You may have noticed that if you ask your child what he played with at school today, he may look at you with a puzzled look. That is because in the Montessori classroom, we refer to our "play" as the children's work. We want to honor their learning & experiences by refering to it with a word that connotes importance. These children are working. All day long they are working to make sense of the world around them, to learn new skills & to make connections to previous knowledge. They are learning to both become a productive, contributing member of a community as well as to become a strong, independent individual. Refering to the work they do all day as anything less would be a disservice to our students. So, the next time you pick up your child, ask them, "What WORK did you do today?" You just may get a very different response!
And speaking of work...here are some photos of the fabulous work taking place in the classroom lately:
Composing stories with the Movable Alphabet
Sorting obects by initial sounds
Lessons with the Golden Bead Material
More Golden Bead work
Working with our class photo two-part cards (matching each child's photo with their name)
Working on the Hundred Board
Making an apple collage
Doing Dot-to-Dot Apple work
Spelling words with the Movable Alphabet
Working with shaving cream at the easel
Exploring early algebra with the Binomial Cube
Skip counting the beads on the Hundred Chain
Free Art

Exploring patterns with necklace making

Cleaning up after a spill

More stories with the Movable Alphabet

Sorting objects by size

Watercolor painting & writing your name

Work with the spelling box

Spelling words with the Movable Alphabet

Sorting objects by initial sound

More Movable Alphabet work

Sorting objects by color

Learning about the animals of North America

Hundred Board work

Phonemic awareness activities with the sound bags

Work with the Discriminatio of Grains (a sensory sorting work)

Phonogram work (spelling "ee" words)

Golden Bead Fetching