Working hard here!!

I thought I would put together a few photos again to show you all what the children are working on in our classroom at the moment. So here it goes:

•  Literacy

Children learn at different pace and while some children are still struggling to recognise their own name among others, others are able to write theirs all on their own. Different activities are being provided for each individual child to help him progress at his/her own pace (I refer you here to all of our literacy activities). Here are a few activities I wanted to share with you today:

Sandpaper letter and our salt tray

This activity requires the child to find the letters of his/her name and stick them all in sequence on a coloured card:

•  Maths

In Maths, some children have been introduced to new materials, bringing them forward in their learning of the numeral system (again I apologise: some of the photos came upside down and I can't sort the problem out!!):

In the following photos, the child is introduced to the units, the tens, the hundreds and the thousands using the Three Period Lesson (this is..., Show me... and What is this?). This exercise not only introduces the child to big and small quantities but also gives him/her a visual representation of bigger quantities.

The golden bead material

"This is 10..."

"This 100.."

"This is 1000..."

Here we are working with the counting rods to introduce the child to the concept of adding. This activity provides a controlled exercise for teaching number bond.

First, I ask the child to lay one set of the small rod on the top left corner of the mat and to lay the other set on the top right corner of the mat. I then give the child a sum: 3 + 2. I show him how to take the rod representing 3 from one set and the rod representing 2 from the other set. Both rods are laid side by side horizontally in the middle of the mat. I shows how to count the sections on the rod to make 5. This is a great oral sum exercise.

To practice number 1-9, the children use the Hanging bead stair. The child counts the beads on each bar, places them in sequence and finds the corresponding numeral cards or vice versa.

Here is another exercise with the short bead stairs. I use it to teah the children the concept of "taking off" (i-e subtracting). The child must build the bead stairs first in a triangle at the top of the mat. I then give him an operation (6-2 =?). The child takes the lilac bead bar (representing 6) and counts back starting from the right. I show him/her how to cover 2 beads and invite him/her how to count how many beads are left to find the answer.



Who said there was no snake in Ireland?

Next Saturday is Patrick's day!! The kids are so excited about going to the parade.... In the meantime, we have talked a lot about St Patrick and what he means to Irish People. And this is one of the crafts we did together:

How two little cuties learnt to say sorry....

The other day, 2 little boys (2 brothers) arrived to preschool a bit late... Their Mam explained to me that they had got into trouble when they decided to crumble their dad's newspaper and tear it all in pieces!!! Dad hadn't even read it yet! Needless to say their Mam asked them to tidy up their mess and to put it all in the fire place... What did they do right after tidying up when Mam wasn't looking anymore? They went back to the fireplace and got the newspaper out, together with all the ashes!!! Monkeys!!!!! Their Mam told them they 'd better find a way to apologise to their dad when he would come home from work.. The 2 boys ket looking at their feet the whole time their mother was talking to me.. It was so cute!

So Rachel and I thought they could make a card to say sorry.. Rachel got a brilliant idea. She got some old newspaper, cut out a heart, crumbled the page and the cut out hearts. The boys glued the hearts on a folded A4 page, and signed their names inside the card.

Could you stay mad at them?  Their dad apparently couldn't!!!

What 's new in our classroom?

Here are a few pictures of what has been going on in our classroom over the past 2 weeks:

• Working with the Seguiun Board A and the short bead stairs to teach numbers from 11-19

• Using the Maths rods and numeral cards to reinforce number recognition and associate quantities with written symbols

• Working on life cycles

Springtime at our doorsteps!

In France, we were thaught that Spring arrives on March 21st... Well, Irish people diagree with me and every year, they argue with me that spring starts on Februay 1st!!! Scientists would say that  it is springtime in March in the northern hemosphere, on the 21st, at the Spring Equinox.  See, the Irish used to celebrate St Bridgid's Day  halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. St Bridgid's festival was pagan and was observed in Gaelic Ireland during the Middle Ages, referring to Irish mythology. Many parents have come to the classroom dropping their kids and laughing at my stubborness: at circle time, I would keep repeating to the kids that it was still winter (thought their parents had told them otherwise!). Parent would tease me and kept joking that it must have been a French thing!!! Ha ha ha!! So, I struck a deal and we usually introduce the theme of Spring in our classroom around the beginning of March. So this is exactly what we are at this week!

The first thing I do is to update our season board (see my post on our winter board here) and put new posters and pictures all around the classroom.

