My Montessori Journey

Number Books

When I taught in a Montessori preschool previously, I used number books to help the children identify and name numerals.  These are very similar to the sound books we use when introducing the sandpaper letters.  I have been meaning to get these ready for the shelf for a while and finally got it completed Friday afternoon.

This is the basket I put together to hold the number book work.  A child would do this work after doing a lesson with me or my assistant using the Red and Blue Rods and the Sandpaper Numbers. 

In this photo you can see what would be used when a child is ready to add "3" to their number book.  The prerequisite work would be counting the "3" rod of the Red and Blue Rods and pairing it with the "3" sandpaper number (shown in the photo).  After tracing the 3 with their fingers several times with teacher guidance, the child would use the glue stick and gluing mat (a placemat cut into a small rectangle) and glue the 3 into their Number Book.  Then they would "read" the book to the teacher.

The only thing I might want to add to this work is a sand tray.  I have one on my little sound table where I introduce the sandpaper letters.  After the child traces the letter with their fingers, they write it in the sand tray several times.  They LOVE LOVE LOVE doing this.  So.............I may use that sand tray for numbers as well OR make a different one for the math shelf.  We'll see..........

NOTE:  I would never put the numerals into the book in numerical order.  My reason for this is that doing that would provide too much of a cue for the child when they are trying to name the numbers.  I want them to be able to say the numbers when shown the written numeral regardless of what order the numbers are in.  So, the pages in their books might be something like: 3, 1, 2, 4, 6, 5, 7, 9, 8 instead of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

 

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.

YAY!!!!

I am excited to announce that an idea I submitted was accepted and featured on The Crafty Crow blog.  I love to read all the great ideas on this blog and was honored to have one of my creations displayed there.  If you haven't already done so, check out this blog.  It has TONS of fantastic ideas for things to make for and with children of all ages. 

Crayoning Project

I recently spotted an idea on Adventures of a Montessori Mama which inspired me to try this project with the children in my classroom.

To introduce the project, I decided to model it to the whole group during our line time, so I did this with both my morning and afternoon group on Thursday.  I had taken our paper that is always on the art shelf and cut it in half prior to demonstrating this lesson.  I had also put out some new drawing paper which is a natural, unbleached paper and is very brown.  That is what I used to demonstrate.  I didn't take photos of the demo, but I just used my little demonstration table which I sat in front of me on the line.  I had one of the crayon jars from the art shelf and one half-sheet of the brown paper.  Using my black crayon, I modelled scribbling all over the paper using overlapping lines.  Then I showed them how my lines had made little "shapes" which I would now color in with my different colors.  I then modelled carefully coloring in the little spaces with various colors.  I talked about working "slowly and carefully" to stay in the lines.  I was very pleased to see that after this lesson several children tried this activity.  And I was REALLY pleased with their results.  Doing this project really required good visual-spatial awareness, fine motor skills and concentration.  And watching the little ones sit down and spend a good chunk of work time on this was really amazing to me.  Here are some of our finished products.

This photo of our art wire shows my sample in the middle flanked by two done by the children.  They were excited that the white crayons show up on the darker paper.

And here are some more.  One little girl thought her finished artwork looked like a snail and so she added the eye stalks to it along with an eye!  How cute is that?

The first photo above is the one my own son did in class.  He worked on it for a long time and added different colors even though his original "scribble" did not include overlapping lines (the overlapping lines part was hard for lots of the kiddos, but it didn't seem to discourage them!).  The next photo is what he did Thursday evening at home.  The only prompt for this was that his older brother was drawing with markers.  He sat for a long time working on this, and I think he was intentionally trying to copy the technique we had used at school by coloring "patches" of the different colors.  I wanted to include his work here because I think it is neat to see how a simple project done at school can carry over to home in various ways.  This year I will have the unique privilege to see this happen.  When you are not privy to everything your child sees and does at school, sometimes you are not sure of what school type of thing inspired what you are seeing at home.  Hopefully, this blog will help the parents of the little ones I teach have that window into the classroom.  I am not sure how many of my parents are reading the blog, but those that are have seemed happy to have it available to them for that very reason.  And that makes all the time and effort worth it.

