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Wednesday, October 29, 2008

My Children's Art

I have had several posts on the art materials I have available for my kids but I realized that I have not shown you their art work! Here are a few masterpieces!!
















The Fire breathing dragon!















Playdough pumpkin.















Painting pumpkins.
















A few I had saved in the last couple of weeks.

I do not keep any of their art work but I think I will start taking pictures of it. It will be nice to look at it years later!

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Training History 4: Development Of The Notion Of Time - Measurement of the Year and Personal Timeline

Measurement of the Year
For this lesson you want to have different year calendars that do not look the same and ask the children what these calendars graphically represent. Since the calendars do not look the same, see if they think they represent the same thing.
This is a great opportunity to show different calendars from around the world. Our trainer showed us a beautiful book called Calendar Art.

Personal Timeline
In this activity the child will illustrate graphically the personal timeline of the people in the child's family. They will see the difference in ages graphically.















For this activity we used graph paper. Each child is given graph paper, glue, scissors, and a blank sheet of paper.

They draw a picture of their family on the paper. One square on the graph paper will represent a year of that persons life. They would cut a strip of 5 squares if they are 5 years old.
When I did mine, I drew my family and put the strips under each person hanging off the paper. The following is a picture of another students Personal Timeline in our training class. She used paper bigger than 81/2 by 11 and she colored her family.








Monday, October 27, 2008

Training History 3: Development Of The Notion Of Time - Grouping of Days and Weeks into Months















This is the picture of the Months of the Year Classified Nomenclature.

This lesson would begin by having the children make observations on the different months of the year by looking at calendar pages. They may observe things like (there are seven days for each week and each month has different number of days). Once they make their observations you can go into the History of the Calendar and its months and how the months got their names. I would only teach 3 months a day since this is a lot of information.
Some follow-up work could be to research a particular month (maybe their birth month).

Information about the months and history of the calendar:
http://www.webexhibits.org/calendars/year-history.html
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0002067.html

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Training History 2:Development Of The Notion Of Time - Measurement of Days and Grouping Days Into Weeks

Measurement of Days
The Montessori and Research manual suggests to use a pull off calendar to help the children understand the Measurement of Days. The children would tear one day each morning and place it on a bulletin board or cardboard in the space provided. This could be your classroom calendar. The children can create their own calendars in their history notebooks and record what they do each day.

Grouping Days Into Weeks
In this lesson we ask the children what they notice how the days of the week are organized. You can show the children a monthly calendar. (The calendar organizes the days into groups of seven). Discuss where seven originated from.
In this lesson we then go into the names of the days, the Latin name of each day and what they mean. You can talk about each day of the week on separate days and Sunday on Monday and Saturday on Friday.















In this picture you see the Days of the Week classified nomenclature material.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Spanish Montessori Week 5 and 6

Week 5 was pretty identical to Week 4.
This week, week 6, in the

Primary Classroom:

I introduced a new song, "Las Hormigitas" by Jose-Luis Orozco. I LOVE this song. It is soooo cute. I had the students stand up in the circle they were in and had them put their hands by their sides bent like a little Ant. We had hand gestures for Up the Hill and Around the Paths. The song then says the Ants walk, stand on their tip toes, jump, do turns, skate and say good bye! So we did the gestures for all of these actions. The kids loved the little ants!! I like to sing the songs without the CD first so we can go at my own pace. I then play the CD if I have it but most times I just like us to do the songs without the CD's.















Here we are singing "Las Hormigitas"! Las Hormigitas estan dando vueltas. The ants are turning.

Lower and Upper Elementary:
The following activity I got from my Montessori Trainers Classroom.
The Calendar Work to promote asking questions and answering them in complete sentences.

"What day is today?" and then the answer "Today is......." I want one student to ask the question and another student to answer the question. I will add questions weekly like: What day was yesterday, what day is tomorrow, What is the weather today and the complete answers to these.... what is the date today.... etc... Later, I will add a small version of this work on laminated cards to put on the shelf and written work that goes with this calendar activity. The written work will include the question and the student will write out the answer.















This picture is from the classroom of my Elementary Montessori trainer from whom I got the idea. I will post the picture of my Elementary Classrooms Calendar Work next week.

We have also began playing Bingo with the Animals. "Los Animales".



















Thank you to Homemade Montessori, I started using box.net to upload files to. This is basically a storage space on the internet. They give a link to each file you upload. These are files I received at my summer training.

