I love Montessori! I know I've probably said it before on this blog, but it's the truth. It is working so well for our family. Case in point today...we had just eaten brunch after church, and were starting to clear the dishes, when the kids pulled some work off the shelf and were quickly absorbed in it. Gene started making a "Christmas Chain", a work just presented on Friday that he hadn't tried yet, and Lucy got some paper and a pencil and drew pictures. They were so calm and peaceful, and we were able to clean up quickly while they worked.

It was nice for us (as parents who appreciate a quiet house), but I am writing this post mostly because I am so excited and happy for them. In my pre-Montessori days (i.e. a few months ago) I would sometimes wonder how I would ever do art projects (or any craft-type project) with them. I would try once in a while, pulling out all sorts of materials to make something-or-other, and then Gene would say he wasn't interested. Or he would attempt the project for a couple minutes, and go back to what he had been doing. The problem was that we were doing projects on my time. Montessori allows children to work on their time, to take a "prepared" project off the shelf and work on it whenever they feel like it. This means they are actually interested in the project, have NOTHING else they would rather be doing, and will probably work on it for a while and do a good job on it (or at least as good a job as they are capable of).

Gene cut, colored and glued together 5 paper rings, and was so proud of himself. Norah worked on it on Friday, and they are both excited to hang the chains on their respective Christmas trees. Yeah, Montessori!

Christmas Ideas

I have had a few good ideas for Christmas activities, and I am way too tired to take any pictures of what I've spent this evening assembling, but here is the rundown... I found some red and white beads and a green string, so we will have "Christmas" bead-stringing on the shelf tomorrow. We have a stringing activity out often, but because of limited shelf space it is not always available. It does tend to be popular, however (being one of those "classic" preschool activities). I also sorted through our duplos (which are rarely used in our house...I think the children think they are boring because all they know how to do is build towers with them...they have yet to use their imaginations!) and put all the red, green and white duplos into a Christmas-decorated basket. We'll see if that makes them attractive enough. I also spent a while cutting out Christmas pictures from catalogs- Christmas trees, wreaths, stockings, candles, etc. I will put it out as a collage/pasting work tomorrow.

One other idea I had (though haven't gotten ready yet) is having the children cut paper to make their own paper chains. For anyone reading this who is also teaching young children, this would be excellent cutting practice. My children have been using scissors more often lately, but cutting on a line (especially a long line) is more difficult for them than I thought it would be, and yet they lack incentive to improve that skill. What is the point of cutting a bunch of lines drawn on a piece of paper (which is one work offered on our shelves)? But, if the point is to cut strips of paper (nice looking strips!) and then make a decoration from them, they might have more reason to work on their cutting. I can't wait to give it a try!

Wednesday, December 3

A nice, peaceful day today. Everyone got to work and settled down fairly quickly once we returned from picking up Norah. I never know how long it will take to get started once we pick her up. Gene and Norah usually race ahead and wait for Lucy and I, but now with snow on the ground everyone wants to pick it up or eat it or whatnot. Lucy was intent today on picking up a huge chunk of dirty snow and carrying it with her the whole way home. And then she wanted me to carry it because her arms were tired! I'm getting sidetracked. Anyway, my point is that there is often some distraction on the way back to our house. And once we get there, they have to remove shoes/boots, mittens, hats and jackets, and put them all in their proper places. Then they wash hands before starting any work. Sometimes (and I don't know how) it seems to be close to 9:30 or even 9:45 once in a while before all three of them are actually working. And we go to pick up Norah at 9! I wonder if we can improve on that:)

The highlights today were as follows:

Gene-
coloring a picture
sandpaper letters
all the dressing frames
cutting paper
reading a book

Norah-
putting dimes in a bottle
playdough
putting pins in a shaker
lesson on coloring a picture
bean bowl

Lucy-
playdough
pins in a shaker
pooh puzzle
stamping
butterfly puzzle
duck floor puzzle
reading

