Heard at school

O: "Miss A, I'm running out of energy."
Me: "Well why don't you go sit in the library and rest with a book then?"
O: "Okay!" Runs over to the library area...yeah, out of energy.

A child trips over his own shoes, another drops a plate that clatters extremely loudly, another child is too far on the edge of their chair and tips it over with a crash. For all these instances another child immediately asks, "Are you ok?" and then immediately add on, "Did it break?".....

Apparently these are the questions I ask way too often! (But at least they're in the right order!)

Building Community

The preschool years are when the child begins to awaken to the community beyond their family unit. They're ready to begin making real friends and exploring new places. My little class has long ago accepted each other as a part of their new community, you can tell by how comfortable they are around each other and aware they are.

It's not uncommon for them to notice when a child does not come to school, asking my where so and so is. Or if another child leaves for the bathroom they're apt to notice and wonder aloud where they are. None are shy about asking anyone else for help, nor are they are afraid to say no to someone (well...M's still working on this occasionally). 

So I've begun throwing some new things in to the mix. The other children's house in our school is fully established in that it has the full three year span of children (unlike our new class that is just growing with younger children). Many of the kindergarten children in the other class are becoming fluent readers and so myself and the other teacher have been encouraging them to come over and read to the children in my class. 

It's actually quite entertaining how shy these 'big' kids can suddenly become when they enter another room; even if it's only filled with people they know! We had quite a few of these visitors today, and I tried to make sure I modeled greeting them warmly and making them feel welcome. I helped direct them to a specific child who wasn't working and would probably like to hear a story (luckily all my children said 'yes' when asked). I had them pull out our special reading mat (Thanks mom!) and stayed out of the way while the visiting kindergartner read at lighting speed before popping up to leave. I made sure I thanked them for reading to us and encouraged them to come back again if they'd like. Hopefully this modeling will rub off on my students and they'll pick up on doing it themselves soon.

The books that take less than 1 minute to read ;)

As an adult it was a pretty funny situation to witness. Children who know they don't really have any reason to be nervous try to pretend they're not, and then leaving as soon as possible; elated and relieved at the same time. Meanwhile my students were quite happy to sit down and listen to the stories, though I could tell they were a bit confused when the kindergartners kind of hid behind their book rather than showing the pictures like they're used to when I read. And then when the older student would leave (usually after only a minute or two since the books are pretty short), there would be this little pause as my children seemed to be thinking "That was it? Huh what do I do now..."

So that's our first real step to building up a bigger community. By welcoming 'strangers' in to an environment where my students are comfortable it gives them a chance to learn some of the social graces associated with visitors before they become a visitor themselves. Now I just need to find more excuses for them to visit the other classroom.....

How to get them to do what you want

So I've been wanting the children to pay attention to a few more of the materials in the classroom. In a larger class there is more pressure to branch out because items will naturally be in use more and so the child needs to wait their turn. This also means that children are reminded about something they may not have used in a while when they see someone else using it. In our little class this just doesn't happen as often.

So instead I gave them some subliminal prompts!

Ok, ok, that's not how I'm supposed to say it. Quoting my Montessori trainer I gave them an "indirect lesson"

I've been waiting for them to experiment a bit more with the pink tower, exploring how all the blocks are related to one another now that they have no trouble building them in order. So I took it out myself. As soon as I did S asked to join me and together we scattered the blocks around the classroom and then rebuilt the tower. By then we had a larger audience so I purposely started experimenting with the cubes, stacking them in different configurations.

M didn't even want to wait until I was done to try that out for herself, she set out immediately to get the brown stairs out to try experimenting. C joined her and the two of them set about building everyone's 'house' out of the blocks (though C also insisted they build a clubhouse....a tall clubhouse!). I noticed M taking stock of the prisms, seeming to notice their relationships in size for the first time as she attempted to build a solid structure.

I'm gonna call that one a success.

My next task was to remind them about the metal insets. Other than W the other children rarely take this work out, despite my attempts to introduce a few variations to C and S. So instead of suggesting it and being turned down I simply took it out and began tracing and coloring the shapes myself. Same as before the children would eventually drift over to watch what I was doing. W immediately joined me, dragging a second chowki over to work right by me.

Unfortunately he did his usual quick trace, trace and barely color in before deciding he was done. I'm hoping to get him to take his time to color in a shape more fully as well as doing a different shape on each side of the paper. But since he's still having such trouble choosing work at all I don't want to make this in to a longer, harder work that he steers away from in an effort to take life easy. Some work is better than none right now!

C, on the other hand, got out an inset and spent quite a bit of time hanging out by me and coloring it in more fully; enjoying the process and hopefully strengthening her hand for writing later.

See how tricky we teachers are? :)

Heard at school

In the morning daycare room with several children coloring together at a table.

"What are you drawing?" One asks another.

"It's an abstract." The girl responds without pausing.

"Oh," Other child resumes coloring.


In the classroom where two children are doing fetching with the kitchen classified cards.

"Will you go get me the Whisky?" One says solemnly.

"Whisky, whisky, whisky," the second chants at she skips off.

At this point their teacher (aka. Me) needs to leave the room for a minute to laugh without having to explain why calling a whisk, whisky, is so funny.

Montessori Sunday: Sound Cylinders

The sound cylinders are a material in the Sensorial area of the classroom. While the majority of materials in this area focus on the visual sense the sound cylinders isolate the sense of hearing (if you couldn't guess that from the name). The material is made up of two sets of 6 sealed wooden cylinders in blue and red. They contain different substances and vary in the loudness of the sound produced when shaken.

