Mix Up Some Glitter!

A fun work offered in our practical life area of our Montessori classroom

This is a quick and simple activity I have done with ages two and up, and it's great for the fine motor skills.  All you need is a bowl with water, a whisk, and a touch of glitter sprinkled in the water.  Give a lesson and show the kids how to use a whisk first, and let them stir up the glitter for fun.  

We added some food coloring, and the kids enjoyed observing and getting a closer look at the colors in motion.

Educational Activities Made on the Photocopier

As a teacher, I am so thankful to have a photocopier at my school.  There are so many matching activities to be made on a photocopier, especially if you have colored ink available.  Here are just a few math works I've made for the kids in our studio.  There are truly endless activities out there with the use of a photo copier to help teach our children.

Matching and Counting Dice

Here, I photocopied different types of dice for the kids to match the numbers to.   

Counting and Sorting Buttons

Here, I laid all of my buttons out on the glass surface of the photo copier, shut the lid very gently so that I wouldn't bump the buttons, and once I got my good copy I added numbers along the side and laminated it.  This is a great tool for a sorting activity as well as learning to count.

Shape Making with Colorful Popsicle Sticks

Lay down some colored popsicle sticks on the photocopier and make different shapes to make cards for the kids to practice making shapes.  Glue the images on thicker paper and laminate them to make your cards last longer.  

Number and Quantity Matching

Instead of using dice, draw out dice cards, copy them in a row from one through 5 and laminate them for the kids to match.

I hope this gave you some new ideas for your classroom.  Thanks for reading!

Valentine's Day Celebration

I thought I'd take a moment to share how our Valentine's Day celebration went in our Montessori studio for ages 1 through 3.  It was a special day indeed, especially since the kids were preparing for this holiday all week.  This week, the theme was on love and my co-teacher and I gave lessons on caring, sharing, and loving one another.  Our students were also offered a station in the classroom to make valentines for loved ones and for each other throughout the week.  They had so much fun and were so excited to see the decorated room on Valentine's Day Morning.

A welcoming entrance on Valentine's Day

The children made flower arrangements during the week for the tables on Valentine's Day.

Valentines made on hearts cut from craft foam for friends and family 

Marble Art Valentines

Our students enjoyed decorating bags by coloring on them and on gluing hearts cut from craft paper.

All in all, it was an exiting week for our students.  They especially enjoyed exchanging valentines with each other on Valentine's day.

Thanks for checking out our classroom on Valentine's Day!  Hope you enjoyed.

~Angelique Buman

Wild Animals in Africa Activity Tray

I have found this activity to be enjoyed by children ages 1.5 through 6.  A great way to learn the shapes and names of our continents is to make activity trays that teach the children something about the continent.  Learning about wild animals can be very enjoyable for the little ones.  If you are a Montessori teacher or teach at a school that recognizes continents in different colors, this is also a great way for the kids learn the colors of each continent.

What You'll Need:

-A tray

-Craft foam sheets 

-Green Felt (Or whatever color you teach with to recognize continents in your program)

-Wild Animal figures 

-A bowl or container for the figures

-Scissors

-Marker or pen

-Sheet of paper

-Tacky Glue or another adhesive that works with felt and foam sheets 

Steps:

-First, glue your sheet of felt to a foam sheet.  Let it set to dry.

-Draw up your continent on paper the best you can or have a printed copy of it and cut it out.  Make sure it is large enough that all of the animal figures will fit on the surface.

-Take the sheets that you glued together, and put the felt side face down on a table.  Lay the cut-out shape of your continent on the foam, but make sure that the image is flipped or reversed as this is the back side that will be facing down in the tray.  Trace it with a marker or pen.

-Cut it out and there you have your continent.

I chose to put the foam on the bottom of the felt, to make it a little more durable.  It also grips better to the foam surface under it.

-Take an uncut blue foam sheet and place it at the bottom of your tray to represent water.

-Add the animal figures with a container or bowl and offer it to your kids.  

-You can add labels to the continent and for the animals, especially if you are working with an older age group.

