Taking Care of Others

   We explain to our children that our number one rule is that everyone must be safe.  This includes taking care of each others bodies, taking care of each others feelings, and taking care of each others learning.
   We read "Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse" by Kevin Henkes.  Lilly loves school and her teacher, Mr. Slinger.  One day, Lilly takes something she loves to school, her brand new purple plastic purse that plays a jaunty tune complete with movie star sunglasses and three shiny quarters.  Often, when children bring items to school, they become distractions.  This is also true of Lilly's purse.  Mr. Slinger has to take Lilly's purse until the end of the school day.
   This book helps the children understand that bringing items to school can hurt our learning.  They learn that other behaviors can hurt our learning as well.  They also learn that Lilly expressed her anger in an unacceptable manner.  However, Mr. Slinger forgives her.  We give our friends permission to make mistakes so that we can mistakes as well.

A Weekend With Wendell by Kevin Henkes - Using the Lifeskill of Friendship

We read "A Weekend with Wendell" by Kevin Henkes.  In the story, Sophie and her parents have a weekend visitor, Wendell.  Wendell and Sophie attempt to play together.  However, Wendell makes all the choices and makes Sophie pretend to be boring things, like a sweet roll in a bakery.  In the end, Sophie turns the tables on Wendell and he learns to play cooperatively.  As I read this book, the children felt how Sophie must have felt.  They found that they would rather play cooperatively than tell everyone what to do.  We discussed how to let each person involved in playing to make choices.  A few days after reading,  one child was telling another what to do.  I simply asked, "Is someone being Wendell?"  The person immediately said, "Yes" and then asked the other "What would you like to do?"  This book helped the children understand the Lifeskill of Friendship as defined by Kovalik and Associates. http://www.thecenter4learning.com/

Photos of Montessori Work on Shelves

I love this idea that one of our preschool teachers, Margaret Freeman has implemented.  She has taken photos of the shelves in her room with the work in place.  She has placed a photo of each shelf set up next to the shelf in a frame.  This enables the children to see where each item should be placed when they return their work to the shelf.

We have two preschool classrooms that utilize the teachings and theories of Dr. Maria Montessori. 

This shelf includes the metal insets that are used to develop small motor skills.

Active Listening

To understand the concept of "Active Listening," we read the book, "Night Noises" by Mem Fox.  Active Listening is one of our Lifelong Guidelines developed by Kovalik and Associates.  The use of Active Listening promotes positive behavioral expectations in the classroom environment.

Active Listening means to listen with your eyes, your ears, and especially your heart.  In her book, "Night Noises," Mem Fox uses many words to evoke sounds.  The book has a wonderful message about a great-grandmother who has lived a wonderful life and is surrounded by her huge family and her many friends.  She may be nearly 90, but she still feels young inside.

After listening with our hearts to the story, we listened for various musical sounds on a CD.  The children had to identify the instruments being played. We also played "Listening Lotto" in which the children had to listen for outside sounds to place markers on their boards.

No Put Downs

We teach and utilize a set of Lifelong Guidelines and Lifeskills developed by Kovalik and Associates to set positive behavioral expectations in the classroom.  One of the Lifelong Guidelines is "No Put Downs."  We encourage the children to use only nice words or words that make someone feel good.  We call these "Put Ups."

We read the book, "Chrysanthemum" by Kevin Henkes.  He is the author we are going to focus on during September.  In the book, Chrysanthemum goes to school for the first time.  During the first few days, some of the girls in the class make fun of Chrysanthemum's name since it is much longer than theirs.  They tell her she is named after a flower.  All is well after Mrs. Tinkle, the music teacher steps in and says she loves the name Chrysanthemum and plans to give her new baby the name.

While listening to this story, the children began to feel how Chrysanthemum felt.  They realized they do not like put downs.  We discussed many put ups that we could give to our classmates.

Next, each child received a heart made of paper.  We shouted put downs to the heart as we crumbled it and stomped on it.  We then attempted to smooth the heart out and found that we couldn't.  We ripped the heart to symbolize a broken heart.  We found that even when we said "Sorry," we couldn't fix the heart.  Hopefully, the children saw that put downs can hurt and even if you say, "Sorry,"  the hurt can remain behind.  However, the children were also told that they didn't have to listen to anyone else tell them who they are.  This is a more difficult lesson and will take some time to learn.

Numeral Formation Practice and Counting

In the 5-7 year old cluster, we decided that one of the things we would do to start the school year would be to focus on numeral formation and counting.  We knew this would help the children write the numerals during math work the rest of the year.  We also need to assess the children's knowledge of number concepts.  The work is also simple enough to give us an opportunity to teach the children how to select work and which procedures to use.  Some of our new students have a Montessori background since they were enrolled in our preschool program.  Some of the children came to our school from other preschool programs.  Some were cared for by their parents at home until age 5.  Some came to us from other kindergarten programs.

Here are some of our numeral formation activities:

Using 1 X 1 Legos to form numerals.

I had 2 clear Lego brick plates.  I made a copy of a plate and then designed a template for the numerals 0 to 9.  The idea is that the student positions the plate under the clear plate.  The student then uses 1 X 1 bricks to form the numerals.

Geoboard Numerals

Math Their Way Dot-to-Dot Templates
http://new-center-account.stores.yahoo.net/

Math Their Way Number Line Templates

 

Playdough Numerals with Ten Frames

 

Hundreds Board

 

Ten Frames with Cat Counters

Montessori Spindle Box

Montessori Hanging Bead Stair 1-9

Montessori Hanging Bead Stair - Teens

 

Schultüten Ceremony on the First Day of School

Parents in Germany traditionally give their child a "Schultüte" or cone-shaped present filled with little gifts, candy, and school supplies on their first day of first grade.  We have adopted this tradition and have a special ceremony on the first day of school since we usually have many students from Germany enrolled in our school.  German is also one of the languages we study starting at age 2 1/2.

The 5-7 year old class participates in this ceremony which includes the singing of a German song about the first day of school.  Here are two photos from the 2011 ceremony. We can't wait for the first day of school to do this again this year.