My Montessori Journey

500th Post!

If my sources are correct this is my 500th post.  That seems like a milestone to me.  I never dreamed when I started documenting my transition from public school special education teaching back to Montessori preschool teaching that this little blog would gather such a following.  I am truly so grateful for all of you who read this blog regularly and take the time to send me sweet comments.  It is so fun to check my blog email every day and hear from readers all over the world.  It's really a small world after all.

I wish I had something big and cool to give away in honor of the 500th post.  What I do have is a pair of pumpkin shaped silicone baking cups that would be oh-so-cute on your Practical Life shelves in October.  So.........if you'd like a chance to win, please leave a comment telling me what you'd like to read more of on the blog.  Be as specific as possible.  I don't think I've ever officially asked, so please DO TELL!  Please comment by 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 2nd.  Saturday night I'll generate a winner using the random number generator.  Be sure to leave your comment in the comments section and not in a separate email to me to be counted in the drawing for the pumpkin cups.

I can't wait to hear from you.........and thanks again for reading!

Cutie Pies

Monday and Tuesday were big-time fun days in our classroom.  We finally baked our little apple pies with the apples we had picked last week.  I recruited the help of a few moms and grandmas with this project.  We set everything up in a separate room from the classroom and my assistant took the children out in small groups so they could each make their own little apple pie.  During this time I stayed in the classroom with the remaining students and we had a normal work period.

The first step was to use the awesome apple peeler/corer/slicer machine (we borrowed these from some moms and grandmas too!) to peel, core and slice the apples.  The children loved being able to turn the crank.  Who doesn't love using a new gadget? (Now I want one of my own.  I have told my favorite thrift shop owner, Terri, to let me know when she gets one in again.)

 

Next the children chopped their apple slices into smaller pieces (with close supervision........although Miss Melissa told me the knives weren't that sharp.  Maybe because I bought 4 for $1 at Dollar General!).

 

We used refrigerated pie crust for the crusts.  The children used a drinking glass to cut out circles from the dough.

 

Next, they placed a circle into the bottom of a muffin tin and added their chopped apples on top.  Then they sprinkled the apples with a teeny bit of flour and a teeny bit of cinnamon/sugar mixed together.  Then they added the top crust and cut a little slit in the top with the knife.  To keep track of whose pie was whose, I made a little "muffin tin map" on a piece of paper and color-coded the muffin tins with a piece of tape.   When a child made their pie, the adult wrote their name in the corresponding circle on the map so that when the pies were removed, they could place each child's pie on a paper plate marked with their name.  Good sanitary habits are our motto!

 

 

 

I loved how cute and kid-sized these pies were when they came out.  Oh.........the adults sprayed the inside of the muffin tins with cooking spray and the pies came out just great!  Most of the adults who helped remarked about how easy these pies were to make and how yummy they tasted.  We baked them in a convection oven at 395 degrees for about 10 minutes.  I had made a trial batch at home in my regular oven at 425 degrees for 20 minutes.  We will definitely plan to make some little "cutie pies" again next fall.  It was a wonderful hands-on learing experience for my little ones and I know they won't forget making their own little pies.

 

 

Fall Bingo Game

I was very excited to find this cute bingo game on Kidssoup.  I don't know if they have added it recently or if I just missed it last fall.  Anyway, I printed and laminated it right away so I could place it out on the shelves this week.  It comes with four bingo boards, so four children can play.  It also has a set of "caller" cards.  I am thinking that one child will be the caller, and up to four children can use the boards.  I don't usually have activities out that can accommodate five children, so we'll see how it goes.  I have set it up on the shelf with a tray to hold the bingo cards and the basket of caller cards and a bowl of field corn on top as shown below.

 

To play this game, the caller removes the top card from the stack in the basket and names the picture.  This is good for vocabulary and oral language development.  Each child then looks on their bingo card to see if they have a matching picture.  If so, they cover it with a kernel of corn.  Play continues until someone gets a "bingo" by placing four kernels in a row either vertically,horizontally, or diagonally.  Then they say, "Bingo!" and name the pictures in their "bingo" row.  I am pretty sure this will be a very popular game for groups of friends.

