My Montessori Journey

Desert Animals Books

One of the books I have been reading to the children to go with our desert unit is Way Out in the Desert.  This is a charming little board book based on the poem "Over in the Meadow" and features many desert plants and animals that we will be learning about. 

 

To piggy-back on what we've learned from this book, I made up a little cut and paste booklet activity.  My students LOVE to make little booklets and they really don't take me that long to create.  Below you can see how this work is set up on a shelf.  The children sit at the two white tables to do this activity.

 

There is a basket of "blank" booklets which have the names of the animals printed one per page and a holder with the animal photos to cut out........

 

...........and a basket with 2 pair of scissors, 2 glue sticks and 2 gluing mats plus a jar with a pencil for writing names on the cover of the booklets.

 

These laminated cards are attached to the back of the shelf for reference as the children make their booklets.  They are the same animals from the book, just using real photos of the animals instead of illustrations.

 

This photo shows a student getting ready to glue her scorpion photo in place.  I have found that setting up these booklets in this manner allows even my youngest children to be pretty independent at completing them with minimal adult help. 

 

Desert Sunset Art Project

Inspired by a trip I took to Tucson, Arizona last October, we are studying the desert in our classroom right now.  In addition to learning about how deserts look different from our landscape here in Iowa, we are learning about desert animals.  I came up with a little desert art project that has been out on our art shelf for about a week.  I love see how each child's interpretation of this is different.

Below you can see how I've set this up on the shelf:  a paper holder holds gray construction paper half sheets and brown newsprint paper cut into 3 inch wide strips.  The child takes one of each papers and the green tray to their work space.

 

The green tray has a vinyl mat, a textured plastic template, a box of crayons and a basket with a glue stick.  The first step is to place the brown paper onto the textured template and rub it with a brown crayon.  This makes the "sandy" desert ground.  Then they tear the textured piece in half to make it look even more realistic.

 

Before gluing the sandy ground in place, the child uses the various colored crayons to make "sunset stripes" across the gray paper.  Then the sandy ground is glued to the bottom.  We also have traced cactus to pin-punch and children who have punched out a cactus may add it to their desert scene.  Many children are also adding their own artwork which reflects their individual tastes and abilities.  So fun!

I tried to get the next photo to post horizontally but Typepad didn't cooperate.  This was taken while a child was working on it.

 

Here is another variation.  They have really loved making this project!

 

 

Our February Poem

I know I'm really late posting this again this month.  That's just the way life is going right now.  Here is the poem we've been learning for February.

"Nature's Valentine"

Frost flowers on the window glass,

Hopping chickadees that pass.

Bare old trees that bend and sway,

Pussy willows soft and gray.

Silver clouds across the sky,

Lacy snowflakes flitting by.

Icicles like fringe in line,

That is outdoors' valentine.

 

Here is the poem in our pocket chart along with the accompanying pictures.

 

Here is our poetry basket/tray for this poem:

 

It's hard to see in the photo, but for "frost flowers on the window glass" I adhered snowflake stickers to a small mirror; the little chickadee was a gift from a former student; the "bare old tree" is from my Christmas decorations; pussy willows from Hobby Lobby; cloud picture printed from the internet; foam snowflake from my stash; you can't see them well, but the icicles are plastic ones from my mom's Christmas tree decorations; the pink heart is cut from felt.  I LOVE seeing pairs of children taking this work from the shelf and retelling the poem together.  It truly warms my heart!

 

Heart Tarts Baking Activity

In lieu of a traditional Valentine "party", we celebrated the day of love in our classroom by having a few parent helpers come in and bake "heart tarts" with the children.  I am loving these little seasonal activities so much and feel that the children get so much out of the extra one-on-one time with our adult helpers.  I think the parents have also enjoyed the opportunity to come in and help without having to plan and organize everything (which was how we did holiday parties previously).  I just have everything ready and tell them what to do!! 

Today I had four parent helpers and they took the children in groups of four into an adjacent classroom to make "heart tarts".  I saw this idea in the February issue of Family Fun magazine and thought it would be an easy and fun cooking activity to do for Valentine's Day.  Of course, it would be fun to do at home with your little ones at any time!!  CLICK HERE for the recipe on the Family Fun website.  The photo below is from that website too.  I forgot to take a "finished" photo of our tarts today!  However, I did sneak in to snap several photos to show the process the children used to make their tarts.  Scroll down to see those photos.

