Back to Montessori School

Back to Montessori School

Going back to school is always an exciting time for teachers, moms and children.  With all the excitement how do teachers plan for phasing in the Montessori curriculum?  This year was especially challenging for me because we have the most new students we have ever had.  We only have 4 2^nd year students and no elders (Kindergarteners) so the remaining students are all brand new to the Montessori Method.  When I am starting out the year my practical life shelves are empty with nothing but trays on them.  This year I am trying a new method of color coding trays and shelves to help with classroom management.  Carrying the trays, walking the line while carrying the tray and returning the empty tray to the correct shelf has all been a part of my phasing in process this year. 

My math shelves start out with basic Montessori materials, sorting, counting and shapes.  Right now we have our back to school sensory box out as well.  

Our science shelves are empty with the exception of a nature tray for exploring. 

Our line activities begin during circle time and then we extend the line to the bathroom and eventually the main flow of the classroom has a line.  While planning walk the line activities I always make sure to incorporate the theme, fun songs and activities to go along with it.  The children do not know that while we are singing fun songs and doing different arm movements or sounds that they are mastering walking the line in the process.  Dr. Jean www.drjean.org and http://www.jackhartmann.com/ are two great artists that I use for line songs.  

It is incredible how valuable these simple phasing in activities are.  Usually around week 4 you can walk into the classroom and see the children working on mats, walking on lines, carefully carrying trays with glass pitchers and bowls on them, and using grace and courteousy with their friends and teachers.  I do not think the Montessori Method can work without proper time for phasing in.  Let me know how you phase in your curriculum or classroom management for back to school.  I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback. 

Montessori Monday Pond Trays

Montessori Monday

Frog Pond Trays

We are studying frogs and ponds this month.  For Montessori Monday I

wanted to do a post about our trays.  I get quite a few questions and

comments on where I get my items and how I set up my classroom.  I am

going to give you some tips on how to set up interesting trays in your

 classroom and at home. 

This is a duck dropper work, the child squeezes the dropper to fill up the blue water and then fills up every duck on the tray.  This builds fine motor skills and hand eye coordination.

Let me start off by saying that I was a preschool, Kindergarten teacher

 and mom all before I got my Montessori certification and became a

Montessori teacher.  The way I set up my school and homeschool reflects

 both backgrounds and I believe I have combined the best of both worlds. 

This is a pom pom transfer extension.  They have to use the tongs to transfer pom poms to the matching color frogs.  This is a build fine motor and math skills.

 First I start with a theme,  for example this month our theme is pond life. 

 Every month I go to the thrift store, target and the dollar store to

 constantly look for interesting trays and containers that can be used on

 work trays.  After each holiday and season I shop all the SALES!!  I

 have built up items over the years and now I have an abundance of things

 to choose from every month.  At the beginning of each year I make a

 scope and sequence to lay out what I want the kids to learn for homeschool

 and preschool.  I break it down into months.  Every month when I write my

lesson plans I use this as a guide and I fill out each individual child’s lesson

 plan to target those goals.  Here is where the fun part comes in!!  I

 search my items to look for works.  For example if I have kids who need

to work on operating a dropper I will look for fun ways to reinforce this

 skill with theme based items.  Every month when I put out the new works

 the kids are always waiting in anticipation to see what will be next and

 even if it is reinforcing the same skill it is packaged in a new way thus

making it more exciting! 

These are some of our language trays.  The first one is the 4 little speckled frogs.  They use the felt pieces to retell the song and story.  This reinforces language skills, counting, subtraction and sorting.

Next is draw and label a frog and sort the frog life cycle.

Here are some of our math trays, Lily pad addition using frog counters, frog sort and classify, frog counting with counters, frog patterns

Here are a few of our Practical life trays,

  frog egg transfer using small Styrofoam balls, operating a dropper duck pond, build a turtle with wiki sticks and our sewing basket.

 Some items that I always keep in stock to use are:

theme ice cube trays and silicone baking trays, Silicone shape baking cups, Colored trays, Theme erasers, Small

 plastic toys such as frogs, Water beads, Suction cup bath shapes, Marbles, Dollar store items for sensory box,

 Different colored and scented play dough , Theme based counters and letters, Theme

 based shape books made on the cricut, Crinkle paper, Medicine droppers, Various scoops and tongs from

Montessori Services, Theme based foam or felt shapes from Oriental Trading, Wiki Sticks , Pom Poms, Colored

noodles, Pipe cleaners, Letter and number beads

With these basic items you can make hundreds of fun work trays and change them often to keep it

fun and exciting!!

What new works did you make this week???

Rachel

I am linking up with living montessori now and what's on the tray wednesday

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