My Montessori Journey

A great offer for my blog readers!!

I was very excited to open my email this morning and read an email sent to me by Montessori Concepts .  They are making a fantastic offer available to the readers of my blog!  During the hoiday season, they are offering my blog readers (that would be YOU if you are reading this!) 3 FREE animal or botany puzzles.  This is a $21 value for FREE!!  You would only need to pay the $12 shipping cost for the puzzles.  To take advantage of this special offer, enter the coupon code MyHoliday when placing your order. This coupon has completely been customized for readers of THIS BLOG!!!!  How cool is that??  Click on this link to view the puzzles that are available in this special offer.  And thanks so much, Johann of Montessori Concepts, for your generosity in making this offer.  I feel like I'm in the "big league" of blogging now.  :0)  

 

New Christmas necklace work

Here is a photo that shows the new necklace work I have put out on the art shelf for December.  We haven't had necklace work out since October, so this has been a VERY popular activity. 

 

From top going clockwise are:  red straws (ordered from Discount School Supply), seasonal cupcake liners cut into sixths and hole-punched, white Rexlace coiled and clipped with metal hair clips, pipe-cleaner spirals and green straws.  Other items that will probably find their way into the necklace work this month are punched out yellow stars with holes in the middle and colored red and green pasta noodles.  For those of you who are new to the blog, the necklace work activity is placed on the shelf and next to it are 4 muffin tins.  To do the work, the child takes a muffin tin and places into it the items from the tray (shown above) that they will use for their necklace.  They take the muffin tin to their table and leave the green tray on the shelf so others can simultaneously make a necklace. 

Christmas Card activity

Each time a student has a birthday in my classroom, I put out the Birthday Card Work.  The children enjoy this activity so much that I decided to put out Christmas card making for the last two weeks of school before our winter break.

  

I have this activity set up against the back of one of my math shelves.  That way I can attach a page protector with a sheet of paper that has key spelling words for the activity onto the shelf.  Other materials include a mug of markers, a basket with "cards" (red and green construction paper cut in half and folded in half), a container of Christmas stickers; a basket for the backs of the sticker papers, and a placemat.

   

To do this activity, the child selects a card to decorate.  They use one sticker strip and the markers to decorate their card.  Then they "deliver" their card to its intended recipient or take it home to deliver.

Jingle Bell Bracelets

A few years ago my oldest son and I made jingle bell bracelets for him to give his daycare friends.  When I saw this post from Itty Bitty Love back in November, I immediately wanted to adapt her set-up for jingle bell bracelets in December.  So here is what I did:

   

I have this tray set up on my permanent station in the Practical Life area.  In other words, this tray stays put and the children just stand to do the activity.  However, with the way I've arranged it, it could easily be taken from a shelf and transported to a table.  On the tray are a little basket of red and green pipe cleaners.  I cut about 1-2 inches off so they would fit into the basket.  That also makes them a better size for little wrists.  The green bowl holds gold and silver jingle bells.  And I placed four numbered sticker dots right on the tray.

 

To do the activity the child selects a pipe cleaner and counts out 4 bells, placing them onto the dots as shown above.  Next, they string the bells onto the pipe cleaner, twist the ends, and VOILA!  a jingle bell bracelet is born.

 

 

The tinkle of little bells is making our classroom sound very festive this week!

Christmas Spirals

Inspired by the leaf spirals we made in the classroom this fall, there is a new project on my art shelf this week.  It is basically the exact same project as the leaf spiral with a green paper plate and stars and pom-poms to glue on.

   

Here is how the activity is set up on the bottom shelf of my art shelf.

 

The basket holds green paper plates with the spirals and dots drawn on using a black Sharpie marker.  The brown tray holds a gluing mat (just a vinyl placemat).

 

This divided bowl holds yellow stars punched out using a scrapbooking punch, pom-poms, a Tap'n'glue bottle, a pair of scissors and a pencil.

 

To do this work the child needs to get a plate and the gluing mat and take it to their table.  Then they get the divided plate and bring it to their table.  Using the pencil, they write their name on the back of the plate.  Then, starting at the star, they use the scissors to cut all the way to the middle of the spiral.  The final step is to put a dot of glue on each black dot and adhere either a star or pom-pom to each dot.

 

Once dry, a hole can be punched in the top of the spiral so that a yarn loop for hanging can be added.

 

OOPS!  I thought this photo turned out better than it did.  I think this looks like a stylized kind of retro Christmas tree.  What do YOU think?

Roll-A-Gingerbread game

As I've mentioned before, I have a subscription to the online teacher resource site called Kidssoup.  I have found this website to be a great source of printable games and activities for the various seasons, holidays, and science units that I have planned.  I've also said before that I like to have out various simple games that children can play together.  Many times this year already, I have witnessed my more shy and reserved children beginning to forge friendships with their peers through playing these types of games.  The game I have made up for December is Roll-A-Gingerbread.

   

Here are the game components set up on a tray.  The top basket holds the different parts of the gingerbread cookies.  The bottom basket holds the "direction" card and a die.

 

To play, the children take turns rolling the die and selecting the correct "body part" until they have completed their gingerbread cookie. 

O Christmas Tree

I have put a few Christmas tree decorating activities out in the classroom for December which I will show you in this post.

 

I was really hoping to get a table-top sized Christmas tree for the children to decorate and I even emailed my parents asking for one with no luck.  However, I found this one on top of the refrigerator in the kitchen and it will work fine.  I will definitely be scouting the thrift stores between now and next December, however, because I really wanted a green one. 