First of all, the children rolled out a little section of pie crust.  The recipe called for rolling it a little thinner than it comes in the package.

 

Then they cut out two hearts with a cookie cutter and spooned some strawberry jam onto one heart.

 

Then they wet their index finger and traced the outside of the heart to moisten the edge so the top heart would stick to it.

After adding the top heart, they used a fork to "crimp" the edges. 

 

Then they brushed some melted butter on top with a pastry brush.

 

The final step was to place their tarts onto some parchment paper on a cookie sheet.  We just wrote their names right on the paper with a pencil so each child could eat their own tart after the moms baked them. 

 

This was a really fun experience for the children.  They were about 50-50 on whether or not they liked the tarts.  Nearly everyone took a nibble at least and many had only crumbs left on their plate afterwards!

Hands and Hearts

For some reason I have really been into painting the children's hands and feet for parent gifts this year.  This is actually the first year I've done any of these hands and feet projects.  A while back I had seen this idea for making a valentine card and knew I wanted to do this with the children to give to their parents.  I won't lie.........it takes a lot of time to do these projects and does take me away from being available to the whole group during work time for a good chunk of time.  However, I have found that the children love it and the parents treasure these keepsakes, so I am really glad we've done them. 

These would make a great gift for grandparents or they'd just be great to do with your own young children to keep as a memento of when their hands were so very small.

In case you are planning to do this with a group of children, here is how I did it.  I had a big bowl of warm soapy water on the table along with some towels.  I also had a dish with red tempera paint and a brush.  I painted the children's hands one at a time and washed them in the soapy water in between (i.e. I painted their right hand, washed it, then painted their left hand and washed it).  If you painted both hands at once it could get pretty messy pretty quickly, I'm just sayin'. 

Another tip is to model with your hand how the child should hold their hand, with fingers together and thumb sticking out.  This can be challenging for the youngest children.  To get a really good "heart" image, you will need to bend the child's thumb down a bit right before pressing their hand to the paper.  I got better at this with practice.  When the two hands are painted and pressed as shown, the white space in the middle resembles a heart shape.  I accentuated this by gluing a little punched out heart in the space.  Of course you could omit that if you prefer.

Since these were parent gifts, I also added a 2X4" shipping label printed with the saying, "Children hold our hearts in the palm of their hands."  If you would like to download and print this label, please click the link below.  It is a document set to print a page of 10 adhesive shipping labels.  If you don't want to print them as labels, you could copy and save the image, print it on a piece of cardstock and print your child's hands directly to that paper.

Download Children hold our hearts labels

Below you can see a finished page.  The pages were actually oriented horizontally and had a name sticker with the child's name in the bottom right corner.  For privacy purposes, I cropped that out in the photo below.

 

A "Special Delivery" Game

I made up a little group game to go with our "special delivery" Valentine mail bag.   We have been playing this game during group time this week and it has been a real hit! 

To play this game we used our mail bag and some laminated name cards, one for each child.  To start the game, I placed all the name cards into the mail bag.  Then I walked around the middle of the group (with a peppy jaunt in my step!) and sang the following song (which I also made up): 

Tune:  I'm a Little Teapot

I'm a little postman short and sweet,

The nicest little postman that you will ever meet.

I deliver valentines on Valentine's Day.

I put one in the middle and you take it away.

I do a little knee bend while singing the "short and sweet" line, and on the third line, I start opening the mail bag.  I remove one name card and "throw" it onto the floor in the middle of the group.  The child whose name is represented then gets up and retrieves their "mail", gives the card to me and they become the next "short and sweet" postman.  We play until everyone has a turn.

I love watching the children during these types of games.  Some are very hesitant to have all the attention on them, but with a bit of coaxing they have all participated in this activity.  Some are not shy at all and "ham it up" when it is their turn to be postman.  This has been a sweet little game for us to enjoy. They LOVE being the postman!! 

Tip:  If you don't have a cute handmade valentine mail bag, don't fret!  Just grab an old ladie's handbag with a shoulder strap.  Your kids will NOT care a bit what the mail bag looks like, I guarantee it!

