Tuesday 11 November 2008

12 months in a year

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.
The children already know that it takes one whole year for the earth to go around the sun as they do this in the birthday walk. After recapping on that I explained that the year is split into 12 months, what month is it now? what month was it last month? when is your birthday? We discussed a bit about the months that they knew and then we counted them.
I lay out a felt sun, then I lay the months around it. As we laid the months out, we sang the months song. The children loved it. Next I turned over the cards to check if I had them in the correct order. I wrote numbers on the back, so that when a child works on this independently they can check their own work and correct if necessary. The children love how the months look like the rays of the sun and even the youngest of children stopped for a peep. 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.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks. I'll use this!
-L

Hannah said...

That looks fun! My kids (5 and 3) definitely know the months (from a song), but like you didn't have any way to practice or make it more tangible.

By the way, I just found your blog and think it's great! Lots of good ideas and pictures to go with them. Thanks for the time you have obviously put into it.

Jennifer Williams said...

Hi,
i found this post through a google search and have linked to it on my blog http://www.little-blossoms-childminding.blogspot.com, it will appear on Saturday this week, I'm blogging for childminders, trying to encourage them to use a little more Montessori!

Thanks, jenni