Just two activities; various homeschool and art books

I wasn't very good at putting together new Montessori activities for Solomon last week.  In fact, I only made one new one.  He is still enjoying his blue and green color activity, so I put together a red and yellow color sorting activity. He saw it the night I did it and was too excited to wait until the next morning to try it:

The next morning he did the color sorting activity again, and then added the blue and green color sorting pieces too.  It is a good activity, though he still seems to get colors mixed up when he talks about them.  He wants everything to be "green" or "light blue."

I just wanted to share that even though many days Solomon is very focused with his activities and quiet for awhile, there are other days he isn't very interested, and interrupts my school time with Hunter. A lot.  He can say "Mommy?" every 5 seconds.  Literally.  So all you homeschooling moms with little ones - don't think that we have some magic going here that you don't!  We have our good days and our frustrating days too.  ;)

A quick tip for getting ideas for some Montessori activities is to request a mail order catalog from a Montessori company.  I have several, but by far, my favorite is the catalog from "Montessori Services."  I have many pages dog-eared in this catalog with ideas of activities to put together for Solomon.  Of course as with most things, there are some things in the catalog I don't agree with, like their triology on the "Big Bang," evolution, and the earth's story.

Solomon really likes playing with cards.  Matching them or just spreading them out to look at.  He often plays with some of the cards I use for math drills with Hunter:

As an aside, I got printed these cards from Ray's Arithmetics and Helps by Sherry Hayes.  I printed them from the e-book on card stock and laminated them.  (I have a laminator and love it.  It is just so useful!)  Sherry Hayes is a homeschooling mother of 15 and has such useful advice, on so many things.  She blogs at:  http://largefamilymothering.wordpress.com.

I also have her e-book McGuffey's Primer Flashcards, Helps and Hints which is good, but I am not using it right now as Hunter doesn't currently want anything to do with the McGuffey Readers.  (I have two sets of the old McGuffey Readers:  McGuffey's Eclectic Readers Revised Editions and The Original McGuffey's Eclectic Readers.  We used both for reading last school year.)  Instead, we are using another old book series by Yesterday's Classics.  He just finished The Primer and is now reading through the First Reader. (There is also a Second Reader and Third Reader.)

Finally, Sherry Hayes also has a very helpful and inspiring book called Homeschool Sanity: Large Family Mothering's Practical Guide to Redemptive Home Education (available in print or as an e-book).  I tend to re-read this book twice a year, to get ideas.

When I was in elementary school, I had a copy of Ed Emberley's Drawing Book of Animals.  (The 1974 Scholastic version. I remembering filling out a Scholastic order form to buy it.)  I remember I loved drawing pictures from it and also using an inkpad to make the fingerprint pictures.

Not long ago, I came across a scanned copy of an old book online called What to Draw and How to Draw It by E. G. Lutz.  Its style is similar to Ed Emberley's books but the drawings are more realistic.  It was published in 1913.  The pages are filled with how to draw things like lighthouses, animals, and people.  But they are also quaint as they have that "early 1900s" look.  I thought we would use this book some in art for school this year.  I downloaded and printed a copy from here:  http://ia350617.us.archive.org/1/items/whattodrawhowtod00lutz/whattodrawhowtod00lutz.pdf
Note: this blog post talks about the book, gives ideas of how to use it, and the blog author gives links to several versions of the book here.  (You can buy printed copy on amazon here.)

I took my printed copy, hole punched it, and put it in a half-inch sized binder.  Do you print e-books?  If so - how do you like to store them?  I've been thinking about trying book binding and I'm always looking for tips!

Finally, I had a little while yesterday afternoon to just hold my napping boy and read.  What a simple delight:

"So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, . . ." - Hebrews 4:9