Field Trips - Learning by Experience (PLUS - CONTEST - see rules at the end)

Preview for the next post: Ella and I hiking during our most recent field trip:

One of the advantages of homeschooling is that not everyday has to be a "classroom" day. Because you only have X-number of children to deal with (in my case, an easy "1"), provided you have a vehicle that can carry you and all your gang around, field trips are limited only by your imagination and your budget!

Montessori is all about learning through experience, not (as is the common way) learning through lectures/teaching/observing. Let's consider these over-used methods.

Lectures
Almost any university or college uses this method either primarily or (in some cases) almost exclusively. This method can work extremely well or terribly poorly; it all depends on who is lecturing, and who is listening. Lectures work very well for me. I'm an aural learner (one who learns well by hearing). But, for visual or kinesthetic learners (those who learn by observing or those who learn by moving/motion), a lecture-only environment is useless.

Teaching
The difference between lecturing and teaching is a fine line, and one that often blurs. Where as a lecturer talks about a subject, a teacher tries constantly to engage the students, watching for response, inviting discussion, and trying always to bring about understanding in the minds of the students. Many teachers can lecture very well, but a lecturer is not necessarily a very good teacher.

Observation
This is the most common addition to any teaching or lecturing. Aural learners are simply not as common, despite it being the most frequent method of teaching, and so teachers add something (sometimes that can mean "anything" - however far they have to stretch it) for students to look at. Usually this involves a hand-out, picture, diagram, chart, object, etc.

But, despite most educational institutions depending on the aural method of teaching, almost every child ends up spending much more time being taught through observation, and the medium is probably sitting in your living room. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of excellent, educational programs out there, but ultimately your child is not experiencing anything! He or she is observing others experiencing something. Do you see the difference?

There are a lot of activities and places that you and your child will never get to experience, and for those things you can teach about it, read about it, imagine/role play it, or observe it. But there is also innumerable activities and places that you and your child can experience, and whenever you think of one of those, write it down and try to work it in as a field trip as soon as you think your child is ready.

Field Trip
In the past, we've taken Ella on field trips to the zoo, the aquarium, the museum, and (of course) multiple field trips to the library. We've gone hiking and talked about identifying trees (she's got cedar and birch down pat - easy to recognise their barks). We've looked at commemorative statues in the park, differing kinds of ships in the harbour, and how to follow a map when hiking in the woods or when walking around a city. All these things, regardless of whether they're typically taught in the public school system, are part of education, or should be.

But there's no control of error if you're doing them in the classroom. In the classroom you can look at videos or pictures of animals, either aquatic or terrestrial - but you can't experience them. In the classroom you can talk about history and look at pictures of the way things were, but you can't walk through and touch real models, and in some cases learn to do the things people did "back then." In the classroom you might be able to have a section of a tree to "experience," a small log showing its bark and a leaf perhaps, but it cannot compare to identifying a tree in it's natural environment. In the classroom you can study maps and write down directions, but you can't follow the maps and discover if you've arrived at the location that was your goal.

Because of the vast difference in observing or talking about something with actually experiencing it, field trips almost always trump classroom time. Please note: there are some areas in which field trips have limited use, namely mathematics, phonetics/reading, chemistry, etc. Often these subjects can be integrated with everyday life. Math can come in handy while shopping, phonetics/reading while you're driving down the road looking at signs, chemistry while baking, and anything else you can come up with using a little bit of ingenuity!

I began this post as an introduction to a post on our most recent field trip, but since it got so long, I'll leave it as a teaser for my next post: Our Super-sized Field Trip.

Can anyone guess where our field trip took us? If you are the first to post a comment and guess correctly you'll get a prize: a relevant postcard will be sent to you of this year's Super-sized field trip.

Don't leave your address in the comment, just your guess - whoever wins will be announced in my next post which will happen on Friday (if all goes as planned). At that time, the winner may submit another comment on the post titled "Our Super-sized Field Trip" that includes your mailing information and e-mail address. I will "reject" the comment, because I'm sure you don't want such information visible for all the world to see.

This contest is open to anyone who lives on planet Earth who does not know me personally. (Sorry to all those who do know me personally - but chances are you already know the answer, and so are disqualified!)

So, You Want to Teach Geography?

Make it fun!!!

I said I'd talk a little about how I teach geography, and so I shall. But let me say first that I am not a trained Montessori teacher. I'm just a Mum who has done a lot of reading and research. Furthermore, I have not (as yet) received any "official" Montessori teaching guides (although I do have the Montessori Research and Development Early Childhood Geography Manual on the way - yippee!!!), but I know the the basics of the Montessori method, so I've applied them as much as possible to what I'm teaching. So what I write you can take as a guide, but certainly not as an authoritative approach!

Thus far I only have the World Continents puzzle map and the Canada puzzle map, but I'm eyeing the Planets and North America puzzle maps with longing!

And I'm so happy to be living in New Brunswick, where the public library system is excellent, making inter-library loans fast and easy! Through my local library I found the National Geographic "Our World" which 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!); it was so wonderful, I went and bought it myself!

Rather than having a labeled or unlabeled control map, I made my own "control" by tracing each puzzle piece on black bristol board and cutting them out. I printed the name of each continent on a piece of cardstock (a very handy item to have around) using a very simple font (my preference is "Century Gothic" in bold). Then I glued the bristol board pieces to the corresponding piece of card stock at (approximately) the same angle as it appears on the map. I slipped these into page protectors to make for easy storage as well as keeping them in good condition.

