My little one, Smiles, really doesn’t care about the animals. He happily moos and baas for them in the pictures… but honestly prefers the trucks and tractors to any adorable furry creature. Boys will be boys. So, I created a Russian Transport Alphabet for this car-loving gentleman:
Russian Trasport Azbuka

Also, I caved in and started showing him words on the computer instead of cards. It seems to work better with our schedule, and he is a lot more interested. So, here is the file with Russian site words (I create one large file with all the words, and then slowly create small files with 5-7 words, replacing updating them all the time. Use any technique that works for you).
Introductory Words In Russian

I started showing word cards to my older son when he was about 6 months. He wasn’t really interested. So, I came up with a thousands of ways to get his attention: we were vacuum cleaning the words, wiping it, jumping over them, doing forward rolls, watching them in the car, hanging in the hallway (see more at Alternative Ways of Showing Cards to An Active Child)… With my first one I was freaking out all the time: “Is it working?”, “Is he learning?”, “Why he is just looking at the pictures in the books and not reading it?!”.

Have you heard of Waldorf? I often stumble upon that name, when I search on Montessori schools/materials. Is it an alternative? Is it another educational philosopher, scientist in search of enlightenment in children’s education? Enlightenment – surely yes, though not in the same way I envisioned… as “light” is the not only philosophical concept, but also the reality: due to the particular attention of the school to the artistic expression, black, brown colors are mostly banned in the school. Biblical Eve has to be represented with a fair skin and blond hair. You would ask, what difference does it make? Apparently, “search for light” can have a greater influence on the rest of the children’s education, then just reflection of number of crayons in the box.

Aha, another terrific book on positive discipline. I thought, that if you read one good book, you’d be as good as it gets. Apparently not: I still often feel the urge for a good old fashioned yelling, stomping my feet and loosing my patience. I try to avoid all of the above. Yelling feels good… but often comes with a nasty friend: guilt. That one is eating her prey raw… My kids long since forgotten and I am still torturing myself… But why, why, why do parents get to feel so frustrated and annoyed when we love our kids more then the life itself? We are ready for every possible sacrifice for them… and just as ready to strangle them with our own hands at some point. I guess, most important question is – what do we do about it.

Some of these animal babysitters were just too irresistible and funny to pass up…  Enjoy!

Read more…

Thanks to Orsi for sharing this wonderful resource:

America The Story of US — premiering on HISTORY™ April 25 at 9pm/8c — is a six week event that provides a fascinating look at the stories of the people, events, and innovations that forged our nation. It will provide you with an unprecedented opportunity to bring our nation’s history to life for your students. This 12-hour series will be supported by educational materials tied to curriculum standards and is copyright cleared for Fair Use in the classroom by instructors or pupils in the course of face-to-face teaching activities.

Montessory three-part lesson is used for introducing and reinforcing the concept of addition. Can be used for other mathematical operations. No need to be an expert Montessory teacher or any special tools – you can get everything at right at home. Very good video, excellent simple and laconic explanations. Short and very useful:

Montessori Introduction to Addition

My little one, Smiles, is growing and I am anxious to introduce more music into his life. Our stereo got broken, and while we are working on a fix, I decided to join a mommy and me music class. Besides, Smiles tends to feel really excited in the most bizarre and overcrowded situations, so a few friends for a playdate just don’t cut it.

First of all, some links:
Music For Aardvarks official site.
Music Together official site.

Some YouTube videos:

Geography turned out to be a lot of fun. But I had to do a lot of materials, and it turned out to be one of the most fun subjects! So let’s get right to it…

Other Categories and how we use these materials.
Categories – Materials and ToDo lists (MS document)

• Materials Useful for learning Geography
• Unit 1 – Introduction to Geography

Materials Useful for Learning Geography

Books: (we are great fans of some series that will follow. Great books that we fell in love with and don’t belong to any series are listed first)