Autumn Scavenger Hunt

This week we went on an Autumn Scavenger Hunt.  Wugs’ preschool presented him with a piece of paper with a variety of items on it that he could find on his walk.  The scavenger hunt was part of an initiative to raise funds to purchase more Montessori materials at the preschool.  For each item the child would be sponsored a certain amount.   The list ranged from basic things that could be found in the garden like a blade of grass and a stone, to items that are more difficult to find such as a winged seed.  This was a lovely way to encourage the children to appreciate nature during Autumn and raise some funds for the preschool.

Autumn Lanterns

This week we have been enjoying the colours of Autumn!  We took a trip to our local park and admired the changing of the seasons.  I asked the boys to gather together different-coloured leaves (this was initially part of Wugs’ Autumn Scavenger Hunt, arranged by his preschool), but the boys seemed eager to pick up more and more leaves and fill their baskets, so we used the leftover leaves to create these beautiful Autumn lanterns.

I purchased a couple of glass jars from Sainsburys and using a paint brush I covered the inside of the jar with Mod Podge.  (You could let the child do this part, but mine were tired after all that walking!)  Then I asked the children to choose the leaves they wanted to put inside their lanterns.   I pressed the leaves into the inside of the jars and then brushed Mod Podge over them until they stuck.  I found non-waxy leaves worked best as they stuck to the side better.  This part was quite difficult to do as the mouth of our jars was fairly narrow, so I pushed down the leaves inside the jar gently with the paint brush.  A jar with a wider opening would have worked better and the child could gently place the leaves inside him/herself. When we had finished we left the jars to dry overnight. 

The next day we placed LED lights inside the jars which illuminated the leaves to show their intricate designs and colours. 

What we used:

Coloured leaves 

Glass jar

LED light

Mod Podge

Paint brush

Letter-Matching Drop Box

I created the letter-matching drop box in response to my three-year old’s fascination with letters (phonics and writing).  The colour-matching drop box was so successful with my two-year old that I decided to apply the same “control of error” principle to the letter-matching drop box.

I purchased a sturdy cardboard box from Hobbycraft and cut out 15 windows into the lid.  Above each window I wrote an upper- and lower-case letter, so that each window's letter corresponded to an object (the name of which began with the corresponding letter) that was to be posted into the window.  For example, above one window was the letter “Ee” and in the basket to the side was an object (an elephant) to be posted into this window.  

To enable my son to check whether he had matched the objects to the letters correctly, I took pictures of the different objects in the basket, printed these out, laminated them and fixed them to the bottom of the box underneath the corresponding window.  Once my son had completed the activity, he could remove the lid of the box and check whether he had matched them correctly. 

As the drop box contained many windows, I decided to create sections inside the box to stop the objects moving around, therefore making it clear whether he had matched them correctly.  The intersections were made from an old cardboard box with slits cut into them so they interlocked with one another.

As this was a new activity, I decided to use mainly familiar objects that I knew my son could match correctly.  There were a few less familiar objects like the otter, the beaver and coral, but including these became a way of introducing new vocabulary and to maintain his interest.  The sheer number of windows meant that a little more concentration was required of him than with the colour-matching drop box.

After a few attempts, my son has become familiar with all the objects in the box and can match them correctly without any help from me. The activity can now be modified to include different objects to further expand his appreciation of the beginning sounds of words as well as with his knowledge of objects around him.

What we used:

• A sturdy cardboard box (a shoebox would work well, provided it is strong enough to have the windows cut into its lid and provided words and patterns do not obscure the letters around the windows)
• Craft knife
• Small objects and figurines
• A marker pen
• Paper
• Laminator

Colour-Matching Drop Box

This September I started training to become a Montessori-qualified teacher.  It’s been busy studying with a pre-schooler and a toddler at home, but I’m hoping the course will help me to facilitate my children’s learning and to enable me to share our experiences on here with you.

The inspiration to create drop boxes came from an attempt to apply the principle of “control of error” to the children’s activities.  Control of error refers to a mechanism whereby a child can perceive his/her own mistake when undertaking an activity because the activity is designed according to the principle of one-to-one correspondence.  A typical example of this would be a jigsaw puzzle in which every piece is different and only interlocks with the correct corresponding piece.  

The first drop box I created was for my 2.5 year old who has developed an interest in colours (or at least the names of colours).  He would point to a red car and say “I want the green car” and this would lead to some frustration on his part and confusion on ours.  Rather than correcting him each time, I thought it would be more effective for him to realise his mistake through a self-checking element incorporated into the drop box. 