What we've been up to

Here are some new photos to illustrate a tiny bit of what's been going on in the classroom this week. 

This flower arranging work is used EVERY day by the boys and girls alike.  They love to decorate our room with the pretty vases, flowers and doilies.  I am frequently asked to smell their flowers during our work time.  Most often, this request is made known by placing the flowers as close to Miss Laura's nose as possible, no matter what Miss Laura is currently doing!!  :0)

The children have really enjoyed using the props to retell the story Dog's Colorful Day which I read several times on line during our first week of school.  This has been a great activity for little friends to do together.

The children are still really enjoying this scooping activity with plastic ice cubes.

The children LOVE using this screwdriver board.  It is off the shelf and in little hands during much of our work period each day.

This student has placed the first four sounds in her red sound book and has matched the pictures to the sandpaper letters.  She is checking her work for accuracy.

The metal insets are used daily and provide such great practice with eye-hand coordination and fine motor skills, both pre-requisites for writing.

This student did the first two rows of the hundred board and is now copying her work onto the hundred chart. 

Puzzles continue to be a favorite activity for the children.

The "Planet Earth" song

This week at our line time we have started singing about our "place" in the world using one of my favorite songs to introduce geography to children.  I used to sing this with the children in the Montessori school where I taught previously and am excited to introduce it to my new "crop" of students.  This time, my friend, Amber, allowed me to borrow a perfect book which I am using to introduce the song.  It is called Me on the Map.  I am including a photo of it below and will add it to the Amazon link on the sidebar.

I like to involve the children in the songs as actively as possible using props.  When I did this song before, I had made up necklaces to represent each geographical area of the song.  The children wore these during our singing.  Of course I didn't have the foresight to take the necklaces with me, so I had to make new ones from scratch.  Since I have 20 students in each session, give or take, and there are 5 geographical "concepts" in the song (planet, continent, country, state, town), I decided to have a necklace and "prop" for each concept.  That way we could sing the song twice and every child would have a turn to do a special job.  Below you will see photos of the necklaces and props.  I have typed the corresponding song lyrics under each photo.  The tune is "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands."

The "necklace" is pictured at left.  I took this photo before I punched two holes in the top and tied a piece of yarn through the holes.  Here are the lyrics for this verse.  One child would stand in front of the group wearing the necklace while another child holds the globe.

"I live on the planet, the planet Earth, (repeat twice), I live on the planet Earth."

For this verse, one child wears the necklace and one holds the "North America" piece (it's orange) from our world puzzle map.

"I live on the continent of North America, (repeat twice), I live in North America."

For this verse, one child wears the necklace and the other holds the United States piece from our North America puzzle map.

"I live in the country of the United States, (repeat twice), I live in the United States."

For this verse, one child wears the necklace and the other one holds the puzzle piece for our state, Iowa, from the United States puzzle map.

"I live in the state of Iowa, (repeat twice), I live in Iowa."

For the final verse, the necklace is identical to the one pictured above, however, our town is marked with a dot and labelled.  One child wears the necklace and the other holds a stuffed animal representing our high school mascot (or they yell, "Go Rams!").

"I live in the town of _____________, (repeat twice), I live in ____________."

I took this photo today so you could see one friend wearing the North America necklace while the other friend held the North America puzzle piece.

Of course this song could be adapted to sing about your specific place on the globe.  Even though geography is still an abstract concept for many preschoolers, I love how this activity makes it more concrete and plants the seeds for understanding that will come later.

Birthday Card Work

We celebrated the first birthday of the school year in our classroom this week.  As part of the special occasion, I put out birthday card work for the morning.  This was something that was part of my Montessori training as well as something that was used in the school where I interned and taught previously.

Here is the work set up on a little table which I pushed up against the back of a shelf.  You can see that I used a page protector into which I inserted a paper with the name and age of the birthday girl.  I just stuck it onto the shelf with some of that sticky-tack stuff.  The table holds (from left to right) a basket with pieces of folded construction paper in several colors, a little clear box of birthday stickers, an empty basket to hold the paper from the back of the stickers, and a mug of skinny markers.  There is also a red placemat.