The child and adult carry the boxes to the table and line up one color in a row on the table. The adult demonstrates how to lightly hold the cylinder and shake it by each ear to hear the sound it produces. After inviting the child to try the adult says "These red cylinders are the same as the blue ones, let's see if we can match them."

She demonstrates separating out the first of each color and listening to one cylinder at a time. If they don't match the directress demonstrates how to discard one cylinder to the side and try the next of that color instead. When the cylinder do match they are placed side by side to the top left of the table. The discarded cylinders are brought back in to the line and the process is begun again. This way of matching is identical for other sensorial materials in the classroom. That means that even though it can be difficult for the child to do the process independently the first time, the skills they learn help with other materials later. Once they understand the process they can apply it to other matching activities like the smelling bottles, touch tablets and fabric swatches.

Right now most of the children in my classroom still struggle with the matching process. They can match the cylinders by their sounds, but aren't very systematic about it and so usually only end up matching one or two sets before getting bored or frustrated. One of the youngest still simply likes to shake the cylinders and marvel at the sounds they make.

And either process is fine. I don't really care if they can match the sound cylinders perfectly or not. (Though it is a good tool to help identify if a  child is having trouble hearing in general). What I want them to do is begin to refine their sense of hearing, learn that they are different degrees of sound. And as for the matching process...well I'm hoping one day it will click and they'll understand why I tried to present it this particular way. Until then they can try and make up their own systems. Maybe one will be even better.

It Happens.

Spilling that is. Some days more than others.

First C spilled some grain and it was scattered so far that he was completely losing track of where he was picking it up to. So I helped him get that under control.

Then O spilled a little bit of water while pouring with the land and water forms. And then as he was wiping it up he proceeded to spill the rest of the water out of the plastic forms....I"m hoping he learned the lesson that when you pick up and tilt something with water in it it will spill...and spill EVERYTHING! He got so distracted that he couldn't even manage to walk back and forth to get a new cloth to dry with. So I got the majority of the water mopped up for him and then got him to finish the job with not quite constant reminders of what the next step was.

And finally at the very end of the day S and W spilled the water from the dish washing bins....both of them. Spilling the first one apparently inspired them to go back and get the second and attempt to pour it onto the counter by the sink because 'the floor was wet' in front of the sink....

That one took a little bit. Luckily while the two of them and myself got in to the rhythm of wiping and wringing water into the sink the other children kept themselves busy singing songs. No clue what songs they were singing but hey, they were amused. It took moving an entire shelf, drying the dustpan and brush (don't ask) and probably half of our generous supply of floor cloths. And what did we accomplish? A floor that didn't have any visible puddles but still squeaked when you walked.

Um...mission accomplished I guess? After all, we were leaving for the day, it'll be dry by tomorrow....right?

No wonder we can't keep track of what's going on!

"D is this your snack?" An older child came in to the coat room.

"No that A's." He replied and turned back to putting his shoes on. The older child obediently tried to hand it to D's brother who frowned.

"That not mine. I give mine to daddy...my daddy already." He replied firmly, making no move to grab the offered snack. The older child looked from one boy to another, all of them standing in silence. Finally she turns around and leaves without another word. A turned and looked at his brother.

"That your snack D, I saw'd the 'd' on it." He stated firmly.

"Oh," his brother answered, still pulling on his shoes. "Ok." A accepted this without comment and started putting on his own shoes.

Meanwhile as I walk out to the other room I see the older child, snack still in hand, trying to explain herself to another teacher.

"Did you find out who's it was?"

"I don't know."

"Did you ask D and A?"

"Yeah."

Silence

"I don't know who's snack it is!"

Oh the mysteries of preschool.

Montessori Sunday: Golden Beads (Part 3)

Ok, so I'm a day late but the Golden Beads are just so darn useful that I can't short them now. Trust me, they do justify having 3 separate posts for themselves.

After the child finally has a solid foundation and understanding of the beads themselves, and how they relate to on another it's time to begin the basic math operations. This same material will be used to teacher addition. It'll be used to show how subtraction works. The children will multiply, they'll divide--all with the same golden beads. Now that is a multipurpose activity.

I do want to point out that the golden bead material includes both the physical beads and their matching cards. The beads are present to give the children a concrete material to manipulate, while the cards are there to show the abstract symbols that society uses. Both parts are important to help prepare the children for further mathematics work at the Elementary level. While doing the operations with the golden beads we're not focusing on whether the children are getting the right answers or not. The process of how things are done is what matters in the children's house. Having the children physically experience adding the beads together to make a larger pile matters more than what 8,932 + 6,247 equals. They can see that putting two smaller quantities together makes a larger one, so they can really understand what the process of addition is.

The idea of subtraction is similar. The children get to be a part of actually taking away a certain number of beads from a larger quantity. They can see that this process results in a smaller number then they started with.

Multiplication usually puts a grin on their faces because they have a 'secret' when they go to collect their beads and cards. (Hint: The secret is that they're all getting the same number). The children who have done multiplication before think it's hilarious and the new ones are properly shocked when the secret is revealed. It's definitely a more fun way to show that multiplication is really just the adding of the same number a certain amount of times.

Finally the children learn the process of division, which usually ends up becoming their favorite way to use the golden beads. I think it's because everything ends up 'fair' and these older children are just beginning to build up a strong sense of right and wrong. The beads are handed out from largest to smallest, with each person getting the same amount and any extras 'remaining' with the teacher.

That's what a remainder means! I remember thinking during my Montessori training. Somehow I made it all the way through high school calculus and all of college without having a real understanding what was happening with division. And I could have learned it at 5 years old.....I kind of feel like I missed out...