Classroom Changes

****Happy Birthday, Mum!****

That's the blog equivalent of when overwhelmed and overexcited folks get on television and wave at the camera saying, "Hello Mum!"

As per the title, I've done a lot of changing around in our room since I last posted photographs, so here's what our classroom looks like now:

As you can see, we've added quite a few new materials in various subjects. And, if you're doing Montessori at home, as am I, learn from my strategical errors: Don't put more than two new materials/subjects out at the same time! I made too many changes too quickly, and for a while Ella just wanted to bounce from one thing to the next because it was all so new and exciting. Now I know better. If you only change or add one thing at a time (or maybe two, depending on how long you have as "school hours" a day), that will give the child more time to explore each new thing, without trying hard to get to everything at the same time!

I don't have time to detail all the new items and their presentations tonight. Suffice it to say, I've got close-ups of all the new stuff and will be writing about their use (both in theory and in practice) in the near future.

If you have a particular subject/material that is relevant and you would like to hear more about that one as soon as possible, let me know, and I'll blog on it first. Here's a list of what's new:

• Kumon workbooks (arts and crafts/math/writing)
• Clock with movable arms (preliminary history/telling time)
• Knobbed Cylinders Blocks 1 & 2 (sensorial)
• Land, water, air presentation (preliminary physical geography)
• Hammering (practical life)
• Seasons puzzle (preliminary history/telling time/preliminary ecology/preliminary biology)
• "Mighty Mind" (mathematics/logic/geometry)
• Letter boxes (language arts/reading/writing/spelling)
• Library corner (language arts/interdisciplinary)

As you can see, there's lots of interesting stuff coming up. The only problem is, I barely know where to begin!