Working with Words and the 3-Period-Lesson

Besides doing Montessori I'm also using a few workbooks with Ella which are grade-specific.  Usually she enjoys doing them and it means that I can compare what she is able to do with what the public curriculum expects.

What she is learning in Montessori I supplement with the workbooks and what she is learning in the workbooks I supplement with Montessori.  Here is an example of the latter.

The workbooks have been going over nouns and verbs.  I have not yet got the material for grammar through Montessori (though I plan to), but I did make up a couple hundred word cards that she could use to make sentences.

I used cardstock in three colours.  The nouns are on red paper, the verbs are on yellow, and what we are currently calling "helping words" are on blue.  I have told her that there are a lot of different kinds of "helping words" and they have names, just like verbs and nouns do, but for right now we're just focusing on the verbs and the nouns.

To present the material I began laying out all the nouns that were the names of places.  I asked her to explain what was the same about these words.  Didn't take her long.  Then I began to lay out nouns that referred to people or were people's names and asked her to say what she thought they had in common.  Finally I laid out all of the words that identified objects and again got her to point out what was similar about them all.

"All of these words are called nouns," I explained.  "Nouns name either a person, a place, or an object."

We repeated the lesson with verbs and talked about how verbs were an action or what someone or something is.

Then we began to make sentences.  Very soon she knew how to use the cards and made longer and longer sentences, sometimes making them rather complex.

Although I had made all the verbs to be present, third person, singular she found that too confining and began to use the word that came after a verb to cover up the superfluous "s."

During our second lesson using the word cards Ella learned the difference between subject and object.  For this I used the 3-period-lesson.  If you're not familiar with the 3-period-lesson here it is in simple form:

First Period: Tell the child what he or she is touching/experiencing.  E.g. This is the subject.  In a sentence the subject is what does the action.  This is the object.  In a sentence the object is what receives the action done by the subject.  The key to the first period is keeping it simple and to-the-point.  With a younger child, such as my sons, I would endeavour to use as few words as possible and keep the emphasis on the word I am trying to get them to learn.  So, when I am presenting the colour red from the first set of colour tablets, I lay the tablet on the table in front of the boy I'm working with and say, "This is red.  Red."

Second Period: Get the child to indicate the correct object when you ask.  E.g.  Where is the subject?  Show me the object.  With my boys I'd ask, "Where is red?"  or "Which is red?" (if I had already presented more than one colour.  If the child has difficulty then you go back and repeat the first period lesson again.

Third Period:  For this you want the child to do the explaining and to use the correct vocabulary without prompting.  E.g.  I would point to the subject and ask "What is this?" or "What part of the sentence is this?"  Then Ella would answer "It's the subject.  The subject is what's doing the action."  With the very young you are simply trying to teach them to identify, they can learn to explain later.  So I would ask, "What is this?" or "What colour is this?"  Henry is my talker and he will usually answer verbally, "Wed!"  Or, sometimes, "'Ellow!" and then I have to correct him.  Eli may or may not answer and after giving him a chance I will give him the answer, "It's red!"

Colours, Colours, Everywhere!

As those who have read My Montessori Classroom and Supplies know, I skipped over the first and second colour boxes. By the time we began a structured "school time," Ella would not have found them the least bit challenging. So I simply ordered the Third Box of Colour Tablets. I knew she wasn't quite ready for it, so rather than putting all the colours and shades out, I put two shades of each of the nine colours in a box.

I'm not specific as to what order she puts them in, as long as the two tablets in the same colour but different shades go together. She likes laying them out like a railway track. Here's Ella making sure that the "railway track" is nice and even.


As you can see, she has put every tablet next to the matching one:


The colours, because of the flash, are difficult to see, so I shall list them (from left to right): dark grey, light grey, dark orange, light orange, light purple, dark purple, light blue, dark blue, dark yellow, light yellow, dark brown, light brown, light green, dark green, light red, dark red, dark pink, light pink.

Because she now was finding the dark/light matching a bit too easy, I ran into the office next door (where I keep extraneous supplies) and got another shade in each colour - a medium shade.

