A real Montessori Day!!!!

Today started off just like any other day! We got down to the classroom and started our work time. I had pulled together a few new works today for the the girls before we started and they were excited to see what I was working on during breakfast. I had a project to help teach them about the atmosphere and I had an extension of that about the layers of the atmosphere for Bunny. Both of these presentations were from the Waseca Biome Study. I also bought and printed off the geometric nomenclature cards from Montessori Print Shop! They are really perfect! They are the right color and a great size (and only a couple of bucks. I really don’t have time to make everything.)! I made these for Pup to match the solids to the card. She loves to do this kind of work and I hope that she repeats it. She was happy to have a new “big girl” work!!! Here are a few pictures!

Atmosphere is like a blanket around the Earth! 🙂 Our project was to make a model of the earth. We traced a circle and cut it out. Then used the North and South America puzzle pieces to add some land. Finally we used cotton balls to show how air is the atmosphere around the earth!

This is Bunny’s!

This is Pup’s!

After we did this, I laid out this layers of the atmosphere example! It was a cool presentation to explain how there are different layers to our air!

Aren’t these cards great? I love them!!!!!!

Pup also worked really hard on drawing her very own little work! She has been drawing people and she drew everyone in our family! I was proud of her and she was super proud when we made it into a book!
Dad

Me

Bunny

Pup
Now after I finished the layers of the atmosphere with Bunny, she went back to the world project we did! She wanted to add some stars to the outside edge of the earth since that was space! But then she was really interested in the continents that we traced and she went and got the South American Box. This led her to look at and draw some of the animals in that box. In the box she found a parrot and decided that she wanted to make a book of all the parrots in all the continent boxes! She worked really hard to color each parrot she found and copy their names. I used the Internet to figure out what parrots eat and which bird we considered parrots. She asked the questions and we found the answer together! As she was working on her book, she told me that she really wished she could see some real parrots!!!! Well…..I told her we could an we packed up to go to the zoo! Bunny and Pup was so excited and Bunny wanted to add all the parrots we found at the zoo to the book! So off we went and it was so fun to find different parrots that were in the zoo! Bunny and I discovered that they eat nuts, seeds, buds, and fruits. They like to nest in holes in trees, and they live in warm environments! Bunny really absorbed all of this information and she really did add some of the parrots to her book when we got home! Here are some pictures and Bunny’s Book!
Here are the stars!

She worked so very hard and I really wanted to show you the pages of her book! I also added the pictures I took at the zoo and the pages she made from those pictures.

This is the “report” that we added to the front of the book!

Today was such a great experience for all of us!!!!! I got to see Bunny starting to think like a elementary kid and Pup just keeps learning new things every day! Today was such a great chance to see how a Montessori classroom can work! Bunny was learning one thing and then used all of the materials in our classroom as a jumping off point to explore more!!!! She really took off on this and I really hope that it is just the beginning of deeper study! Gosh learning is so cool sometimes (I am a Montessori nerd I think!)

Happy School Everyone!!!!!!!