Beyond the classroom walls

We had a field trip today. Well, if going over to the elementary classroom counts as a field trip. At a little before 10 o'clock we called the children to the ellipse and let them know that we were going to a play put on by the elementary class. We talked about how we needed to be good visitors to their classroom, sit quietly and stay in our places. And they must have took it to heart because I only had to speak to one child about keeping their voice off. A short Q&A after the play (The Scrambled States of America) was a bit much for them to sit still for, and required an explanation of a question versus a story. Then we trooped back to our classroom and got back to work.

What play do you choose to do when
your Elementary class has 44 students?
Why one with 50 roles in it of course!

That was just about the perfect amount of 'going out' for our children. Elementary on the other hand has actual going out activities where they leave the school grounds. Normally these events don't involve the whole class, rather just a small group will go. Ideally these going outs are planned by the children themselves and stem from a desire to learn something in a more hands on way, like actually visiting a recycling plant or soup kitchen. The children figure out how they will get to their destination, recruit a parent volunteer to accompany them if  needed, and any other details. The parent chaperon is there, not to lead the children, but rather as a safety net in case a situation arises that they might not know how to deal with (such a missing the scheduled bus). 

All of this is a little above the younger ones in Children s House. For them the simple routine of coming to school and knowing exactly what to expect is comforting to them. Their community has expanded beyond the family to include their classroom. Elementary students, on the other hand, are ready to begin embracing an even larger community. All of this stems from Dr. Montessori's findings of child development and understanding that the preschool and elementary child differ as much as the adolescent does. And I have to admit that watching our children walk nervously into that big elementary room really brought this point home.

These are older children that they see regularly, and a lot of them are even their older siblings. They see these children coming in and going home at the same times as them, some even play with the older children in before and after school care. Yet walking in to a new room, even with all their classroom friends, was still the biggest challenge of the day for our kids. Meanwhile it seemed like the Elementary was ready to take their show on the road if we would only have let them!

Imitation, the sincerest form of flattery

Oh distractability and imitation, what big roles you play in the life of a preschooler! O is one of our three year olds, but because she's so articulate she seems older. She also attended a Montessori toddler program before coming to our school and so the idea of choosing work, working at it, and then putting it back was pretty well instilled in her already.

However she's still got some big obstacles to overcome in the area of self control. O is one of those children who will see someone else do something, hear an adult tell them not to, and then repeat it herself. Very frustrating as a teacher, well at least for me. I can handle it when the children copy each other, even if it's not the best behavior. But as soon as I explain to them that it's unacceptable it really pushes my buttons to have a child (who I know heard that message) commence the same behavior. I'm trying really hard not to let O know this....but I'm not sure I'm succeeding.

Unfortunately for me one of O's best friends, E, is quite prone to bouncy, loud behaviors. Unfortunately for O her friend is much better at regaining control of her behavior, so even though E will start the chasing in the classroom, it's O who ends up getting the reinforcement for how to walk because she can't get herself under control as quickly.

Perfect example. While getting ready for nap today both E and O were in the bathroom at the same time. A bad combination that I saw coming and reminded both of them to keep their voices down before they even walked over the threshold. Yeah, no such luck. Another teacher was keeping an eye on them while I helped the last slowpoke hang up her snowpants and jacket. By the time I saw the two of them again there was some pretty loud giggling and quick feet in the hallway.

At this point in the year all I had to do was give them 'the look', asking without any words if they thought they were behaving properly. E immediately clammed up, and slowed her dancing feet enough to walk to the nap room door and remove her shoes. O on the other hand kept snorting as she tried to stop giggling and I had to verbally remind her to walk. Luckily they were separated for the actual nap time, since O naps in the coat room to keep her from disturbing the others. I doubt either of them would have slept if they had gone into the darkened nap room together that keyed up. As it was, all by herself O took a good five minutes to quiet down and begin looking at the books she had chosen for nap.

Yeah, these shirts would be so appropriate for O and E!

The influence on others

N ended up next to me for the last 20 minutes of class. I had already redirected him four or five times that morning and was out of ideas of how to re-engage him. So instead I asked him to sit by me and observe how the other children we working. He grumbled a little bit but listened and sat quietly on the rug while I wrote down some observations. 

Funnily enough though, he inspired another child so sit by and observe with us as well. E sat down next to him without a word and silently watched the progress of the room. She didn't ask what we were doing, didn't try to interrupt, just took it into her head to join us. 

A lot of things in a our classroom work like that. Sometimes it's good, like with the puzzle maps this morning. A took out the entire map of Asia, and well....it was a little bit too much for him. So I recruited a couple of girls who were being silly nearby, trying to engage them in something more productive. While helping put the puzzle back together one began asking the names of the pieces. Next thing I knew she had her own puzzle out and we had gone over about a dozen state names in the United States map.

But sometimes that influence of the environment isn't so good. E loves nothing more than a good game of chase. She's been getting better, keeping it mostly to the playground, but there's one younger boy in our classroom that just gets sucked in to following her. They egg each other on until there's a game of tag going on if a teacher doesn't catch them in time. E wasn't quite running when I put up an arm to stop her (in fact I'd like to say she was doing a pretty legitimate speed walk!) but the high pitched voices were rising.

So back to N. He sat by me and I sent him out to get dressed 10 minutes early, along with another go-homer who has trouble concentrating when the entire group is in the coat room. When I brought the rest of the children in a few minutes later they were both dressed and eager to help me put out name tags for lunch. Sometimes it just takes a little change of environment. 

Montessori Sunday: Dressing Frames

 Snaps, zippers, buttons, velcro, buckles, laces, bows, safety pins, hooks and eyes, there's so many different ways to fasten clothing. The dressing frames in the Casa give children the opportunity to practice these different fasteners in a less awkward situation then on their own bodies. It's always easier to master a task when you can see what you're doing. This is the same reason it's pretty common to see children who are able to help their friends with a zipper, but still can't manage to do their own.

With all the dressing frames the Directress shows the child how to carry the frame with two hands to a table. Usually the snap frame is shown first, though buttons or a zipper may be introduced in the child is really interested. Using careful movements she slowly demonstrates how to undo the fastening. Carefully the two parts of the fabric are folded back, showing the table underneath. With the same careful and analyzed movements the teacher demonstrates how to fasten the pieces back together and invites the child to try. 

Sometimes with a more antsy individual the teacher may demonstrate only two or three fasteners before allowing them to have a turn, but part of what this lesson teaches is patience as well. Patiently waiting for ones turn for an activity is difficult but well worth learning.

The dressing frames are mainly used by the younger children in the class, though the lacing and bow tying frame aren't introduced until later. The bow tying frame is unique in that it may be broken down into two parts when introduced. The first part, the criss cross, can be learned pretty quickly, but the second part, tying the bows, takes a lot of perseverance. Because it's so difficult this is a presentation that we really want the child  motivated to learn before introducing it. Earlier this year we had one child who was very determined to learn how to tie a bow because he had new tie shoes. It only took about two weeks before he could do it independently. Throughout this time though he only took out the frame two or three times, all his other practice occurred using his outdoor shoes. It may have been easier to use the frame but his real intention was to be able to tie his shoes and that's what he focused on.

How to dress your child for the outdoors

J got stuck in the snow. I walked out the door to the playground, pulling on my mittens against the cold and heard her howling. Of course she was at the furthest reaches of our snowy playground. And let me remind you that we had 3 snow days last week. That translates into drifts that are just a few feet short of the eves of the building and have made our fences into short decorations rather than actual blockades. It's been so cold we haven't had recess either and the children haven't made any tracks yet.