Here are the new works I just mentioned:

"Coloring a picture"...I have been printing out coloring pages from online (look up "free winter coloring pages" for instance), and then laying out a couple choices for coloring. A child would choose a picture, and take it with a bowl of crayons and scissors to a table. Placing the materials on an art mat (we have some wild crayoning kids and the tables don't appreciate it) they can color the picture. That part is obvious. Then, if they want, they can cut on the lines that you may be able to faintly see in the picture...I drew lines above and below each picture, so that when cut the picture would be completely free of "computer lingo"...the words that always print telling the website the picture was printed from, etc. I am trying to incorporate some cutting practice in, as well as coloring, and it has been really popular. Gene is actually coloring, and learning to color in the lines! (He was never interested in coloring books, and loved to scribble on blank paper, but that's what it would be, lots of scribbling. So, this is a new step for him:)



Below is "Pins in a shaker"...I will take votes on new names for this. I bought some long sewing pins with colored heads, and they fit nicely in this vintage sugar shaker I found at a thrift shop a few weeks ago. I first saw this work at Go Like the Wind Montessori school I visited over the summer, and have been wanting to put it together ever since! It has been used every day since I put it out...The shaker is turned over, and all the pins are dumped in the small red tray (really a cardboard lid for a wine gift-box, but such a pretty lid I had to find a use for it!). Then, carefully, a child can pick up a single pin and put it into a hole in the shaker. They can put them in any holes they like, but when they are ready to put it away they must put the pins around the edges again.


And here is a picture from a few days ago...it wasn't during school-time, but Gene and Lucy pulled the Magneatos out, and I was finally able to interest them in building three-dimensional towers. They watched as I started one, and then helped to build a little of it. But then, they went back to their comfort zone and began putting them all end-to-end to build "roads"...


Also, at circle time today, we finished up reading a Bill Peet book (Zella, Zack and Zodiac)...I had never read any of his books before, but am pleased with what we have read so far...they are long but interesting picture books. I am enjoying reading random picture books during circle times...we don't have a theme to what we read, but I find that the books hold the kids' attention, and help them to settle down for the other activities we do. We also recently read "The Rainbow Fish".

And then, at the end of circle time, we build a couple "pink and brown towers" all together. It was fun for them, and I am hoping to interest them in using the cubes and prisms a little more (actually, at all...they have not been chosen by anyone by me!)

New Choices

As I mentioned, there are some new works on the shelves that I haven't posted about. And some have been pretty popular lately. Here they are, in no particular order:

This is "leaf rubbing", and it has been out on the shelves for maybe a month now. Not a ton of use, but more so lately.


It took me a while to figure out how to present "leaf rubbing"...but this seems to be working. The leaf is real, and taped to a square of cardboard. To do this work, a child gets a piece of "metal inset" paper, puts it on top of the leaf and attaches the paper with the clothespins. Then they can rub the crayon all over, pressing harder to really bring out the veins in the leaf. Once they have rubbed a leaf, I will put tape on the back, and they can stick it to a branch of the tree I drew on our wall (I will post a picture sometime...right now it is too dark in the schoolroom to do the tree justice).


This is a "sewing cylinder"...at least that is what we call it. I got it from Montessori Services, I think.


There are many holes to put the large wooden needle into, and it is a pre-sewing exercise. Basically the wooden needle goes through multiple holes until the string is used up, and then it can be taken out again. But it is trickier than it looks...getting the cylinder unthreaded takes a lot of patience and requires good eye-hand coordination.


Sorting money is a very new work. Gene has been dealing with money for the last year or so, and very interested in it, but I realized that Lucy has barely touched a coin and couldn't tell the difference between any of the silver coins. So I pulled this together last night and presented it today. Everyone is pretty good at sorting, but it is fun to introduce new items to sort. And eventually they will learn the names of the coins, and learn more about them. But first things first!
These are the magneatos...we got them for Christmas a couple years ago, from a children's toy magazine. There are two sizes of "sticks" and many balls, and they are all magnetized. Here are some ideas of things to make with them, but so far the most popular has been to just stick them all together in a long line. Hopefully they'll get a little more creative soon...





