Back to school!!

Well, vacation's over and it's back to work!!  I spent 3 days at school  getting all the Christmas stuff put away and getting out new activities.  Below is a glimpse of some of what was new for the students:

First, I wanted to add a bit of spice to our knobless cylinders. The children love them and we have used them in any possible ways as taught by Maria Montessori.  For those of you not familiar with the Montessori method, the knobless cylinders are four sets of wooden cylinders, each a different color that correspond to the cylinder blocks, are used in early childhood development to help children begin to understand the concept of dimension. So I went to Montessori Print Shop and purchased 2 set of knobless cylinders pattern cards. I printed some of them and bound them together. The children will now be able to make shapes with the different cards, mixing them and learning to appreciate variations of height and width within each patterns. . This will definitely encourage additional sorting and comparison drawing as well as making the building process more difficult. I think it is quite good. My little man was the first one to say so...

We have a moveable alphabet in our classroom. As we finish our study on the first Montessori set of letters (a,c,m and t), we will start using quite a lot to make up words phonetically. Until then, I wanted familiarise the children with all the letters of the alphabet. I could have used the moveable alphabet but I decided to create an exercise which should attract the children. I printed a few random pictures and glue them on one side of a coloured card.

On the other side, I glued the word corresponding to the picture. Using wooden pegs, I wrote each letter of each picture on top of the peg.

The idea is for the child to look at the picture, make the link betweent he picture and the word and then look for the corresponding letters. This a pre-reading activity but it also let the child practise his pincer grasp (essential for writing). So I am killing 2 birds with one stone!!

I have also added a few more seasonal activities:

• Icicle making: the children use all the beads, the white straw and the snowflakes to create their own icicle.

• A snowman grid game using a dice. 2 players. The first one to fill his/her grid is the winner.

Sorry I forgot to include te dice in the pic...

• Stamps: the children will develop their pincer grasp control by using these stamps (I only found 3 winter animals: a rabbit, a reindeer and a polar bear!)

• Gluing activity: making a snowflake following a pattern I made for them.

There are a few more activities I need to add or do witht the children. So keep checking  us up over the next few days. See you soon..