Here are the files for the Bingo game (Loteria) for Animals.
Loteria-Los Animales
Loteria-Loas Animales Calling Cards

Friday, October 24, 2008

Training History 1: Development Of The Notion Of Time - Tally Marks

This past Sunday we began the History Elementary I Montessori Training.

There are two ways to develop the notion of time: through movement and through geometrical and graphic illustration. The geometrical and graphic illustration is recommended for children who are 6 years of age or older.

Lessons in the Development of the Notion of Time section.
Graphic Representation:
1- Tally Marks
2-Measurement of Days
3-Grouping of Days Into Weeks
4-Grouping of Days and Weeks Into Months
5-Measurement of the Year
6-Personal Timeline
The Year and its parts
The Clock-Orientation to One Day

Today I will show the Lesson - Tally Marks















Tally Marks - In this lesson you have asked students over a weeks time to make a mark on the roll of adding machine paper. One paper for the entire class. One student makes the days mark at the same time of the day. After a one week period you discuss with the students how one mark represents the same amount of time has passed, therefore the marks must be made the same distance from each other. Determine what length you will use between each mark (for example two inches). Have the students mark the piece of paper each morning with each mark two inches apart. This will now be a more accurate linear representation.
Make sure the children understand that the length used between in mark is insignificant. The important thing is that you use the same distance between each mark.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

We Finished Up Botany Class

This past Saturday in my Elementary I Montessori Training class we finished up Botany. We covered Fruits, Seeds and Flowers. We covered the Montessori and Research Manual Botany 1.
Here are a few pictures of our class.

FRUITS

































FLOWERS














SEEDS














Sorting Roots, Leaves, Stems, Seeds, Flowers, and Fruits

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Halloween & Fall at our home

I absolutely LOVE Fall and Halloween. I love all seasons and holidays but to me this is just the best time of the year! At our home my husband and I both love to decorate for Halloween and Christmas. I think my husband may enjoy it more than me :-)














This is a picture of the Art shelf at our home and how I changed it up for Fall and Halloween.














































This is another shelf with other things for the kids to do with a Halloween theme.
















The basket at the top is filled with Halloween and Fall books. Our nap and bed time stories come from this basket these days.















I have a tracing tray with Halloween cookie cutters and Playdough tray with black and orange playdough and molds from a pumpkin carving set.

It is wonderful to work at a Montessori school because I get so many ideas on things to do at home with my children and their toys. It is all about how you display them, rotate them, and organize them.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Spanish Montessori Week 4


Week 4 in the Primary classroom:

This week I brought in the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? Oso pardo, oso pardo, ¿qué ves ahí? This is a great book to practice colors and animals. We then sang "Que Llueva" using some of the animals from the book. I talked about the song "Que Llueva" on this post.






















This picture shows a work that will be in the primary classrooms in the next week. Each primary classroom will have one of these Language Masters. The students slide the card through and it plays the word on the card. I recorded the words on each card and we taped the picture and word on the card. With these language cards and language master the students can press the student button and record themselves.

The cards that will be on the shelf right now will be the parts of the body for the "head, shoulders, knees and toes song" and Hello and Goodbye.
My school purchased these Language Masters through ebay for approximately $80. These new cost around $300.


Lower Elementary:

We continued playing TENGO with everyone taking a turn on calling the classroom items.


Upper Elementary:

We continued playing TENGO with everyone taking a turn on calling the classroom items and we also finished recording the interviews.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Spanish Montessori Week 3

The third week in the primary classrooms:

We always begin with a Good Morning song:
Buenos Días
Buenos días, buenos días,
¿cómo estás? ¿cómo estás?
Muy bien, gracias,
Muy bi
en, gracias,
¿y usted? ¿y usted?

I added Good Afternoon - Buenas Tardes and Good Evening - Buenas Noches. I played Jose-Luis Orozco singing this song.

I always greet the children in Spanish. It may be individually if I get a chance or as a group and see if I get a response. If I do not get a response, I may say "Estas bien or mal" good or bad! I also like to ask here and there "What does Buenos Días mean?" Or whatever word I choose that may be in a song we are singing to see if they are understanding.

We sang "head, shoulders, knees and toes", "Vamos a Cantar" Let's Sing by Jose-Luis Orozco, and "Que llueva" Let it Rain.

