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Dragonfly Room
| Dragonfly Dronings So much is happening in our classroom right now it is hard to know where to begin. With the sunshine, we have been taking opportunities to get outside. Yesterday, we explored lifecycles—the lifecycle of a ladybug and butterfly. We are gaining first hand experience of this as we have the larvae stage of both of these critters in viewing containers in our classroom at present. With our kindergarten group we also talked about lifecycles of some plants and concluding our discussion with an outdoors adventure including finding and blowing dandelion seedpods. It was great fun to make use of these toys of nature. Some of the children did some artwork reflecting lifecycles and allowed me to display it on the wall outside of our classroom. Take a look next time you are signing your child in or out. Sarah Briddon is a new student in our classroom. She is acclimating well and especially enjoys activities involving water. She has been mopping, watering plants, washing dishes and hand washing all of which help her develop control of movement and concentration. Sarah has great vocabulary skills and is learning to use her words to make polite requests of others when she needs assistance. Luka is participating in operations of the decimal system. Now that he has the nomenclature for the units, tens, hundreds and thousands, he is learning how to associate symbols to these concrete objects, make exchanges and play addition games with his peers. Yesterday he exerted great effort and determination carrying a tray that I believe was wider than he is tall back to the shelf as part of cleanup. Olivia is also learning the Decimal System materials and enjoyed playing “bring me” games with the cards yesterday. She also had a lesson on button sewing and has sewn many a button for her mom learning to alternate up and down movements and to carry a needle safely as part of the process. Aby continues to favor food preparation activities and is showing great self control as she prepares quesadillas and remembers to save the eating of it or any part of it until she has completed the preparations. This self-control is carrying over into her relations with peers. The other day, she got into a squabble with a classmate over a position at the snack table. I intervened when I could see they were not going to work it out at that time. I noticed a little later when Aby approached this child again and told her she was “…sooo sorry that I didn’t know you put your napkin down first.” The next thing I knew they were both eating snack together and spent a lot of the morning doing other activities peacefully together. It was truly delightful! Aiden continues to develop his interest in writing. He has worked a lot this week on writing numbers. Because he has had a lot of experience doing operations of the decimal system, he is ready for a lesson on the stamp game, which requires the ability to write numbers. Aiden also enjoys daily activities with the bells and has a good ear for hearing the matching notes for the diatonic scale. Autumn has also been writing numbers. Her hand is well developed for this task so she is learning to write the numbers 0 – 9 as part of learning to identify them. She recently had a lesson on the spindle rods, which further develops her ability to associate quantities with numerals. Emilie Deboard had a lesson on the parts of a plant. She quickly learned to identify the roots, stem, branches and leaves and then went into making a book. She has almost completed this but her strong desire for social interactions has taken precedence for the last couple of days. She has befriended Martinique, a new student in our classroom and they have been learning how to take turns while playing games with the sensorial materials. Emilie noticed this part of their game playing wasn’t working and came to me in the midst of it. Once I played with them and emphasized the skill of taking turns, they caught on quickly and have taken great pleasure in practicing this skill with each other and independent of me. Trent truly enjoys independent activity and has been working with the dressing frames as part of learning to care for himself. He has put forth much effort learning to button, zip and buckle and the development of his hand control has improved through these activities as well. He is also working on the teen beads and boards activity and now includes the often- neglected number 15 when counting up to 20 objects and associating the numerals with this quantity. Speaking of counting, Anselmo has been counting number rods and bringing them to me as he locates the one I asked for out of the three he has placed on his rug. His face reflects his enthusiasm when he discovers the one he is looking for and brings it to me. Anselmo had a lesson recently on the binomial cube and takes this activity out daily to build this cube employing various strategies for putting it together. I love the ramifications of this activity for future creative problem solving that life so often requires. Aaron continues to be focused on opportunities to interact with others. He is learning effective it can be to employ his strong vocabulary skills to get what he wants by incorporating polite phrases such as “excuse me” or “can you please make room for me.” He is also learning how to lead when playing operations with