So here was J in the middle of that mess, most of her hidden down in a hole the older children had dug in the snow. I let her know I was coming, took a step and immediately sank up to my knee. Oops. Other than a path the elementary children had pounded by coming to borrow our sleds, the yard was still fluffy powder. I waded out to J, got the snow out of her boot and helped her back to more stable ground.

And she was just the first. I fished child after child out of the snow, stuck on countless boots and knocked snow out of at least five pairs of mittens. Luckily they were all so happy to be out playing in the snow that any tears were pretty short lived and no one seemed bothered by the cold. At least while we were outside, when we went in and took stuff off it was a different story.

So if you ever have a need to buy winter clothes for a child (especially a montessori one!) keep these things in mind-

1. That elastic band at the bottom of snowpants? Make sure they have it and that you child knows it goes OVER the boot, not inside it. I had quite a few children who were completely amazed when I explained that it had a purpose.

2. Mittens that go OVER their jacket. Hand wear that goes inside makes it impossible to finish the dressing process. I have trouble doing a zipper with mittens of gloves on my hand, and I've had over two decades of experience. Sorry but a three or four year old has no chance.

3. A hat that really goes OVER the ears, and those with ear flaps are even better. Your child's hat will fall off. They will need to put it on again. They will have gloves on. It will be difficult. Giving them that little extra bit to grab at will make it easier.

Hm....maybe I should make this into a note to send it home to parents. It would certainly help keep my own hands warmer at recess by not having to fix those mittens and snowpants over and over again...

Trust me kid, it's worth it!

Buckling down

There was work galore happening this morning, and really focused, challenging work.

I was so amazed this morning when I brought in the tray for food work and after setting everything out found that I could sit down and observe the children work for a little while. I thought I'd get maybe a minute or two, but I got closer to 10 minutes of uninterrupted observation. This is what we're striving for in our classroom; children who can make choices and work on those activities independently. A couple of girls were playing a game with the pink tower, an older boy was setting up the farm while a younger child observed him, two children were walking carefully on the line. Every where I looked children were engaged in activities or walking to the shelves with purpose.

It's great to be able to watch these children mature and settle down in to the routine, especially the older ones. Some have never stayed for the afternoon, or have napped during that work cycle so having an extra two hours every day has really exploded their abilities. M is one of those who has always gone home after the morning work cycle, this is her first year staying all afternoon. She just turned 5 in November and over the past month has discovered she can read. It started with the little slips we have for clean up jobs at the end of the day and went from there. This morning I watched M use the moveable alphabet with a friend to write little commands (like "sit on a mat"), read them and act them out. Now that's awesome progress, not only being able to read the words but really interpret them as well. 

Below is the work of another Kindergartener. T traced each country from the puzzle map of Europe, colored them in, labeled them and then wrote the name of the country on a separate piece of paper. Not a bad way to practice and learn capital letters!

Another example was with another M girl. We've always known she was very artistic and musical, she takes piano and her older sister plays the violin so there's a lot of formal music education as well. The other day though I heard her playing Christmas songs on our melody harp--from memory! We have little cards that slide in under the strings of the instrument so the children learn which string to pluck, but I'm not ever sure that we have the songs she was playing. Anyways I asked M if she'd like to learn how to play little songs on the bells, she was a little hesitant, telling me that she didn't know how to read regular music. But after talking to me, walking away, coming back again she finally decided that in the afternoon she wanted to learn some more work with the bells. Together we labeled the bells, learned the parts of the staff and the placement of the notes. M was really in to it and was even more proud when she realized that she had had the most presentations on the bells of any of the other kindergartners.  Ok, so we're not supposed promote competition like that but it really was an accomplishment she could be proud of since she puts so much work in to her music.

The week we played inside

Ok, so it hasn't been a week yet, but it's not looking promising. We have a policy of not letting the children out for recess when it's 0 degrees out, including wind chill. Well this week it's been close to zero, actual temperature. Brrr!! So we've been inside and have yet to make tracks in our wonderfully snowed in yard.

The kids haven't been complaining, though they have been looking longingly out the window. Instead we've played with the parachute, done a lot of Simon says and just played with some toys in general. The kids are really in to building with these cardboard bricks we have. They're about a foot long and there's enough that they can actually build a pretty decent fort. It's funny though because there's almost as much squabbling over who gets to put the bricks away as to who gets to play with them in the first place. Don't ask me why, maybe they're fun to carry or something?

Anyways, today though the apparent big hit was limbo. I turned on some music, held a pole for them to walk under and the hilarity ensued. Children crawled under the pole, they belly slid, they crab walked, they wriggled and giggled and had just a great time. Oh, and nobody got stepped on either, yes! The best part though was right after when I lined up the older children to go back to the classroom and as they walked out they were all still dancing a little bit and saying 'thank you'! A pretty awesome end to what might have been a stuffy, boring indoor recess.

Except now I have to top that tomorrow...hmm....

The play yard the children are just itching to get out and play in.
Now it it would only warm up enough to go outside! 

Back to business

No, I did not forget about yesterdays Montessori Sunday. But after our extended break with snow days and the weekend I figured it was too soon for another technical post. After all, you want to hear more about the kids right?

Today was a day of glitter.
And glue.
And glitter-glue.
Oh, and regular glue and clip art pictures, and stickers and stamps and swirly colored paper.

Yeah, kind of kid-art paradise. I guess one child went back in to the classroom and was actually hopping up and down she was so excited to have been a part of the art project. Not that I let them use the glitter personally. Most 3 and 4 (also some 5) year olds just do not have the coordination for meaningful application of glitter products. But they did get to choose their design and color so I'm going to count that as their own work.

Anyways, we were busy making stationary this morning. While we know that not all of our families celebrate Christmas, most do and so it's a good season to make a little extra gift to send home. Each child got to decorate the headers of 4 little pieces of stationary with all manner of art things. Before we started I explained how we were making stationary and needed to leave the bottom part blank for them or their parents to write little notes on. Overall I was pretty impressed with how well they respected this rule, most kept their stickers and pictures and stamps above the line and it actually looks like stationary.

They independently chose their stickers, peeled them and put them on, and also glued on their own clip art pictures. I helped with the glitter application (as previously discussed) and added the final touch of a line of glitter glue from the hot glue gun. The children then made sure their finished stationary stayed with the correct envelope, cleaned up the paper backs from stickers, and helped me store the extra supplies back into their bags. They pushed in their chairs and went back into the classroom and back to work.

Ah it was great. I love how even though this project was adult led they could do it mostly by themselves--including the clean up!

SNOW DAY!!

So I'm sure the children are having lots of adventures out in the snow today. I'll have to wait to hear about them until tomorrow though...unless it keeps snowing like this...two snow days in a row perhaps?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Montessori Sunday: Puzzle Maps

Children love puzzles. So why do we insist on giving them puzzles of cartoon shaped animals and people? In a Montessori environment there are still puzzles, but they are more realistic than what you find in most toy stores. Many classrooms have puzzles of plants or animals where each distinct part of the animal (ex. the hind legs of a horse) is a separate piece. The geography puzzle maps follow the same concept, each different continent or country is its own piece of the puzzle.

The puzzle maps are introduced after the child has been shown the globe of the world, and introduced to the idea that the world is round and made up of land and water. The globe and world map are both brought to a working mat and together the teacher and child explore how they are similar and different. The teacher then demonstrates with clay how a round sphere can be flattened into the two circles that make up the puzzle. After demonstrating how to lift the pieces carefully using the knobs the child is encouraged to practice the puzzle on their own.

