My Montessori Journey: Eyeball sticks

Is that an attention-grabbing title or what? I am just sitting here relaxing a little after finishing my first full week of teaching in my Montessori preschool classroom. It has been a great week, and I feel very happy. Really. just. amazing. (and kind of tired)

A while back I wrote some detailed posts about how I go about introducing sounds in my classroom. Today I wanted to show you an additional activity that I hadn't mentioned before. To completely understand what I am writing about, please go back and read this post. And especially if you are the parent of a child in my class, you will want to read that particular post. It really gives a lot of detailed information about how I approach teaching the children letters and sounds. AND........several little friends have already started their red sound books this week. Yippee!!

OK...........after a child has learned a new sound using the sandpaper letter, writing in the sand tray, gluing it into their sound book, etc., they can take an "eyeball stick" (I don't have a more correct term for them.......sorry!) and try to find their sound somewhere in the room. Most often they can find the sounds on the nametags of our cubbies OR in the books in our library area.

Here is the table that always stays set up to do sound work. At the left is the sand tray where we write our sound with our fingers. Next is a cup with the "eyeball sticks", then a little basket which holds a Sharpie marker for writing their name on the sound book along with a glue stick and gluing mat to glue in their paper letters. (See this post for a little more info about the paper letters.)

NOTE: Also in the can with the eyeball sticks are some pipe cleaners which are bent at the end in a circular shape. There are some curly ribbons tied to the circle part. These can also be used to find a letter or word.

Here you can see that I found an "a" with my eyeball stick. So far I have only just begun to introduce these to the children. I actually had the can of sticks on another shelf for most of the week until one of the children asked what they were for. Then I had the brainstorm about using them immediately after their sound lesson to find the letter in the classroom. So I moved the can over to the sound table for easy access and to remind me to have them do it!