We end with the Adios song from Jose-Luiz Orozco: Good Bye, Good Bye, Good Bye until next Tuesday or Thursday depending on the day we meet.
Adios Adios Adios
Adios Adios Adios

Hasta el martes (jueves)
Adios Adios Adios

In Lower Elementary and Upper Elementary we started to play TENGO like BINGO. (See a picture at the end of this post). The Tengo (I have) cards, have classroom items we covered
on week 2 and a few new ones. I have the Tengo cards as Excel files which can be downloaded from the "Free Downloads" link on the left of this blog.

To play this game with the Upper Elementary, each student takes a turn calling the items. They have in their hand the picture and on the back the name of the item: la escuela - the school. The student says "Tienes la escuela?" and all of the other students say "Tengo la escuela". When someone wins, they yell "TENGO"

Lower Elementary students also take turns calling the cards but they are not as loud and need a lot more help with pronunciation. I take volunteers for lower elementary but make all upper elementary participate.


Upper Elementary: With the Upper Elementary I also started to record the students doing their interviews. I just used my digital camera which takes videos and recorded their short 3 minute interviews. They loved to see themselves on video and just loved the entire idea of having their own "show"!
















Playing TENGO!

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Zoology and Botany Elementary I Training

This weekend we finished Zoology and started Botany. This was a make-up weekend because we did not meet in August. Therefore, we will be in training two weeks from now finishing Botany and starting History.

In the last part of Zoology we covered Fish, Amphibian, Reptile, Bird, and Mammal. After going through the lessons for each of these we created an art project with different mediums. We were asked to observe the live animal for each of these groups and make the animal with the medium given. We were not given direction on how to make the animal just given the different art supplies.

For the fish we were given water colors.
For the reptile we were given construction paper, water colors, and colored pencils.
For the Amphibian we were given green tissue paper.
For the Mammal we were given different materials like felt, tissue paper, colors, shiny and flat material.

Someone took group pictures of everyones art work. I will get those up as soon as I get them in my hands! The main point of these craft activities were to not give children a model to make their animal from but just to give them the art materials and let them come up with whatever they want. The other thing was that we had to make these while observing the live animal. Very important to actually have a live animal to observe.

This craft activity would be done after the initial presentation the animal where you discuss its needs. You will want to give the kids a few days to observe the animal before going into detail about its parts. You can have them observe the animal and read books about the animal that you have for them on the shelf.

A few pictures from the end of Zoology






































In Botany we covered The Root, The Stem, and The Leaves.




























Thursday, October 2, 2008

Spanish Montessori Week 2

Primary:
The Primary children are always on the rug in a circle for Spanish. There is at least one teacher that stays in the room while I teach. The teacher(s) participate and learn the songs so they can help the kids when I am not there. These classrooms have Spanish activities on the shelf. I will post pictures later of these.

The second week we reviewed our songs using slow and fast for the head, shoulders, knees and toes song. Reviewed the song "Vamos a Cantar" by Jose-Luis Orozco. "Now we are going to sing"...eat...jump...sleep...etc... The kids act out verbs. I like to add a new one when I see fit that relates to maybe a book we read or what we are talking about that particular week or month.

We also sang "Que llueva" Let it Rain - this song is about animals in the Forest going in a cave when it rains. The kids pick the animal we put in the cave.

Lower Elementary:

The lower elementary students are also on a rug in a circle but we get out of the circle to do activities.

The first 15 minutes of the second week the students were given a lesson on school and classroom items. I want them to get familiar with school and classroom items so that in week three we can play "Tengo" which is like Bingo with school and classroom items.

To review and introduce the names of the school and classroom items, I put the items in my backpack. Each student pulls something out of my "Mochila"-Backpack. I had pre-made the names of each item on white strips of paper so we could place the label and item together. For the classroom items like desk, chair, calendar, the Spanish teacher, etc. the students placed the labels on or next to the items. After we went through the items twice, I passed out the strips of paper and everyone had to place them in the correct place. I only introduced 6 items each day. Everyone had a turn. We sang the song "Que Llueva" which we had done once or twice last year. All of the children really love this song because they get to pick an animal to put in the cave.






























This is work on the shelf for the Lower Elementary Students.



Upper Elementary:

Upper Elementary worked on a script to interview each other. I gave the students a list of questions and answers we already know and we added a few things they wanted to find out like "Do you like ___________" "What is your favorite _____________". The students are paired up and will take turns on being the interviewer and the one being interviewed. I will be video recording the students once they are ready to present. They really had fun with this activity.