A Montessori Note on Why I Chose to Teach Africa First

For you Montessori teachers and parents, I wanted to explain my underlying reason on why I chose Africa as the first continent tray to offer my students, ages 1.5 through 3, and not North America (which is the continent we live in).  As you may know in many classrooms, it is helpful to first teach the continent that we are from. I too agree and I do talk with the children about where we live, but I tend to break things down in different ways to reach a point.  During circle times, the kids were first shown a sand paper globe to recognize land and water, and then I began showing them the most typical maps and globes where the land is all green and the water is blue.  If you know your Montessori, you know that continents on a Montessori globe are all different colors to help the child learn their continents.  Africa is the color green on a Montessori globe, and since the kids are still learning the concept of land and water, I felt that this color was best for that as they begin to recognize continents.  This age group is very visual and they respond best to real and natural imagery (such as the most natural colors on maps).  Showing them the Montessori multi-colored map would be a little harder for them to understand right off the bat, but while many of the kids have grasped a better understanding of the earth we live on, they are being introduced to the concept of the Montessori multi-colored map.  

Land & Water Sorting Tray for Toddlers

As a teacher using the Montessori Method, I often find myself teaching young children complex concepts in the simplest form.  When teaching children to understand land forms, maps and globes, we must find ways to make it fun and easy to understand.  I think about the most common and recognizable presentations and break it down into toddler terms.  For example, we know that water on most maps or globes is nearly always presented in blue and the land is typically shown in green.  This land and water sorting activity that I presented here is just one of the many ideas out there to help kids to begin thinking about the earth they live on.

There are many different ways to display a land and water sorting activity such as using actual water or photos of land and water to sort.  You can add air as a third sorting element when using photos, such as imagery of clouds and birds flying.  In general, it's good to have many different options to rotate for the kids to explore.

HOW I MADE IT:
It's simple.  I used a wooden tray from an arts and craft store, green felt for the grass and a glitter blue foam sheet for the water.  Optional: I glued the green felt to another piece of foam sheet to help keep the felt in place better.  As for the objects, I have a huge bag of sorting objects that I've collected over the years, but it's easy to find things like this at your nearest toy store or dollar store.  Some objects include fish, sea shells and trees.  On the inside wall of the tray I labeled land and water (and I added the labels on the opposite wall, so that the child is always bound to see the labels and start recognizing them as site words).

Sorting objects that are found on land or the water is a great start for a young child to start thinking about the many differences between land and water.


Thanks for reading as always!  Feel free to pin or comment!
~Angelique Buman

Pushing Pins into a Pin Cushion Activity

Pushing pins into a pin cushion takes coordination and careful handling for ages 2, and sometimes up to age 6 or older.   This is a preliminary sewing activity that the students in our Montessori studio absolutely love.  It's an activity that is seen in many Montessori environments.  A very thorough lesson is given to children first before handling sharp objects such as pins.  We explain that if we are not careful, these items could be dangerous.  Many children also realize that in most cases, it is a privilege to use such objects at this age. They recognize that we are trusting them to handle this material properly and they take pride in that.  Of course, we are always observing them, but we find that they are most respectful to material that typically wouldn't be offered to them elsewhere.  This lesson teaches children safety and a respect for materials in the classroom.  In addition, it is great for the fine motor skills!

Extension for Pushing Pins into a Pin Cushion

After the kids have had some practice with pushing the pins in, challenge their coordination by adding beads.  Show them how to put the pin through the bead hole before pushing the pin into the cushion.

Make a Rainbow Basket for Kids to Explore

What child doesn't like learning about rainbows?  I have made baskets like this in classrooms for ages 2 through 6 and it is always a hit.  Discovery baskets are great opportunities for kids to explore on their own.  

Things you could add to your own basket

Note: Be sure to rotate out different items that you find related to rainbows, and don't add too much material at once if the children don't have the space to explore.  I find in the Montessori environment, sometimes a few items are better than a lot, so that the children can spend more time absorbing the material lessons.  Once they have had enough opportunity to learn from the basket, it may be time to rotate new material that teaches about how color works.  For older kids or as children advance, you can start making separate baskets that are focused on different areas of color, such as a color basket that teaches about the painters pallet and color wheel, and another basket that teaches about light and color.  

-Rainbow Exploration Cards: Surf the web and print off available images of real rainbows, colors, diagrams of how light and raindrops work to see rainbows, and don't forget Sir Isaac Newton (who used prisms to show that sunlight was made up of the colours of the rainbow, etc.)!  Oh, and be sure to have an image of an airplane view of a rainbow so that the kids can learn that rainbows are actually round when we can see the entire rainbow is in view.  Laminate the printed images to make them last longer.  If you don't have a computer available to find images, start saving rainbow and color clippings from magazines as well as samples at local paint stores.