Then we talk about all the changes that happen outside in our garden when Spring time arrives. And at the moment, we are focusing on the weather: wind, rain, rainbows etc.. This week, I wanted the children to learn bit more about rainbows.  I looked for the best way to explain them how a rainbow happens and I thought of a few science experiments to do with them. I started by asking them "have you ever seen a rainbow in the sky?... Was it a rainy day?... What did it look like? ...Can you name the colours?". 

Reading books about rainbows is a way to begin your lesson. Here are a few suggested titles:

Rainbow and You, by Edwin C. Krupp

A Rainbow of My Own, by Don Freeman

We read Over the Rainbow by E.Y. Harburg. I love this book. It comes with a CD with one of my favourite songs "Over the rainbow". A beautiful rendition. It really touched my heart and those of the children. I read the book to the children wih music in the background (the book came with a CD). I asked them to close their eyes and to imagine they were flying on the rainbow. "What can you see now?", "where are you now?" etc... They ABSOLUTELY loved that exercise. It was so much fun. We then played the song "Over the rainbow" and I used the book to illustrate each verse of the song... I really loved this activity..

 

Then,  introduced the children with a little bit of background knowledge on the rainbow. Only a little bit. No need to go into details at their age. I explained them that a rainbow is a colored light we can see in the sky. And that light appears when the sun beams over falling raindrops. To demonstrate my point, I used a glass prism to show them what happens.

I also put a little mirror / glass prism in a glass filled with water and placed the glass by the window, playing with the light until we capture a rainbow in our classroom. I had given the children an empty small baby jar each and as I held the mirror in the glass, I told them to try to capture the rainbow in their jar.

I am sorry but I couldn't catch the rainbow when I took the picture! But the kids saw it!!

I am so sorry now that I didn't take another picture when they were trying to catch the rainbow! What fun!!! So much laughter!! Obviously, they got nothing. So I told them we were going to make our own rainbow. I had planned to dye some rice beforehand with food colourants for the children to pour layer by layer in a baby jar. Unfortunately, I heard that my granny had passed away in France and I had to leave everything behind (to the capable hands of my assistant Rachel) and flew home to be with my family...... Anyway, when I came back, as I had very little time left to finish our acitivities on rainbows, this is what I did: I had lots of wooden curtain rings in my house. I got them out, sprayed them all in white. I precut some colourful ribbons I also had in my "magic bag" and showed the children how to loop them around the rings.

I tied up up neatly and Voila!!!! The children seemed quite happy witht the results! I don't know if their parents understood what it was meant to be, but I am sure they told them!!! ..

I surely do hop that my Gran is flying on one of these beautiful rainbows now!!

Always in my heart, Mémé  .....

Welcome to our classroom!

A few days ago, Sasha at To The Lesson was asking me if I had any more picture of my classroom. I realised it was high time I updated my blog and today I went to take a few pics of what my preschool looks like at the moment.

This is what you first see when you pass the preschool front gate:

Here is our tiny tiny litlle hall when I welcome all my little children. You can't really see, but we have pegs all around the walls for the children to hang their coats and belongings.

This is what you see when you walk into the classroom:

On your left as you enter, you'll see our lietracy/language corner:

You wouldn't be able to see our art corner when you come in, but here it is, right behind you:

On your right (as you enter the classroom), we have our geography corner and the paractical exercise shelves:

Our jigsaw sehlving units faces the PLE corner:

Behind the jigsaw shelves, our little book corner and circle time area:

Here is another view of our book corner. See one of our sensorial shelves there too.

Our cultural/science area:



And our Maths corner:

I hope you like it!!!

As the classroom was initially built to fit in with the Montessori methhod of education, we don't have any role-play/fantasy corner. I personally believe that if I was to add such a little corner, it would benefit the children tremendously. The benefits of role play are endless but I think I will have to dedicate a full post on this topic. So until I can add an extra room to our classroom, what I do is work with boxes. I have a box for cars and small people, a box for dressing up and a box for pretend play with doctor set, tea set, teacher set etc... We don't make them available at all time but we use them to compliment or add to a theme, a story. And when it rains outside, we get the boxes out to have a bit more fun inside!!

Finally, here is our outdoor area... Keep in mind that we are just getting out of a long dull winter. Not much colour yet in the garden but that will change quickly. Just bear in mind that the trampoline is NEVER used by my preschoolers. Neither is the tree house. Too dangerous. But they have access to the rest of the garden. They even have access to our wooden decking with their tractors, their bikes and their cars. It is situated on the left hand side of the sand pit but I forgot to take a picture this afternoon!!! The children love the garden and they should be able to make the most of it as the good weater returns. I have also lots of little fun activities planned ... And I am hoping to add a few little crannie here and there to encourage oral language, role play and discoveries.  Keep in touch..

