My Montessori Journey

A few oldies but goodies

For the parents of my current students who look at this blog for updates (as well as those of you who don't have the time or inclination to read through the entire archives of this blog!), I wanted to share links to a few activities that are on our shelves now that I've written about in past years.

If your child has been trying to describe the ROTTEN EGG GAME to you, CLICK HERE to read all about it.  It is great fun to play this with a friend.

Similarly, if you have been the recipient of some darling CHICK DRAWINGS, CLICK HERE to see how this work is set up on our shelves so you can see the steps your child used to create his/her artwork.

On our math shelf, we have this EASTER COUNTING GAME which is also fun to play with a friend.

I also have out many of the activities that I have linked to in THIS POST.

Eagle Cam

I have hooked up my laptop computer in the classroom several times during the past few weeks so the children could watch the Eagle Cam.  It has been so exciting to see the eagle "mommy and daddy" take care of the three little eaglets.  Our eagle watching has inspired some amazing child-initiated art projects including the one shown below. 

Last week there was a HUGE fish clearly visible in the eagle's nest.  In the project shown below, the little girl drew and cut out a fish (far right) to include on the nest.  She drew and cut out the baby eagles in the center.  I am always so amazed at what these little ones come up with.  They are so creative!

 

Collaborative Easter Egg Mural

For the past week or so we have had out this activity which is a variation of the Rainbow Project I wrote about here.  Set-up is shown below.

 

This photo was taken last week.  Our egg is now much more filled in.  I will have to try to edit this post with an updated photo.

 

Shape Pattern Work

The work I'm posting about is no longer on our shelves, but I realized I hadn't written about it yet.  This year is the first time I've put it out, so you won't find it in the archives either.  Below you can see how I had it set up on my stationary shelf. 

From left:  a basket of various colors of construction paper, a basket with strips of plain white cardstock, a basket with a gluestick, a basket with the pattern cards, a tray with three shape punches, and in the center of the green placemat, a Punch-Aid.

 

To do this work, the child selects a pattern card.  (I made these by punching the shapes from black construction paper, gluing them into various patterns, and laminating the cards.)  Then they choose a color (or two colors) of construction paper and use the Punch-Aid and punches to punch out the shapes they need.  For the card shown below, they would punch 4 squares and 2 circles.  Next, they get a strip of white cardstock and glue the shapes to it, following the pattern on the card.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a "finished" photo, but I am pretty sure you get the idea!!  This was a very popular activity during the two weeks I had it out.  If you have seasonal punches, this would be fun to put out with various seasonal variations.

 

Mary Cassatt Artist Study Project

I am pretty behind in posting about our artist studies.  We last learned about Mary Cassatt.  We have studied her painting, After the Bath.  We learned that Mary Cassatt loved to paint children and families. 

Our project to go with this artist was self-portraits.  I set this project up as shown below.  When introducing this project I pointed out that Mary Cassatt paid close attention to the details of the people she painted.  Details such as hair color, eye color, etc.  In the set-up below I placed a little mirror on an easel.  I modeled studying my face in the mirror and talked out loud about the shape of my face, color of my hair and eyes, etc.  I kept looking into the mirror and describing the details of my face that I noticed such as my glasses, eyebrows, ears, and earrings.  After describing them I added each detail to my own "face" self-portrait.  After this group lesson, the work was set up for the children to do independently.  I was so thrilled with the attention to detail in their portraits, especially because we had recently done full-body self-portraits for our parent conference portfolios and few of their portraits had as much detail as the ones they drew for this activity. 

Following is a gallery of some of the portraits that were completed during this project.  I love how much they vary...........as well as how much they resemble the sweet little artists who created them!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Collaborative Rainbow Project

Here is another "late" post of something we worked on during the week of St. Patrick's Day.  Again, I've decided to post it because this concept could easily be adapted for use at any time of the year. 

I took a large piece of poster board and sketched a rainbow onto it.  Then I set up a little "cutting" station where the children could choose one strip of one color and cut it into small pieces.  Then, they glued the cut pieces onto the rainbow in the appropriate arch.

 

Here is the cutting station:  the blue basket is there to catch the small pieces of paper after they are cut.

 

The (very crudely drawn) rainbow...........

 

........close-up of the arches with color names written in.

 

Here is what the rainbow looked like when we first started it.

