Keystone Montessori School

Montessori teachers are very skilled at introducing work that will captivate their students. Young children love to learn new vocabulary. Put these two facts together, and you open the doors to a wide variety of “Parts Of…” work. Throughout their three years in Children’s House, students will explore the “Parts Of…” work at various levels.

An initial exploration of the activity involves laying out a set of three part cards. Some children will decide to create their own reference booklet, with colored illustrations, and written labels. Our classrooms may have parts of various animals (turtle, horse, bird, fish, frog — the five classes of vertebrates); parts of the dump truck, fire truck, or other vehicles; parts of trains, flowers, trees, leaves, etc.

Each finished booklet is a reference work, with one part colored and labeled on each page. The children enjoy learning the real nomenclature for animals, geometric shapes, and parts of everyday things. The finished work represents a series of activities, culminated in the written record.

Our “Parts of the Dump Truck” include:  dump truck, left fender, dump body, rear axle, headlights, side view mirrors, hood. It’s easy to see that coloring each part, writing the label, give repeated practice with letter formation, writing, careful pencil skills coloring just the specified part, and an overall sense that everything is made of parts, and each of those parts has a name.

In Room 1PM, the afternoon half day Children’s House class had a group lesson on the parts of the apple. Apples are familiar to everyone, but with this lesson, students took a closer look at the familiar fruit.

Mr. McGlinchy used a set of three-part cards to present this lesson. The first series of cards has a picture and the word. The second series of cards has only the picture.  The third series of cards has only the word.

A child will lay out the first set of cards (word and image). Then, s/he will lay out the second set (matching the images). Then, s/he will lay out the third set (matching the words).

Young children may stop at that point, having explored the vocabulary of the apple thoroughly:  apple, stem, skin, flesh, core, seeds.

Older children may record their study in a booklet, coloring the images and labeling the parts of the apple. We consider these booklets the equivalent of research reports. A child may make many ‘parts of’ booklets over their Montessori career, and you can accumulate these at home in an honored spot as a personal research library.

Art provides opportunities to be creative, expressive, use a variety of media, and interact with your friends! Our elementary students are creating self-portraits — life size replicas of themselves.

A friend will draw a life-sized outline on a piece of mural paper. Then, the student can draw details, and create a likeness using a variety of collage materials. Throughout the year, our art program will utilize a variety of media, providing many diverse opportunities for creativity.

Our elementary students are learning about world geography!

Our first year students learn about land forms:  island and lake; isthmus and strait; cape and bay; gulf and peninsula; group of lakes and archipelago. The second year students take this knowledge to the next level – searching out those landforms on the world map.

Using a map of the world, and a set of cards with geographic landmarks, the student looks at the card (which has word and image), searches the world map to find that location, then uses the pointer label to mark the spot on the map. As with all Montessori materials, the set of cards is designed for success:  with visual cues and color coding. One set of cards will be all island and lake. A second set is all cape and bay. Working with a single set reinforces the concept of those landforms, and also gives an introduction to world landmarks.

This can be an individual work, or a small group work. All of this builds on the introduction to land forms in our Children’s House program. With each cycle, the work becomes more refined, and more detailed, allowing the child to revisit a concept at many different levels through their learning cycle.

Students in our full day program have the opportunity to brush their teeth during the day. In Room 3, Mrs. Gilpatrick has shared a lesson on toothbrushing. Children enjoy practicing with the larger-than-life model. Of course, toothbrushing at school is a supplement for good oral hygiene at home. We expect all children to brush twice daily at home, and see a dentist regularly.

Other children work independently, or enjoy small group lessons with Mrs. Gilpatrick. The room is busy with math and language activities, classification, matching, and (of course) snack!

In our Summer Program, children had a lot of fun creating puppets and props based on The Lorax by Dr. Seuss.

The children worked together to color a backdrop for our puppet theater. The backdrop was used for the puppet show performance of the story.

Children also made “brown barbaloot” puppets from paper bags, “swamee swan” puppets from socks, and “truffula trees” from pipe cleaners and pompoms.

The group talked about the story’s message of environmental responsibility.

Next week we will make finger puppets and sewn felt hand puppets, then try out everything we’ve made in our puppet theater.

The project culminated in a puppet show performance of The Lorax. Children enjoyed working together on this multi-media project:  coloring, making puppets, reading, discussing the story, and then acting it out for their friends.

The Lorax brought their attention to environmental responsibility, and how our actions can affect our world.

Experimenting with a variety of art techniques is part of the fun of the summer program. Here are children doing bubble art. First blowing bubbles in a bowl of colored water. Then, placing a paper on top to make the bubble print!

Another fun medium is Spin Art! While the paper is spinning, the child drips some paint onto it. The result is beautiful, swirled, and colorful. You can even observe how the colors mix when they overlap with each other.

One of the multi-faceted activities this week involved the story The Rainbow Fish. Mrs. McMahon read the story, and the children enjoyed using paper and foil to collage their own colorful rainbow fish!

The children in the summer program are respectfully observing the mother robin and her nesting activities.  When mother left the nest, one head popped up!  Later, mother returned with some food, and the children saw three heads pop up. We think there are three babies.

This part of the climbing structure is temporarily closed. Children enjoy the other parts of the climbing structure, and have plenty of other playground activities.

We reorganize our day a bit in the summer. Children begin with outdoor time from 8:30 until about 10:00 a.m. Then, they enjoy indoor work time, lunch, and rest. Outdoors again in the late afternoon. With this schedule, children avoid the hottest part of the day, and enjoy the cool mornings, and cooling late afternoons.

Our teachers create some extra activities for children to enjoy outdoors. It’s a great place to do some artistic push-pinning on the picnic tables, or set up an easel and paint freely!