Making beautiful things

During my student teaching I was poking around the classroom, totally in awe of all these fun things I was just learning how to use and teach when I found them. These beautiful, colorful, enticing....folders. Yeah, like a folder you're supposed to organize your papers in for school.

In fact these were the cultural folders for the classroom, each one color coded for the continents of the world and containing pictures of all sorts of different scenes from that continent. Lucy, the absolutely wonderful guide, saw me admiring them and admitted that she had just gotten around to finally making them, even though they had been on her "to do" list since leaving training years ago.

Now it's not that these fabric folder were that spectacularly beautiful. Sure they were well sewn and had a fun color scheme, but it was the contrast to other versions of that material I had been seeing in different classrooms. Some teachers had put the pictures in paper folders that seemed to inevitably get bent, ripped, torn, etc. and just look tattered. Other used plastic pockets of some kind that also quickly got cracked or broken in some way. Yes, we're supposed to teach the children how to handle things gently and with respect but still, they're in preschool and things happen.

But these colorful, fabric ones weren't going to do that. It might have taken a bit more money and time, but they were going to last far longer than one school year and still look great.  I immediately decided that was how I wanted to make my folders too. And now, almost 6 years later, those same folders are still lovely and enjoyed by the children in my classroom.

A monkey see monkey do moment as one child inspires others to get out their own cultural folder to enjoy
The penguins in Antarctica always seem to be the favorite and l love showing them that they are in Africa too!

Now, this isn't just about the cultural folders though. It's about thinking how to offer children beautiful, quality things that will last (especially in a classroom setting!). Whenever I'm looking at making or buying a new materials I'm sub-consciously thinking about these folders. I want to have something that's able to be used independently by the children, but will hold up to them fumbling through how to use it the first few times. Something that can be easily fixed by me if it does break/tear/fail for some reason. I have a box of fabric scraps of things I've sewn for the classroom, and some cardstock remmanents for printed materials.

We want to be able to tell children that they are worth our time and effort. That they are worthy of things which are valuable (both monetarily and personally). And I know that I don't want to spend time walking around my classroom cringing about how tattered and torn something looks!

So I'm trying.
Trying to make it well the first time.

Basic items for making Montessori Materials

Hopefully most teachers are lucky enough to have some of these tools available at school, though personally I never could find the time to actually work on projects at school and ended up taking them home anyways. Here’s my suggestions for some items that have made it easier to make quality materials at home.

• Computer and printer
• Basically essential! Use to make any type of card or book materials.
• Cardstock and/or scrapbook paper
• I was gifted a bunch of old scrapbook paper by an aunt and used it to make fun color coded card sets. Put out feels to your family/friends to see if they have any extra laying around.
• Sewing machine
• I grew up with a mother who sewed all my Halloween costumes, so I feel like I had a jump start on this during training. Most materials can be sewn by hand but I think it’s totally worth it to learn how to use a sewing machine to help speed things up and overall make a sturdier product. If you can find someone with an old serger machine they’re willing to part with this makes for even faster sewing on a lot of things.
• Laminator
• Not necessary for those just making materials for at home use (though highly recommended if  you want them to last through multiple children or be used out of doors). A lot of school supply stories offer lamination machines where you can pay by the foot. However since a personal laminator can be bought for under $100 it might be worth the hassle free of being able to laminate at home. I have one just from Target and it’s been just great, though sometimes feeding it small labels can be tedious trying to make sure they don’t shift around! Of course laminate is also expensive so ask your school if they’re willing to reimburse you for making materials!
• Book binder
• Definitely a wish list item. I had originally gotten a  comb binding machine as a gift from an aunt (my family is pretty awesome by the way! ;) ) but I finally broke down this Christmas to get a metal cinch binder instead. Comb binders are cheaper, but do make a cheaper feeling book, and the plastic combs on several of my books have snapped due to use/age. This binder has been nice; the holes feels a bit big on smaller books but I’m very happy with it.

These are the things I use on a regular basis that have made my work easier. Obviously there are ways to get around using one or the other, but if there's a convenient gift giving occasion in your future you might want to think about dropping some hints for one of these!

Do you have any other recommendations that make your material making easier?

Learning how to sew

A lot of people are intimidated by the idea of sewing. I lucked out and had a mom and aunts who were really in to quilting and introduced it to me at an early age. So when I finally got the chance to begin my own classroom from scratch I obviously sewed A LOT! And because life gets in the way I still had a lot of sewing (or repairing!) to do when class actually began.