After mastering the world puzzle the child is introduced to the continent puzzles, which are more complicated due to the larger number of pieces. Additionally the child will be introduced to a puzzle map of their own country, which is divided into either states or regions. There are large, laminated control maps for the children to fit the pieces onto if they accidentally take out too many. These maps may be labeled with the names of the country/state or left blank.

Puzzle maps help children with their fine motor skills, spatial reasoning and introduce them in a concrete way to the world around them. In Montessori we work from the whole concept (the world) to the parts (the child's own country/state). This is to help them learn things within a context. It's hard to really understand what a continent is if you don't know that the world is made up of land and water. The children are introduced to the idea of geography though a material that they can see and manipulate. Other activities also branch off from the puzzles. Montessori classrooms have flags of different countries for children to learn about. Cultural folders share with them pictures from different parts of the globe.

Cool fact about the puzzle maps: the knob for each country is strategically placed where the capital of that country is located. How neat is that!

An off day

"I'm not gonna be your best friend ever again!" L turned back and shouted at S, before continuing to stomp away. I thought about going over to remind her that this wasn't a kind thing to say, but instead I just watched as L stomped herself over to a corner of the playground and sat down. The grumpy look on her face convinced me that I wouldn't be able to get through to her right now, and that maybe a few minutes was what she needed. Well, I take that back, she'd needed a few minutes all day long.

It started in the morning. L was sitting at a table with another child and I went over to speak with them, I think it had something to do with not listening to another child. Anyways, L was just completely not paying attention, slumping down in her chair while opening and closing her mouth. I led her away from her chair and brought her in to the coat room, letting her know that when she was ready to listen to her friends she could come back in.

About 20 minutes later another teacher asked me why L was still in the coat room. Now normally this is a child who would have taken at most 1 minute to decide that she was ready to come back in. The fact that she didn't kind of worried me that maybe I hadn't been clear that it was her choice when to come back in. I had the other teacher invite her in and L meekly returned to her table.

Later I ran in to her trying to bring an extremely soapy scrubbing board over to the sink. L has a habit of not following the presentation of the teacher, and making up her own steps so I asked her to bring that scrub board back and I'd show her how to clean it with a sponge. She made a pouting face, and slowly made her way back to the stand holding the rest of her work. That's when I saw how many bubble where involved in her cloth washing endeavor.

Anyone remember my post last week about how we were out of soap for grating? And how that grated soap was used for cloth washing? Well all of that powdered soap....was gone.

All of it.

Yep. That's right. All that soap (almost 2 cups worth) had gone in to L's wash water...or elsewhere on the cloth washing. I helped her clean it up, encouraging her to fetch clean water and dumping it out when it got too soapy. She got over her grumpiness a bit as I worked with her, though she clammed up when I asked where all the soap had gone. After I fished several rather large pieces out of the basin she did tell me "F just dumped them in there." Now I'm still skeptical that he did that, but I let it go, figuring that as long as she cleaned it all up it wasn't a huge deal.

I think L's lunch time behavior was pretty typical, but at recess she still seemed a little bit lackluster; trudging along rather than running while we went on a group bear hunt. Luckily for both her and me, L took a long nap, not getting up until snack time.

Then we come back to where we started, with her stomping off and denouncing her friend. Sigh, sometimes a nap cures everything, sometimes it doesn't.

Luckily, before I could go over and talk to her one of the other children spotted L as she pouted in the corner. E raced over and crouched down. I have no clue what she said but in a few seconds she was racing over to the children who had made L so upset.

Oh, and I am so proud of how E handled this. The two girls she wanted to talk to were playing with a couple elementary children and she politely said to the elementary kids "I need to talk to these two." They kind of stared at her, dumbstruck, and I guess she took their silence as an ok to go on ahead. She asked why they were mean to L and that she was sad. They didn't say anything back but E set off at a run back towards L.

Unfortunately she got sidetracked by the appearance of her dad and L's predicament seemed completely blown out of her mind. I felt a little disappointed, thinking she wouldn't be able to complete her mission, but as I watched L came waddling out of the corner.

Yes waddling, it's hard to move in full snow gear when your legs are that short!

"Bye E!" She shouted as the other girl ran to get her lunch box. L waved at E as she left, grinning when she got a wave back. Last I saw she was back to playing with S, the girl whom she told that she'd never be her friend again. Guess she just needed someone to sympathize with her today. Too bad it took so long.

Soap, soap and more soap

We are out of soap. Not the liquid kind for handwashing, the bar kind. The reason? This thing-

Pretty much actual size

Our soap grating activity has been off the shelf constantly for the last week or so. One of the older children just got really interested in doing the grating and inspired a few of the younger children to start as well.  They take a small bar of soap, grate it with the tiny little grater, and then spoon the resulting powder into a tiny bucket with a lid.

This is one of those cool Montessori activities that is linked to another activity in the classroom since the grated soap is used for the cloth washing activity. This makes for a neat cycle for the children to notice. They get the cloths dirty doing something like polishing, then can wash and hang them up to dry to be used again. Similar to what actually goes on at home.

Unfortunately we don't have any children right now who are really interested in washing cloths and so there's been a slight backlog of soap. I think the children have grated around 7 or 8 bars of soap, and filled up both the soap shaker for cloth washing, and the small bucket with the soap grating. Guess I'd better find somewhere to store it all if I can't inspire anyone to use it up!

Does the copy machine work on people?

Does the copy machine work on people? Because I sure could have used an extra one or two of me after recess today. Ok, so it was a little bit of my own fault. The other staff who normally helps me get the nappers ready was gone for the day, and I figured, "Hey, there's only 9 of them, I can handle it alone." Umm...yeah, not so much.

Getting ready for nap is a half an hour process; the kids come in, take their boots off, grab their inside shoes, take off their outdoor clothing and stow it, use the bathroom (only two at a time!) and then head into the darkened nap room. Almost 3 months into the school year, you'd think they'd know the routine by now. Nope. I had one kid still taking off his boots in the back hallway. two running circles around the rug near the boot shelves, four in the coat room playing hide and go seek, one wandering up and down the bathroom hallway, and the last sitting in the nap room fully dressed because she's been hitting one of her friends with a mitten.

Yeah, I could have used at least four more copies of myself. They all got through it, only five minutes late , but I guess they were pretty restless in the nap room. On a normal day we end up with about 7 or 8 who actually sleep. Today only 5 did. Sigh. Tomorrow I think I'll give a presentation after recess on how to take off our outdoor clothing. At least it will keep them all together in one group!

Montessori Sunday: Number Rods

Introducing, the number rods. These pretty red and blue rods are the child's first formal introduction to numbers and counting. By the time most children get to this work they may already know how count by rote, maybe learned from songs, stories or just parental repetition. The number rods help them to associate the name of the number with an actual quantity.

The idea of quantity is reinforced by the fact that the sections of the rod are bound together. Rather than introducing the child to counting with say, shells, whose number name with fluctuate based on how many they grab, the number rod of 9 is always going to be 9 (barring the introduction of a power saw into the environment, but I think we can say that most likely will not happen). 

The child brings the rods to the mat and the Directress has him or her build them in order of length. This process should be relatively easy because the child has already had experience with building the red rods, which are identical (except for color). After arranging the number rods the teacher takes down the shortest rod and introduces it in the form of a three period lesson.

