Thursday, 7 August 2008

Look what I found in the storeroom

While I was looking for some mathematics materials in the schools storeroom I came across a big box that had 'Nienhuis' written on it. I asked the head teacher and she said she didn't know about it, so I went ahead and opened it. I found this amazing cultural material.



This is the map of Europe. It has a set of flags for each country and another 2 sets of flags one with the countries names and the other with capital cities. The set included three control charts for the flags, countries and cities. The school bought it years ago and forgot about it!! How I don't know! If I owned this it would be in my living room where everyone can see it!!


I also found another flag material. Can you believe it?? Two master pieces in one day. This one is the World flag map. It has about 36 flags from around the world. The school got this from Absorbentminds sometime last year.

Finally I have my own classroom!!!

Our Early childhood class was very very spacious and we need an extra room for our older children. The builders came in and built half length walls to section off part of the early childhood class. Now we have an extra room :), it will be our first Montessori 6-9 class. The room is quite small [but hey its better then nothing] and we will start off with three 5 1/2 year old children.

To the left of this picture is the rest of the early childhood class.


Here is the class from a different view. The bottom left corner is where the door is.

There was lots of cleaning and reorganising to do. I had to remove all the early childhood materials from the shelves and then bring in the 6-9 yrs materials.

I only managed to set up the mathematics and cultural areas.


The 6-9 Mathematics area has so much materials I ran out of space !! I haven't even got the bead cabinet yet and there's no where to put it!

Here is the cultural area, its full of maps and maps and more maps. I am so excited that this year I will be teaching something new! I still have other materials to add in the cultural area but i haven't made them yet.

The curtains need changing and those stickers on the windows need removing. I decided to buy an Orchid to put on the corner shelf between the windows.

Over the next week I will be adding in a creative , sensorial, advance practical life and language areas. The nice thing about my class is that it is still attached to the early childhood class, the older children can go between classes as they wish. The younger children can come in to observe or ask for the help of the older children. More about my class later!

Wednesday, 6 August 2008

Dabber paint pens



I found these paint pens in ASDA and thought they would come in handy for those days when we cant get messy with paint!! The pens are actually really good, perfect for toddlers. Little-N painted a boat and then added some details with his felt-tip pens.

Tangramino: Architect blocks



I picked up this activity the other day from a toy store. I thought it was a tangram, when I got home I discovered it was a set or architect blocks [It didn't say that on the box!!]. Little-N played with it for hours today. The blocks come with a book that has 60 [or more] different models to build. He copied some models from the book but then decided to use his own imagination and came up with a rocket. This is a perfect activity to add in your Montessori homeschooling area or classroom.

Here is the rocket he made.

Singular and Plural

Here are pics of Little-N working with the singular and plural box 1.


Monday, 4 August 2008

Continent Puzzle


The other day I bought this puzzle. Little-N has enjoyed putting it together and matching the animals. i really like that the puzzle has a built in control of error. Little-N doesn't even have to ask me where the animals live. While playing he said 'This puzzle lets me teach myself' and he was so proud of it.
The colour coding is different from the Montessori continents. To help Little-N identify the continents I stuck little coloured stickers on the back of my continent cards, the stickers were coloured as the continents on the puzzle.


After Little-N matched all the animals, we got out his wooden animals to match.


I got these wooden animals from Amazon. The animals are made by a company called 'Sri Toys'.

Blog Award



Last week I was nominated for a blog award by Stephanie at Montessori Free fall. Thank you so much Stephanie!!!


I would like to pass the award onto seven of my favourite blogs.

Montessori a la Masion

My Montessori Journey


A Bit Of This And A Bit of That


The Moveable Alphabet


Home Made Montessori



Montessori Mama

Chasing Cheerios