Here is a photo which shows the whole activity better.  I modelled the card-making in front of the class at line time.  I showed them how to choose a card, use ONE sticker strip (with 2 stickers) to place stickers on the card, throw the paper in the basket and draw/write on the card.  I pointed out that if they couldn't write their name on the card, they could go to their cubbies and get one of their name labels to place on the card so our birthday girl would know who the card is from.  When they completed the card, they were to take it to the birthday girl wherever she was in the classroom and wish her "Happy Birthday."  Several children chose this work during our work time today.  I think I should put it out more often than just on birthdays, however, because some students wanted to make a card for someone in their family instead of for our birthday child. 

In my training it was suggested that you provide some matboards with a shape cut out (like the ones you put into a picture frame to frame a photo) for the children to use to trace onto the card and to write the message inside.  I didn't, however, have any so I didn't put any out. 

Our calendar routine

We have a few routine things that we do each day during our line time that I have wanted to share here on the blog.  Some of the parents in my class have appreciated the posts I've done about some of the songs we sing.  After reading about the songs here, they can initiate a conversation with their child (and maybe a sing-along) about their preschool experience.  So, I thought it would also be helpful to write about our calendar routine so the parents would be aware of some of the concepts we work on.

This is my calendar area which is at the "front" of our line.  You can see the red tape of our line in the front of the photo.  I leave a space in the line which is where I sit and where the snack helper sits.  Everyone else sits on the red line on a black dot.  I use a pocket-chart style calendar with plain black numbers.  I like this type of calendar because the emphasis is on the numbers instead of a cutesy shape.  This allows for fewer distractions for children who are beginning to recognize and see patterns in numbers.  The little stool is for my snack helper to stand on when they look out the window to tell us what the weather is.  The flag on the shelf is used when we say the Pledge of Allegiance.  You can also see the Fudoo board on the floor below the calendar.  This is where the snack helper places the magnets for their snack and we discuss the nutritional value of the various food groups.

Here is a close-up of the wall next to the calendar.  I have the extra months, days of the week and season cards in the little red gingham library pockets.  The cards for the weather are in the little pocket next to the weather card.  When the seasons change, we will put up the card for the new season and move the clothespin on the wheel to the new season.

So........now that you have a visual image of the space, here is what we do.

First, I play the "Linus and Lucy" song to gather everyone to line.  I call it our "clean-up" song.  Everyone is used to this by now and they respond quickly by putting their work away and joining me on line.  Next, we all stand on our dot (the snack helper stands next to me in the "space") and the snack helper holds the flag in their left hand.  We all place our right hand on our hearts and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.  Then, while still standing, we sing our "Months of the Year" song.  I use a song which is called "Macarena Months" (I think!) from one of my many Dr. Jean CDs.  I can't really describe the tune, and the actions would be kind of hard to describe too.  However, we basically just say the months of the year in order while doing our actions and the song ends with "These are the months of the year."  Then we sit down.  I use my pointer to point out the month and I may call on someone to say the month, then we say it together.  Then we sing our "Days of the Week" song while I point to the days of the week on the calendar.  It is to the tune of "My darling Clementine" and goes like this:

"Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday (repeat)

There are 7 days, there are 7 days, there are 7 days in a week (repeat)"

Then we talk about what day of the week it is.  I then pull out the number for the date (it is always covered with the blue plastic to stand out on the calendar) and we say the number and the ordinal (i.e. "four" and "fourth").

Then our snack helper stands on the stool and tells us what the weather is and puts up the weather card.  Then we all sing "What's the weather, what's the weather, what's the weather right now? (repeat)" to the tune of "My darling Clementine" and the snack helper responds at the end with the weather word (i.e. sunny, cloudy, etc.).

Our last consistent step of the calendar routine is to have the snack helper tell what they brought for snack and put up the magnets on the Fudoo board.  Then we talk about what group the food(s) are in and what those type of foods do to keep us healthy.