the decimal system materials because he is now often the experienced fellow in the group. This required that he notice what the next step in the process is and tell his peers what do to. Joel recently engaged in his first research project with another child. He and Grace had the movable alphabet out and were interested in rockets. They had Cindy read a paragraph to them and then came up with their own summary of the information: “Rockets have parts called stages.” They wrote this out with the movable alphabet and then got paper to transcribe it onto. Grace is in her third year and is very proficient at handwriting. She helped Joel get the words onto his paper and then they proceeded to illustrate. Since then, Joel has put forth much effort to learn to write doing metal insets, chalkboard and prepared slips for tracing. He recently learned to write his entire name and is using this skill for much of his written work. Martinique is a new student in our classroom who came to us from another Montessori school. She is rediscovering all the materials and by watching her I am noticing how much with which she is familiar. She is interested in everything and typical of a 4 year old; she is especially interested in her peers. She has shown her readiness for movable alphabet activities and engaged in this several times. However, her social interest and attraction to the decimal system games has been giving her lessons in these areas as well. Sitara had a lesson on the Art Cache last week. She does this activity as much as she can as she enjoys artistic expression. This is an activity reserved for our older children as it allows for flexibility in use of materials such as glue, paper, scissors and markers and requires skills in self-control and safety with these materials. Sitara is using her skills gained here to make clearer illustrations of the pages to her research projects, which she engages in daily with other children. Esther, Grace and Emili Hart had a group lesson on adjectives recently. Now they are doing extensions to this lesson by writing descriptive phrases about their peers. They have written such phrases as, “the helpful Tyler,” “the friendly Emili,” and “the purple Grace”—she was wearing a lot of purple that day! After they write these phrases, they symbolize them according to their functions and enjoy then giving them to the peer about whom they have written. Maas, Ryan and Tyler have been doing some division with the Boards and Racks of Tubes. This is a very attractive material, which requires much manipulation and order to carry out. Through work with the stamp game and this material they are really gaining an understanding of division as sharing equally and having the answer always be in what one unit (or the one’s category) gets. As children enter the second plane of development (approximately ages 6 to 12), their power of reason and imagination take over and they become more interested in the how and why questions verses factual information and vocabulary building. I notice this in the humor of our older children and the imagination employed in finding ways to be funny. Recently I overheard a conversation in which one child said, “I am going to plant whip cream into the ground so that it grows into a canned whip cream tree!” [Peels of laughter all around]. Another child responded with, “I’ll put whip cream in my oatmeal and stand on it!” [Now they are doubling over with giggles]. I have decided that rather than combating this because of the disruptive nature of the responses, I would appeal to it by incorporating some funny songs and books into our classroom activities. We have been reading poetry by Shel Silverstein and started singing some funny songs like, Father’s Whiskers, Waltzing with Bears and Down by the Bay. I am finding that I have their full attention when I appeal to that which attracts them in this way. Even now, I am learning a song from my son’s school entitled; “I Love to Laugh,” which I am sure will be a hit. In closing, I want to remind you to please sign up for our upcoming Mother’s Day tea to let us know that you will be attending. The sheet is posted outside our classroom door. Also, I need a few more glass jars for the Mother’s Day gift we are making so if you could bring in small jars ranging from baby-food size to a 16oz. Peanut butter jar it would be helpful. I want to express once again my pleasure in being with each of your children every day and the opportunities I have had to get to know them and each of you—I feel so very blessed by this. Chorus: I love to laugh, I love to giggle, From my head to my toes, it makes me feel so good. Now I can be silly and I can be serious, But I love to laugh every chance I get. Till my knees get weak and I fall down And my sides ache and I laugh til I cry And I can’t stop, and it’s hard to breathe But the more I laugh the better I feel. Oh, u oh, u oh u oh u oh (Chorus) When it’s sides kicking and rib shaking And tongue tickling and happy making And silly giggling and duck busting The more I laugh, the better I feel Oh, u oh, u oh u oh u oh (Chorus) So open up wide and let out some sunshine Share something happy making with friends and family It won’t cost a penny, a rib tickling funny story It brightens our day and makes you feel so good From your head to toes and chase the blues away Oh, u oh, u oh u oh u oh (Chorus) |
Camas Montessori School
Tami's Dragonfly Room