Oh, Dearest Mother, Sweetest Virgin of Altagracia, our Patroness. You are our Advocate and to you we recommend our needs. You are our Teacher and like disciples we come to learn from the example of your holy life. You are our Mother, and like children, we come to offer you all of the love of our hearts. Receive, dearest Mother, our offerings and listen attentively to our supplications. Amen.



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Nurturing the Years of Wonder
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Subject Topic: Montessori/Center "Kits"? Post ReplyPost New Topic
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DeAnn M
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Posted: Feb 14 2009 at 9:23am | IP Logged Quote DeAnn M
Hi Ladies,

I don't have the time or energy to set up a true Montessori learning space for my littles right now. So...what I would like to do is create a group of boxes/bags/folders with a Montessori theme so that I can just label them and pull them out for a center time. (I also teach the 4 and 5 year olds at our homeschooling co-op so this would be something that I could bring and use for them too!)

I would love some suggestions for simple centers to create. A few ideas that I have already are:

1) a box with clothes and handtowels to practice folding.

2) a place setting in a box to practice setting a table properly

3) Pattern station with cards and pattern blocks

You get the idea. Any other suggestions?

Blessings,
DeAnn
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mooreboyz
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Posted: Feb 16 2009 at 12:26am | IP Logged Quote mooreboyz
DeAnn,
This is how I started out with Montessori with my then 3 yr old last year. I didn't have the space for special shelves and so I just put together bags or boxes with activities. It worked great. This year he does have his own shelves as does my almost 2 yr old.

One of my favorites is the what I call the tool set. You can have a few different nuts and bolts they have to match, a container with clay or putty in it and some nails and screws they practice hammering and screwing, some locks and keys, a flashlight and batteries, a level, a tapemeasure, a ruler and sting and scissors with a list of lengths to cut. The kids all love this one and I took it to our coop last year and set up stations the kids rotated through. They loved it...it reminded me of what I envision a Mont. school would be.

Another one is matching pretend animals to pictures of where they live. I just had a farm scene, jungle, and ocean; but, you could make it more complex using freshwater/ocean, desert, rainforest/temperate forest, etc..

Shellmatching is fun. Somewhere I came across a sheet with different shells and the kids sort them by kind. They also just sort between univalves and bivalves.

Magnetic/nonmagnetic is lots of fun at this age too and pretty easy to put together.

Penny polishing is loads of fun too. Oh there is so many. If I think of other big hits I'll add them later.



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Jackie
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Kristin
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Posted: Feb 17 2009 at 8:14pm | IP Logged Quote Kristin
Great ideas.    How do you do penny polishing?

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mooreboyz
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Posted: Feb 18 2009 at 12:11am | IP Logged Quote mooreboyz
I set up a tray with a dropper bottle with lemon juice, a small bowl with salt, a towel, a container of pennies, and a small cloth rag (a small brush or old toothbrush would work too), and a container for cleaned pennies . The child takes a penny and sets it on a towel. They drop lemon juice on it. They use fingertip in cloth (or use brush) to pick up salt and then scrub penny. They repeat on other side and put it in finished container. When finished they take cup of polished pennies to sink to rinse and then dry.

The pennies really shine and they really like seeing the result. My boys of all ages like this and can spend quite a while doing it.

Oh...they need to clean up their mess afterwards too and refill containers and put out clean cloths.


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Jackie
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DeAnn M
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Posted: Feb 18 2009 at 9:29am | IP Logged Quote DeAnn M
Great ideas ladies!

Thanks so much!

DeAnn
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