"This is the rod of 1." She demonstrates counting it, placing a finger on the rod while saying, "1." Next she brings down the rod of two and repeats the process, moving her finger from the red section to the blue when counting each new number. This is repeated for the rod of three and then the teacher begins to give fun little commands that have the child interact with the rods. Things like, "Tap the rod of one," "Give me the rod of 3," and so on. The child is introduced to all the rods this way, until they can identify them all through counting.

And this is just the initial presentation, there are lots of activities and extensions that help solidify the child's concept of quantity and their ability to count to ten. There are also small cards with the numbers 1 to 10 on them for the child to match to the rods when they can identify the written symbol for the numbers. 

One of the things that I think is coolest about the number rods though is that there is an actual activity with them is the introduction of the idea of addition and subtraction. Yes, that's right. In preschool we are not just teaching how to count, but introducing children to the operations of math. I know there's a lot of other toys/games/activities for young children that are supposed to teach counting and math, but most don't even attempt to claim to teach the operations, thinking young children aren't capable of it. However, thus far I've shown this to at least four different children and all of them have been fascinated by the idea of adding two numbers together and easily picked up on the idea of how to do it. Score one for well designed learning equipment!

Parent Teacher Conferences

Whew. Two days of over 25 meetings with parents, as well as some of the regular busy work with the few children who came for daycare. Basically it's been busy.

The poor children who came for daycare were pretty confused as to where some of their classmates where. We take just a limited number on conferences days, most stay home with their parents, other family, or different daycare centers for the two days of conferences. So I had 11 children in the classroom for our shortened work period. Boy did it feel empty in there! On the other hand I could easily observe what they all were doing and we have never had more chairs being remembered to be pushed in! A little bit of extra recess, as well as time spent with the older elementary children definitely had our younger children deciding that daycare days are pretty great.

Lucky for me I not only got to spend time with the children, but sit in on quite a few conferences and see what their parents had to say. The head teacher and myself were pretty happy with all the rave  reviews we got from parents about how their children are doing. I know a lot of it is the environment, but I think sometimes the parents also aren't aware of how much their children are maturing as time goes on. ]
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Since I worked with most of these same kids before I took my Montessori training and then came back after a year I really had a unique opportunity to see just how many changes a year can bring. The children not only become more physically competent, but also much more socially aware and developed. I credit most of this to just maturing with age, as well as having the great support of their classroom community (not just the teacher) but it was nice to hear how grateful the parents were.

Funniest part of conferences:

Two parents came whose children were part of our daycare group. The parents kind of sneaked in to the classroom for their conference while their two young boys were in the other room with the daycare children. While I and the other teacher were talking to the parents this voice suddenly pipes up from the coat room, "Mommy here!" For some reason or other one of the boys had gone into the coat room, and most likely spotted his moms' jacket and deduced that she was in the building. We could all hear him trying to convince whatever adult he was with that he should go and find him mommy. Oh, and by the way he's using extremely simple sentences so she's interpreting what he's trying to say, adding to the entertainment. Meanwhile we're trying not to laugh and resume the conference, with his parents keeping their voices low so he won't hear them and get even more convinced that his mommy was here and that he should go find her. Luckily he was convinced that he didn't need to and went back into the other room so we could finish the conference and his parents could leave without a crying incident. Yeah, I'd rate than a success.

Daddy help! (but really, don't)

D came in to school with his twin brother and dad this morning, same as just about every other day (sometimes mom drops them off). I said good morning and reminded them to take off their boots at the door, a habit we're trying to develop before the snow flies and creates a terrible mess of puddles in our school. D sat on the bench without uttering a single complaint and began swinging his feet and kicking at one boot with the other foot.

"It might be easier if you sit on the rug, just like after recess, remember?" I asked him. "Yeah, rug!" he exclaimed, sliding off the bench and settling himself on the floor. Meanwhile his brother A sat on the bench, looking a little less motivated to come in and dad stood in the doorway watching. D pushed at his boot from the ankle, mainly just squishing it down rather than pushing it off.

"Can you push on the rubber part D?" I cued him, pointing to the harder part of his boots so he could slide it off his heel. His twin hadn't yet made any effort with his boots dad began prompting him to try too. Hearing this D looked up and began whimper, "Too hard daddy!" Dad said basically the same thing I had, about which part of the boot to push on. D made a pretend effort, moving his hand back up to the soft part of the boot and pushing again. "Daddy help!" he cried, hiccuping a little bit. Daddy knelt down, showing him were to push again and giving the boot a nudge so it slid off D's heel. D kept up his whimpering until dad helped him with the second boot too.

Not bad acting for a three year old huh? And I know it was an act because here's what happened later today at lunch.

D finished pretty early and was carrying his lunch box into the coat room to put it away and get dressed just as I left it. In less than 5 minutes he came out to the rug to get his boots, fully dressed in his snow pants and jacket with mittens in hand. I took the first group of children outside and 5 minutes after that D came waddling outside, bundled up for the cold with boots and mittens fastened securely.

10 minutes total. 10 minutes for a three year to get all his winter outdoor gear on, including those boots that had given him so much trouble in the morning. Oh, and that 10 minutes includes waiting for a teacher to fasten his mittens over his sleeves, something that even our kindergarten students have trouble mastering (and actually I as an adult sometimes struggle with!)

Oh, and when we went back inside after recess? It took him maybe 2 minutes tops to get those boots off. And I didn't hear a single whimper after reminding him that it was easier to sit down on the rug instead of the bench.

So yes daddy, help....but not with those boots.

All the things we can do

Such a busy day in our classroom...though I can't think of a day that isn't busy so let's just say the energy was a bit higher than normal. Not that the children were out of control, but they were quite busy and a bit louder than normal. Want to know just how busy a Montessori classroom is? Well come and and follow me through my morning work today!

It starts out pretty quiet, I'm still filling up the tubs of water for dish washing when the first children come in. A few more little chores preparing the classroom and L comes up and asks if she can do a horse book. I let her know that we don't have any more of the paper for that animal, but we have lots of turtle pictures for her to color the parts. She eagerly goes to set up the turtle cards at a table while I greet a few more children and when she's done we go over the different parts. By the way does anyone know how you actually pronounce 'carapace'? I sit with her for a bit as she colors all the parts in, a different part on each page. Then we review them and I write the names underneath. L finishes her book and I reminder her how to bind it using a hole punch and some string.

During all of this I've shaken probably 7 or 8 hands, gotten a bar of soap for soap grating, suggested work to 3 or 4 children, sent M back to clean up his work (several times), and knotted the thread on two different needles. Someone has broken a glass over by the dishwashing and I keep the crowd back while another teacher sweeps it up. We have a brief meeting for a child to show the whole classroom the paper wasp nest her mom found before resuming work.

G comes over to show me her very first pillow that she's sewn, and E comes and asks for a story. I tell him I'd rather practice sounds with him and he goes to get some sandpaper letters. He traces f, t and b while I hurry to think up words with that sound in them. He thinks it's hilarious if he can trace it before I can think of a word. When I say that I'm finally out of words and ask which sound he wants to make into a book. He chooses b and while he gets the paper I chat with I, the three year old I've asked to sit by me since she was just bothering her older sister rather than choosing her own work. E comes back with the paper and I send him off to get a pencil holder and some colors. Meanwhile I tells me that she wants to do bead stringing so I send her off. E and I come up with four b words to put in his book (ball, brother, bucket, and something else that I forget).

