record, I took all these pictures after we were done, re-creating the task for you. I did not use the equal sign or plus sign with DJ as these are not taught until he is ready to do abstract math (ie in his head/on paper).

Not school

I've been on furlough from homeschooling the past couple of weeks mostly because I was a bit burned out and looking forward to the summer. But there is no stopping DJ. He's like the Energizer Bunny, if anyone recognizes that reference.


As mentioned in recent posts DJ has been crazy about math lately. Last week, he selected the Pink Tower for the first time in a long time so he could count the number of cubes. As he was putting it away, he had the largest cubes on the stand and he stacked a few of the smallest cubes in his hand. I asked him how many cubes were on the stand and he said "six". Then I asked how many were in his hand and he answered "four". Finally I asked how many would be on the tower when he added the 4 cubes to the 6 and he immediately said "ten".

School Days

DJ is moving slowly through the early Golden Bead work. This involves matching the large number cards to the corresponding cubes, squares, tens and units. He enjoys this work but it is challenging for him so we are taking it very slow.

Math for May

DJ has been all about math lately. He is really keeping me on my toes because I didn't expect to need to be prepared for these activities for another 6 months or more!

The following activities in this post have been done over the past 2 to 3 weeks.

A Year in Review

DJ started Montessori preschool one year ago when he was 2.5 years old so he has now completed the first year of the three year sequence. Since Montessori is child-led, the first year could look very different for each child but I thought it would be fun and informative to do a recap of DJ's first year.

Life Cycles for Spring

DJ's grandpa Dennis has signed him up for the subscription service from Brainy Kits. We received the third set last week and it is their best one yet, by far. Although I might be a little biased because I needed to be putting together a study on life cycles but I was dragging my feet as I wasn't really sure where to start. Brainy Kits solved that for me!

Letters & Numbers

As we're winding down the first year of DJ's preschool, the work is all about letters and numbers. He still occasionally chooses cylinder blocks, geometric solids or lacing cards but those seem to be more like downtime for him rather than real, challenging work. In addition to the official school time work, I hear DJ counting his toys during playtime and he's analyzing the sounds in every word throughout the day... t-t-tiger, scared-d-d-d.