They started off the weekend at an Italian car show Saturday morning. Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Maseratis galore. Lucas even got to sit in a cafe-au-lait colored ("coffee with milk") Ferrari! The show was in downtown Norcross so afterward they stopped by the train park to play. Lucas loved all the excitement, but he is happy just doing things around Mia's house ... this weekend included art projects, roasting marshmallows and a trip to the store for an "expensive car."
On Monday morning, my mom drove him to her work where I met them with Sofia and breakfast from Chic-fil-A. After breakfast at her office, I brought him home and, still inspired by all the drawing he'd done that weekend, he got to work right away on a new project: lining up many of his cars and then documenting the line-up by drawing a matching-colored rough rectangle to represent each car...
If you look closely, you can see a little babiness in there. Yay!
And while I'm on the topic of Lucas's projects, Thursday he brought home his school work. It's always fun to see what he's doing and how he's progressed.
At the age of 4 and 3/4 Lucas can sew as well as I can.
First he learned how to weave a shoelace through holes in poster board. He loved doing this last year and came home with dozens in all different shapes.
The next step is tracing a shape drawn on a swag of burlap with thread and a needle. He did this last year, but this year it looks much neater.
And now, apparently he can sew on buttons.
He also likes working with numbers. The other day he told me he could could to nine thousand. So I told him I'd like to hear, knowing he'd probably get to ten and skip tens to one-hundred and so on. But he counted up to one hundred with no shortcuts and when he started in on "101, 102, 103..." I felt I was in trouble. Thankfully he continued "108, 109, 9000!"
Here is the "Hundred Board." They write the numbers 1-100 in this grid and (I'm assuming) understanding and remembering the layout helps them in subsequent work.
Montessori students learn to write before they learn to read because it is less abstract. And they learn to write in cursive before print because (the story goes) the flowing movement is more natural than the choppiness of print for their young minds and hands. This is one of Lucas's first written "stories."
"I have a green car in Mommy's car. It's fast."
I'm amazed! But I also know the many baby steps it took leading up to this.
-Without even knowing it, he was practicing his pencil grip by doing practical chores that require the same grip, such as folding cloths.
-He worked with the sandpaper letters - wooden tiles (I'd guess 5 square inches in size) each inscribed with a lowercase sandpaper letter for three-year-old hands to trace.
-They put the two above steps together and start writing cursive letters, first (I believe) on the chalkboard and next on paper. Success at every step!
-There is also a cool material called the "movable alphabet" where they take letters about the size of fridge magnets, but thin, and form them together to make words and stories.
-They use the phonics method of sounding things out so initially they are not corrected for misspelling words, which encourages further practice. In the beginning, I was not sure about this for the "that's not how I learned" reason, but now I'm warming up to it since it seems to be a natural way to learn.
It's truly amazing watching a child's mind unfold!
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