   

These photos show the way I have set up the decorations for the tree.  I simply placed all the ornaments in a glass bowl.  Then I found a divided glass tray in the cupboard into which I placed my four strands of silver beads (sorry for the blurry photo!!).

   

Here is a tree in decorated glory.  The bead strands would definitely drape much better on a more tree-like tree.  (I know, I have to let it go!)  The important thing is that the children are enjoying this work and feel good about getting to decorate a tree by themselves.

   

I could not resist buying this adorable little tree at Hobby Lobby.  It is no more than about 8 inches tall.  I also bought the tray and ornaments at Hobby Lobby (love that store!).  The little silver baskets were purchased on a thrifting outing for 25 cents!  So..........another variation of Christmas tree decorating.  I love it!  It's so cute and tiny!  The tree was only 99 cents and was 50% off as well.  Can't beat those prices!

What we've been up to this week

Here is our weekly photo gallery of work in the classroom.  Hope you enjoy it!  Some of the photos show activities that are new that I haven't posted about.  So expect to see lots more new things in the posts over the next few days.

 

This child is working with the nesting Santa dolls.

   

The children are loving being able to decorate this tree.  This has been a great activity for them to do with a friend.  They are so proud when they finish it and usually ask me to take a picture!

   

Tracing the metal insets

 

I ordered this Nativity feltboard set from Oriental Trading.

 

This Nativity puzzle was already in the stash in my classroom.  It is a large floor puzzle and the children have loved doing it.

 

This is a Gingerbread upper/lowercase letter matching activity that I printed from Childcareland.  

 

Two girls did this color matching activity together. 

 

This student is stamping the words she read from the red word drawer.

   

This snake number puzzle is new on the math shelves this week and has been challenging, but popular for the children.

   

As always, the hammering activity is great fun.

 

This student worked very hard for a long time putting together his Christmas bead sculpture.  See the finished sculpture in the photo below.

 

 

I love all the great creations my students build with the colored wooden blocks.

An experiment

I pulled together another new activity for December that is a total experiment.  There is a little story about how this came together.  Over Thanksgiving break I was working at school on some new PL activities.  I was putting some beads away in a cabinet when my eyes fell on a plastic baggie with a bunch of colored hair scrunchies in it.  I had purchased them last school year when I was a special education teacher co-teaching in a regular education classroom.  In first grade math we were going to do an activity where the children were divided into small groups and each group member had a specific role.  To help the children keep track of who was doing what we gave each group member a hair scrunchie to wear on their wrist.  That way, when we gave directions we could say things like:  "The blue person rolls the dice, the green person uses the counters to represent the number, and the red person writes the equation."  I had completely forgotten about the scrunchies until I saw them and then a new activity was born in my brain.  Time will tell whether or not it is something the children enjoy.  I will let the photos illustrate the activity because it would be VERY hard to describe with words only.

 

Here is how I have the activity on the shelf.  Can you tell what to do with it yet?

 

Now can you tell what to do?

 

That's right!  You stretch the scrunchies around the glass jar to make a pattern of Christmas colors.  I have had questions from readers about some of the Practical Life activities I put out.  One question that has come up is whether or not every PL activity should directly relate to a real-life activity.  I am certain that many Montessorians would answer that with an emphatic, YES!  And that's okay.  In my classroom, I do place activities on the shelf that may or may not directly be related to something people do in real life.  And I'm okay with that.  Early in the school year I invited an occupational therapist who I had worked with previously to visit my classroom.  I wanted her input about what activities I should provide to help children practice the full gamut of critical motor skills.  I recalled that she had said having children stretch rubber bands is a good finger/hand strengthening work.  And until now, I had never put out anything like that. (I admit that part of my hesitancy involved disturbing visions of my 4 year old boys shooting rubber bands at one another across the room!)  Anyway........we'll see if this activity interests the children or not.  That's why I've dubbed it "the experiment."  I will watch and observe, just like my genius mentor, Maria.

NOTE:  I wrote this several days ago and am just posting it today.  This work has been out all week and the children are really loving it.  It is kind of hard for them to stretch the scrunchies onto the jar, but they are persistent and so proud of themselves when they achieve it.  The jar looks really pretty with the scrunchie pattern too.  I added a rolled up piece of felt to place the jar on as it was sliding around on the table.   Also, it is easier for some students if they turn the jar upside down to slide the scrunchies on.

Seasonal variations of "old favorites"

The activities shown in this post are all new this week in the classroom. However, each one is a seasonal variation of something we've already had out.  Flower arranging and bead stringing have been out all year with a few variations.  I have found that both of those activities are favorites of the children and are chosen daily. 

   

I added seasonal flowers to our flower arranging work.  The little vases look so festive and fun on our tables during classtime.

 

And here is a seasonal variation of the bead bouquet activity I added to the classroom in November.  For December we are using red, white and green pipe cleaners and star beads.

    

I have had some variation of bead-stringing out all year and it is an activity that is chosen daily by my students.  For December I pulled out some white and red beads to string.  I put these out after school on Monday and my son was with me.  He immediately wanted to string ALL of them and made a pattern of all the white beads, then all the red beads.  He worked steadily until all the beads were on the string.  You can see in the above photo that he already had his coat on, but wouldn't go home until he had done this work!