During this F has wandered over and I ask if he'd like to work with me. He eagerly nods and rushes off, coming back with a box of constructive triangles. I ask him to set it up at a mat,and go back to M (the boy I already reminded earlier) to keep putting away his work. Then F and I gather at his mat and put the different triangles together. We go over the different parts of the triangle (base, vertex, midpoint, altitude or height) and I try to trick him with little commands like 'point to a midpoint' 'where's another midpoint?' 'trace the base'. He thinks it's kind of fun, but I can tell he's more interested in working with me rather than the actual lesson so we don't spend too much time. I let him clean up, going to remind M yet again to keep cleaning up his work. Granted he did have a lot of pieces to put away since he did the decanomial square, but this was still about an hour long process. Oh well.

Decanomial Square

Free for a little bit I wander over to the dishwashing area, moving some of the 'cleaned' dishes into the plastic bin that we'll haul to the dishwasher later. I remind a few children that we don't wait for snack and shoo them off to find a work. I write a few names on paintings at the easel and rinse the colors out. Having white paint probably isn't the best idea but it's the one we have the most left of (big surprise) and the children really do like using the colored paper so we've kept it out.

I spot S just putting a work away and ask her if she'll help me fix a work. I show her how the vegetable cards are all mismatched and she goes to grab a mat while I carry the tray. After changing her mind about what mat she wants S unrolls the chosen one by her sisters work and we take out the cards and begin to match them. I really like these cards, though they're more like wooden tablets than cards. However they have a large card that sits in the bottom of the tray and then two sets of smaller ones that match one top. One set has the whole vegetable, while the second set has it cut up so you can see the inside. S did really well with it, I only had to cue her for a few of the names and she easily matched the inside pictures with the pictures of the whole vegetables. I think her mom does a lot of cooking from scratch at home.

Meanwhile I had noticed a couple of girls who seemed joined at the hip...well maybe joined at the hand. Any time they were walking around they were holding hands, one usually pulling the other to a work. And they were working, but I had seen that most of their activity was becoming just silly and off task. So I asked the two of them to work separately for a bit. M went off without a complaint, but G immediately began to complain and exclaim 'I can't work by myself'. I shrugged my shoulders and said that I actually wanted her to take a break so I could hear her read. She hesitated a moment and as I dug in the pile of easy readers G began to say "but I don't like those books!". Then I pulled out one with a train. She went silent, turned it in my hand so she could see the cover and read the title aloud. "I want to read that one!" she stated gleefully and we chose a quite place to read.

I sat next to her as she read, occasionally helping out with an atypically spelled word but she read fairly fluently. A few of the younger children drifted over, I think some of them have a sixth sense for when a story is being read. G finished just as it was time for French so I had her put the book back and went to gather the other children. We were out in the hallway, all lined up when I realized that the French teacher hadn't shown up for the day. Oops. I apologized to the go-homer children and sent them back in to work. After about 15 minutes when I noticed none of them had really chosen any work I gathered them up again and we did a grace and courtesy lesson on how to observe. We've had some problems with this in our class as some children have developed the bad habit of leaning on the table for the work they're watching, or talking to the person while they're working. So myself and one of the slightly older students demonstrated how to stand quietly, with hands behind our back while observing another child work. Then they all got to try it themselves before being dismissed to get dressed to go home. When they all had a chance to try I went and joined them in the coat room, zipping zippers, helping find hands and mittens, and sending them out to put on boots.

And that was just the MORNING. Let no child go home and say that they did 'nothing' as school.

Trust me, a lot was going on in this building
Don't let the quiet fool you!

Mini Minnesotans!

We have some true Minnesotans in the making at our school, I don't think I heard a single kid complaining that they were cold! And it was cold today, I wore my snow pants, I'll admit it! I also had to double check what our 'stay inside' cold temperature is, because that windchill was pretty nasty.

But outside we went. There were hats, mittens, snow pants and jackets all scattered throughout the coat room, and yet somehow 22 children got ready. And I think we only lost one hat...or was it mittens? I sometimes think that a school is more of a clothing vortex than the washing machine and dryer. I think that's pretty impressive actually that we have kids as young as 3 who can not only keep track of their own things, but get it on basically independently (except for those darn mittens, especially that second one!). Plus the fact that they're surrounded by a pack of other children doing the same thing. Our coat room and boot shelves are both very busy locations!

Amazingly it also took us the same exact amount of time that a day without snow pants, go figure. I think it had to do with the shear excitement of a dusting of snow. Technically we got more snow last week, enough to actually make a few snowballs with, but I think the fact that nearly everyone had snow pants put the kids in the winter mood.

And to cap it off we played the animal game and picked all cold weather animals. What kinds of cold weather animals can preschoolers come up with? Well we were, big lumber polar bears, waddling penguins, fish (hey, they live up there too!), and swooping snowy owls. I also got requests for snow bears, and snow birds and tried to explain that we'd already done those. Unless there's a snow bird I don't know about?

We definitely had a few kids with this problem today!

Montessori Sunday: Care of Plants

Ahh, another visit to the lovely area of practical life, this time looking at the sub-area of care of the environment. Every notice how self-centered young children are? When something interests them the rest of the world does not exist. Activities in the Montessori classroom like care of plants, sweeping, dusting, etc. begin to bring the child's attention to the world around them. We want them to begin to feel a sense of responsibility for the environment and participate in both caring for it and making it beautiful. Taking care of plants fulfills both these desires.

Care of plants stand at my training

For taking care of plants the child first puts on an apron, and spreads an oilcloth out on a table. The training center I attended had an absolutely lovely copper-topped work bench just for plant care (see picture to right) but I've yet to see any
permanent set-ups in a regular classroom (though I'm sure it's on many wish lists!). A tray containing scissors or plant shears, a dish for cut leaves, a mister or atomizer, a cloth for spills, and a water can is brought to the table next. The child is introduced to all the objects and told their names as the Directress lays them out in the order they will be used.

The child is then allowed to choose a plant from the environment that need care and brings it to the working table. If there is a book of the plants in the classroom the teacher will help the child find the picture that matches and see how much water and sunlight the plant needs. Next she will demonstrate how to  clip off any dead leaves near the stem and how to discard them into the tray. The child is allowed to try as well, with a reminder that we clip only leaves that are brown and dry. The plant is misted lightly and the soil is checked for dryness to see if it needs water. When all this is done the child returns the plant and either picks another one to care for or cleans up their work.

While it's not unusual for plants in a classroom to suffer from too much care (especially over watering!), it's still great to have a child walk by a shelf with a plant, notice that it's not looking so well and then lovingly bringing it over to a table and tending to it. It gives the child a purpose and they are so proud of what they accomplish.

    

We don't have any plants in our classroom currently
but I think the children would love something
like this lovely terrarium my aunt got me for home.

Better Days

Ok, so Monday's post was a bit of a downer. How about some success stories for a boost tonight instead?

Story 1: The farm

Remember those two kids struggling to get the farm set up? Well today we used a timer (not very Montessorian, I know, but sometimes things need a little prodding to get going). The verdict? A HUGE success! Not only did they get the entire farm set up, but they kept the energy rolling and made it through the entire packet of labels...though they didn't quite know where to put 'the', 'a' or the 'and' labels that somehow got mixed in with things like 'the spotted white dog' and 'kicking horse'. Oh, and that 'kicking horse' label took a little bit because they read it as the 'chicken horse'. I can understand how that would be hard to label since I"m still not sure exactly what a 'chicken horse' is exactly....