Here she is naming the new colours. Then I had her add the third colours to her "railway track" in the proper position (between the light and the dark). This task proved a bit difficult because she wanted to keep her "railway track" perfectly straight. She started with the medium orange:

Despite how it looks, it's not really an easy task. Especially if you're working with all nine colours, each with seven shades. The darkest orange is remarkably close to an orangey-red, making it hard to differentiate between it and the lighter red shades. And the darkest pink poses a similar problem. The darker shades of grey and brown can be difficult to distinguish, depending on the light. And some of the shades of the same colour are so close that you can only tell which is lighter and which is darker when they are in context with all the other shades of that colour which are already in order!

For now, however, three shades each of nine colours is enough of a challenge. Here she is going after the reds:

Having already matched the darkest and the lightest, Ella had little difficulty putting the medium shades between the correct colours. I shall have to add a fourth shade soon!

The addition of another shade for each colour really seemed to add to her fun - and it made her railway track much longer!

Ultimately, I hope that she will be able to use the colour tablets to make more elaborate designs, such as the colour wheel I made:


Because we're not yet to the point where we're using all the shades, I bought a cardboard box at the Dollarama to hold the tablets currently in use. If I add one more shade, I'm going to need a new box!

My Montessori Classroom and Materials

EGAD!!! I haven't posted since 2006, which is very, very sad. So, I've changed the name and the focus of this blog, so that (hopefully) I will remember it exists.

I'm now homeschooling my pre-school daughter using the Montessori method, and I would like to use this as a pictoral and written account of this adventure.

Here is my homeschool classroom:


My daughter, now 3 1/2 is fascinated with geography. She just adores studying that map. We're now learning the location of the continents while doing a unit on Antarctica. Hopefully this will counteract the winter "blahs" that have been invading our household.


Here you can see my Montessori materials. Some I made, and some I bought.

Now for the detailed close-ups, plus how I use them...

Above, you can see the yellow knobless cylinders and my version of the colour tablets box #2. I bought both the cylinders and the colour tablets - although the box of colour tablets I bought was box #3. Rather than going to the expense of getting both box #2 and box #3 (box #1 would have been way too easy!), I have taken out a dark and a light tablet of every shade in box #3, so that she can match two differing shade of the same colour before sorting a range of shades.

This is our geography set-up. I bought the map of the world on e-Bay, and then traced and cut out each continent/piece on black bristol board and glued them onto a piece of cardstock onto which I had printed the name of the continent. The National Geographic "Our World" is a fantastic beginner atlas (Canadians, make sure you get the Updated Edition so that you get a two-page spread of Canada and its provinces, otherwise you'll just get the U.S. and its states!) - and the pictures are actually deliberately made to look like puzzle pieces (did they hear about Montessori???) and the "Antarctica" book is from Usborne. Soon we will have a little globe:

I've been painting (and painting and painting) this globe for her, and it looks so good. But I've come to hate South-East Asia and the Arctic - WAY too many TEENY-TINY islands!!!

My miserable failure of sandpaper letters. I went about it entirely the wrong way, and the only difference between the red and the sandpaper letters is the colour - the painted area is WAY too rough. Next time: I'll mount red bristol board on the wood and then mount the sandpaper letter on the bristol board. MUCH easier!

Practical Life activities: pouring rice and using a turkey baster to transfer water. She LOVES the turkey baster activity.

Dressing frames. I made them with "paint your own" photo frames and tea towels from the dollar store, a variety of buttons from Mum, some hook-and-eyes from I don't know where, pretty white upholstery tacks from the hardware store, and belts from a different dollar store. I have a few more in the making now.

Four little cups and a variety of buttons for a sorting activity. Note the oh-so-classy Cheez-Whiz bottle as a holder!

My number rods (small) in a tin. I nagged my father into cutting a square dowel into the right lengths for me, but I measured them in inches, rather than centimetres. Mostly for his sake (Dad refuses to use metric), but also so they would be a little larger than the classic small number rods.

A little peek into our phonetic "mystery bags." Letter, lion, and letter; Tambourine, train, and towel; Hat, heart, and horse.

Ahhh... the teacher's corner - the messiest spot in the room. What can I say??? I try!

Next time: pictures of activies in progress...