Week 5 Wrap-Up

On Wednesday, Miss K continued with her apple theme for Circle Time. She reviewed the Johnny Appleseed story from the previous day, as well as the lesson on seeds. She showed the kids a red apple and a green apple and explained that there are many different kinds of apples. Then she asked the kids which apple they thought would have more seeds and took a vote: would it be the red apple, the green apple, or would they have the same number of seeds? She cut through both apples at their "equators" and showed the kids that, even though the apples were different on the outside, they were identical on the inside (love the larger life lesson there, Miss K!). She showed them the apples' identical star-shaped cores, and then they counted the number of seeds from each apple:


Notice how she used the odd number format from the numbers and counters activity? Nice touch, Miss K! :)

After Circle Time, I introduced the next set of sounds from the red letter series Laura at My Montessori Journey uses: b, i, t, and g. We started the same way as we did with the first four letters: we played "I Spy" with laminated clipart objects beginning with each of the sounds, then I showed the kids the corresponding sandpaper letters and said, "This is what the sound /b/ looks like," or, "This is how we write the sound /b/." Once we had been through each of the four letters, we went through a big stack of phonetic object cards and sorted them according to their beginning sound.



All of the kids were familiar with these four sounds and letters, so we glued the letters into the red Sound Books they had made the day before.

During Independent Work time, my daughter asked to build the "super duper big maze" using the Long Red Rods and Number Rods (I had shown her how to do this once before after seeing it here), and Miss D's son wanted to try it too:



Here they are trying to navigate their labyrinth:


Miss K's daughter busied herself with the cutting activity, and then she wanted to try her hand at the hundred board:



Miss D's son can't pass up an opportunity to work on the Hundred Board, so he helped. In the meantime, my daughter was frustrated that her maze was so skinny, making it difficult to walk through, so she set to work constructing the maze using only the Number Rods.

Much easier:


Miss D's son and Miss K's daughter wanted to give it a try:


During Snack Time, the kids ate the red and green apples Miss K had shown them during Circle Time, and then they got to vote for which apple they liked better. Miss K made a chart with a red apple and green apple at the top, and the kids got to vote for their favorite apple by marking a tally under the appropriate column. After everyone had eaten, Miss K and the kids counted up all of the tallies (there were many once all the moms and 2yos had voted) and declared the green apple (actually a Golden Delicious rather than a Granny Smith) the winner. The concepts of voting and tallies and even ties (the apples "tied" for the number of seeds) were all new to the kids.

For Arts & Crafts, the kids continued painting the calenders they had started the week before. Last week they got through May, and this week they got through September; they'll finish up next week.

We closed with the "E" verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Even a child is known by his deeds."

It was a good week! Even though we were only in the classroom for two days (with a field trip on Monday), I really feel like we accomplished a lot.