I purchased a sturdy box from Hobbycraft and cut some windows into the lid.  Around the edge of each window I created a border using eight different-coloured marker pens to correspond to the different-coloured pom poms to be posted into the windows.  One of the pom poms was multi-coloured, so I represented this with a multi-coloured border.  (I added the names of the colours above each window so that my 3 year old could also use the box and become familiar with the words that correspond to the colours).  Inside the box across the base, I made coloured circles to correspond to the coloured edges of the windows, so that when my son posted the pom poms into the box, he could remove the lid and check whether he had posted the pom poms into the correct window.  To make the self-checking element more pronounced, I could have created sections inside the box (as I did with the letter-matching box), but as I used only a few pom poms in this activity, they tended to fall exactly on the coloured circles, making it obvious which window they had been posted into.  The decision to use just a few pom poms worked well as I found my son’s concentration was beginning to wane as he came to the end of the activity.

The drop box managed to grip my son’s attention and after six or seven attempts over the course of a couple of weeks, he was able to match the pom poms correctly and refer to the colours of objects in the room accurately. 

What we used:

• A sturdy cardboard box (a shoebox would have worked well provided the coloured borders were not obscured by writing/patterns)
• A craft knife
• Marker pens
• Coloured pom poms

Click here to see our letter-matching drop box

Writing and Phonics Seaside Small World Play

Over the last couple of months, I have been reading about and following some of the suggestions in the book Montessori Read and Write: A Parent's Guide to Literacy for Children, by Lynne Lawrence
in response to Wugs' recent interest in writing.  At the same time as familiarising himself with the shapes of the letters, he has also been exploring the beginning sounds of certain words.  Our favourite activities have included "I spy" games ("I spy with my little eye something beginning with "sss" - ie referring to the sound of the letter rather than its name) and pulling objects out of a mystery bag and then grouping the objects according to the starting letter of their names.  Today's small world was an extension of these activities combined with Wugs' favourite type of play - sensory small world play.

The group of letters we have been exploring are S,M,A,T so I gathered objects that had these letters at the beginning of their words and arranged them in the play scene - a scorpion crawling out of the sea, a straw and piece of string buried in the sand, a landing spot made out of a mirror for air balloons and aeroplanes, an ambulance, a motorbike and truck travelling across the sand, a shark, turtle and scuba diver swimming in the sea near to a treasure chest and a spoon and a stick placed outside the box for Wugs to use to scoop or draw in the sand.

In a separate container, I placed the four letters that corresponded to the names of the objects in the play scene so that Wugs could match them up.

As the weather was sunny I took the small world into the garden and let Wugs play with it as he pleased.  He pulled out the different objects asking the names of the ones he didn't know.  He proceeded to write letters into the sand using the stick and manipulated the string into the shape of various letters.  After he had finished writing, I asked him if he could find something that begins with "sss".  He pulled out a straw and we put it in the container section under "s".  We went through all the objects in the play scene until it was empty - some of the objects he identified correctly and some he struggled with, so I encouraged him to listen to the beginning sounds of the words.

Once all the objects had been taken out of the scene and categorised according to their starting letters, I let Wugs play with the scene as he wished.  Interestingly he continued to refer to the objects using their beginning sounds even though we were no longer categorising them.

What we used:
Tub
Sand
Blue perspex (for the sea)
Water
Figurines and other small objects related to the letters
Wooden letters
Container for letters

( If I did this activity again I would probably use less figurines and more objects that he was less familiar with to make it more challenging).

A Rainbow Watercolour Picture

The rainbow watercolour picture was part of our Noah's Ark theme that we have been following this week, but it could be used for any rainbow/colour-related activity.  I thought it would be fun for the boys to hang up a rainbow that they had made.  To do this, I gave them some watercolour paper and asked Wugs to tell me which order the colours should come in.  We coloured our paper with felt-tip pens in the order that they appear in the rainbow and then I asked Wugs to squirt the paper with water using a squirty bottle.  Whilst he was doing this, I held the paper over the sink until all the water had run off the other end.  Then I left the picture to dry.  Unfortunately the colours didn't run as much I had hoped, but the subtle appearance of the rainbow on the page was quite realistic considering some of the rainbows I have viewed in real life.

What we used:
Watercolour paper
Felt-tip pens
Squirty bottle of water

Please click here to see our other Noah's Ark-related activities.

Sampling Olives

The dish full of green and black olives was a tasting activity that I set up for the children as part of our Noah's Ark theme.  In the story of Noah we are told that Noah sent out a dove who brought back an olive leaf in his beak indicating that the flood waters had receded and vegetation was once again growing on the earth.  I wanted to make the children's activities multi-sensory and the closest thing I had to an olive leaf or branch were olives.  Although the children had tasted olives before, they were usually part of pizza or pasta meal, so it was interesting to see whether they liked them on their own. They didn't!

I printed off the olive branch card so they could see the tasting activity in the context of the story.

Please click here to see our other Noah's Ark-related activities.