 

 

Which one is different?

I'd like to share another activity that I've put out on the science shelf during our study of the life cycle of apples.   I've had these cards printed for a few years but this is the first year I've put them out.  These cards are from the wonderful website, Prekinders.

Each card has four pictures with one picture that is different.  I added a little basket with green marble chips.  To do this work the child lays out the cards and places a marble chip on the one that is "different."  I have been surprised how difficult this is for many of my children.  Still, they are choosing this from the shelf quite a bit.  On the Montessori For Everyone website under the Free Downloads section in the Language section, Lori has a similar activity called "What Doesn't Belong?".  I may print that out to add to our classroom shelves later.  I am filing this post under "language" even though it's on my science shelf.  Being able to discriminate and categorize is an important skill for reading and writing.   If I print out the "What doesn't belong?" activity, I'll probably put it on the shelf with my other pre-reading activities.

 

 

My passion for Compassion

Tomorrow morning (Sunday, Sept. 26th) I am going to speak at both services at my home church about Compassion International.  I am not nervous about it.  In fact, I enjoy public speaking.  (I know, that's kind of odd!)  However, as I was thinking about sharing my passion for Compassion I realized that in this little corner of the blogosphere I have a pretty good-sized audience to reach out to as well.  (I just checked my stats and saw that I have between 2000-3000 page views a day!)  So I've decided to open up a little more about my personal life and share with you about my experience with Compassion.

My family has sponsored a little boy in Honduras named Fernando for about a year now.  It all started when my husband and I saw a Natalie Grant and Jeremy Camp concert last fall.  I distinctly remember not feeling well during the concert........I was starting to come down with something.  In fact, I think I may have been feverish.  Anyway, during the break I snuck downstairs and headed straight for the Compassion table.  I had been toying with the idea of sponsoring a child for several years and decided that I would just do it.  We had gone to a MercyMe concert a few years before and thought about sponsoring a child through Compassion but felt we couldn't afford to do it at the time.  I knew that our finances were not a whole lot better in terms of having more resources, but I just felt compelled to take the plunge.  The cost is $38 per month.  In no way are we affluent people.  I am a preschool teacher in a private setting and my husband is a college professor.  We drive used vehicles.  My van has rust on the bottom of it and over 108,000 miles.  I buy a lot of my clothes at Goodwill.  Still, I can assure you that we do not miss the $38 per month.  AT.  ALL.

I chose Fernando's packet from the table because he is roughly the same age as my oldest son.  We received a photo of him with some information about his living situation.  To date we have received four letters from Fernando and just today I opened the mailbox to find an updated photo of him.  We pray for him and his family and write letters to him.  We will sponsor him until he reaches adulthood.  And maybe someday we'll get to meet him.  For now, we think of him as a part of our family.  We feel blessed to have a "son" and "brother" somewhere else in the world.  We are making a personal connection with him through our correspondence and his life and that of his family is better because of our sponsorship.

If you have any interest whatsoever in sponsoring a child through Compassion, I encourage you to click through the link in this post or to click on the link I've added to the right sidebar of the blog.  You CAN make the difference in a child's life.  And in return, your life will be changed. 

Note to Self:

Do NOT get a week or more behind on replying to blog-related emails.  Yikes!  I just spent about 2 hours getting caught up on all the emails I"ve neglected to reply to.  If I still haven't replied to a specific question you've sent me, please send it again.  I am pretty busy right now getting ready for an upcoming presentation at a conference in October as well as teaching a class starting in 2 weeks.  That's on top of a few committees I'm on and preparing the classroom and trying to be a good mom and wife.  So........I am feeling a bit swamped.  I'm not trying to whine about it.  It just is what it is and I love being involved in lots of things. 

