Here are a few highlights from school this last week.
1. So much object box love!
2. Working with something familiar.
4. Then working up to something more challenging.
5. A sweeping frenzy.
Things this week
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Monthly Archives: August 2012
Mending Materials
Every year we make sure all the materials are in ship-shape. This year I repainted the brown stair and the pink tower. Since I work with these materials almost every day it is easy to forget just how awesome they are. As I was painting I really got to reflect on the materials and how they’re used in a Montessori classroom and how much the children learn from them. It was awesome to reconnect — like getting coffee with an old friend.
The Great Metropolitan Adventure
Today I took a few of my students to the MET to see some of the paintings we’ve been exploring in our classroom. It was an awesome day!
I brought along a few of our classified cards and gave each child one painting to find inside the Museum. They had a great time being art detectives. It must have been amazing to come face to face with artwork that they have become so familiar with over the last few months. I only took them to the galleries that had the Degas and Van Gogh paintings since I didn’t want to overwhelm them. We kept the experience simple, short, and sweet — it was under an hour! But as we walked through the museum they couldn’t help but recognize a few others and call out, “Wait, stop! I just saw ‘The Actor’ by Pablo Picasso!” and “Oh look, The Path Through the Irises by Claude Monet!” I’m a very happy teacher today!
It’s the first day!
I’m going to head over to school in just a few minutes to put the final touches on the environment. I bought a bunch of sunflowers yesterday and I think they’re just the thing for a day like today. I remembered a beautiful quote from Dr. Montessori’s Discovery of the Child and I’d love to share it with you this morning.
“That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendour during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom.”
And with that I’m off!
Behind the Scenes in a Montessori Classroom: The First Day
With school starting on MONDAY, I thought it might be fun to show you what happens behind the scenes in a Montessori classroom on the first day of school. This is how we go about welcoming brand new children (the 2.5 and 3 year olds.)
Brand new children usually start school a week after returning children. This gives the returning students time to readjust to the classroom and each other. They also spend the week anticipating the arrival of new children. It’s all very exciting!
When the day finally comes new children arrive one by one to the great excitement of the older children. We don’t want the first day of school to be overwhelming in the slightest so we only have new children only stay for an hour or so on their first few days.
When the new children arrive they will see the older children working. This sets the stage and shows them what to expect. The teacher welcomes them, shows them where to put their shoes and backpack, and shows them how to say hello and how to walk in the classroom. We want to equip them with the skills necessary to act as independently as possible. A child who does not know what the expectations are cannot be blamed for not living up to them!
The next hour the directress will stay near the child and make sure he is doing alright and not being too bombarded by excited older students.
When it is almost time to go we will have a group. We’ll sing a song or tell a story. Then get ready to go home. We take plenty of time getting ready to go. Going home will be calm and unhurried so the child can see exactly what goes in to packing up at the end of the day.
And that’s that!
DIY Flag Pins
My students are really into geography. They can not get enough of the puzzle maps or the land and water forms. This year I needed to offer them more geography materials, and the next step is to introduce them to the geography maps. These maps teach children the names of countries, cities, and they introduce them to the flags of different countries. This year I decided to make my own so that I could spend the $700 on other materials. I got images of flags off Wikipedia and made a pdf of the flags of each continent. You can download the flags of the United States here.
I used a folding bone to make a nice fold down the middle.
Then I put a toothpick in the middle, (pointy side up, of course) and glued the sides together.
Then I made 49 more!
A Parent’s Guide to Back to School
photo via pickledimages2011 on flickr
Here’s some advice I gave the parents of my students for getting into a school routine.
- Minimize exposure to TV. This is a no brainer.
- Establish routines that can easily transition into school-day routines. If you need to wake up an hour earlier for school, start waking your children up early now. If you are going to have to eat breakfast on the go, start eating breakfast on the go now.
- Encourage your child to be more independent (making choices, preparing food, dressing himself, etc.) This will not only help your child prepare for more independence at home, he’ll also be able to function without you at school.
- Count down to the first day of school. We always used to make paper chains to count down until special days. This helps your child get an idea of when the first day of school is happening. That way he’ll be ready for it.
- Prepare your child (and yourself) for separation. Make sure your children know that school is a special place just for them. Confidence and insecurity about the first day of school are contagious! Parents must instill confidence in their children. Tearful goodbyes, never-ending hugs, or any sort of clingyness will make your child think that school is scary and he won’t want to go there! Smile, be excited, and talk about how much your child will love school.
Do you have any other tips or tricks?
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Yesterday we went to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I’ve only been there once before and I can’t believe I haven’t been more often. It was paradise! I can’t wait to take my students. Here are a few pictures:
Rain in Summer by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Crazy storms are rumbling across New York’s sky tonight. Here’s a poem to put a brighter spin on things .
Rain in Summer by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!
How it clatters along the roofs,
Like the tramp of hoofs
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!
Across the window-pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!
Free Stuff! Action Cards
Action cards are one of my favorite early reading activities. We introduce action cards after the child has shown that he can read simple phonetic words by working with the object boxes.
Here’s how they work:
I tell one of my students that I’m going to write him some secret messages. My students love the whole secret message thing. It’s thrilling, mysterious, and super top secret. I’ll take a strip of paper and make a huge deal about hiding what I’m writing. I’ll write a simple phonetic verb like hop, skip, run, lift, etc. and then fold the message in half and slide it across the table.
The child reads the message and then I suggest that he do what the message says. I’ll write a few more and then show the child a small stack of prepared action cards that he can do by himself or with a friend. Then I’ll leave him to his work.
The action cards are awesome because we are showing the child two very basic functions of language; that writing can be used to communicate a command and that there are some words that are action words. Obviously we don’t tell the child this, we’re just planting seeds at this point.
I’ve been making some new material for my class the last few days and I thought I’d share my set of action cards with you. You can download a PDF here. All you need to do is print it out, slice it up, and get going!
Download Action Cards Here: action-cards