-Prisms and Color Paddles:  You can get a small prism for pretty cheap on Amazon and those translucent color paddles are great for holding up to the light.  Just Google "color paddles" and search through images if you aren't sure what I mean by those, as they are usually the first thing that pops up.  An old CD also could be added so that the kids could see how the rainbow colors on the reflective side.

- Color Sample Swatches from your local hardware store.  If the swatch books aren't available like I have here, you can gather several color strips in the paint section and make your own book.  Just stack them together, hole punch each of them one one end, and add a key ring or string to keep them together.

-Make a Felt or Laminated-Paper Rainbow Puzzle: Search for a rainbow coloring page on the web and print out an image or just draw one up yourself. Cut each arch out to create a stencil for your rainbow puzzle. Then place each layer of the rainbow on the appropriate sheet of colored construction paper or felt sheets, trace each arch and cut them out.  Put the rainbow arches together and glue the entire rainbow to a piece of poster board.  Cut the rainbow out, but do not cut it into sections just yet if you choose to make a rainbow out of construction paper.  I would laminate it first or use clear packaging tape if you don't have any laminating paper.  After it is laminated, you can cut each ray out and add it as a rainbow puzzle to your basket.  If you use felt, you can simply cut each arch out and there you have a rainbow puzzle.  It won't be easy to make it perfect, but it will be good enough for the little ones.  You may want to use foam paper instead of poster board for the felt if you want it to last a little longer.  I find that felt sticks really well to foam paper, especially if you use elmer's adhesive spray.

-Make a Braided-Yarn Rainbow Puzzle: Buy yarn in all of the colors of the rainbow, cut 3 long strands from each ball of yarn and start braiding.  I suggest braiding all colors very long at first, at least 2 feet long so that you have plenty of yarn to figure out what size you want your rainbow.  Lay them straight next to each other in the order of the rainbow with the red at the top, and then trim each one shorter and shorter, making sure that the red stays the longest and the indigo/purple is the shortest.  Depending on how long you are keeping the red, you may want to cut at least one to two inches off of the next one and so forth. It is important that the kids see a different of length if you are trying to teach them about the spectrum of color rays.  Save room for knotting each end and then you may want to trim the ends up so there is not too much fraying.  I actually bought a bundle of yarn called "rainbow yarn" to do this, so that might be another option if you don't want to buy each individual color.  When you are all finished, you can show the kids how they can stretch the braids out to learn how red is the longest ray of light, and how each ray gets shorter and shorter.  Yes, children can learn elementary and middle school level material, too!  Afterward, show them how to arch each color into a rainbow like how I did in the image above.

These ideas may or may not fly for some kids, depending on what they are interested in, but I'm sure they will find something fun in the basket...

Thanks for tuning in and I hope you learned something!

Sincerely,
Angelique

Lesson on Saturn Followed by a Fun Craft For Kids

An educational lesson followed by a craft activity that ties in really helps the lesson to sink in.  On the topic of planets, here is a fun group activity I presented this summer to a class of ages 2.5 through 6.  For this activity, I flipped through library books to show the children imagery of the real Saturn. I explained how things aren't always what they seem to be in a far-away picture and by taking a closer look, we can see that Saturn's rings aren't solid and that they are made up of ice chunks, rocks, dust, and so forth.

This activity focuses on a close-up of Saturn's rings.  The children enjoyed cutting up "ice chunks, rocks and dust particles" out of strips of craft paper.  

You may have to prepare a few things before the children can begin:

Cut out circles from construction paper, about the size of an outer rim of a soup bowl.  Then cut out an elipse shape that is about the entire length of a piece of construction paper.  Fold the elipse in half, and cut a slit from the center fold, 2 or 3 inches down.  Open it up and make sure one of the circles can fit through it (see image below) Cut out a couple of long strips of scrap paper with a width a little less than an inch.  We used some funky animal print paper to make things colorful and abstract.  I rarely measure things out and just cut things out freehand, so hopefully the images help!  Below, I added glue ahead of time, but you can always have the kids do that as well.  

Offer scissors to each child to cut the strips into "ice chunks, rocks and dust," or simply tell them to tear the paper up if they are not quite ready for scissors yet.  Have them place their chunks on the glued surface of the ellipse, offer colored pencils and/or chalk for Saturn, then slide it half way through the ellipse, add some glue or tape to keep it in place and there you have it.