A successfully labeled farm!

Story 2: When Mommy comes to visit...

When mommy comes to visit some kids don't leave her side, or they are inconsolable when she leaves. But then there are some who don't do either. Instead they buckle down and show how much work they can do. Thank you A and O for doing just that. Both their moms visited today and without any suggestions both of them promptly took out their favorite works, set them up at a table near their mom's observation stool and got right to work. As far as I saw they both concentrated and completed their work and put it away for the next person. If only we could get that to happen with every kid class would go A LOT smoother. Thought O did get a little bit jealous/protective when some of the other children began talking to her mom, but she just went over and listened and walked back to work whent he children left. Oh well, her mom said she had a good visit anyways.

Story 3: Writing can be easy

How good is your phonetic reading?
1. Pony
2. Strawberry
3. Pink
4. Working mat
5. Teddy Bear

Oh yes, writing actually can be easy...when you know all your letter sounds. This afternoon I suggested to M that she take out Moveable alphabet for her language work, and after needing a reminder about what material it was I thought maybe I should check and see which letter sounds she knew before suggesting words to write out. Turns out she knew them all. Yes, all of them. Now in my training they made it sound like of course every child should know ever sound when they're using the moveable alphabet but really, that doesn't always happen. We don't want to hold them back if they're really eager to start writing, or if they're getting stuck with learning sandpaper letters sometimes presenting the same information with a different material works better.

M wanted to get out some objects and write the words for them, but I tried to encourage her to think of some of her favorite things instead, hoping to give her some different practice analyzing the sounds. She did pretty well, didn't need my help finding any of the sounds she was looking for...though I think maybe we need to practice listening to ALL the sounds. After all, I'm pretty sure that 'strawberry' has a t in it somewhere.....

In over their heads

Usually there's a lot of success stories over the course of the day, but coupled with those has to be some stumbling.

Story 1: Too much work

M and M decided that they wanted to do "Big" addition. Guess they were really inspired by the one we did in the afternoon last week. They spent a good twenty minutes trying to recruit another friend to work with them since doing addition with the golden beads works best with three people; two to add their numbers together and a third to be sort of in charge and help get the counting done. After failing to find a third they were still inspired enough to set it up for just two children with me giving them the numbers to collect. They gathered their cards and beads with just a little difficulty and then got stuck. This whole thing took about half an hour and when I noticed both of them just wandering around, occasionally returning to their mat I had to step in and ask what step they were on. I reminded them to set out the big set of cards and left them at it, hoping it would spur their memory of how to finish up the activity.

No such luck. By this point they were still a little fuzzy on what to do, add that to the fact that they were tired from working on this one project for about 45 minutes But they pulled it together, finished the work and without a second thought began cleaning up. I wish they could have done it completely on their own, but on the other hand I didn't want them to get frustrated or bored so much they didn't want to ever do it again. Oh well, better luck next time.

Story 2: Toy temptations

This story happened in the afternoon, when only the oldest children are in the classroom. E and A had the farm out, one of the most coveted and anticipated materials in the classroom. The farm is just what it sounds like, a play farm. It is used in the classroom to teach the parts of speech (noun, adjective, etc.) and isn't introduced until children can read fairly well. Of course all the younger children recognize the fun animals that go with it and want to play with them. Even the older children can get distracted from the reading by the temptation to play with the animals.

So when I heard E telling A about how 'super pig needs to be here to he can tell all the other pigs what to do,' I went over and reminded them they needed to finish setting up the farm animals so they could label them. They buckled down for a little bit, but not long after I noticed they were simply arranging the animals in a tight circle. I asked E to come and read some of his book to me, telling A she could arrange the animals while waiting for her turn to read. Usually things get less silly if there's only one child but still they couldn't get those animals arranged. They were just too tempting. I could tell that E and A both knew they weren't using the farm like they should have though, because as soon as I said they needed to put it away since they weren't using the labels they complied without a single complaint. Sigh, well at least they knew what they were supposed to be doing.

Story 3: You can't read with hands in your eyes

Reading is hard. And it's even harder when you're struggling with it and you really want to do it, but you can't, and all your friends have read the books you're still struggling through, but you still can't make out the words, and you just can't stand to look at the words on the page anymore and your eyes hurt from it.

Yeah, I think that sums up the frustration A was feeling this afternoon. She has such a hard time remembering what sounds the letters make that reading is nearly impossible for her. Sounding out 'it' or 'rag' is almost impossible when you can't remember what sound a 'g' or a 't' makes. In a Montessori classroom we really focus on helping children recognize the sounds of letters so they can read and write phonetically, then as they progress forward we introduce 'puzzle words' (things like 'the' 'two' and 'these' that can't be sounded out and just have to be memorized). Poor A has such a hard time recalling sounds that she treats ever word like a puzzle word, staring at it and reading it over and over again until she can recognize it on site.

It's a long and laborious process. I could tell how hard it was as she struggled to read the short book, constantly rubbing her hands over her eyes and looking away from the book. We spent nearly 20 minutes on  a book with maybe 25 phonetic words in it. Most of that was focusing on getting her to keep her hands away from her face so she could actually see the words, rather than just trying to guess what is on the page. A did agree with me that it's even harder to read when you can't see the letters and kept trying to stop herself rubbing her eyes. And we did finish. We're going to have to read that book again tomorrow, but that will be ok. All I can say is that I hope it gets easier, because I know she really wants to read like her big sisters.

Montessori Sunday: The Mixed Age Structure

Instead of featuring a Montessori material this week I want to focus a bit more on some of the intangible aspects of a Montessori classroom. I've talked a lot in my posts about how we have a mix of ages in our classroom, and even a little bit about why this. I was reading through articles on some other blogs I follow and this one article from Montessori on the Double struck me as a great example of this aspect of classroom structure. I promise if I had the time/opportunity to just sit and observe in our classroom at school I could write something similar, I know the same type of experience is going on for some of our younger children but I haven't found the time to just sit and observe so closely yet. Maybe I'll make that one of my goals for the upcoming week.

Enjoy!


http://montessorionthedouble.com/2013/11/02/what-its-like-being-the-youngest-child-in-a-montessori-class/

Trick or Treat!

Well the kids have been practicing and preparing their 'trick or treat' steps all week. Leaves on the play ground make great 'candy' at recess to both collect and hand out. Building forts in the daycare even creates different 'houses' to practice saying trick or treat at. Yep, I'd say they should all have been well prepared for whatever adventures they had tonight. I can't wait to hear all about it tomorrow...and then have it be over. Now I"m glad with how enthusiastic they are about holidays, in fact I think it's wonderful how over the top excited they get. But we basically had no regular work time today because we knew that they would be so distracted.

Halloween at our school means costumes for all ages, and a little parade of the Children's House around the Elementary classroom. Then the Elementary students usually read poems or sing some Halloween themed songs for the younger children. It's a fun break from routine, and we did a great job this year as adults with helping the children get their costumes on without losing any pieces (I don't think!). Three of us zipped, snapped, Velcro'd and attached countless fairy/angel/princess wings (the accessory of choice for most of the girls in our class) while Mrs. C snapped pictures of the children with our freshly carved pumpkin.

Remember the ones I featured about a week ago? Yeah, they got a little bit soft but luckily we got a donation later and one of our extra staff had time to carve it for us. Hooray!

