I have been teaching a preschool class in our homeschool co-op since January.  It has been an interesting experience for all of us.  Our kids loved the interaction.  The facility was nice and large enough for all of us super-sized families to gather comfortably.  This alone meant we saw more of our friends than we usually do.

This was my first attempt to translate the Montessori activities I have been using at home for the past nearly two decades (ouch – that makes me sound WAY too old lol!) into the classroom.  The birdseye view of Montessori in action in a group setting was priceless.  It really does work! I have been very encouraged to see children with such a range of ages and personalities work together peacefully and orderly. Mostly <g> 

Here are some pics of yesterday’s work. We found the patterned plastic eggs at the dollar store and the egg tray at Walmart in the Easter section.  They paired the eggs with the same patterns and placed them on the tray. This work was meant for the very littlest ones but surprisingly the older kids always take a turn with it. I also used the egg tray with pony beads for sorting by color.  Tweezers kick it up a notch.  Some of the children were not able to manipulate with the tweezers but those who did were very pleased with themselves.

The other game is based on an idea I saw in the Toys For Life catalog. We made pentagons and placed a geometric solid image on each.  Then I had some pictures from an old math workbook of items that fell into those shape categories – cylinders, cubes, spheres etc. I copied those and laminated them.  They sorted the images by shape around the proper pentagon. Easy to make!  Tricky to play, said my four year old on his first try. If you own the wooden geometric solids ala Montessori you could place one of them on each card instead as a variation.

Will we do it again?  I am not sure.  While we loved the interaction we certainly picked up our share of *bugs* this year.  We have never done a church nursery type of thing before and my presence couldn’t prevent the baby from the germs inherent in the setting.  He spent a wknd in the hospital in Jan with RSV and we had a bout with what I suspect may have been rotavirus later in the session. In my heart I believe nursing babies and their mamas ought to be mostly at home – resting, playing, working together and bonding.

Keep checking back and I will keep posting the activities when I get snippets of time here.