After doing the above activities (they only take about 5 minutes), we do other songs/games, etc.  Then we go outside for our recess. 

How to talk with your child about their day at preschool

A few parents have asked me what words they can use to discuss their child's preschool day with them.  And one in particular asked me to do a blog post about it.  I thought that was a great idea, so here is the post.

It can be difficult to get much information from your preschooler about their day.  There are a variety of reasons for this.  For one, they are often so fluidly moving from activity to activity that it could literally be hard for them to recall specific things they did.  Another factor is that they may be questioned about their preschool day several hours after preschool and that can also affect their memory of the specifics (how well those of us who are "older" can understand this one!!).  And, of course, another factor may be that the words adults use to ask them about their day may be different from the words we use to describe things at school.  So the child becomes confused by the question and is unable to offer much information.  I am hoping this post will help some with the latter issue.  I'm not sure much can be done to remedy the other issues, but it will definitely will help to use the right "jargon".

First, at school we refer to the materials and activities mostly as "work."  This is just kind of a Montessori thing.  Many or most of the materials wouldn't necessarily be called "toys", nor would the children necessarily think that they "played with" things.  So if you ask them questions like, "What did you play with?" or "What toys did you play with?", you are unlikely to get much of a response.  However, if you say, "What did you work with?" or "What work did you do?" or "What did you take off the shelf?", you may yield better answers.

Second, if you aren't getting a lot of specifics about the "work" your child is doing, don't give up on trying to have a conversation with them about their day.  It may be that their "work time" is not standing out in their mind as the most salient or "important" part of their day.  That doesn't mean they aren't learning or busy during work time.  Rather, there just may be other parts of our preschool day that are more preferred by your child.  If this is the case, you could ask them things like, "What songs did you sing on the line today?"  If you read my blog regularly and have a child in my class, I will try to post most of our songs under the sidebar category called "Montessori---Group Activities".  So you could specifically ask them if they sang the "Bakery Shop" song, for example. 

If your child loves being outdoors, you could ask them about what they did outside or who they played with.  For many children, this is a highlight of their preschool day.  Additionally, most children will at least tell you about what they had for snack.  When my oldest child went through Montessori preschool, that was the most reliable piece of information I gleaned from him. 

Also keep in mind that all children (like all of us adults) are different.  Some will voluntarily share with you many details about their preschool experience and some (like both of my boys, I'm afraid) are not as inclined to share a lot about their day.  If your child falls into the latter category, don't despair.  As far as I know, there is no correlation between amount of learning and amount of talking about their learning.  Remember................so much of the learning that is going on within your child is just that..........within. 

And for a final thought..............try to think about what your own adult response would be if, at the end of a full work day, you were intensely questioned about all the details of what you did for the duration of the time you were away from the questioner.  Sometimes, you'd just prefer to not talk about it.  Not because it was bad, just because.  You know what I mean??  And............it's okay. 

Visual evidence of our learning and work together

Here is another post filled with photos to show what's been going on in our room.  If you are the parent of one of my students who reads this blog (and I am hoping many of you do!!) I am especially doing this post for you.  As I said at our Parent Information night, many activities in the Montessori preschool curriculum do not result in something that your child will bring home.  However, these pictures illustrate the many, many great things your children are doing each day when they come to preschool.  Perhaps you will recognize an elbow or hand here and there.  The children are so busy and happy using their little hands to complete tasks, not to mention cleaning up their work and returning it to the shelves.  Their independence is growing each day and I am so proud of them.  Enjoy the show!

Gluing work

Brown stair extension (you can see the card on the rug)

Tonging activity with apple pencil toppers

Crayoning

Apple picking game

Pink tower

Apple counting

Short bead chains

Tonging activity with "porcupine" balls

Jars and lids

Pink tower variation

"m" in the sand tray, drawn by a little finger

This is the picture matching for the first 4 red sounds.  This student has learned the 4 sounds shown and put them in her "sound book".  So.........she was ready to sort pictures by beginning sounds.  This photo shows her checking her work by turning over the cards and making sure the letter on the back matches the sandpaper letter at the top of the column.