Here is Part Two of our post discussing the work our five year olds are doing in our classrooms. These pictures were taken during the last week of October and the first two weeks of November.
Les Animaux De La Ferme ~ French Materials in the Classroom
Our French Language program is a vital part of the Montessori curriculum at our little yellow school. Each day the children engage in small group French lessons with our French teacher. Many graduates of our three year Montessori program attend French Immersion programs for grade one as they have both a very strong French and English base on which to build upon.
In the following pictures, J. and L. are working with Les Animaux De la Ferme vocabulary cards. The cards were introduced prior to our trip to the farm at the end of October.
J. and L. are setting out Les Animaux De La Ferme vocabulary cards. They are reading the names of the farm animals in French and matching the labels with the corresponding picture.
This is what the work on their mat looks like.
They each made their own booklet. This is part of a booklet.
Skip Counting with the Bead Chains
This is a picture of the Bead Chain Material Cabinet. This material illustrates the squares and chains of numbers from 1 to 10. The chains sitting on the shelves illustrate the squares of numbers while the hanging chains illustrate the cubes of numbers. The top shelf holds boxes which contain colour coordinated numbered arrows for the squares (short boxes) and cubes (tall boxes) of numbers. The child must be familiar with numbers 1 to 100 for the short chains and 1 to 1000 for the long chains.
This material is used for many different purposes in the Montessori casa (preschool) classroom and in the lower elementary classroom. Children often begin work with this material at the age of 4. At the simplest level, it is a counting exercise to practice the order of numbers. That after 39 comes 40 etc.
At the next level, this material illustrates skip counting, counting by ones, twos, threes, etc. all the way up to counting by tens.
Towards the end of the casa program and in the lower elementary, this material is indirect preparation for the memorization of the multiplication tables.
This material also illustrates the squares and cubes of these numbers and their relationships with each other.
K. is working with the Cube Chain of 4.
K has set out the number arrows and is setting out the appropriate number arrow as he counts the beads along the chain. You will notice that every fourth bead has an arrow.
This is part of his completed work. K. has been shown that the first four parts of this chain can be folded to make a square.
K.'s completed Cube Chain of 4. The chain can be folded into four squares. The four squares can be placed on top of each other to form the cube of four. The cube of four is placed at the end of the chain.
The bead chains are a very popular activity in our classrooms. The children consider this very big work and are always so pleased with their accomplishment.
Reading Books
Children begin reading in the Montessori classroom between the ages of three and four. At our little yellow school, children make their way through sequenced readers in addition to the Montessori Language activities in the classroom. Children who are reading read their books each day at school with their teachers and take their books home to read with their parents. Once they have completed our sequenced readers they are able to read chapter books and factual books.
In this picture P. is reading his reading book.
Phonograms with the Small Moveable Alphabet
The Small Moveable Alphabet is used to practice reading and spelling skills. It is most often used to help children identify phonograms in words. Phongrams can be single letters, such as "y" in "candy", but are most often two letters that come together to form a completely different sound such as "sh" in "ship".
