Well, today I worked a little bit more in the classroom and I re-organise the materials in my sensorial corner. As you know now, sensorial is a pre-academic area of the classroom that bridges Practical life with the other academic areas in the Montessori classroom (Math, Language, Cultural). Please refer to this post to get more information on the benefits of the sensorial materials. Again, to begin our new school year, I wanted to re-introduce the "old" kids to the basics as well as lay the foundations of the sensorial area with the newcomers. I removed some items which were probably too advanced for the beginning of the year. We have 2 sensorial shelves in our classroom.
Here is the 1st shelf:
And the details:
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| Cylinder blocks |
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| Knobless cylinders |
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| Colour tablets |
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| Not a Montessori item but brilliant for sensorialwork. As you can see, the child uses cards and needs to recreate the patternthey are copying. |
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| Mosaic |
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| Game of colours and shapes - patterning |
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| Great game to differentiate left and right, up and below. |
I forgot to take pictures of the top shelf. I have geometric jigsaws, a multi pieces cube & cylinders tray puzzle, a stackabe geometric tray puzzle and a pyramid.
Here is our second shelf: (it is placed right behing the first one)
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| Bionimal cube and touch boards |
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| The brown stairs |
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| I got this little game for 1 Euro at a Field day! Great game as the children have to match the colour and the texture with the picture. |
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| I only put out one triangular box for the beginning |
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| Peg boards |
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| A simple jigsaw: matching the colour to the picture |
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Our popular little bears- classify by colour and by size
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I don't know if you can see it on the left hand side of the1st shelf, but we also have our red rods in a basket. And on the left hand side of our 2nd shelf, you should be able to see our Pink Tower on a stand. Today, I placed some laminated cards I made on the shelf to be used in connection with the Tower. ANd my son had to try for himself.
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This is when sensorial and maths overlap each other. Great preparation for the decimal and number system.
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So, what do you think? What have you got on your shelves at the beginning of the year?
i loved reading this post because everything you said is exactly what I do in the classroom at the school i teach at. I never put everything out on the shelves for exactly the reasons you stated :)
ReplyDeleteGreat Blog Jessie Lee.. We have a lot in common in the way we run our classroom by the sound of it.I do too start the year with an "All about me" theme. As you said, we have children in our classroom for 3 years in a row sometimes, so I like to present each theme a bit different every year. I don't want the children to get bored. We never do the same crafts and I vary our activities related to our theme as much as possible. And we changed our books too. SO like you,I am working on our "All about me" theme at the moment. You'll see it all on my blog in September. I will make surely to follow your journey closely. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI just found your blog a few days ago and I love. I homeschool my two boys (4 and 18 months) and was wondering if you would be willing to share the pink tower document?
ReplyDeleteThank you either way!
Hi Shelley.Thanks for your comment. I don't seem to be able to email you so I hope you will see this comment.I have had a quick look on my computerand don't seem to find the filein question. I updated my laptop a fewmonths ago and I hope I haven't "lost" any docs in the process. PLease leave an email address for me just in case I find it again.SOrry about this.
ReplyDelete