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Thursday, November 27, 2008

Pink-Blue-Green Series in Spanish?

Can you follow the same Montessori English Language Sequence for teaching Spanish?

A reader of the blog asked me this question and after some research I found out the answer is “Yes!”. I found out from a teacher who trained and taught in Mexico that she followed the same sequence followed to teach English.

Montessori Educativos - She recommended this company. It took me a while to figure out where the prices in American Dollars were located but finally found them. To get the list price go to this link. It is at the very bottom of the main page where it says "Lista de precios en dollares". It is all in Spanish, not sure how to get it in English.

This company sells the Pink-Blue-Green Series Cards in Spanish:
Widening Horizons
Pink Series: Introduces three letter phonetic
Blue Series: Includes longer phonetic Spanish words
Green Series: Introduces the non-phonetic Spanish sounds like gue, gui,
I have not purchased any products from this company, but if you have or know someone who has, please let me know.

Other companies that sell Spanish Materials:
Amonco - I found on-line
Touch Spanish - used at my daughters school

Training History 6: Development Of The Notion Of Time - The Clock

This is a continuation from the other Training History Posts.















We were shown two clocks in our training class.
The Judy Clock - What I liked about this clock is that as you move the second hand the hour hand moves. Also, the minute and hour hands are clearly different in length.

The Montessori Teaching Clock - What I love about this clock is the fact that the children have to put it together which makes them very aware of the different parts of a clock. The hour hand does not move as the second hand moves. This clock was designed by a Montessori teacher. Notice the 12 glass 5-bead bars used for the minutes. A circle carved into the center of the clock face holds red plastic fraction insets that help children grasp by sight and touch what is meant by the terms half-past, quarter-past, and quarter-till. Beautiful clock!

I found this Tutorial online on teaching children how to tell time very helpful.

Linear Timeline
Hourly time with linear time line: This should be done after an introduction of time (they should know that each numeral represents an hour of the day, one to twelve, that there are 12 hours for he day and 12 for the night, with 24 hours for the entire day)

Using a narrow strip of thin, flexible cardboard equal in length to the circumference of the clock with numerals one to twelve marked in sections of equal lengths AND Labels with AM and PM AND A set of twenty-four command cards for each hour.

We can represent the hours with the hour strip. Place the strip around the clock to illustrate how it is the same size as the circumference of the clock. Ask the children what time they do certain things during the day like: what time they get up in the morning, what time they start school, go to lunch, end school, eat dinner, go to sleep, etc... They will place an arrow at each time on the hour strip. Ask if this is morning or evening. For example: Do you eat dinner at 6 in the morning or 6 at night. Explain the AM and PM labels and have them add the AM or PM Labels.

Other Clock Lessons included in our manual:
Half hour time
Quarter past time
Quarter to time
Five minute time
One minute time
In all of these lessons the children practice with the clocks, worksheets, and the children stamp clocks, draw the hands, and label the time.

Monday, November 24, 2008

All in a days work!

My husband was out of town for 4 days this past week and I was sick most of that time. I finally felt better on Sunday so I worked on house chores which the kids helped with and they also worked a lot with the works on the shelves. Here is a few pictures of their Sunday morning.















The kids come in and out of the backyard while working. I love our backyard. It is big and shaded by an almost 100 year old Pecan tree.















My sweet girl! She is getting very good at these. These are creative memories patterns.















Stamping. After this, he ended pulling out ALL of our stamps and stamped his heart away and colored them all in!





























Leaf Rubbing.














My sweet boy! He is adding a leaf next to the leafless tree! He said he needed to draw the leaves that had fallen!















Playdough, a daily favorite. I purchased Christmas cookie cutters for the playdough and intended to put them out in December but my son knew I had purchased them and was eager to get them out!















Washing Dishes.















