Shamrocks, Rainbows, and Lucky Pennies

Can you tell it's nearly St. Patrick's Day?  The children have enjoyed exploring some festive lessons during the past couple of weeks.  It is always remarkable to observe their growing proficiency as they navigate new lessons and practice skills.  It has been especially gratifying having long, uninterrupted periods of work time in the mornings.  The children have been able to achieve new levels of concentration while achieving mastery in lessons, enabling the presentation of many new lessons.

Using tongs to transfer decorative green stones.

Pouring into four cups.

Sliding the coins into the 'pot of gold' for strengthening visual accuracy and  left to right movement.  

St. Patrick's Day patterning fun.

Colors of the rainbow with color matching.

Using chopsticks to sort and transfer.

Three Cylinder Blocks for an extra challenge.

Using a garlic press to squeeze water from sponges.

Shamrocks and lucky pennies!

Extension work with the Teen Beads.

Using a Practical Life lesson to write words with the Moveable Alphabet.

Recording words in cursive and print.

Counting the Decimal System with golden beads.

Making a booklet of leaf shapes using the Botany Cabinet.

Static Addition with golden beads.

Rainbow Do-A-Dots.

Making an Irish flag with collage materials.

Color Tablet Box 2 extension work.

Learning about odd and even numbers with the Cards and Counters.

Using the Red Rods for refining visual discrimination of length.

Abstract art with yellow and blue.

Pin pushing collage with positive and negative space.

Counting by tens with the Tens Boards and Beads.

Static Addition with the Stamp Game.

Linear counting and pattern recognition with the Hundred Board.

Matching circles to their filled in counterparts.

Practice opening and closing zip loc bags - This lesson stemmed from several friends need help with this at lunch time!

Completing a Rainbow Shamrock with glue.

Teen Numbers writing practice.

Careful cross stitching!

Writing words with picture prompts.

Laying out the Large Number Cards after lots of work with the Golden Beads.

Color matching and fine motor practice with clips.

Retrieving quantities.  

Writing practice with Sandpaper Numbers.

Rainbow Shamrocks

The children enjoy seasonal art activities, and one way we incorporate new skills is to introduce them through these types of lessons.  For this activity, the children were shown a new gluing technique using a small brush to seal layers of tissue paper squares.  As with all lessons, the materials are set up keeping in mind the directionality of moving from left to right.  

Here the materials are set up on the art shelf.  Moving from left to right, the child gathers the tissue paper squares , glue tray, and white paper with a shamrock shape.

Everything is brought to a workspace, where the child completes the process of sealing the tissue paper squares using the glue and brush. 

Once dried, the paper can be cut into the shamrock.  

The children have been interested in completing the lesson because the gluing technique has provided a new point of interest.  Up until this point, they have worked with glue sticks and glue bottles, so using the brush and adding second layer of glue on top has been most intriguing.  Of course, the clean up process is part of the lesson, and the children have been taking great care to leave the materials clean and beautiful for the next person to use. 

Sharing Knowledge

Over the past couple of weeks, we have really noticed a new level of sharing of knowledge among the children.  I very much appreciate how this is occurs naturally within the mixed age setting of a Montessori classroom.  The children are so fortunate to have each other to observe and learn from.  Here are a few pictures of our classroom from the last two weeks:

Finding a quiet moment with the Individual Silence Game.

This painting activity has been very popular lately!

Counting quantities with the Short Bead Stair.

It's always a joy to see such exploration and collaboration with the Pink Tower and Brown Stair.

Static Addition with the Golden Bead material.

Setting out and counting the 45 Layout...

…and checking one's work.

A beautiful flower arrangement - its so wonderful to be surrounded by such beauty!

Making new shapes with triangle using the Constructive Triangles.

Learning about the Function of Words: the conjunction.

 Number writing practice.

Careful exploration with Pink Tower and Brown Stair.

Creating a collage with paper cuttings.

Transferring small beads with a tweezer.

Making a crossword using the the Small Moveable Alphabet and phonogram list words.

Sorting images into categories of Land, Air, and Water.

Comparisons between the Pink Tower and Brown Stair.

Quantity and counting with the Short Bead Hanger.

Walking the maze without touching the sides - such a challenge!

Reading and recording silent 'e' words.

Analyzing sentences.

A festive St. Patrick's Day pin pushing collage.

Making a flag of Ireland.

This chid spent most of the morning creating this gem!

Listening to the sound of a bell - "I listen until I can't hear the sound anymore!"

A small group of children descried to make a cultural table using all of the items from our Russia shelf.