I do have to say that we had some unique costumes, and even all those fairies and princess were different (though I have never seen so many glittery wings!). We had-

-A squishy Puff the magic dragon
-Olivia the Pig
-A Beaver (with a tail almost as big as the boy in the costume!)
-Princess Lolly from Candy Land (anyone else remember that game?)
-A young king with his older brother Knight
-A plump pumpkin
-A cobra (complete with hood containing heat sensing pits!)

My favorite though was Princess Leia, and not just because it was a home made and well done costume, but from how the boy who was in it explained why he was Leia. "Because Dad is R2D2, my little sister is going to be Yoda, and Mom is Chewbaca." Ahh, family themed costumes, gotta love em.

Games we like to play

I don't want to give the wrong impression that in a Montessori environment that the children never do anything as a whole group. On the contrary we do a lot of things as a big group: birthdays, holiday celebrations, lunch, recess, and outdoor games. Outdoor games are probably the most consistent group activity and all the children who stick around for lunch participate. About ten minutes before the end of recess I'll call out that it's time to clean up and the children know that that's their cue to run their toys to the big blue bin and dash to the side of the school so they can get their 'favorite' spot. The older ones are especially keen on standing in a particular spot,

Normally our games are pretty simple. Things like 'Fishy, fishy may we cross your ocean?", Red light green light, and moving like an animal. We did crab walking the other day and most of the children thought it was hilariously funny, though a few others needed encouragement to even try. All the games we do have very simple rules since even red light, green light is a bit confusing for our younger students.

Photo courtesy of Amazon
(all our domes were picked up by the children
 before I could take a picture!)

And today we had a brand new game to play. Ok, so it really was just Simon says using these colorful domes but the kids thought it was a great new game. After all, it's so much more fun to find a purple dome than it is to touch your nose. And it's even MORE fun when you get to find the purple dome that your best friend is also standing at. And then the teacher asks you to find your favorite color and you not only get to choose but change your mind (just in case you know). Plus what child doesn't want to run around after keeping themselves at a walking pace for the entire morning? Answer: None of the children in our classroom!

They all really enjoy playing, even those who don't fully understand it and those for who it is really easy. We try to keep it non-competitive, not because we don't want them to try hard and feel like they've done a good job, but it should be obvious that there is no way a three year old could keep up with a six year old. Amazingly though children seem to realize this and it's not uncommon for the older ones to handicap themselves. In tag I've seen our biggest and fastest boy purposefully miss the flag when chasing a younger child. In our school they spend enough time with the younger ones to realize that they need to help them, and that if they play too hard they may cause the younger ones to cry. They've learned to give the younger ones a head start, or help them if they fall, and even give them second chances. Mostly without any adult intervention.

Making a book

So this actually occurred yesterday but I got distracted by the chicken pox and forgot to write about it. Please note that I will only be using the first letter of the students name for confidentially, while still trying to keep the story a personal experience (aka. not just calling the girl, 'her' or 'she' through the whole story).

L made a book.

Parts of a Horse puzzle from Montessori Services
(we use most of the same parts for making books)

Yep, an actual book. Well, ok it was 6 or 7 pages of printer paper stapled together, but it's still a book. And she illustrated it herself. L is one of youngest students, this is her second year in the Children's house but she's still only three years old and hasn't started too much of the academic materials yet. So it was a big deal when the head teacher invited her to make a book on the parts of a horse. Boy was she excited. First they took out the laminated cards with the different parts of the horse colored on each one and went over the names. Then L got to pick her favorite one and color that part in on her own, blank copies of the horse. Horse, body, mane, tail, forelegs, hind legs, neck, forehead, ears, she colored them all.

Next came the exciting part--stapling! With her book bound she 'read' it to me, stumbling over just a few of those parts. Hey, it's hard to remember which of the legs are which! And I think L carried that book around the rest of the afternoon she was so excited. She finally moved on to a new work when I promised that I would help her remember to get it into her blue bag on Friday to go home and show mom.

Today I caught her checking on it still in her bin, and showing it off to a few friends. I'd have to say that she's still pretty proud of herself for completing such a big kid work.

What's something every school has in common?

Notes on the window for parents

The passing of germs and alerts to prevent pandemics of school-wide proportions. It's the annual chicken-pox alert at school! Ok, so it's probably not quite an annual thing, but I'm sure it's close to that. We've already had reports of lice earlier this year, now chicken pox, as well as the normal coughs and colds that travel around in this season.

We had 8 children out sick today. 8. I think that might be a new record. It felt so quiet in the classroom with that many gone, and I felt almost in the way. One of the reason Montessori classrooms limit the adults in the environment is because we want to step back and let the children work without interference, even if they're not doing something exactly right. Normally in our classroom there are enough real problems (like thread tangling, or lost scissors) that keep us three adults busy enough to not interfere too much and give the children a chance to figure things out on their own.

But today with so many children gone (and I will admit they were some of the ones who require more attention!) it was a different story. I found that I had to force myself to back to the counter and just observe for a bit, recording what lessons each child was practicing. Now I do want to say that normally I really like just taking time to sit on a stool and just observe. However today we had some students from the local university came to observe and as we had four of them in at a time all the stools were taken and I felt slightly awkward just standing at the counter to observe. It's kind of amazing how the smallest things can throw you off. I have to remember that, it's a part of the reason we really try to keep the environment organized and clean for the children. If everything has a place and is in order, one knows what to expect and can focus on other things.

Maybe tomorrow it will be a more normal kind of day and I focus on really observing. There are some children who need new work to do and I'd really like to observe them a bit and see what they're really interested in. It always makes a presentation go better when they're actually engaged and interested!

Montessori Sunday: Scrubbing a table

I apologize, this was scheduled to post and never did for some reason...sorry about the delay. I did actually write it on Sunday, promise!)

Ah practical life, definitely one of the most relaxing and normalizing areas of the classroom. Dr. Montessori talks about the process of the child normalizing, or coming back to the normal path of development. According to her books children who are this normal path of development are calm, eager to learn and develop themselves. Think about it in context of being an adult. Is there any activity that you do that calms and centers you? Many people run, work on a craft, bake, garden, etc. Usually these activities include some kind of repetitive motion that you can lose yourself in as it becomes habitual (the word cathartic comes to mind).

The lovely table washing set from my Montessori Training cente
(note how there is red color coding to help distinguish the set)

Many practical life activities try to help children lose themselves in these repetitive motions for the same purpose. Table scrubbing consists of these lovely, repetitive circular motions that satisfy the child's need to move while directing that energy into purposeful work. And when I talk about purposeful work I'm not really thinking about the table getting clean. In fact most often the table will end up being soaking wet and possibly even still soapy when the child finishes. Instead the purposeful work is for the child themself. These repeated motions are helping them learn how to control their movements and build up their muscles. Everything the young child wishes to accomplish they must repeat over and over until they master. We as adults have long forgotten how impossibly thick our fingers used to seem when we were trying to learn a new task. For children almost every task is new and requires immense amounts of concentration.

But let's get off theory for a bit and look at the actual activity of table scrubbing. The activity begins with the child putting on an apron and choosing a table which may or may not be dirty and need scrubbing. They move the chair aside and set up a chowki (a small, short table used while sitting on the floor) and lay an oilcloth on it. The materials are all brought over and laid out in order of use on the chowki; scrub brush, soap, sponge and drying cloth. The small basin is filled using the pitcher, and then the scrubbing can begin.

The child is shown how to wet the bristles and apply the soap using a circular motion. The table is then scrubbed, top to bottom and left to right. Circular motions, beginning slowly and then speeding up in the middle of the table, and slowing again as the end is reached demonstrate paying attention to the edges of the table. The circles are overlapped and the child is show up to apply more soap as needed.

