Tricia's Blog

On Friday, Baila and I had the day off, but Mechel had a half-day of school.  We drove him in and I spent some much needed time cleaning and preparing my classroom.  Baila asked to come along and was quite content to do some “works”.  At one point in the morning she asked for the bow-tying lesson which I happily gave her!  She had attempted it toward the end of last year, but her classroom this year does not have it.  She went on to do an amazing job.  It was magical to watch her tiny little hands go about completing the bows.  She was in the wonderful state of concentration that we carefully watch for in our Montessori classrooms.  When a child is ready for a particular lesson, and repeats the work that they have freely chosen,  watching them work is magical.  I was so happy to have captured her work on video.  The following clip is about two minutes and is sideways – sorry!.  Baila is 5 years old and this is the first time she has succeeded in tying bows: 

 

 

Last Sunday we tilled the garden and amended the soil with mulch and the “treats” from the chicken coop!  Today, we finally had a chance between raindrops to get some of the seedlings in the ground.  We planted eggplant, ocra, peppers, red cabbages, and beans today!

Here I am with a student planting some peppers:

HH and CW are preparing a bed for planting:

Here I am showing the girls how to mark out the bed for planting:

Hard at work!

I went to an open house at one of my children’s schools recently and was excited to hear about the teacher’s “hand’s on” materials.  Sadly, many educators get caught up in what I call the “semantics of pop education”.  No, counting out a pile of twizzlers at your desk is not really meaningful math when your are 7.  But hey, at least he got a nice sugar infusion before he had to finish the next batch of worksheets.

Today, I had a chance to introduce some actual, meaningful, hands on math to a couple of four year olds.  A couple of the girls have mastered their teen numbers and are up to place value work.  We have been working on identifying 1 unit bead, 1 ten bar, 1 100 square, and 1 1000 cube.  We also matched the number cards to those beads.  Today, it was time to do a big layout.  We count out each set of beads like this: 1 unit, 2 units, 3 units, etc.  Then 1 ten, 2 tens, 3 tens and so on.  After having successfully completed laying out the number cards, it’s time to layout the corresponding bead material.

Number card layout in progress:

 

Layout of the beads in progress:

1’s, 10’s, and 100’s completed!

I know I won’t be able to post every day, but e few amazing things happened today that I want to share!

One child chose the knobbed cylinders today.  She is just turning four years old and had worked with this material last year.  She created her own variation today!  First, she took out four rugs and aligned them across the room horizontally.  Next, she placed one cylinder on each rug.  She then went to each rug to complete the cylinder work.  She also selected the blindfold because I guess she was going to attempt the entire feat with looking!  After, she replaced everything on the shelves neatly and rolled her rugs.   Sometime later she called me over to show me that she had rolled all four rugs together!  She was very proud.

 

 

Another exciting thing that happened today highlights the importance of a mixed-age environment.  One child had selected the broad stair and once completed, checked her work by rolling a marble down the “steps”.  We have a heavy marble for this work and it actually sounds

 

                                                                          

musical as it goes down the stairs.  It has been a big point of interest in our classroom!  The child was having a bit of trouble guiding the marble properly and an older girl saw her struggling and came over to help out.  They worked very nicely together, and both girls felt successful!

After a few (nearly) sleepless nights of preparations, the big day arrived!  One of the the only drawbacks of having the school in our home is that there is always “one more thing” I seem to need to do.

The biggest change for this year is that I moved Mechel out of his room and created additional classroom space.  We now use the room for Practical Life, Art, and lunch.

New Practical Life Area:

 

The New Art Area:

            

The room also serves as our new lunch area!  A few girls are able to prepare the tables while the other girls continue working in the other room.  Today we changed our lunch routine from last year by creating two lunch tables for six girls each.  We are also using real tablecloths, placemats and napkins.  After Sukkos, we will also switch to real plates, cups, and silverware.  After a short demonstration, two of the girls happily set the tables for lunch:

                         

 

A peek around the class:

           

                  The library                                                         Seasonal work                                                  Language area

           

               Future geography area                                       Sensorial Area                                                Special banners

           

               Metal Insets                                               Personalized coat hangers                                   Nametags

 

 

Hard at work on their first day:

           

           

           

           

 

It was a wonderful first day.  The three new girls are a wonderful addition to our class and the combined energy was extremely positive!  I was especially pleased with the way the returning girls included their new friends so easily!

 

Girls who like to write….in cursive……of their own choosing.  It’s true.  Oh, and did I mention that they are only four?

A couple of the girls have been working on their /at/ word lists (bat, cat, fat, etc.)  They suddenly realized that they could write the names of their friends.  All at once they ran to the cubby area to figure out what letters came first. 

 

 

Their excitement was so contagious that another friend came over to give some spelling guidance.

Celery cutting was such a tremendous success and since the girls were able to complete the steps easily I introduced carrot peeling.  This work has an additional level of difficulty because it introduces peeling before chopping.  There were many special points of interest in this work:  a carrot pitcher, an orange ceramic basket holding the carrots, and the bird peeler.

     

This work was just as popular on it’s first day as the celery work was.  Girls lined up and waited patiently for their friend to finish.

           

The best part is watching the girls offer their prepared food to each other.  It is such a wonderful opportunity for practicing grace and courtesy. 

It was absolute magic!  12 girls anxious to eat celery.  Really.

I finally assembled all of the coordinating materials for celery cutting and demonstrated it to the girls today.  Needless to say, they all lined up to do it.  Baila was first to try it out and she did a great job:

For the rest of the week, celery cutting was a big hit.  Girls could be heard munching celery quite often!

         

Our last day of school got started with class photos.  I took the girls down to the studio in the basement and posed them in front of our “school picture” backdrop.  The girls all did a really great job (although Baila gave a very unusual smile for some reason!)

 

After our short performance (which I missed taking any pictures of!), we had a very yummy pizza party with the Mommies and siblings.  Thank you Mrs. Hamburger and Mrs. Viders, for sponsoring the delicious food!

 

The two graduating girls received a large, framed collection of pictures from the year – you can see them hanging on the wall below:

All in all, it was a wonderful last day of school!