I had fun with them, anyway. Maybe seeing what I did will rub off on somebody!


These are the sound books, which have been filling up with "sounds" at various rates. Gene has begun filling his yellow sound book, and Norah and Lucy are about halfway through their red sound books. They are very simple...I draw one big letter on each page as they are introduced to that particular sandpaper letter. Then, every time I give a lesson on a new sandpaper letter, I have the child show me how they trace the previous letters in their book. It is built-in practice.



This is the first sound in each red sound book. I just draw them in, though I know that Laura in the blog My Montessori Journey has the children in her class paste in a die-cut letter. I like that idea, but for now drawing seems simpler. Everyone has been fascinated, however, watching me color in the lines. I think we need a coloring activity...we haven't used many coloring books, mostly because Gene was never interested in coloring and Lucy was too little. But now that coloring is more popular, I think they need to appreciate the art of "coloring in the lines"...someone actually asked why I was doing it that way!!!

Wednesday, November 19

Here's what we've been doing the last few days at preschool... Playdough, playdough, playdough! At least, Lucy and Norah have. But, I've got to admit they are getting good at it. Norah has perfected her snake-rolling and sometimes makes multiple "squirmy-wormies" and Lucy continues to work on her creativity. The other day she asked me to come and see the "tweezers" she had made...and how they opened and shut. Today she made a hamburger (with cookie-cutter cutouts for the buns and burger), a birthday cake (the hamburger with a candle on top) and a lollipop. This may not seem astounding to anyone else, but I haven't taught her any of this. And Gene was never very interested in play-dough, and doesn't have the same creative spark that Lucy seems to be developing.


Above is a "butterfly"...I can kind of see it. What I see most of all is that Lucy realizes that butterflies are symmetrical.

So...besides a heck of a lot of play-dough, here's a few other activities that have been off the shelves lately:

Gene- transferring water with a sponge (will post about this soon)
bean bowl (mostly spooning beans between big bowl and a smaller bowl)
duck floor puzzle
pooh puzzle
sandpaper letters (multiple times)
drawing with markers (another favorite)
magneatos (will post)
zipping a jacket
stickers

Norah- playdough
sorting money (will post)
bean bowl
magneatos
transferring marbles
toothpick jar
sweeping on table (with small dustpan...sweeping playdough crumbs)
rubber bands on dowel
sandpaper letters
butterfly puzzle
small alphabet puzzle

Lucy- spooning beans
cylinder block #1
rubbing a leaf
magneatos
sewing cylinder (will post)
toothpick jar
pooh puzzle
sesame street puzzle
duck floor puzzle
world map puzzle
drawing with markers, crayons and pencil
drawing lines with a ruler
butterfly puzzle

Lucy with a magneato "carpet square". Everything she makes now is "something"... It's not just "look what I made Mama" anymore. It's "Mama, look what I made. It's a...carpet square." But whatever she says it is, it actually looks like. So I don't have to fake my understanding.

Note: the reason there are so many pictures of Lucy posted is that she has realized that she can ask me to take a picture of her work, and she has been asking more lately. I let Gene and Norah know this as well, but they haven't taken advantage of it. And I don't usually think to take spontaneous pictures during a normal busy school morning...

A brief synopsis...I will post soon about the new works mentioned above. I have put quite a few new ones out on the shelves.

Sandpaper letters are awesome!

I remember worrying a few months ago that Gene was getting too old to learn how to write. The Montessori books I had read mentioned (repeatedly!) that children usually have their "explosion into writing" around age 4.5. This is after they had been in a Montessori environment since age 2.5 or 3 and had been using many of the "pre-writing" materials- metal insets to learn pencil control, sandpaper letters to learn the shape of each letter, moveable alphabet to learn how to put letters together to make words. I thought since Gene hadn't been doing any of those things consistently (the only material he had used once in a while was the moveable alphabet, but he usually just made the letters dance around and talk to each other!), that he would move past the critical age, and not be able to master writing as quickly or easily.