After the scrubbing the teacher demonstrates how to wet the sponge and squeeze it until no more water drips back into the basin. The sponges is then drawn in a straight line across the bottom of the table, collecting the suds and stopping just short of the edge. This is the only time a circular motion is not used. The child is show how to rinse the sponge out in the basin and squeeze it dry before collecting the last of the suds. Finally the drying cloth is pulled out, folded into a small mitt around the hand and (using circular motions!) the child is shown how to dry the table.

And of course once everything is cleaned the child is responsible for drying the materials, wiping up any spills on the floor, and returning it to the shelf for the next person. Typical expectations for any Montessori activity. If you're ever having a bad day I honestly suggest setting up something similar at home, it's actually really relaxing and you've got a nice clean table when finished!

I spoke too soon

So this post is a bit late but with good reason. (there's always a good reason isn't there?) Anyways, my previous post was about pumpkin carving, and how trying to have even just one organized activity made the day a lot longer. Well the day after that the head teacher of our classroom was gone for the day to get her son in for a long overdue doctors visit. So after a long Wednesday I found myself playing at head teacher the next day. So yeah, get ready for another me centered post rather than one about the awesome children I work with. Don't worry though, they'll return soon!

Don't get me wrong it went great. The kids were very well behaved, and a few of our youngest children were out sick so the day wasn't quite as busy as it normally would have been. Because it was Thursday the children also had French. For this they go out of the classroom for about 15 mins for the younger children, and half and hour for the older. While the rest of the morning was pretty smooth, it was nice to have the class size reduced by about 10 when French began.

Next came our recess time adventure. Recess is a part of my normal schedule, but dogs jumping the fence into our play yard is not. There's a Shepard/Collie mix in one of the yards behind our school who gets really excited when the kids come out and start running around. We're talking excessive barking, pacing and putting front paws up the fence. Well this particular day the dog got so excited that he used the wood pile as a vaulting block and ended up in our play yard.

Then he must have decided he really didn't want to be where all these screaming kids were and that's when he discovered he couldn't get back over the fence. Of course all the children were so excited about the dog, some were nervous but most just really wanted to go and pet it. Luckily they all respond really well when I yell "Line up at the school" since that's the phrase we use every day to start our game. So we got the children all corralled in one part of the yard and with the help of the neighbor got the dog back over the fence. The children could hardly talk about anything else the rest of recess.

Then the afternoon rolled around. My normal afternoon is pretty relaxed. After getting the younger children into the nap room I have almost an hour to take my break and prep any materials we need in the classroom (usually cutting paper or designing artwork). Then when the first group of nappers gets up I go back into the classroom to help with the children who are awake. With our regular teacher gone I was busy all afternoon. The extended day children (those who stay awake all afternoon) kept themselves busy brainstorming ideas for 'we missed you' cards for our missing teacher (there was a decided Halloween theme!) while I helped get the nappers ready.

Myself and the older children read a chapter from the boxcar children and made cards, then got back down to serious work. The older children have these checklists they are supposed to complete during the day. These checklists are just to make sure that they do a writing work, another type of language work, and a math work. It also helps prepare those who are going in to Elementary where they will plan their own projects and make the deadlines for them. Right now though only two of our children are confident readers, the others need help reading the options on their checklist. And I made the mistake of just reading the lists aloud without seeing what was on there. That was how I ended up trying to give three new presentations as well as trying to deal with the normal mishaps that come up in the course of the day. Oh, ad did I mention that soon after starting this I had the newly awakened nappers come join our classroom? Luckily there were only two who didn't sleep. But still, it was a far cry from a normal afternoon when there are two adults in there for the majority of the afternoon.

So yeah, while it went well I was pretty exhausted by the end of the day. But I'd already told some friends I would go climbing with them. Waiting for them to get to the gym all I could think about was doing this-

Oh, and then on Friday one of our other staff left at 1 o'clock instead of 3:30 like normal. So I was in charge of taking out all the garbage in the school (it's amazing how much we generate, mainly from paper towels) and extra daycare duty after school. Nothing that I haven't done before but it was a good thing that it was Friday. A day of pumpkin carving, having our regular teacher gone, then filling in for yet another staff member wiped me out. Hopefully next week will be more normal....except for there's Halloween....I better rest up.

Why I don't teach regular preschool

It's because of the pumpkins, or more specifically what I ended up doing because of 4 little pumpkins.

Obviously Halloween is coming up. For school we'll have a little 'parade' of costumes through the elementary classroom who will then perform some poems for us. Then we'll get a special snack (pumpkin seeds) and that's it. Pretty simple as far as halloween parties go. However, we had a really nice couple of parents donate pumpkins to us for decorations, and decided that we had enough to let all the children help clean and carve them.

I want to say that it was great to be able to get all the children involved, normally only the children who stay awake for the afternoon help in this special project. These are children who are kindergarten age or close to it (the others are napping). Since we had 5 pumpkins donated we decided to let the older children do one as a group,  including measuring it, guessing how many seeds it contained, and then counting the seeds. Meanwhile the younger children would just clean out the 4 smaller pumpkins and draw faces for me to carve later.

The plan didn't sound so bad. I'd get the pumpkins all ready to go, bring the kids out in groups of 6 and when they finished I'd bring out the next group. And I have to say that the first group went pretty well with only a few unforeseen circumstances. The pumpkins we had were so little that it was hard for even the children to get their hands in the hole, much less the scrappers. So instead of letting the children scrape I had to loosen up the inside periodically so they could pull the guts out with their hands. 2 children took turns with that, while the other four sorted the seeds from the guts so we could save them for snack. Some children were a little hesitant about touching the squishy, sticky insides, but when they saw the others digging in most joined in with enthusiasm.

The other problem was our aprons. Because there was so much pumpkin gunk and sticky hands aprons were pretty much a necessity. Our normal aprons in the classroom are velcro, and definitely designed to be taken on and off independently. Unfortunately there aren't enough that I could borrow six for the entire morning, so I had to borrow the spares. All the spares, though, are tie aprons. I think we have 2, maybe 3 children in the classroom who can actually tie a bow, and none who can tie one behind their back. So guess who ended up tying and untying aprons for group?

Are you seeing the problem yet? Not only had I put myself in charge of the whole group, but given myself the added responsibility of scrapping the pumpkin and tying/untying aprons. Oh, and because of the time crunch and messiness of the project it wasn't worthwhile to let the children help clean up lit normal, so that was all on me too. After an hour and a half, and 24 children later I was exhausted, and there was a very orange, sticky table and floor.

In a regular preschool this kind of group activity happens most of the day, and in even bigger groups. The adults seem to spend most of their time going from one child to another, trying to make sure everyone is at roughly the same point in the project so they can all finish together. Some schools have the children clean up, but even then the clean up is minimal, like putting all the markers in a basket. I want to give a thumbs up of appreciation to anyone who works like that five days a week and still likes doing it. This little project really made me appreciate how helpful teaching the children in our class to be independent and not only work without direct supervision, but to also clean up afterwards. It makes it so much easier for us teachers as well actually giving the children the opportunity to have quality one on one time, since we don't need to focus our attention on multiple children learning how to do the same project.

Oh, and after all the busyness in the morning I still spent almost an hour in the afternoon actually carving the pumpkins and finishing sorting the seeds. Though they did turn out pretty cute!

Our children designed pumpkins,
(just a little soft from sitting inside over the weekend...oops!)