Folding- Care of the Environment

Some of the children have been busy learning how to care for the environment.  One example of this is folding the blue cloths we use to mop up various water spills.  In the mornings, we bring the clean laundry and put it on a table.  Several of the children have noticed it when they arrive and once given a lesson on how to fold a cloth, they are off. 

Several children are now looking for this as soon as they enter the classroom.  We do not mention that they need to be folded.  The cloths sit on a table and the children notice them on their own. 

The children were heard this morning talking to each other saying, "Did you see those cloths!  We can fold!!"

They create piles of blue cloths and then take turns placing them in the classroom on the shelves and then in the cabinet where they are stored.  It is a delight to see the children caring for their environment in this way.

 

If you have laundry that needs to be folded, take a week to show your child how to fold shirts.  The next week can be towels etc..  After they are done folding, they may want to help put the clean clothes away. 

 

 

First Week of School

We had an amazing but busy first week of school!  Everyone should sleep well this weekend! We really enjoyed getting to know the new children and seeing our returning students again!  The children all learned so many new things.  We had many grace & courtesy lessons on how the classroom works, painted many pictures, poured, transferred, poured drinks of water, matched colors, learned some phonemic sounds of letters, watered plants, washed tables, learned the Earth is made of land and water and many, many more things!  Here are a few pictures!

walking through the maze

 

 moveable alphabet

having a snack

 living & non-living

watermelon slicing

brass polishing

addition with short bead stairs

Happy Birthday Maria Montessori

Check out the Google Doodle today to find out more about the amazing woman Dr. Maria Montessori!  Just so happens the Google guys were Montessori children!

Here are some articles that may be of interest:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2012/0831/Maria-Montessori-a-bold-life-breaking-gender-boundaries

http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Tech-Culture/2012/0831/Maria-Montessori-and-10-famous-graduates-from-her-schools/Google-founders-Larry-Page-and-Sergey-Brin

 

We are proud to be carrying on the Montessori Method!

Food For Thought... Raising Successful Children

From the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/raising-successful-children.html?pagewanted=all

A Visit to a Montessori Classroom

Here is a wonderful article which may help parents understand a little of what we are all about.  Although not all classrooms are the same, it is important to have a specific feel to the classroom.  It is not ours, it belongs to the children.
http://mariamontessori.com/mm/?p=2102

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!