Presentations, presentations and more presentations!

A presentation is what a Montessori directress calls the process of showing a new material to a child. Most children love getting presentations, even if they're not particularly excited about what the activity is they love the one on one time with the adult. I normally don't do a lot of new presentations in our classroom because we want to limit how many new things the child is introduced to at a time so they go back and practice what they have already been shown. So my fellow teacher and I have decided that it's best if she does the majority of the presenting and I focus more on showing the children extensions and reinforcing what they learned the first time. Today though it just worked out that I had a lot of opportunities to give new presentations.

I caught L right when she came in and said that magic words "I haven't worked with you in a while, what would you like to do?" The first thing she blurted out was the color wheel. I grinned and reminded her that she already knew that work so well that she didn't need me to help her. Instead I offered to show her the leaf cards and had her set out the mat. She laid out one set of the cards and I read off the names of the leaves before handing her the card to match.

Unfortunately I was interrupted a few times during the presentation. Ideally this should be a time where the teacher is completely focused on the one child, but with one of the other teachers busy greeting children at the door I had to step away from L to remind other children to stay in the classroom. Luckily L was patient and I did try to leave her with a card to match when I stepped away. Overall I think L enjoyed matching the cards and she was really quick even though there are a lot of different leaves to look through, and since they're real leaves they aren't truly identical.

My next presentation actually started before I even finished doing leaves with L. A came in and the first thing she asked me was if I was going to give her the presentation I had given her friend M the day before. I told her sure, surprised she had remembered that I wanted to show her subtraction and seemed pretty excited about it. So I had her start setting up the cards for the golden beads. That's one of the really nice things about working with the older children, they can really take direction, and set up even new works independently.

A and I flashed through the process of doing subtraction. She knew exactly how to count the beads, remembered the numbers she needed to get and eagerly followed the steps. In fact she had such a good time that as soon as we finished reciting the problem she asked if we could do it again! I apologized that I needed to work with some other children and suggested a few other friends who knew subtraction that she could ask to work with her. Unfortunately they all declined and she just cleaned it up instead.

Next I reviewed a counting work with one of the four year old boys, helping him recognize his numbers and double check his work. I got another boy started on the sound book he was supposed to be making, helping him find a table where he wouldn't get distracted. I also tried to engage one of the four year old girls in to doing a fetching work since she wasn't working, but rather being silly and distracting her friends. She didn't like that idea though and turned me down. Ouch. Though she was polite about it. Just asking though had desired affect of getting her to buckle down and choose a work to do.

As the day was drawing to a close I saw N running around the classroom, trying to play chase with some other children. I got him to stop running, asked if he had a work out and then told him to come with me and choose one of the chains. This was the first presentation I gave today that wasn't optional. Usually it should be optional if the child wants to come to the presentation, but occasionally, like in this situation, it's necessary to divert them to something more productive.

So N chose the short 7 chain and I introduced him to the arrows that went with it. He quickly caught on to the idea of counting and placing the arrows. Since it was so easy for him I also introduced him to writing the numbers down on special graph paper. Why hold him back when he's obviously ready for more challenging work? It took right up until the end of the work cycle, but N finished writing his number for the chain and I'm sure he's excited to bring that paper home.

Whew, a lot of new materials today. Now hopefully they all liked the work enough to try it again tomorrow.

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!