Little-N's cousins will be coming to visit today so we've been busy making cupcakes.
Today we had fun with a spiramouse [an automatic Spirograph], its really easy to use and Little-N enjoyed the beautiful patterns he could make. The spiramouse is quite cool as you can place up to 13 pens at the same time to make all sorts of patterns. All you do is place the pens, press a button and watch. 
Even Annabel [the cat] enjoyed it.
I really shouldn't be blogging now, I'll be leaving for Cairo tomorrow morning and I'm not even ready [and seem to be going down with a cold]. BUT I couldn't resist sharing these beautiful Christmas trees with everyone. I wish I could take credit for them, but I won't I'll be honest. These cute trees were made by one of our teaching practice [intern] students as a gift for the school. We both share an interest in origami and made loads of stars months ago, however she spent 10 hrs last night [yes of course she doesn't have kids] making this big tree and a little one for each child. Just in case you didn't recognise this, each tree is made from mini origami stars.
Don't you think they look great??
The time has past so quickly and i find myself preparing for the end of term. I don't know where all these weeks have gone, they've vanished. But I have enjoyed every bit of it, every moment and chance I spent with my class I cherish. During the end of term parents meetings I received lots of positive feedback from the parents, each one of them said I change their child for the better. 
On Monday it will be Eid, many of the children in my class are Muslim and will be celebrating this festival. I needed to come up with an Eid card making idea that was original, fun and linked to something we have already been working on. After a lot of thinking and brain storming, I settled with an Islamic geometric star pattern for the card's design. The children have already developed a good understanding of how shapes fit together by working with the constructive triangles and pattern blocks. Many already make geometric patterns while working with the pattern block, so although this star might seem a bit complicated it's actually quite easy for them.
I designed a sheet with shapes that I can print off for the children to cut out. You can print the sheets from here. Each page needs to be printed on a different colour card inorder to have a multi coloured star. The cutting needs accurate cutters and great fine motor skills, so if the children aren't quiet ready for that then get an older child to help you cut a prepare them for the younger children. 
Once all the pieces are cut, you simple start sticking them into place. Start with the octagon and then stick the small triangles around it and finally the large kite shape. Little-N found the shape arranging very easy and was very happy with his end result. We added some glitter and text to finish it off. 
I'll be honest here, it depends on what activity it is that they need to engage in. I understand how difficult the EYFS can be and the strange requirements it has. The children in my class are self directed, I had one child who wasn't for a long time but due to the ground rules and work of other children he seemed to find out where he wants to go. Since I have a small class size , the children quickly pick up on each others interests, so when Little-N was interested in dragons, castles and knights, so was everyone else. This helps to keep the children who dont know what they want, engaged in activities, Little-N is a big trend setter by the way.
As for backing off, I try to do that as much as possible. For montessori to work properly, for the children to really absorb the learning they need to be the active ones, sailing the boat as I put it. I'm just there helping them out. I try not to correct errors, for example the other day one of the children was working on the table of subtractions, instead he added all the numbers!!! I left him, when he finished and was checking his answers he realised what mistake he made. HE simply added a line to made the minus sign a plus sign. The next time he was working with subtraction he said to himself 'this is subtraction not addition'. You have to believe that the children CAN do it, you have to think it in your head and say it to your self. Children pick up on our negative thoughts and know when we don't think they know something, consequently they'll think they don't know.
Some reception aged children are unable to sail the boat, so for them I would offer more guidance but be very in tune with them so that I can help them work out what they want to learn.
I am very interested in this as we are balancing Montessori with EYFS and this can be the hard bit!!
Our school is being moderated this year for the EYFS and I am so happy. It gives me the chance to prove to our borough that Montessori is the best. As montessorians we have everything in place to easily complete the EYFS we just need to work on the paper work, cross referencing and child profile. I don't actually teach the reception aged children, Little-N is the only reception aged child I have, however he already has scores of 8 and 9 in most area's except for the writing. Due to the nature of my work I have a responsibility to make sure the teacher who is working with the reception children does her work properly.
We don't separate the EYFS from the Montessori, instead we cover everything in the work cycle using the Montessori materials. We have all the Montessori materials and activities mapped to the development matters and EYFS scales. So we actually only do Montessori, but we use the EYFS and DM terminology to show inspectors that we have covered everything and more. The key to the EYFS profile is in your observations, you have to really dissect them, squish out all the proof an observation holds and then link it to the scales on the EYFS document. Once you have done that you'll feel much better.
I hope this helps, and if you have any more Qs then plse leave a comment and I'll be more than happy to share what we do.
Little-N has been doing addition with the golden beads. He is able to do mental addition with numbers up to ten. Now that he is quite confident with that I decided to extend his knowledge about addition and go beyond the ten. I made some addition questions for him to work on by himself. On the right of the mat above, you can see the question card 53+35. He collect the small number cards and then the golden beads for each quantity.