A puzzle. We just got this one. My son always wants my help the first time he gets a new puzzle. He then does it over and over and over again until he has mastered it. I personally LOVE puzzles. When I grew up my parents did not have a lot of money. My mom said that puzzles were the most inexpensive toys she could purchase for us so she bought a lot of them for us! As a child we played lots of board games, cards games and worked on puzzles. My father loves board games and cards games and I loved how we spent hours playing these games. He is a mathematician so I learned probability with cards games!



















My son comes home everyday from school writing a letter or number he worked on that day at school. Here is K and k.
















And our calendar. I changed it up last month because they were not at all interested in it. I just purchased an English Calendar and added the names of the week in Spanish under the names of the week in English.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Elementary Classrooms Calendar Work

Here is the Lower Elementary Calendar Work that I blogged about here. The calendar has the days at the top in Spanish and English. Under the calendar there is a red pocket chart with the questions and answers for the students to complete with the days of the week.

So far, we have worked on what day is today, what day was yesterday and what day is tomorrow. I also have cards that will work on the date - la fecha and the weather - el tiempo.
Here are the links to the documents to create this work.
Calendar Work 1
Calendar Work 2
Calendar Written Work 1


































One of the students put "jueves" on the very top question, that is not suppose to be there!

I have this same work in the Upper Elementary Classroom.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Memory Game

Lower and upper-elementary:

This is another game idea I got at my summer training. This is a color memory matching game where the children call the number and the color.















These are yellow index cards. I wrote the numbers 0-21 and paper clipped the colors behind the numbers. I have two white, two red, two yellow, etc... The children call the number, turn the card, say the color, call another number, say the color. If the colors match they pull those cards out.

I've observed the children do very well with the colors but some have trouble with the numbers. Once they feel comfortable with 0-21, I will go to higher numbers. I plan to do the memory game with the animals and class items we have already learned.

As shelf work I have left this work. Coloring by number - the Turkey, in Spanish.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Work on the Shelf - Primary Classroom

The following is the Spanish work on the shelf in the Primary Classrooms. This work was here before I began teaching towards the end of last year.















The Colors - on the left is the control card which is laminated to the front of a folder. In the inside of the folder is a laminated sheet with the names of the colors blank. There is a little box with the colors to match up. There are also sheets where the students can write the names of the colors.















The Numbers





























These drawers contain 3 part cards: foods, animals, parts of the body, clothing, etc. and a little book with the pictures and space for them to write the name.

There is also the Language Masters which I talked about in a previous blog. Montessori Spanish Week 4. This work is being added this year.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Recycling















My daughters teacher and I were talking about recycling the other day and she told me how she had kept all of her recycling on the counter for one day to see the amount that is recycled. I did this Sunday and here is the amount of recycling I accumulated. Sunday is my shopping day so I did organize and clean out the pantry and fridge so there may be a little more to recycle than a week day.

That evening my children and I then took all of this to our backyard were we have our recycling bin. We chanted recycle, recycle as we took all of the recycle out! I need to get them to help me more often to take items to the recycling bin. It is great that they are growing up in a world where we emphasize recycling at schools and work, where they hear almost daily how we can conserve energy, water, and living green.

The schools do such a great job talking about recycling that my children will get on to me if I put something in the trash that is suppose to be recycled!

Monday, November 3, 2008

Training History 5: Development Of The Notion Of Time - The Year and Its Parts

This lesson is not like the lesson in the manual but one that our trainer came up with and I absolutely LOVE! In this lesson we teach the children how the year can be divided into 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6, and 1/12. This is a long lesson and would need to be broken out into several small lessons. It not only helps to learn the calendar and it's parts but also works on fractions!
1. Give each student a page of a monthly calendar
2. 12 students will be at the front of the class with their calendar pages and then get in a circle and put down their calendar pages.
3. Students that did not have pages can participate in putting down the strings that divide the calendar into 1/2 (6months), 1/3(4months), etc...















1/4 of a year is 3 months. 1/4 of 12.






























1/6 of a year is 2 months















This a Calendar extension (not clock!). The number of beads under each calendar month is the number of days in each month.