We will be doing 3 Montessori Work Periods per week (3 hours each). Some weeks we may do more, but it will depend as Snow White also attends a French preschool program from 9-1 two days a week.
We were actually going to start our work next week, but I could not not wait, so we started today! (I did not take pictures of all the activities as I feel that sometimes it distracts them if they are thinking hard, but I hope you enjoy some of the pictures I took)
Our theme for the week is “my body” so today we talked about HANDS and read a few books that held that theme.
I printed out and laminated some Nomenclature cards for hands that I found on Adventures of a Rainbow Mama The children really enjoyed this work. Later when they were using some finger puppets I heard them saying “Hey, I put the giraffe on my index finger” and “you are holding one in the palm of your hand”… It was so nice to hear!
We sang He’s got the whole world in his hands, twinkle twinkle little star, and deep and wide all using our hands to do the actions.
We also did matching gloves/mittens
tweezing pony beadstonging beads
tracing hands
picking up objects without using our thumbs
making sounds with our hands (clapping snapping, rubbing, flicking etc)
The children also worked independently picking work off the shelves, some of the things they picked were:
Pink Tower
spindle boxes
color tablets box 2
carrying a tray on the line
pouring beans
and they also asked to do the Sink & Float activity
All in all I think it was a great first day!
I had some other ideas planned, but we just did not get to them. I will list some of them here in case anyone else wants to do this theme:
Finding objects in shaving cream
parts of a hand puzzle
left and right pairing of gloves
finger painting
* Many of my ideas and themes come from the NCM Guides. I use these more for book ideas, crafts and activities to fill in time but I try to always follow the lead of the child and use the 7 periods from David Gettman’s book as a guide in what to present to the child at certain times. Many of the lessons I present come from the NAMC guides.
The Sunshine Crew
Thursday 17th of September 2009
Love the work for hands and feet. Great that they are enjoying so much! Can't wait to hear about French preschool, too.Hope that your day is going well:)