He then counted them together at the bottom of the mat starting with the units. He collect the large number cards. You have to use small number cards for the adding numbers and large number cards for the answer so that they children can see that we add two small numbers together to form one big number.
Basically its a box with two dice. The children take turns rolling the dice and then they add up the numbers and write the question on the squared paper. The paper is just long enough to keep them engaged for long enough that they actually practice their mental addition. In case you didn't know most children develop their own unique way of doing mental addition, so this game has given them a great opportunity to share how they work out the total of two numbers. The other day I walked into the class to find 6 children playing this at one time, all at different levels. It was so cute to see them come together and support each other.
Yes Little-N has finally decided to document his thoughts and write a few things here and there. It feels great, Little-N isn't that little anymore, he's reading and writing. Now.. I know his letters are back to front and a mix of capital and lower case, but its a good start one that I will have to react to in a Montessori way so that he independantly improves his writing. 
All the children only made the cube and pyramid, Little-N decided to make more. After making the cone he begged to make another shape, but I told him we'd have to leave it to another day.
Little-N is still engrossed in his map work. He's been learning countries all over the world, but I have focused more on Europe so that he knows the countries around him [Also because he has a mix of European blood and its fun to find all the countries in his ancestry] . Two days ago he took out the labels for European countries and labeled a blank map. Both I and my boss were speechless. How is it that he can read words like Portugal, Lithuania and Switzerland? How is it that he know where all these countries are were us as adults are still confused. To be honest I don't know and I never taught him that, all I did is give him the learning that lead to this. Now that he's reading and attempting writing, I realise he no longer needs my guidance as before as he is able to teach himself what his heart and mind desire. 
The other day I noticed Little-N walking around the classroom with a piece of the Africa puzzle in his hands, he was showing it to all the children and naming it. I stepped closer to hear and he was saying this is 'Sudant'. He meant Sudan and had read it from the Atlas, however we have a boy in the nursery class called Sudant, so I guess Little-N was a little confused with how the name of the country is pronounced. It such a pleasure to see that he's learning on his own and teaching himself. 
We now have new hamsters at school : Wallie and Eve. One is a Roborovski Russian Dwarf who runs so fast we can hardly catch him. The other is Winter White Russian Dwarf who loves to bite anything she can see. It's been really hard to get pictures of them as they're always running to fast, I only managed to get a few pics of Eve when she was biting my camera strap. The children are delighted with them and have named them after the Disney Film characters.
In my class the children may choose to work at a table, on a floor mat or at a mini table. These mini tables are great for when you don't have much space in your class [as with mine]. The children also use them when they have been working on a floor mat with a piece of material and then wanted to write up the work they are doing on the floor. 
Traditionally a Montessori 6-12 class would have peace table where children can go in order to resolve conflicts or quarrels without adult help. My class is to small for me to allocate a whole table for that purpose, so instead I came up with a 'peace basket'. I just added this activity to my class, but i haven't had the need to present it yet. 
When two children quarrel they are directed to go and take the peace basket to discuss their problem. They lay the activity out on the floor or table as in the picture above. The child who suggested the peace basket holds the shell in his hand and explains how he feels. The other child has to sit and listen to his friend. When the child has finished talking, he gives the shell to the other child so that he can now talk. They have to discuss their feelings and why they are upset with the other child. Only the child holding the shell can speak and they take turns until they have solved their problems and made up. 
Here's how its set up on the shelf:
I recently received a comment about my primary class schedule. Its been trial and error for last few months to see what works for the children, this is our first primary year and so everything is new for us.
Little-N has been doing really good in all his areas of learning. The only thing he's not doing so good on his his writing! I'm not bothered tho, I know he'll do great at the right time and perhaps it hasn't come yet. He'll write something when he wants, but he isn't interested in writing the letters with the correct formation. So Today i wanted to see where he is with his writing. I got him to write all his letters [from mind] with colourful crayons. 
He can write most of them in his own sort of way, but for someone who is 4.5yrs some parents and teachers might be worried [Lucky for him I'm not! he does so many other things I can't expect anymore]. After he wrote them we painted over them with black water colours. This idea was adapted from one of nopinkhere's ideas for a sun picture. 
When we got back, some of the children made autumn mobiles using the things they collected. On Monday I hope to have a leaf rubbing activity set up for the children using this idea. 
Many thanks to everyone that left a comment on my earlier post about comments. It's great to know that there are people out there that enjoy reading my blog!
Some of the children at school are learning about calendar months. I find this topic rather boring as I can't find something tangible that a child can manipulate while learning the names of the months. At the moment we are doing a project about the sun so I decided to tie that in with the months.
I also printed the 'Months of the year' cards from ‘Montessori for everyone‘, when the children get bored from using the plain cards they can practice with these. My cards are colour coded by season as this project will gentle turn into a project about the four seasons.