Thanks so much to everyone who reads the blog.  I can't tell you how much I appreciate you taking the time to read and leave a comment.  I am HORRIBLE about leaving comments on other blogs although I read many.  I should really try to do better with that.

Anyway, please contact Jamie at Milk Allergy Mom if you are planning to be part of her suction cup pad swap.  She would really like to wrap that up so people can start swapping. 

I'll be writing a post soon with the artists we'll be studying this year since several of you requested that.  I also will be posting about some new things on our shelves.  Thanks for your patience as I get caught up.

Leaf Stringing

OK.........there's a little backstory to how this activity evolved.  First of all, I've never seen this particular activity anywhere else in blog-land.  Chances are good that someone somewhere has done it, but I've never seen it.  Here's the story.  I have been writing weekly posts for my local MOPS website called "Mommy and Me Mondays" where I give our MOPS moms ideas for simple activities to do with their young children.  For this past Monday I had what I thought was a great idea......to use dollar store silk leaves and decoupage them onto a clear glass vase as a fall decoration.  I loved that young children could easily be involved with spreading the Mod-Podge onto the vase.  One problem:  the silk leaves wouldn't stick to the vase no matter how much Mod-Podge my son and I slathered onto it.  I swear I've seen this idea done somewhere (the leaves on vase idea, not the one I'm sharing here) but maybe it was with real leaves that had been pressed flat.  That might work better than the silk ones.  I think the problem was that the silk ones weren't flat enough to mold themselves to the contours of the vase.  Anyhoo...........I realized the futility of this craft idea on Sunday afternoon and had to get a post up by Monday morning.  That's when the following idea was born.

First I took my package of $1 Dollar General leaves (I had 2 packages but one would be PLENTY for this activity)..........



I used my scissors to cut slits into the leaves as shown below.

 

Then I found a fall ribbon and cut about a 2-foot length.  I folded the ends over and sewed a button to each end.  This will prevent the ends from fraying and will make them sturdier and thus easier for little hands to manipulate.

 

I placed the leaves into a basket with the ribbon in a little wooden bowl.  A very pretty fall presentation. (NOTE:  I haven't actually put this on the shelves yet.  It will probably go out next week.)

 

Since I was trying this out at home, the photo below shows my youngest son placing the leaves onto the ribbon.  He loved working with them and said he was making a pattern.  (I thought I should explain the bare belly in the photo.  We don't usually take our shirts off at preschool.  At home it's okay though.)

 

Here is my son holding up his leaf garland.  It looks very pretty.  He wanted to hang it up in our house right away.  I told him that this one is for Mommy's classroom.  Luckily I have a BUNCH of leaves left over and we'll make a longer one to decorate our home this weekend.

 

I am pretty sure that my little preschoolers will love doing this work.  They may even want to make one at home too! 

Life Cycle of an Apple Tree work

This week we are picking apples from a tree near our playground.  We have been walking by this tree every day on our way to recess and we usually stop beneath it to sing our new apple song.  We have borrowed a few "apple pickers" from our families since the branches are too tall for us to reach. Next week we are going to bake little apple pies with our apples.  I will be sure to post about that process....so stay tuned.

At group time this week we are learning a little more about how apples grow.  I have read parts from the book How Do Apples Grow? by Betsy Maestro.  This book has beautiful illustrations and lots of great information about the life cycle of an apple tree.

 

On our science shelf this week is an activity where the children can sequence a set of photos to show the life cycle of an apple tree.  To make this work I used images from a free download from Montessori for Everyone.  It is under the "Botany" section in the free downloads.  Lori has so many beautiful mateirals on her website.  I have purchased many from her.  I also have a set of printed and laminated apple life cycle 3-part cards on the shelf.  I used those to make the cut and paste paper for this activity.

This is how I've set up the materials on a tray on my science shelf.  There is a little woven tray which holds the cut-apart pictures.  I copied them on a color copier and they look awesome!  Then there is a stack of white (cheap-o) paper plates which have an address label stuck to the middle.  It says, "Life Cycle of An Apple Tree."  You can download a sheet of the labels using the link below.  And we have a little basket with scissors, gluestick and gluing mat.

