My Montessori Journey

More fishy work

Here are a few more things that are on the science shelf to support our study of fish.  Expect a post within the next week or so which will give more details about the fish unit.  As you can imagine (just like everyone else) I feel a little strapped for time this week.  I really try to post daily, but I won't have time until later this week to do a more in-depth post about our fish unit.  So, this is another show and tell type post.

I had planned to make a hand-sewn felt playmat with an ocean theme.  BUT.............didn't happen.  So, I just pulled out a piece of plain blue craft felt and cut a strip of tan for the sand and there you have it.  The kids love it!  I don't know where I got the wire fish basket, but I had it left over from when I taught Montessori before.  The green "seaweed" is just that shredded paper grass for Easter baskets.  Add the real shells and plastic fish and you have a fish playset.  What's the purpose of this activity?  Just creativity and fun, pure and simple.

And here is fish pin-punching.  The pad for the punching is a piece of carpet pad.  I recently had a reader ask about the pads I put out for pin-punching.  All my other ones are from Montessori Services.  They last forever and are reasonably priced.  However, I currently only have four of those and they are all being used elsewhere (2 on the art shelf and 2 on the geography shelf).  So, for this work I brought a piece of carpet pad we had at home.  I've had it for a while and my boys use it at home for punching projects they do.  (Mostly my older son does this at home.)  If you go to a store that sells and installs carpet and ask them for a remnant of their thickest carpet pads, you can probably get a good-sized piece and just cut it into small squares (about 6 inches).  Add a push-pin and you're good to go.

Here is a photo which shows the science shelf with the fish work on it.  The bottom has two new fish puzzles that I put out.  I am also going to add Parts of a Fish 3-part cards, Parts of a Fish booklets, and a fish art project to this shelf.  We will probably have the fish unit out for about 3 weeks.  Then we will move on to Amphibians.

Something's fishy...............

...........in my classroom this week.  We are beginning our study of the animal kingdom this week.  The first vertebrates we will study in depth are:  FISH!  For the past several weeks I've been busy at night stitching up little felt fishes to go on the science shelf.  I debated about putting these on the math shelf since they are technically counting fish, but I decided to put them on the science shelf where all the other fish work will be.  In upcoming posts, I'll be showing more of the fish work and explaining how I am introducing this to the children.  Today, I am just showing my little felt fish project.

Here is how the work is set up on a tray.  There is a little blue bowl with clear glass pebbles.  These will represent the "bubbles".  The white metal bucket holds the fish.

To do this work, the child takes the tray to a rug.  He/she places the fish in order from 1-10 as shown.  Then, he/she places the correct number of "bubbles" above the fish to correspond with the number on the fish's body.  The hardest part for them is remembering to place the bubbles above the fish since we usually do this type of activity by placing the counters below the number. 

To make the little fish, I just found a fish pattern at Preschool Express and cut out my fish.  I used wool blend felt and whipstitched around the outside leaving an opening.  I filled them with polyfil and stitched them closed.  Then, I used fabric paint to paint the numbers on (the children thought I had used white glue) and hot-glue to attach the wiggle eyes.  Very tactile and fun!!

On a side note...........check out the post I did last week on our watercolor leaves.  If you scroll down in that post you can see the Giving Tree covered with the leaves the children have painted.

New activities for October

Here are some of the new seasonal activities for October that are going out on the shelves soon.  Most of them are out this week, but there are a few that will probably go out next week.  I am learning to find a good balance of how much new to put out at once.  I'm not sure I've found it yet, but the children do really like to see new things on the shelves.

Pumpkin transfer activity.  The jack-o-lanterns are votive candle holders I picked up at Hobby Lobby.  I got the mini pumpkins there too. They had gold loops for hanging which I snipped off.  The "tray" is actually a black melamine plate from Target.  I love how the jack-os look on the black plate.  There is a small piece of white shelf liner under the jacks so they don't slide around on the plate.

Spooning pumpkins activity.  I found the little brown tub at our local thrift store.  The white tray is a paint palette.

Rice pouring.  The glasses are Halloween votive candle holders with colored rice in them.  We haven't had much luck recently with our dry pouring activities.  Despite several modifications, the children have been spilling them a lot and my little creamer pitcher broke last week.  So..........we'll see how they do with this one.

This is a math activity.  It is a Cards and Counters variation.  The children lay out the numbered cards in order on a rug and then place the appropriate amount of Halloween pencil toppers beneath the numbers.   I found the little felt "bucket" in the Dollar Spot at Target.  Love it!!

