New Practical Life Activities.

On Friday afternoon, while the children were outside enjoying the sunshine I decided that I would completly change the PL activites. Well 5 hours later and here are the results:

A view of the PL shelves

Water transferring using a sponge

Pouring water from one jug to the other (sponge to be added)

Spooning tiny fishes

Pouring coloured rice and spooning back

Sieving salt and chickpeas

Sorting objects (by colour or shape)

Sorting money

Sorting objects

Transferring using tongs

Transferring and sorting pompoms using tweezers

Medium threading

Opening and closing

Nuts and bolts

Transferring and counting skills

I am hoping that the children will come in from the long weekend and be keen to explore the new activities.

Arrgggghhhhh Practical Life!

As you can probably guess by the title, I am not a great lover of Practical Life. Don't get me wrong I understand the importance of this area and the skills it promotes within the classroom and for life. I also understand and appreciate the need for all children within the setting to be able to access materials that are age and developmentally appropriate- THAT'S MY PROBLEM!

Within my setting, as previously mentioned I have children from 2.5 to 5 yrs- nothing unusual about that I know, however we can have new intake every single month! This means that for every month we have new starters comes the introduction to the Montessori environment and the introduction to the early PL skills. SO, here comes the main issue that while having to provide early PL activities I feel that my older students are not always being challenged.

Another difficulty I have is finding new and exciting ideas to put onto the shelves that will engage the children and also myself and other staff. That was where you all came in! Over the past 8-10 months I have been reading many of the Montessori blogs out there and have been truly inspired and have been able to implement some of your ideas, which has been fantastic. I must just mention here that my first delve into this world of blogs and inspiration was Laura at http://mymontessorijourney.typepad.com/my_montessori_journey/ so if you haven't visited this site then I would highly recommend it. This explosion of interest in PL even caused me and my colleague to declare that I was having a MF (Montessori Freak) moment whenever I would ramble on about the new activities I wanted to put out, which would happen quite a lot!!!!!

I can now honestly say that I am getting better at devising and putting together new PL activities but I do know that I still have a long way to go.

Woooooooooo My First Post!!

I have wanted to write this for so long and have never known what to write that I am throwing caution to the wind and just going for it, so here goes........

Well, who am I? My name is Marie and I am nursery (preschool) teacher in a Montessori classroom, where I teach children aged 2.5 to 5 yrs. I have been working in my current setting for nearly 10 yrs now, so I guess I must love it?! Naturally it has its challenges and I do sometimes question why I'm still doing it but then the answer is THE CHILDREN- I love the children that I get to teach :)

I shall warn anyone that reads this now- I am not good with words, what you will read here are my own thoughts and feelings in my own words. I read so many blogs about Montessori schooling and homeschooling and they are very inspiring, creative and well written that I only hope that anyone that does happen to read this can take something away from it *crossing my fingers*.

Well, for my first dip into the world of blogging I shall just keep it simple and leave it there, but before I leave I shall congratulate myself for finally doing this, so just excuse me while I..... WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO (hehe). Ok all that's left to do is click on publish post- doing it now.