 

And here is what it looks like now that it's finished.  It's still up in our classroom.  I think we'll do something similar with a large Easter egg during April.  The children enjoyed collaborating on this project, and it was something they could all do successfully!

 

Shamrock Counting (a bit late!!)

Wow! I am sincerely sorry that I haven't posted in so long.  Parent-teacher conferences and two fundraising events are now behind me.  (Not to mention plenty of events involving my family.) I vow to get back to doing regular posts.  To be honest, sometimes I am just too tired at night to feel motivated to write blog posts.  Or I'm folding laundry, straightening up the house, surfing the internet and reading OTHER people's blogs (!), reading, etc.  You know, just living life and relaxing.  BUT.......I do enjoy blogging, so here I am, back at it again!

I know I'm posting this activity late since we did it for St. Patrick's Day.  However, the idea of this work could be easily adapted to any season or holiday, or just used any old time to reinforce number concepts.  That's why I decided to go ahead and post it even though it's late.

Below you can see how I had this work set up on the shelf.  I kept it out on the math shelf for a few weeks.  The left basket held "grid" papers and my punching tool.  The right basket held pieces of green construction paper along with a little basket with a glue stick and a teeny shamrock punch.  There was also a little gluing mat (just a vinyl placemat cut into a small piece) tucked in there.

 

The photo below shows a close-up of the grid papers.  I don't have a source for this.  I found the grid in a file cabinet in my office.  It actually went to 10, but I adapted it to just go to 5.

 

This whole activity was inspired by my discovery of the small shamrock punch when I was looking in a cupboard in my storage area. So fun to find new materials to inspire new activities!

 

To do this activity the child punched out shamrocks and glued them in place according to the number at the beginning of each row. 

 

This photo shows a completed grid.  Even my youngest students were able to independently complete this activity using the Punch Aid.  (NOTE:  A parent bought my punch-aid at a garage sale.  THIS LINK has something very similar.  I don't think the one I have is manufactured anymore.)  This would be easy to adapt using any seasonal punches you have on hand.  I am thinking of making something similar for Easter using a little chick or duck punch.  Flowers for spring would be fun too!

 

There Was a Coyote Who Swallowed a Flea

Another fun (and totally silly) book we have read quite often during our desert unit is There Was a Coyote Who Swallowed a Flea by Jennifer Ward.  This is a silly and outrageous version of the "Old lady who swallowed a fly" books, and it's set in the desert. 

 

 

I wanted to make a project to go along with this book and was thrilled to discover a free printable activity from the author's website.  I used it to make two activities for the children to do independently.  CLICK HERE for a link to the website where you can print your own copy.

The photo below shows the shelf in my science area where I have set up this work.  The middle shelf holds all the materials for this particular book.

 

At the far left in the photo above is a basket which has a laminated numbered strip and laminated pictures of everything the coyote "ate" in the story.  To do this work the child unrolls the strip and places the picture cards in correct order.  They are also numbered on the back so the work is self-correcting.

 

Below you can see the first two cards placed on the strip.  Typepad would not allow me to rotate the photo.....so I apologize for its position.

 

Next to the basket with the sequencing activity are two trays with pages printed directly from the author website.  The child takes one page from each tray and a basket with scissors, glue and a gluing mat (shown at far right in the first photo).  They cut out the pictures and sequence them in order on the grid page.  Then they can take the paper home and retell the story to their family.  Retelling a story is wonderful for working on oral language skills as well as memory.

 

 

Group Activity for "Way Out in the Desert" Book

Wow!  Sorry I've been absent from the blog for so long.  Life gets busy.  Anyway, I wanted to post a group activity we have done recently to go with the book Way Out in the Desert.  We have used this book as a literature-based way to get to know several desert animals.  In fact, this book prompted me to create a desert animals booklet-making activity that you can read about here. 

For our group activity I used laminated pictures of the ten desert animals from the book and numeral cards 1-10.  I placed these into a cloth bag.  At group time, the children passed the bag around the line and took a card from the bag without peeking.  Each child had either an animal picture or a numeral card.  As they passed the bag I asked each child to name their numeral or animal.  Once everyone had a card, I read the book aloud.  When I read each page the children with the corresponding numeral and animal picture came up and placed them into a pocket chart.  When I finished reading the book, the children and I "read" the pocket chart (i.e. "one horned toad, two hummingbirds".......etc.).  This was a great way to involve the children in the rereading of a familiar text.  It also helped to reinforce the vocabulary of our desert unit.

 

 

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.