Well, we'll see how fast he actually MASTERS writing, but the interest is definitely growing. He has been learning the sandpaper letters rapidly, and practices tracing them with his fingers multiple times a day, not just during preschool times. And this is great for the girls as well, because they have seen Gene taking the letters off the shelf so many times, they have asked for lessons on them as well. So, I have confidence now that Gene WILL write, and that Norah and Lucy will learn as well. And as proof of that, Lucy spontaneously wrote a capital "E" today, in the middle of scribbling a picture...and she came up and showed me. Way to go, Lucy!

Wednesday, November 12

I introduced three new works today- folding cloths, zipping a jacket, and "getting water". The folding work is something I know will be used, and it is a stepping stone to other folding activities (i.e. folding paper, or folding clothes)...I have often tried to get Gene and Lucy to help me fold the laundry, but only occasionally are they interested, so we'll give it a shot on the shelf.

This is the basket of folded cloths.

The first step is to take them all out of the basket, and pile them up.
Then, select one cloth, spread it out on the mat, and fold it. The kids can choose to take out and fold all ten cloths, or if that seems too challenging they can just take out one or two.

"Zipping a jacket" is something I've wanted to put out for a while, because none of the children can get their own jacket zipped, and with jacket season beginning I am going a little crazy getting everyone ready to go outside. Once they can zip themselves, they will be able to get completely ready on their own...good for all of us! I also want to put out a jacket with buttons on it, but that will have to wait until I find a good one. I found this pink jacket amidst all of my youngest daughter's outerwear (she was given about 20 jackets and sweatshirts and sweaters, not kidding!) and it has a little hood that completely unsnaps...a fun bonus!



"Getting water" is also something I'd wanted to put out for a while now. There are a lot of Montessori water activities that are very fun, but they all involve the children getting their own water to use. Stepping up on a stool to get water from the sink, and then stepping down again, is fairly difficult to do without spilling, especially for the younger children. So, a water bucket is a way that many schools use to make water accessible to everyone. The children scoop up some water from a full bucket on the floor, use it for a certain activity (such as pouring water between two pitchers, or using a sponge to transfer water between two containers). At the end of each activity, the water is disposed of (I think we'll have a "used water" bucket). And that means we don't have to keep water in the containers on the shelves...a good thing when a curious toddler is living in the same house.

Here's what we were up to today:

Norah worked on playdough (first this time), the butterfly puzzle, and the bean bowl. She is very consistent. But she feels really comfortable doing these activities, and needs a little encouragement to branch out, I think. But, in the meantime, she is learning how to get out, clean up and put away what she does choose to work with. And she is definitely observing what the other children do...watching someone else do an activity a few times makes doing it oneself much easier.

Gene worked on folding cloths (before I even gave a lesson on it- he was that interested!) He drew a few pictures with a pencil (one of his "comfort works") and then moved on to pouring beads, the duck floor puzzle, a sesame street puzzle, and reading books. One of his accomplishments was writing his own name on one of his pictures. I told him I wouldn't do that for him any more, now that I've seen him do it a few times...and he remembered to do it by himself today.


Lucy learned a new sandpaper letter today (f) and was then able to get a lesson on "object box #1...an activity that matches up letters and objects that begin with those letters. There are four objects and letters in the box, and after she had four letters in her sound book she was excited to match up the objects. I'll try to take a picture of that work, as well. She also did stamping for a while, and copied Geno's name with letter stamps that I had put out. Maybe she'll do her name sometime... She did the duck floor puzzle as well, and the butterfly puzzle. I was amused to see that she had sorted the butterfly puzzle pieces before putting them back in the puzzle...she has been sorting everything lately!