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/