Reish al ha-Rosh!

We made letters with Duplo blocks today.  Started out with a Reish like last week, then changed it to Hey by adding one more block, or a Vav by changing the block on top.  I didn't get alot of good pics, but here is R, putting the Reish on his Rosh:

and here he is trying to make a Hey:

M said this was more of a Vet....

Oh well.  But he is doing great with building big towers with Jenga blocks:

This is nice.  I think I'll add another one!

There, that was easy!

Not too impressive, huh?

Well, how about this?  Take that!

Uh-oh. I guess that was one too many.....

Coloring in the map

I made blank USA maps for M to color in.  He has been practicing with the puzzle for several weeks, and now can identify most of the states.  He even tried to color them in the same colors as the puzzle from memory.  I encouraged him to make up his own colors -- New Mexico doesn't have to be green, nor Louisiana purple......

Scissors

I finally got the boys into the scissors lesson.  I took out the leftover strips of paper from making Sukkah decorations, and showed R how to make little cuts to cut off bits of paper.  He took the process very seriously:

In the meantime, M shocked me by picking a paper strip, and with no direction at all started cutting it lengthwise -- in a straight line!

Is this OK, Imma?  Or do I have to do it the easy way..?

We learn about Reish

E joined us today for a lesson about Reish.  We made the letter with blocks and with our fingers, and noticed that it is the mirror image of a lower-case letter "r".  Then M wanted to write some words with Reish:

Then we enjoyed the unseasonably warm day on the porch:

What is that Montessori stuff, anyway?

So today I wanted to do some cutting and pasting with the boys, but once again, M had ideas of his own.  He pulled out the box of Montessori math materials, and asked for the place value labels.  Well, he didn't know that's what they were.  He thought they were stickers.  Well.....

I thought tens were pretty big......

....but these hundreds and thousands are even bigger!

 R seemed to enjoy the scissors well enough: