Love Lights
Many of you have seen your child come home with a little, yellow felt circle pinned to their shirts, representing their “love lights.” This is actually the fourth, inner circle representing the spirit of a person. As we have progressed through our peace lessons this year we have expanded our awareness of the four aspects of a person; body, mind, emotions and spirit. The largest circle represents body, followed by mind, then emotions and in the center is the yellow, spirit circle.
As an extension of learning about the body, Ms. Melissa spent time recently talking about the spinal cord and its very important function of connecting commands sent to the mind, and executing the command through the body. She played the game of “Simon Says” with the children and they got to experience the sensation of really listening to the instructions, or not, and feeling the disconnect when they realized they had moved with out the “Simon Says” directive.
We explored the five senses this week and the children were quickly able to isolate which of their five senses they had used to match color tablets, identify sounds with their eyes closed, smell the difference between an orange and a piece of chocolate, and watch Ms. Melissa grade (put in order) the wooden cylinders with her eyes closed using only her sense of touch to guide her.
These lessons help the children identify aspects of themselves that they have in common with each other and it gives them labels that help them communicate more clearly with each other.
Sometimes, when a child is having a hard time emotionally, it simply is a matter of helping them identify their emotions, such as “were you mad about that?” You can see the tension drain from them as they know that they have been heard and they are more willing to soften their stance and work through the disagreement.
Every peace lesson is closed with “Making Silence”, a centering exercise that is as simple as it is profound. We encourage you to ask your child about it and if you want, let them lead you through it. Here are the words:
I cross my legs,
I place my hands on my knees,
I make my back very straight,
I tell my body to be still,
I tell my mouth to be quiet,
I take a deep breath,
I close my eyes,
I make silence and feel my love
Sensorial – Part 4
Today we continue our exploration of the Sensorial area of the Montessori classroom, specifically discussing the following materials – the color blocks, the ten geometric three-dimensional shapes, touch boards, and the sound cylinders . Sensorial is an area of the Primary classroom that is uniquely “Montessori.” Many of the jobs hearken directly back to Dr. Montessori when she set up her original classroom for the benefit of the young, unattended children in the housing projects of Rome in the early 1900’s.
There are three color boxes. The first has the three primary colors (red, blue, and yellow). The second has 12 different colors. The third box has nine colors, but in different grades from light to dark.
Ten Geometric three-dimensional shapes made from wood and usually painted blue. The shapes are:
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Sphere
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Cone
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Ovoid
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Ellipsoid
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Triangle-based pyramid
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Square-based pyramid
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Cube
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Cylinder
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Rectangular prism
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Triangular prism
Touch boards groom the student’s sense of touch and enhances their ability to distinguish between the smooth and rough.
Sound cylinders are sensitizing the child to the gradations of sound from soft to loud and at the same time, teaching the child how to match the sounds from the red box with the exact same sound in the blue box.
Once the basic sensorial lessons are mastered, numerous extensions can be practiced with each of the materials. Often sensorial materials will engage the interest of the child for long periods of time because the materials are concrete and the “control of error” is so immediate. There are also many math and language applications using the sensorial materials, such as labeling the materials, or taking a moment to count the quantity of materials used in a particular job. Sensorial is part of the classroom that uses all five senses and draws directly from the wisdom of Dr. Montessori in a concrete, useful and vivid way.
Montessori material descriptions taken from Wikipedia “Montessori Sensorial Materials”
Sensorial – Part 3
Today we continue our exploration of the Sensorial area of the Montessori classroom, specifically discussing the following materials – the binomial, trinomial cubes, and the constructive triangles . Sensorial is an area of the Primary classroom that is uniquely “Montessori.” Many of the jobs hearken directly back to Dr. Montessori when she set up her original classroom for the benefit of the young, unattended children in the housing projects of Rome in the early 1900’s.
The binomial and trinomial cubes are more advanced works that not only teach specific pattern matching prisms together, there is an underlying algebraic equation that can be explored Lower Elementary classes.
The constructive triangles are put together to form various shapes. Shapes made with the triangles include the parallelogram, hexagon, rhombus, and trapezoid.
Join us on Wednesday as wrap up our series on Sensorial.