Little Reminders

One of the reasons I enjoy documenting activities in our classroom through photographs is because of the ability of the pictures to remind me of all that occurs throughout each day.  While it is impossible to capture everything that happens, I am truly inspired by the "little reminders" these pictures give me to let me know that learning is happening and progress is being made!

Apple Chopping Work!  I love how this lesson is so engaging for the children - it's gets them excited about food preparation and allows them to practice Grace and Courtesy skills as they offer their friends a healthy snack.

Parts of a Tree Puzzle

Exploration with the Brown Stair prisms.

A lesson with the Teen Beads.  The children are counting the number 13 in this picture.

A student-led lesson with the Sandpaper Letters.  The children had spontaneously formed their own lesson and an older child began reviewing the letters with some friends.  I chuckled when I heard, "I'm going to sit here and you can sit here (pointing to the chair on the left) so that you can see the lesson better," as this is something is must say quite often.  :)

Walking the Line while holding a tray with the top four cubes of the Pink Tower  - it  is a fun challenge to make sure the tower does not slide or fall from the tray!

Practicing writing skills while learning about leaf shapes with the Botany Cabinet.

Tracing shapes with the Geometric Cabinet - another exercise which promotes writing skills.

Pink Tower and Brown Stair extension work.
  

Practical Life Pouring practice.

Basic Cutting practice.

Teen Beads and Boards along with number words using the Small Moveable Alphabets.

Pink Tower in foreground, and Brown Stair behind.  This work was being done by two different children right next to each other.  One remarked to the other, "Look, your tower looks like mine!"  :)

Exploring dimension with Red and Green Knobless Cylinders.

A pre-writing lesson with the Sand Tray.

Learning about quantity and place value with the Decimal System Cards and Golden Beads.

Tactile discrimination with the Touch Tablets.

We've been learning the names of the continents and identifying them by their colors on the Montessori Continents Globe.  Here, a child using the Brown Stair and Pink Tower took it to a whole new level and associated the Pink Tower with South America and the Brown Stair with Australia! :)