The kids had lots of fun trying to make their planet look original by using different colored scraps and construction paper.  If you want to teach some more basics about Saturn and any other planets, here is a great kids site that I recently came across: 

Kids and Space

Pattern Dice Game for Ages 4 and Up. Easy to make!

I came up with this game for kids in the classroom who have shown interest in playing with dice and counting numbers.  It is a fun two player game where each child takes turns rolling dice of two different colors that color coordinate with small tiles to ultimately make a pattern of colors on a grid.  This is a great game that is not competitive as each child works together to create a colorful and original design or pattern on the grid.

What You Need:

-2 to 3 different colored sets of tiles or chips, 10 to 20 of each color
-2 or 3 dice, each matching in color of a set of tiles or chips.
-A ruler
-A pencil and pen
-A piece of paper
-Glue
-A durable board of your choice (you could use cork board, cardboard, masonite, etc.)
-A container to hold the tiles in
-A small tray to roll the dice in
-Optional: 2 popsicle sticks
-Optional- Clear tape or laminate paper
-Optional: A piece of fabric such as felt to put on the tray so that the dice will settle nicely when rolled

How To Prepare:

Randomly Lay out all of the tiles a piece of paper to make a square or rectangular shaped grid.  I made a rectangular grid by placing 5 rows of 8 tiles, like the sample below.  You may use all of the pieces, or leave some out.  It won't make a big difference in the game.

Make marks and measurements with the pencil and ruler, remove the tiles and draw up your grid.  You can use a pen or sharpie to draw over the pencil marks when you are done.  If you don't want to trace over your pencil marks, you can always put clear tape or laminate paper over top of it, so it doesn't get smudged.  Cut your grid out, glue and center it on your durable board.

How To Play:
The first child rolls the two (or three) colored dice and drops them on the tray.  Without flipping the dice over, the child may carefully place each dice next to each other in the top corner of the tray or on the surface area beside the tray (Optional: you can offer a separate tray for the dice).  He or she may then count out the amount of tiles that matches the color and number each dice.  They may place these tiles anywhere they wish on the grid.  A popsicle stick may be used to help straighten out their tiles on the board.  It is now the next child's turn.  Repeat the above steps until the entire grid is filled up.

My students like me to take pictures of their pattern art when they have finished a session, and enjoy seeing their original images later.  To keep things fresh, you can add more dice or change the colors of the tiles/shape of the grid.  You may also add players to this game to change things up.  If you try this out, please let me know if you have any questions or if you found something that worked better for you!  

Save the Cardboard Lids from Your Pizza Boxes for Art Activities

As you know, typically pizza boxes cannot be recycled, because of all of the grease left behind, but more often than not I find that the lid is usually clear of any grease.  So whenever we have a pizza day at our school, I started cutting the lids off and collecting the cardboard for art projects.

The lids can be good for the kids to paint on, use as a base for clay models, etc.  So the next time you have pizza, cut the lid off before tossing the entire box in the trash.

If you are concerned there still might be some hidden grease, you could always paint a gesso base over top of the lid (the white paint that is painted on fresh artist canvases) and let it dry before handing it over to the kids to paint on.  

Dig Through Your Recycling Bins for Material You Can Use for Your Classroom!

I was given a hard time by friends and family for hoarding things, but once I proved them wrong, some of them started following my footsteps.  Now, as many of you educators know, it is helpful to collect these items as they will certainly be useful.  Jars, containers, and even cardboard could be enough to start building your own classroom.  Just try to be as organized as you can about it and keep this "junk" out of other people's sight until you are ready to use it.  I have proven over and over again that saving recyclable items can be very useful in the classroom.

Just a few ideas off of the top of my head include:
-Using Cans for messy art activities to hold paint brushes, water and paint
-Using containers to separate small items for art projects and activities such as beads, stones and shells
-Cans and yogurt containers can be used to hold crayons and colored pencils

These are all common sense ideas that many educators already use, and there are so many more ideas all over the web.

Saving these items can also be useful around the house.  I will likely be posting some ideas on my blog below:

 DIY Sweet 'N Simple with Angelique

 Stay tuned and start collecting.

I have lots of fun ideas that I will be sharing here.