Happy Birthday Maria Montessori!

Happy 142nd birthday Maria Montessori!  You may have seen it on Google this morning, but I bet many of you don't know who Montessori is.  If you've seen my recent post about delving into the Montessori methods, her methods are those I'm referring to.  She was a true pioneer in children's education, and developed and approach to learning that inspired children and adults around the world, and continues to do so.

Here's where the Google link will take you haven't clicked on it already:

• http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2012/0831/Maria-Montessori-a-bold-life-breaking-gender-boundaries

I've had a couple of these links on my sidebar, but here are some of my new favorite Montessori and Montessori-inspired blogs:

• Living Montessori Now at http://livingmontessorinow.com/
• Counting Coconuts at http://countingcoconuts.blogspot.com/
• Montessori on a Budget at http://www.montessori-on-a-budget.com/

These are my go to pages when I'm planning ideas for our weekly preschool themes at home.  All of these sites are jam packed with wonderful Montessori information.  From the few things we've done so far, I can say that Maria Montessori was a genius.  Her ideas were groundbreaking and have stood the test of time.  

Check out some of these amazing Etsy finds with Montessori education in mind:  http://www.etsy.com/treasury/MTQ1Njg4NTZ8MjcyMzI1NjUxNg/montessori-monday

Sometimes we tend to rush our kids through things, and force them to learn a certain thing or a certain way.  We over-complicate it for young minds.  At least I feel I have been guilty of that.  School and learning came very easy for me.  I don't remember the approach my early teachers used, and my degree was in computer technology, not early education.  But I feel that these methods, with the help of these amazing blogs, is making teaching my children easy and much more fun!

I can see their imaginations at work.  I can see how excited they get when they figure something out.  I can see their confidence grow as they learn and do more.  I'm eager to see what they learn next!  And with that, I'm off to finish up our last day of "Back-to-School" week.

Happy Birthday Maria! And Thank You!

Preschool Pirate Projects

During our Pirate Theme week, when we weren't working on the pages of our pirate book, we were doing a bunch of other fun pirate themed activities and crafts.  We found some great projects, stories, and songs that went along with our special theme.

The songs were easy this week, I chose two that were already favorites, "The Pirate Song" and "Scurvy Pirate" from the Backyardigans.  Here's a link to some Backyardigans pirate puppets that make singing the songs even more fun!  I chose these songs because they are kid friendly.  There are a lot of pirate songs out there that have some questionable topics in them, but these tunes are on the safer side.  They also are very easy to get stuck in your head!

Pirate Ship Construction Paper Craft:

One of our first activities of the week was this very easy but adorable pirate ship craft from Busy Bee Kids Crafts.  With just some construction paper, craft sticks, and some Cheerios, you can create a fun pop off the page pirate ship!  The kids especially loved snacking on the Cheerios while we were making these.  We didn't use their template, so we weren't able to fit as many sails on the page, but they still turned out pretty darn cute!

Paper Bag Pirate Hat:

No pirate is complete without his a pirate hat so we also had to make these paper tricorns from Disney's Family.com website.  I wish I had a good picture of how these turned out but my little pirates were running around in their underwear while wearing them, so I'll keep those for the personal album only!

I was able to snap a few pics as they were painting them however.  We used a a brown paper sack instead of packing paper.  Also we skipped the sewing part.  While I'm sure that would have looked nicer, I was looking much quicker and easier hat.  We ended up stapling the sides together to form the points, and used some twine as a little embellishment.

They took quite a while to dry because the kids really layered on the brown paint, but once they were dry these hats turned the kids into instant pirates.  They were running around in them calling us scurvy pirates and telling us to walk the plank!

Paper Plate Compass:

This is not a working compass, but a quick and easy way to introduce directions to kids.  Once mine are both a little older we'll try making a real one.  We used these small plain paper plates to draw our compass on.  The top one is my 2 year old's compass.  The bottom left is my 4 year old's, and mine is the bottom right.

Here's a close up of mine.  We took this compass on a "treasure hunt" (ie geocaching!!), and used it to find our way to the hidden treasure.  I'll post more about that later.

Pirate Stories:

We also used the compass to help find some pirate treasure using a free downloadable PowerPoint at http://worldhistory.mrdonn.org/powerpoints/pirates.html.  Click on the link for "A Treasure Island.ppt (Captain Smuggle)".  This was a huge hit.  My son is really into computers so anything interactive like that always gets him excited.

Here are links to two other great online pirate children's stories we read:

• http://www.outpost221.com/pugwash/pugwash.htm (Musical intro)
• http://www.magickeys.com/books/pirate/index.html (Complete with audio narrative!)

We also read some pirate books from the library.  This one about the Lego pirate "Brickbeard" was my son's favorite.

And lastly, we read a history of the pirate Blackbeard from National Geographic.  My son got bored with this one, it wasn't as fun as the other stories so he wasn't all that interested.

There were several other crafts we didn't get to this week.  But I've got them saved to my Pirate board on Pinterest for the next time we get an urge to act like pirates!

Chocolate Chip Zucchini Muffins

There is almost nothing better than tweaking a recipe and having it turn out perfection!  Last night we had sauteed zucchini with dinner, and I had one large zucchini still waiting to be used up.  I immediately thought about making zucchini bread, but I decided to go with muffins because it's easier for the kids (and inherently portion size).

As I started looking for a good zucchini muffin recipe, I realized most of them adapt a recipe for a couple of loaves of zucchini bread into 2 dozen muffins.  I only wanted to make one batch of muffins, and I didn't want to mess with halving a recipe.  So I kept looking.  Finally I found this recipe for zucchini muffins with carrots.  I love a good carrot muffin, but that wasn't what I was looking for today.  The recipe was workable, but needed a few tweaks. With those tweaks, it turned out amazing!

Chocolate Chip Zucchini Muffins

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 1/3 cup applesauce
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 large zucchini (unpeeled), grated
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips

• Recipe adapted from SouthernFood.About.Com

Directions:

Grease 12 muffin cups and preheat oven to 375°.  Mix oil, applesauce, eggs, sugar and vanilla extra in a large bowl until thoroughly combined.  Stir together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.  Add to wet ingredients, and mix just until combined.  Stir in zucchini and chocolate chips.

Spoon into muffin cups, filling at least 2/3 of the way full.  Bake for 20 minutes.  Cool in muffin pan for 5 minutes and then remove.  Enjoy!

These turned out so perfectly moist and incredibly delicious.  The kids go nuts for them because of the chocolate chips.  Neither of them cared much for the sauteed zucchini with dinner, but both of them were jumping up and down for these!  I'm going to have to use this one for a school snack one day.  There are twelve kids in my son's class so this makes just the right amount!