Here is a close-up of the pencil toppers in the felt bag.  There are bats, ghosts and jack-o-lanterns.

This is a clothespin activity.  The child simply takes the clothespins and places them around the rim of the orange bowl.  This is a very good activity for developing finger strength in young children.  I haven't had anything like this out yet, so I am curious about how they will respond.

This is a shape patterning activity.  We haven't had anything like this out yet this year either.  It will help give me an idea of which children understand the concept of patterning and which do not.

This is a magnifying glass activity that I downloaded from Kelly's Kindergarten.  The second photo doesn't show it very well, but there is a laminated page with 12 pictures of animals.  There is a corresponding set of 12 cards.  On each card is a teeny tiny picture of an animal.  You have to use the magnifying glass to identify the animal so you can match it to its correct spot on the larger page.  It is a really cool activity.  I can't wait to see how the children like this.  There are three versions of this activity available for download from Kelly's website.  Plus a LOT more cool stuff if you haven't checked it out yet.

Living and Non-living work

This week at line time I have introduced the children to the concept of living versus non-living.  We talked about how each of us is a living thing.  We need air to breathe, food to eat, water to drink and we can grow.  As a group we did a sorting activity using the Living/Non-living cards I had purchased from Lori at Montessori for Everyone.  I laid out a rug in front of me along with the "title" cards for Living and Non-living.  Then I called each child up one at a time and gave them one of the picture cards.  They decided whether it was living or non-living and placed it in the appropriate column on the rug.  This is a fairly easy concept for them.  However, they sometimes have a hard time understanding that plants (and trees and bushes, etc.) are living.  One little girl thought "if it has a face" it's living.  So........we talked about how even though plants don't "have a face", they DO need air (what would happen if we put a plant into a jar and closed the lid?), water, food (I told them that plants don't eat pizza like us, but they do get food from the soil through their roots), and they can grow bigger. 

Now the frog life cycle work on the science shelf has been replaced with the Living/Non-living card work along with a cut and paste that I developed.

Here is the top shelf of the science shelf.  On the bulletin board is a completed Living/Non-living paper done by my oldest son to be used as a control.

To do this work, the child takes a paper from the brown tray, a picture paper from the blue basket, and a wooden bowl with scissors and glue.  They cut the pictures apart and lay them in the appropriate column.  Then they ask a teacher to check their work.  Once it has been checked, they can glue the pictures down.  If you wish to download a copy of the sorting page you can do so at the link below.  I don't have a link for the pictures as I made them using a hard copy.

Download living_nonliving_sorting_page.doc

Frog Life Cycle work

Have I mentioned our new classroom pets?  We now have 4 tadpoles living in our classroom thanks to one of my students who brought them to us (at my request after he brought one for show and share).  I am anxious and excited to raise these little guys to froghood.  I forgot to take a photo of them swimming in their little tank, however.  Hopefully, we'll keep them alive until they become frogs.  That would be very, very exciting.

Because of our new little aquatic friends, I decided to put together a frog life cycle activity for the science shelf.  This shelf has been pretty bare so far since we haven't formally started our study of the animal kingdom.  I was lucky to find some little frog booklets left by one of the previous teachers.  I used the pictures from this work to make what is shown below. 

Here is the "new" top shelf of our science shelf with the frog life cycle work on top.  This shelf is situated directly under a bulletin board.  I attached my example of this work to the bulletin board just above the shelf.  That way, the children will have a master copy to refer to. 

Instead of doing a booklet with pages, I decided to use a paper plate for this work.  I like how this shows the cyclical nature of the life cycle (i.e. how one stage leads to the next and the next in an endless pattern). 

To do this work, the child will take one paper plate from the basket shown above and one paper with pictures.

Along with the plate and paper, they will take a wooden bowl to their table.  It contains the colored pencils, glue stick and scissors they will need to complete the work. 

I will model this activity at line time so the children will know the order of the steps to follow:  color the pictures; cut out the pictures; glue the pictures onto the plate.

Also on the science shelf is a basket which contains the models of the frog life cycle.  I have shown these to the children at line time and they have enjoyed taking them to a table and sequencing them in order as shown in the photo above.

Next week in our weekly "photo gallery" on the blog be sure to look for photos of the frog life cycle work.  I am pretty sure it will be a popular activity.