A geography day

W and C started it by working on the world map today. I think W just really wanted to use the clay, but they also had fun putting the puzzle pieces in the frame. While they were doing that S took out the new little flag book I had made for them and was heading to the library to look at it when M caught her.

"I wanted to read that!"

"Ok," said S, who's always up for some socializing. So together they got out the reading mat and crowed around, flipping the pages to look at the different flags.

"That's South America," S said matter of factly as they flipped to one page. Now I know "South America' doesn't have a flag but hey, at least she was using geography terms! Then S got in trouble with the next page.

"What's that one?" M asked.

"I don't know." S replied after a short pause, quickly flipping away from it.

"How about this one?" M asked again. S just looked at it for a minute, struggling to figure out what to say. Finally she came up with,

"You have to read it silly!" and turned the page again and stated "That's South America." I couldn't help but giggle a bit as she kept trying to convince herself that she knew the names of those flags. After a few pages she did come and ask me to read a few of the names, but S was definitely determined to know them by herself. I have a feeling that girl's going to learn to read by sheer determination some day when she gets it into her head.

Afterwards C recruited M to do fetching with him using the flags. She happily pointed out the pictures in the book and sent him to bring them over from the stand. Unfortunately there were so many flags there that it was hard to pick out specific ones so I helped them spread all the flags out on one mat and work at a second with the ones they had already found. They were so in to their little game that when we noticed that some flags in the book were not out they asked me to check in the closet for them.

Soon they had ALL the flags for North and South America out on the mat or in the stand. They were bound and determined to find all the matches. M was having a great time directing C, who couldn't have been more pleased than when he brought back a matching flag. They made it through nearly all the flags before they finally got tired and went on to new work. I checked it later and that's about 35 flags....They went back and forth nearly 30 times matching the flags and pictures. Without any prompting or real help.

Now that's a great example of the kind of repetition we want happening in the classroom!

Following the interest

And I'm back! Between winter break, snow/cold days and weekends we have had only 2 days of school over the last 2 1/2 weeks. It's gotten to the point were not going in to work feels more normal, and the sleepy children today convinced me that it was true for them too. The classroom volume level was higher than normal too, with a few children even coming and telling me it was too loud for them to concentrate. I made an announcement to the entire class the first time, and then encourage the children to go and speak with specific children who were being extra loud. They were....semi-successful.

Not that there wasn't any work happening. N was painting at the easel and requested that I get him some red and white paint so he could make an American flag. Not only did he do the stripes and blue field, but he painted on a few stars as well. After getting him the paint I told him to come find me when he was done and I'd show him some new work to do with flags.

Now most children love getting presentations, working one on one with an adult is really special to them. N is no exception, but he usually doesn't continue the work for too long after the adult leaves.

I worked with his younger cousin for a little bit, showing her the constructive triangles. Part way through N wander over, done with his painting and clean up. He had not only remembered that I wanted to show him something, but he was excited to. I took N over to the flags and had him choose one. I helped him get set up with paper and colored pencils to make a replica while I checked in on his little cousin working with the triangles. When N showed me his colored flag we went to work looking it up in the new flag book.

Now this flag book was brand new, N was the first child to use it. I had made it over the break because our original flag book from the store didn't have some of the flags we have in our classroom. It also just had a lot of dry facts, or historical facts of the flag that really weren't interesting to the children. So I had made a small booklet that had just the flags we had in the room, and wrote just a short paragraph with some facts. Things like what the color represent and how the flag was designed and has changed over the years. Over the cold days when there was no school I had bound the laminated pages and was getting really excited to have the children use it.

Well, N used it and we discovered that I had missed a flag. Oops. Of course it would have been the one that he chose. Oh well. He managed to find it in the big book and we wrote the name down. Then N decided that he wanted to do another flag.

That was awesome. Like I said earlier, N isn't one to keep working on something new without an audience. And I had left him to work independently for a good chunk of the flag work. N successfully made an American flag and then brought me over the book to read the story of it. The fact that not only did he work alone, but wanted to continue showed me how interested he really was in the flags.

Now I just need to figure out how to turn that interest to helping work on his handwriting.....

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!