Writing and Illustrating a Book

As we have many children on the path to reading, we thought it would be fun to make our own books to read.  We start by taking a piece of paper and folding it into eighths. 

Turn it into a W and the cut along the middle fold.

Let it drop open and you will have a small book.  We talked to the children about being an author- someone who writes the book (or thinks the words and someone else writes them down) and about being an illustrator (someone who draws the pictures- these pictures explain what the words are about.) We made several books!  Some were stories about a bat or even Benjamin Franklin, others were more instructional (How to Draw a House) and a few were more along the lines of reference books (Flowers or Rainbows).  Here are some examples...

The children were VERY proud of their work.  They loved being able to take home their own book.  This is a great activity for any age child. 

SPACE!

Our final stop in Geography this year was to explore space!  Dr. Montessori felt children should learn about space to discover how they were connected to the Universe.  We are so lucky this year to have two visiting astronomers as parents!  Dr. Briceno came one day to help introduce the planets to the children and also to help them understand where they were in the Universe. 

We began with Dr. Briceno explaining each of the planets and even got to see the actual planets on the computer. 

We went outside and each child was given a planet, comet or asteroid. 

Everyone was placed in a long line.  The children were able to see how some planets were closer to the sun than others. 

Dr. Briceno and his daughter made the planets and gave them to our school to use (BIG THANK YOU!) and so we were able to use them all week.  We put them outside in the ground as they were on sticks and asked the children to run around and name them.  We also played other games where the children quizzed each other. 

During the week we explored space in other ways.  We made different planets as craft activities, books with the planets, we also had a cutting activity where the children cut out the planets and pasted them on black paper.  We read many books about space and had other hands on activities.

puzzles

lining up felt planets and then using labels

planet crafts

A really big THANK YOU to Cesar, Kathy and Julia for helping make the study of space so interesting!