As we part for our Easter break...

Needless to say that this week was filled with excitment as Easter is nearly at our door. The children were full of beans, a bit noisier than usual and I have to say that they were finding it hard to concentrate on anything at all. This is why I more or less drop all on-going lessons and concentrated on fun arts and crafts.

 

First, we painted chicks with a potatoe (this surely intrigued the children at first).

 

 

Then we repeated the activity we did last year: we used colourful buttons to fill in the template  of an easter egg:

 

 

Finally, we made our Easter baskets. First I drew the templates of bunnies on card paper. I got the kids to use their fingertips to dot the template. I then added the goggly eyes and drew the bunnies' whiskers and noses. The rest was up to me. It took me nearly 2 hours to make the baskets (using card paper) and stapple the dotted templates to the front of the basket. The basket also needed a handle and a bunny wouldn't be a bunny without its fluffy tail. So I simply glued a cotton wool at the back of the basket. And all I had left to do was to fill the basket with pastel shredded paper and chocolate eggs (without forgetting a few chicks!).
 

 

 

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!

Getting ready for Easter

Another 2 weeks and we will be starting our Easter break!!! I can't believe how fast it's going!! The children have been waiting for me to put up our few Easter decorations up and when they came today, they were delighted to see our Nature table decorated with a few rabbits, a miniature Easter egg tree, chicks, egs etc.. And did I think of taking a photo? Nope..... I will do it tomorrow. Promise! However, I took a few pictures of the new activities on our Practical Life shelves.

This 1st activity is soooo cute! I found the 2 egg holders and the fork/spoon on sale in a thrift shop a few month ago and I had to get them.. Straight away, the children were attracted to this material and they never stoped commenting on how real the egg holders looked!! This is just another spooning exercise but it is so popular!! It can be a bit tricky as the spoon the children are using is flater than normal spoons, which means they have to have a very steady hand in order to avoid spilling any of the Easter decorations I placed in the egg holders.

Here, we have a transfering exercise using tongs (the children transfer little wooden Easter decorations: rabbit, chicks..)

I added a lot of exercises with tongs to develop their fine motor skills. Here is another one:

And another one. I am using a rubber duck that comes straight from  America ( my dear friend Karen from Little Acorns.. Check out her blog: it is absolutely ind utterly brilliant.. and inspiring!)

And finally, I have added an activity using glue. The children use the strips of colured paper provided, add glue and stick Easter decorations onto their strip. Eventually, I will show them how to make patterns too.

I have a few more things I want to share with you... keep in touch!!

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..

Linking our cultural corner to our initial theme

It was raining today and the children were at their friends' house playing. So I spent another few hours in my classroom today. After the science/nature corner I tackled our cultural corner. You can see what it looked like before by clicking here. I have decided that the month of September will be dedicated to a topic called "we are all the same and we are all different" which goes hand in hand with our first theme of the year: "All about me" (I will write a post about this theme in a few weeks as we are about to start preschool again). This is why I will firstly concentrate on showing the globe to the children and teaching them to recognise our 7 continents. To do so I have put up on the wall a big picture of the continents (it is actually the control of error map used in connection with the Montessori geography puzzles) and have replaced the Asia and Australia jigsaws with the continents one and the one for Europe.

 

I have also added a new little game which will surely please the children. I recently found a book on Amazon called Sugar & Spice: Around the World. Initially, I thought this would be great as kids can discover cultural outfits in ten different countries and dress up Sugar and Spice in hundreds of outfit combinations. I was excited when it arrived home but was a bit disappointed with the whole presentation. You see, dolls and magnetic clothing come at the back of the book, which I do not find very practical at all  So I photocopied each page and laminated them (tearing the pages was not an option as they are made out of thick cardboard). Then I placed everything in a see-through box, easy to open. This way the children can dress up the cardboard dolls much easier I find.

After the continents, we will then focus on Europe as this is our continent. I haven't got a set timetable as I like to  be flexible in the way we learn. This year I have different nationalities in our classroom which will make it so much more interesting. Children will be invited to bring items from their parents' country (flags, stamps, photos, or even food). Studying Europe as our first continent should help to promote positive identities and a strong sense of belonging. It also should empower every child and to develop a confident self and group identity. From birth, children develop a sense of who they are. Relationships with family members, other adults and children, friends and members of their community play a key role in building their identities. Children’s sense of who they are is shaped by their characteristics, their behaviour, and their understanding of themselves, their family and others. Belonging is about having a secure relationship with or a connection with a particular group of people. When children feel a sense of belonging and sense of pride in their families, their peers, and their communities, they can be emotionally strong, self-assured, and able to deal with challenges and difficulties. This is going to be a sub-topic of our main theme "All about me".

I have more or less finished our Europe continent box. I am sure I will be adding more to it but so far I have 5  countries represented: obviously Ireland, France, Greece, Hungary and Holland.

Here are the few boxes I have in our cultural corner (Asia, Europe and USA)

France

Here you can see some stickers from Bretagne where I come from with a traditional hat. And of course, some wine bottles of Bordeaux!!!!

Hungary (chilli plant used in a lot of recipes over there, a traditional cards game, coins and the hungarian symbol - a blue bird)

Holland

Portugal

Believe it or not but finding items for Europe have been trickier than I thought. But do not despair because I lately got involved in a cultural exchange organised by Melissa from Chasing Cherios. I got involved in a group of 11 other women around the world. There are other famillies from Singapore, Argentina, Australia, France and the UK... The exchange is supposed to benefit the children in each family and are addressed to them. Our first package arrived a few days ago from Ohio. Once my kids opened the parcel, they read the letter, played with the trinkets and whatever they didn't want, I was allowed to use for my box. Great, eh? Especially as I am currently working on my North America continent box.  I will update you on this cultural exchange as soon as I have received more letters. And I should be able to post more on my continent boxes tomorrow.  Blogging is wonderful, my dear friends, wonderful!!!