 

"Special Delivery"

I am super-excited to see how the children like this activity as this is the first year I've had it out.  I think it will be really really fun for them.  My inspiration for creating this work was this tutorial over at The Crafting Chicks.  When I saw their adorable felt envelopes I immediately thought, "How cute and fun would it be to make one of these for the classroom so the children could deliver valentines to each other using the special mail bag?"  So.......this past weekend I whipped it together.  I used my sewing machine and sewed white ric-rac right onto the bag at the same time I was sewing the pieces together.  I used a long piece of ric-rac for the should strap too.  The pink heart on the flap was sewn on partly as decoration and partly to cover up the stitching from the Velcro I sewed on to fasten the flap closed.  (NOTE:  If you don't have access to a sewing machine, I am pretty sure this would work equally well using hot glue.  In fact, I think that's how it is shown in the tutorial.)

To do this "special delivery" work, the child takes the "mail tray" from the shelf.  You can see this tray below.  I printed and laminated 2 sets of "love mail" cards (8 cards in all).  The download for these cards is available in the tutorial I linked to above.  I placed these on the tray along with a dry-erase marker and piece of felt (for erasing) and a basket of photo cards of the children.  We use these namecards each day as placecards for snack time.  They have a photo of the child with their first name printed below.  You can see that in the second photo.

 

 

The child chooses who they would like to make a valentine for and writes the name of that child after the "to:" using the dry-erase marker.  Then they sign their own name after the "love:". 

 

Next, they go fetch the "mail bag" which is hanging from a hook near our line area. 

 

They slip their card into the mail bag as shown below.  Finally, they are ready to deliver their mail to the recipient.  They will practice using their grace and courtesy skills as they say, "Happy Valentine's Day" to their friend.  The friend will then reply, "Thank you."  The recipient of the card then returns the card to the "mail tray", first using the felt square to erase the names so the card can be "recycled" for use by another child.  The "mail carrier" returns the mail bag to the hook and the "mail tray" to the shelf.

 

 

Heart Cutting Work

I have probably said it here before, but I think it is worth repeating that very simple activities give young children such joy.  This activity is a perfect example of a simple activity that gives the child such a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.  I have this work set up on my art shelf as shown below.  The basket contains several folded pieces of construction paper in various "valentine" colors, a vinyl mat, and a small basket with a pair of scissors, a marker, and a cardboard heart template.

 

To do this work the child takes the basket to a table and selects the color they would like for their heart.  They place the vinyl mat on the table and carefully align the straight edge of the template with the folded edge of the paper (I gave this lesson to the whole group; however, many children still learned the "hard way" that lining up the edge on the "open" side results in a heart that falls apart!).  Next, they trace the outline of the template using the marker.  Finally, they cut on the traced line and open up the folded paper to reveal their heart!  What a sense of wonder they have when something that doesn't look quite heart-like produces a loving shape nonetheless!  I wish I had snapped a photo of some little hearts that were cut out this way this week.  Many times over a little one came to me with eyes shining with pride, proudly displaying what they had created all on their own!  So precious to witness!  I know that these happily-handmade little tokens of love were carefully stowed in backpacks or hidden behind backs and a smiling face, just waiting to be presented to loved ones who (I am sure) received their simple gifts with gratitude.

 

Some Valentine-related work

Here are a few things that are out on my Practical Life shelves right now.  First up is a "heart punching".  The basket holds small (3X6 inch) pieces of construction paper, two sizes of heart punches and a basket of little teeny ziploc bags (found at HobLob in the jewelry section).  To do this work, the child uses the punches to punch out little hearts.  The baggies are used to transport the little hearts home.  They usually choose to keep the "negative" space of the paper with the heart "holes" in it too.  I told them their moms or dads would love to use it as a bookmark!

 

It's hard to see in the photo, but this is a marble transfer work with white marbles and a pink starfish suction pad.

 

A water transfer activity using two halves of a thrifted heart-shaped glass box, one side filled with red water.  They use the eye dropper to transfer water from one heart to the other.  A sponge is included for wiping up spills.   They love the challenge of this work.

 

I have posted this before, but I love to put out red and white feathers in these awesome purple metal footed bowls each February.  They use a clothespin to grasp the feathers and move them from one bowl to the other.

 

Book Giveaway

This is not a Montessori-related book, but I wanted to let you all know that I have a copy of the book Reshaping It All: Motivation for Physical and Spiritual Fitness by Candace Cameron Bure to give away.  Please CLICK HERE to read my full review of this book on my other blog.  You can register for the giveaway on that blog as well.