Another T-Shirt

Another attempt at freezer paper stencilling. To make the T-shirt special I stencilled one of Little-N's favourite road signs.

Great Idea: Eyeball stick

I just saw this great idea at My Montessori Journey so I made one for Little-N. He is using it to help him read the words in his books!

Preparing my class for the new school year

I have been really busy at school preparing my class and the early childhood class. There is an endless list of things to do!!! My class is taking so much time because all the materials are new and I have to make many of them. Over the next week I am hoping that I find time to photograph each shelf and explain what I have for the children. I have made many PDF files for both the early childhood and 6-9 class, I hope to start an eBay shop probably at the end of September. I'll post about it when it is ready. But for now I better go and cut the laminated sheets of new materials!

Glitter Playdough

Little-N made some glitter playdough. I set up the materials with the correct measuring cups in front of each ingredients and let him do all the rest.Here is the recipe i used :

1/2 cup of flour

1/4 cup of salt

1 tsp of cream of tartar

1/2 cup of water [don't use all at once add as needed]

Food colouring

Lavender oil

Oil [I don't always put this]

Glitter

I will use all the photo's I took to make an instruction card for Little-N or the children at school to use independently.

Hundred chain

I have been away for a few days and unable to post. I'm glad to be back and be able to share Little-N's learning with everyone. School is about to start and there are many preparations to do.

Here are pictures of Little-N working with the hundred chain. He still needs a bit more practice with this. The arrows make it fun for him, but counting can get boring after a while. I think it will be a while before I attempt the Thousand chain!

The chain next to the 100 square to show Little-N that they are the same.
Laying out the arrows.
Labelling the beads.

Bracelets activity

This is the threading activity that I have for Little-N. He helps with sorting the beads, then I provide some elastic that perfectly fits my wrists and he makes all sorts of wonderful bracelets. This activity is addictive and the result is always beautiful. I usually wear the bracelets he makes and that encourages him to make more.

New curtains

I haven't been able to go into school much these past few days. I have been overloaded with trying to plan and organise a 3 day creche program. There was a lovely surprise when I went to school last Thursday: NEW CURTAINS! I asked a couple of time for the classes curtains to be changed to something simpler and more cosy. I love new curtains, they're perfect. It really adds a golden feeling to the class.

On the left under the curtain you can see a wooden dolls house, that's used for the grammar materials. I'll write about the other materials once I finish setting the whole language area.

Although I will be teaching in the 6-9 classroom, I still have to help with the setting up of the 3-6 class. One area that I wanted to redo was the cultural area. Previously the children were going onto the later cultural materials too early, because they were not ready for the materials they were being presented to they developed a bored attitude to learning. I decided to have a good look at the cultural sequence for materials. Many colleges follow different sequence, in the end I decided to use the sequence from my first Montessori college [MCI] and the years of experience i had. We have decided that the cultural materials will start with paring activities. On the shelves above we have pairing fruit, pairing berries, pairing flowers, pairing animals and pairing trees. The 2.5yr old will start with these and learn the names of all the fruits, plants, trees or animals. We will also add in some concrete pairing activities. Next we will have the zoology puzzles for the different parts of each animal and terminology cards that go with them. Next the child will go onto life cycles and then classification of the animal kingdom. I want the children to do all this before going onto the globes and puzzle maps. Its essential that the child has a good understanding of the world that they can see around them and experience everyday before teaching them about continents. That's all I can write about now, once the shelves are all set up I'll take pics and explain the sequence more.