A Fraction-a-licious Lesson! ~ The Fraction Insets

The lessons on fractions are highly anticipated at our little yellow school.  They are introduced to children in their third year of the Montessori casa (preschool) program.  All of the children in the classroom are drawn to and fascinated by the two trays of red circles divided into many parts.

Parents who visit our school often marvel at the fact that we are teaching the children fractions.  For the children, it is just a natural progression of the Arithmetic materials.  The aim of the Fraction Insets materials is to introduce the child to the idea of fractions as the division of a whole into equal parts.

The children are introduced to the Fraction Insets and are invited to freely handle and explore them.  This includes taking out the sections, counting them, comparing them, etc.

Explain to the children that each circle represents a fraction, which is taking a whole (the circle) and breaking it into equal parts that are all exactly the same.

The children are then introduced to the names for the parts of each circle - whole, halves, thirds, etc.

Children are then able to go further by exploring numerators and denominators.


So why is this lesson so anticipated and so memorable?  Well, the lesson is introduced with food!  This year it was blueberry muffins that we cut into halves and then quarters to illustrate that fractions are part of our daily lives.  After eating his piece of blueberry muffin a child declared 'Fractions are fraction-a-licious!"

Our Study of the Universe and the Planets

In April we began our study of the Universe and the planets.  As is the way in Montessori education, we began with the large (the universe) and moved to the small (the planets). 

The children were fascinated to learn that we are part of the Milky Way Galaxy.  All the stars that our eyes can see in the sky are part of the Milky Way Galaxy.  Our Earth and all the planets are also part of this galaxy.  The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. 

We each made a spiral galaxy using sequins for the many stars and planets.

Our galaxies were so beautiful and sparkly!  We were finding sequins in our classrooms for weeks!

We then moved on to our Solar System.  We had a model of the Solar System in the classroom, along with individual planets to be manipulated and individual books on each planet.  These materials provided the children with many different options to explore the planets.  We read the individual planet books to discover more about each planet. The children were very sad to hear that Pluto used to be a planet but is now considered a dwarf planet.  They felt that now poor Pluto couldn't have any fun with the rest of the planets.  We were quite sad for days about this.

Some of the four, five and six year olds decided to make Planet Books.  Here are a few pages from a book made by a child who recently turned six.

A three year old in the classroom wanted to make a book too.  The beauty of the Montessori classroom is that each child moves at their own pace.  Our little three year old joined the older group and here is part of his Planet Book.  This little three year old was so proud to have printed all of the names and drawn the planets all by himself!

More Blog Posts to Come

Thank you to the parents at our school who enjoy visiting this site and to those of you around the world who visit regularly.  New blog posts are on their way!  So much has happened at our little yellow school over the past few months but there has been no time to share our good times with you.  I am currently writing blog posts about fractions, life cycles and the universe among others.  I should have some up later today or tomorrow. 
Thank you all once again.  Happy reading to come!

What Can We Do On A Rainy Spring Day?

Rain, Rain Go Away

Come Again Another Day

It has been raining off and on for close to a week now with more rain in the forecast.  The rain isn't going away when we sing our little nursery rhyme.  If we can't beat it, we may as well join it.  Today we dug out our school umbrellas and went for a walk in the rain on our property.

We discovered that the world is a very different place when it rains - it is quieter.  We were able to hear the rain falling and dripping off our towering pine trees and we watched worms wiggling on the walkways and parking lot.  We noticed our green, green grass and the budding leaves on our trees.

So rain, if you don't want to go away, just know that you aren't spoiling our fun. 

In Our Garden

Today we were able to get out and work in our back garden. Maria Montessori's writings speak of the importance of a well-rounded education which includes rich experiences in nature.  When looking for a property for our school, it was very important to us to find one with a large outdoor component.  Our half acre of property allows us many wonderful opporutnities to explore and discover the natural world.

The children were so happy to get into the garden to plant some potatoes.  Our property is simply teeming with wildlife, particularly squirrels and rabbits, who love to munch on anything that we plant.  We have been very successful with vegetables that grow underground as the animals do not realize that they are there. (Details of last fall's harvest can be found under the Gardening label.)

Here are some pictures of the children planting potatoes.

Potatoes are not the only thing that the children planted.  This week, R.'s dad gave us some white pine and spruce saplings.  We planted about twenty saplings along the back of our property.

The rain forecast for the next few days will be wonderful for our plantings.


We had the whole school out in the back garden and playground on Thursday morning and it was not exactly the quietest place to be.  You can imagine our surprise when we found a little toad sound asleep on our fence despite all the commotion.  We don't know how he managed to get himself up there but it was delightful to see him.

Happy Mother's Day

We would like to wish everyone a very happy Mother's Day.  We hope everyone had a lovely day!

The children gave their mothers a Christmas cactus along with a card and picture (photo follows).  We would like to share our Christmas cactus planting experience with you.  Way back in January, one of our parents, V.'s and E.'s mom, gave us a portion of her large Christmas cactus plant.  This cactus plant provided us with a lovely opportunity for the children to experience another way of starting a plant, besides planting seeds. 

This is what we did.  The children made cuttings from the original plant. They then put some potting soil in a pot and placed some cuttings in the soil.  

Over the next few months we placed them in the sun in the upstairs classroom and watered them sparingly.  The plants thrived and every single one survived!  In November/December their mothers can look forward to beautiful white and pink blooms.

We also made a card for our mothers by asking the children a few questions about their mothers.  Some of the answers were hillarious while others truly touched our hearts.  Here is one of the cards.

The Montessori Mafia

The Wall Street Journal recently wrote a blog titled The Montessori Mafia.  The blogger discovered that many of the world's most creative thinkers and innovative entrepreneurs have attended Montessori schools.  Currently two of the world's most innovative companies were created by Montessori alumuni - Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.  The blogger asks if there is something in the Montessori approach to education that nurtures creativity and inventiveness that we can all learn from.  It is a very interesting read.


Here is the link:

http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/04/05/the-montessori-mafia/