Download Life Cycle of Apple Tree labels

 

This completed life cycle plate is stuck on the wall near the science shelf to use as a control for the work.  I love using a plate for life cycle activities instead of a booklet because they really demonstrate the cyclical nature of life cycles so well.

 

Ten Red Apples by Pat Hutchins

For the past week we have been reading the book Ten Red Apples by Pat Hutchins.  This is a fun, rhyming, rhythmic text that children can easily begin to "read" along with an adult. It also reinforces math concepts in that one apple is removed from the tree on each page.  Children can predict how many apples will be left on the next page. 

When I plan to add an interactive activity to our story time, I always spend about a week just reading the text to the children so they can become familiar with it without the distraction of props or materials.  Then I add the props to our story time the following week.

This summer I found some printable materials to go with this book at Hubbard's Cupboard.  (A great website if you have never checked it out.)  CLICK HERE to go to the page about Ten Red Apples.  You will have to scroll down to where the pocket chart activity is and you will find the printables to download.  I loved the way this activity was described at Hubbard's Cupboard; however, I enjoy making hand-sewn props for my classroom.  So instead of using the apple cards in the printables, I sewed up some felt apple beanbags.  I used this pattern from Making Learning Fun to make the felt apples.  (Sidenote:  When I make things with felt I have found that I love working with wool blend felt so much more than the cheap acrylic felt you can usually find at craft stores.  If you are interested in purchasing the "good stuff", I always order online from Colonial Crafts.  They ship superfast and their prices are reasonable.  Their wool "squares" are 12 X 18 inch rectangles which is much bigger than the typical acrylic pieces.) 

For our group activity, I placed the ten felt apples into a basket along with the "character cards" I printed from Hubbard's Cupboard.  The children passed the basket around the circle, each child taking one item out of the basket.  Then I read the book out loud.  When I read the part about an animal eating an apple, the child holding that animal card stood up and took an apple from someone holding an apple.  Then they returned to their place on the line with the apple and animal card.  We tried this for the first time today and the children really loved this activity.  In a week or so I will put it out on the shelf for them to use as an independent activity.

 

Here is a close-up of the little apple bean-bags.  I was very happy with how they turned out.  I took the brown stem pieces and folded them in thirds and hand-stitched them to make them more "stemmy".  Then I inserted the stem and a felt leaf between the two layers of red apple and zig-zagged around the edges, leaving a small opening for adding lentils.  Then I zig-zagged the opening closed.  I just love these little apples. 

 

"Where I Live" books

Each year in the fall we learn the "Planet Earth" song at group time.  We sing it using the necklaces I made and holding the puzzle pieces from our puzzle maps.  CLICK HERE for a post that describes the song and necklaces in detail.

In the past I have always put out little "Where I Live" booklets for the children to color as an extension of our group activity and song.  CLICK HERE to read about how I did this in the past.

I was never completely satisfied with the booklets I had put out because they were basically little coloring books and did not require the children to do anything more than color them.  This year I changed it up a little bit.  I made new masters of my booklet pages, taking off the pictures and just leaving the text.  Then I made a little cut and paste paper using the pictures.  Now the children have to cut apart the pictures and glue them to the correct pages.  I took apart my master booklet and mounted the pages to the back of the shelf for control cards.  My set-up is shown in the photo below:  (L to R on top of the shelf): A basket with "Where I Live" booklets, a tray with the cutting pictures, a jar with pencils for writing names on the booklets, a basket with 2 pair of scissors, 2 gluesticks and 2 gluing mats.  You can see the control cards stuck to the shelf. 

 

Close-up of the first two control cards..........

 

Close-up of the booklets and tray of cut-apart pictures.........

 

I did not snap a picture of the inside of the booklets, but basically they are identical to the control cards shown except they are black and white and have text only, no pictures. 

My students have really done a great job completing these independently.  I hope they are taking them home and singing the song to their families as they "read" the booklets.