What We Did Today

Today Miss K continued with her "Understanding the Calendar" theme for Circle Time. She asked the kids about important dates they knew - their birthdays, relatives' birthdays, etc., and they flipped through a yearly calendar to find those dates. They also counted how many days remain in this year (99) and contrasted that with how many remained yesterday (100 - totally unplanned, Miss K said :).

After Circle Time, I presented this cutting activity from My Montessori Journey (again, thanks Laura!). Almost everyone wanted to try it right away, and some of the kids even did it twice!

The colored bead stair and hanger (both units and teens) are extremely popular activities in our classroom, so last night I created some extensions to go with them (corresponding coloring and handwriting sheets). I'm going to try to figure out how to upload documents, and, if I can, I'll make the extensions available for download here. Both Miss C's son and Miss D's son are big numbers guys, and they gravitate toward the Math area - the bead stairs in particular. They weren't interested in doing the extension worksheets today (although they did the stairs), so I'll present them again some other day. My daughter did the extension for the teen bead hanger, and the other kids were able to observe (and of course "absorb," as Maria Montessori would say ;) her work.

Miss K's daughter is very interested in patterns and sorting, and she spent a long time sorting colored bears and then creating patterns with them. She also did the new cutting activity twice, which took up a big portion of her morning.

Miss D's son started - and finished - the hundred board. Long before school started, his parents told me that they really encourage him to finish what he starts. About one-third of the way through the hundred board he started saying he was tired, but Miss K and I coached him through and he finished the whole thing - we were really proud of him and made sure to praise him lots and make a big fuss over him. I think he had a great sense of accomplishment when he was done.

After we wrapped up our Montessori work, Miss D led the group in Music Time. She brought everyone's favorites - rhythm sticks and shakers - which are always a huge hit. Then everyone did their jobs, we read the "D" verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses, and we had finished another day!