Ladybird counting game

You all know by now how much I like to create new activities for my little ones.. Keep them interested and challenged. So I came up with this little math activity. Nothing extraordinary but I am quite pleased with it. On Friday, we were outside and one of my students came running up to me excitedly, carrying a little ladybird in her hand and shouted: "the ladybird is awake.. she 's awake... She is not hibernated anymore!!". All the kids gathered arounfd her to look at it and went all around the garden to see if they could find anymore. They were not very lucky in their hunt, alas! However, this gave me the idea for my math activity. A nice way to tie everything together! So here is what I did:

First, I made some numeral cards: I used green for odd numbers and yellow for even numbers. I used a spongy/foamy type of paper.

I laminated 10 ladybird templates I found in my "drawer of things to keep" (which basically mean, "my messy drawer where I put everything when I don't know wherelse to put them!!") and cut them out once they were laninated.

I used 55 black buttons as counters and voila!!

First the child takes the ladybird out of the tray and is shown how to lay hem horizontally, one fater one, from let to right at the top of the mat (by the way, we did the exercise at the table first, but I would strongly recomend to do it on the floor as it takes a LOT of space!).

The child then lays the number cards randomly on the mat and must pick the numbers in sequence from 1-10, laying number 1 on top of the first ladybird, on the left. The child keeps going in this fashion until all the number cards have been placed orderly. The teacher should encourage the child to learn his odinal numbers at that stage, by saying for insatnce: "what comes after 2?". The child says 3 and the teacher asks him to place it on the "third " ladybird etc.. This is a great way to either introduce or reinforce the child's knowledgeof ordinal numbers.



       Then, the teacher places the basket in front of the child and asks him how many counters the 1st card should get. The chld says 1 and places 1 counter on the left wing of the ladybird. She then asks the child how many counters should go on the 2nd ladybird. The child places 2 counters: on on the left wing, and another on the right wing.

       When the exercise is finihed, I would remind the child of what an odd and an even number is and point at the pattern of the counters. The odd number have no partner at the end of the row but the even number numbers do. I would also point at the different colours used for this exercise.

      I am very pleased with the activity. It is base don the cards and counters material designed by Montessori but with a little twist, which I think will attract the children and bring them back to the task again and again.... As i said above, nothing you haven't seen.. nothing extraordinary.. but it is so satisfying to create your own materials!!!!!!

Caution: Floor mats in use here!!!

Here is what went on this week in our classroom. A bit of this and a bit of that....

Remember my recent post in our literacy activities? Well, here are a  few pictures of the children in action with the sound booklets, the sandpaper letters and objects and the sandpaper letters witht pictures:

I found these exercises so beneficial to the children. We always revise our sounds at circle time and introduce new ones too. Of course, this go hand in hand with the sandpaper letters during individual lessons. However, I have found that, taken out of these 2 contexts, if some children are asked to recognise a sound, they are lost. Practising their sounds this way was so enticing and they really liked it. It helped a few of them to make the association between a word, its initial sound and the written sound. I am really glad I spent so much time making the booklets and looking for objects around my house for our box (believe me, it was probably the hardest part.. though my own kids thought it was fun... LIke a scavenger hunt inside the house!)

What else did we do?

Punching and gluing

Tracing, colouring and cutting exercise

Jigsaws

More jigsaws

The above photo shows how the children are using our floor mats in the classroom. To be honest, over the past 2 weeks, I have been reminding the children of the importance of working with their mats (either on the floor or at the table). This was a principle of the Montessori method we had gone over at the beginning of the year but some children had either completely forgotten the rules and forgot to use the mats altogether or they were not using them appropriately (e.g:  carrying their work and mat separately). So, I reintroduced the lesson on the use of mats in our classroom. The mats provide children with a delineated work space of their own where they can work. I explained again to the children that a mat represents their own space of work. Nobody can interfere with their work on the mat, touch it or alter it. Children have to learn and show respect for their peers’ work. Basically, the purpose of the mats is to reinforce Montessori's principle of "freedom within limits". I showed them how to walk around the mats and how to place their work on the mats. They were reminded that (as I said above), they are not allowed to join a classmates’ work unless they have be given permission by that child. The children have been more careful thanks to these reminders and you know what… their work and concentration have already improved so much.. Why didn’t I do this before?