My first year I only had 6 three year olds in my room, and I was careful not to make myself too available to them, trying to encourage independence. With such a small number I had to make sure that I was pausing to do a lot of observing. To keep my watching from being too obvious I spent a lot of time sewing at one of our classroom floor tables. A lot of times the kids would wander over to see what I was making and it made for great observation practice.

I give this first year a lot of credit for turning out some great sewers in my classroom. Before I left Minnesota those original three year olds were confident kindergarteners and boy could they tackle some big projects! Here's a great example of what one accomplished with me simply planting the idea in her head and providing the materials.

Sewing her own globe was a 2 day project and took surprisingly little help from me. However there was a lot more prep work than just gathering the appropriate fabrics for her. Here's some of what we did over the three years to build up to this:

• Needle threading
  • An obvious first step! How can you sew if you can't thread a needle? As soon as I discovered how frustrating any sewing could be for a child who couldn't thread a needle I immediately madea  stand alone activity for practice threading a needle and handling a spool of thread
• Button sewing
  • A classic Montessori work. Over the year the children helped me sew snaps onto the classroom aprons, repair buttons that fell of pouches and even fixed a dressing frame! That's real practical life and purposeful work.
• Embroidery
  • Tracing metal insets onto fabric and practicing the basic running stitch was hugely important for any more advanced sewing. Button sewing introduces the basic up and down motion, but embroidery expands on following a line.
• Knot tying
  • Ok, so honestly we're still working this being an independent activity. I've tried to introduce this one using thicker thread and a big needle but still have yet to have a child who can honestly tie their own knots. Anyone care to give ME some tips?
• Pinning fabrics
  • We had some random felt board shapes laying around that I used. The idea that  the pins need to not only go through the fabric but come back up was the trickiest part!
• Pillow sewing
  • Puts together the idea of a running stitch, flipping fabrics inside out and then stuffing them! We also had a puppet making for those times stuffing was a bit hard to come by, lol!
• Puzzle tracing
  • How could you make a globe with all the continents without practicing tracing them in the first place?

And of course once one student had done it others wanted to make their own globe as well! We had a line-up for that work right through the end of the school year!

I've heard that Sewing in a Montessori Classroom is a great resource. Has anyone used this book before? Or have some other sewing activities they've found have been popular?

It's not just for girls

A lot of people think Montessori is really more for girls. They can't imagine getting little boys to sit quietly and concentrate on something for an extended period of time. They don't think the practical life exercises like sewing, preparing food, taking care of plants or dusting will appeal to boys.

That's just being stereotypical.

I'm very lucky that right now there's no stigma of "That's for girls/boys!" in our classroom (even with colors which for obvious cultural reasons seems to get drilled in very early on). So I had no problems showing O how to arrange flowers. It's a presentation I've been meaning to give him for a while, but one that needed to wait until we had a fresh delivery of flowers. No point showing him how to cut and put them in a vase if there was only one or two flowers to use!

I'm so glad that I finally got around to this today because he absolutely loved it. This is the same little boy that came in to the classroom in September and was so unaware of his movements that he would move the tables a foot or two as he tried to see what someone else was doing. Today O stood quietly and observed with his hands at his side as I demonstrated how to cut the stems underwater and them place them in a vase. I felt no qualms about handing over the gardening shears to him. I knew he'd taken to heart my message that they were sharper than scissors and we needed to be extra careful.

I helped him through the process one time, making sure he didn't skip any steps and reminding him gently if he did. O was more than happy to try and do it the way and I had shown him and happily went to get another bunch of flowers when the first set ran out. He did come to me a bit later, upset that the flower kept falling out of the vase but perked right up when I told him how he needed to cut the leaves so it would fit inside the mouth of the vase.

M with all her arrangements.
She was so focused on making them they she didn't
want to waste time spreading them around the room for display!

O made a few arrangements, then neatly cleaned up...well at least I think he did. I know I saw him drying things and folding the apron neatly. But M had been shadowing his work station, just waiting to pounce on it to arrange some flowers herself. So she was already hard at work before I had time to go over and inspect.

Now after this whole little tirade of how much a boy enjoyed flower arranging I have to admit that I have been a little biased by only showing the girls the button sewing activity in the classroom. But NOT because the boys weren't interested in it. In fact I had one little boy that for weeks kept taking out the basket and asking for a presentation....but he wasn't ready for it yet. It's commonly recognized that boys mature more slowly than girls, and that includes the fine motor control necessary for sewing on a button.

I purposely made an activity for threading a needle, the primary step in learning how to sew a button, to help gauge when children might be ready. I told C that he needed to master that work first and then I would show him how to sew a button. He's still working at it- and so are the other boys.

There are no 'pink' or 'blue' areas in the classroom. Everything is for everyone and that's the way we like it in our room.