Now, I had it easy when it came to geography. Firstly, I love geography. I can play with a globe for ages, even at my advanced age! And second (and more importantly) Ella is fascinated by maps! Since about a year or so ago, once she understood what a map was, she's really enjoyed looking at them, following the lines on them, and "explaining" them to others ("See Grampie, we hiked from here to here..."). When we go hiking, she loves to see where we've gone, and where we are going to. And when she first got the atlas (which was a while ago) she wanted me to identify places that she'd heard of, like "Uganda" and "Calgary"!

So, we'd been looking at it for some time, and she had been getting used to the ideas of maps and directions ("left, right, up, and down," as we haven't begun "north, south, east, and west"), when one day, while in town, her father needed directions on how to get somewhere. Now my husband is an extremely intelligent man, and if you want to discuss the intricacies of some abstract, complex theological subject, he's your man, but if you want directions, DON'T ask him! He is forever getting lost, and it's not uncommon for him to ask "Where are we?" when driving along. I'm usually the navigator and the driver, which doesn't bother me in the least. So I grabbed a piece of paper and pen and started to make him a little map. Ella, who was just getting out of her car seat to head with me to the library, climbed forward pointed at the little drawing and said, "Look Daddy! Mummy drewd a map of Nort America!"

A BRIEF EXPLANATION OF THE THREE PERIOD LESSON
Much of Montessori's method was built around the idea of the three period lesson. Each period represented a different level of learning, moving from directed learning to independent learning. The first period includes the teacher/parent introducing the material. The form in which they (typically) present the information is in a simple, straightforward statement, doing the lesson as they hope the child will learn to do it. So the teacher would say, "This is ______." The child may repeat the statement.

The second period is when the child has learned to identify those thing defined in the first period. In this period, the teacher/parent will be asking a question such as, "Where is _____?" or "What is ______?" or "Which one is _______?" And the child can then point and respond verbally, "This is ____."

The third period is the beginning of independent learning. This is when the child, with little to no direction from the parent/teacher applies the knowledge him/herself, doing as the teacher did in the first lesson. To start this period, rather than asking "What is _____?" the teacher/parent would rephrase the question to "What is this?" or "Where is this?"

Ultimately, the teacher will not have to ask any questions, because the child has learned the material already, they can do it on their own and can begin to explore with the material, discovering other things they can do with it (such as putting the puzzle map together as a jigsaw rather than in the wooden puzzle frame, or trying a new way of organising the red rods, perhaps in one long line rather than one above the other).

PRESENTATION - FIRST PERIOD
So, Ella already had some understanding of maps and map usage when I got the puzzle maps. And I went with simplicity when it came to presenting them to her. I sat out the puzzle, and fanned the control sheets out from the map in a semi-circle. Then I sat down and slowly and deliberately took out one of the puzzle pieces and ran it over the control sheets until I came to the correct sheet. I placed the puzzle piece carefully over the shadow and then ran my finger along the word beneath while I said, "This is North America," so she would get the idea that the letters below read "North America." I did this with every continent/piece, and then I did it again in reverse, essentially putting the puzzle back together.

SECOND PERIOD
I invited Ella to do the puzzle with me. I had her sit on my lap and I would say, "Show me North America" and she would try to choose that particular puzzle piece. If she didn't get it right, I would invite her to find the control page that the puzzle piece fit on, and when she did, I'd say, "You found Asia!" while underlining the place name with my finger on the control. Then I would repeat "Show me North America" and let her try again.

If she got it right, I would say, "See if you can match it to the shadow," indicating the control sheets. When she found it and had set the puzzle piece over the shadow correctly, I'd say, "That's right! You did find North America!" again, while underlining the words "North America" with my finger as I said the name.

We repeated the second period over a number of days, letting her get used to the placement of each continent, and when she was getting the idea with relative ease (though still not always doing it perfectly), we moved on to the third period.

THIRD PERIOD
This is the period of independent work, with as little parent/teacher direction as possible. I will help her by carrying over the map puzzle (it's a bit heavy and awkward for her yet), but she can do the rest pretty much by herself. If she gets the name of the continent wrong (naturally, she can get it properly placed on the shadow) I will guide her again by saying, "This is North America" and underline the word.

It hasn't taken her long to become fascinated even by the words. She will run her finger along beneath the word, just as I do, and say the letters aloud. She'll usually say something like this: "This is Asia," (she places the puzzle piece, then begins to run her fingers slowly along the word), "A - S - I - A, dat spells Asia!" So not only is she learning geography, but she is also learning spelling and reading!

Above, you can see Ella placing the piece for "South America" on the control page.

New Montessori Activities

I'm constantly adding and adapting the activities Ella does for school. Here's some of the newer stuff...

This is a practical-life activity. Essentially, she's learning to use tongs to transfer an item (in this case rocks!) from place to place. She soon figured out that she could get more if she sort of "scooped" up as many as she could before closing the tongs together.


This is a colour-sorting activity, which could fall in the category of "sensorial" or "finger dexterity."

For a long time Ella's favourite colour was blue (it's now green), and she still always begins with blue if green isn't an option.

I'm not 100% sure yet, but I suspect that my greatest challenge is going to be making mathematics fun and interesting. We've used the small number rods (pictures previously, but not in use), but in order for Ella to do it, I need to be completely with her, helping, showing, and creating games in order to keep her even semi-interested. Since until now that has been our only math-oriented activity, I've added my version of the spindle box. It was very easy to make. I got a few long, thin dowels and had Dad cut them into 5-inch lengths (45 spindles are needed for the activity), and sanded them. Then, using a "snap together" desk organiser that I got at the Dollarama ($1 for three parts, I needed ten, so I bought 4 - anyone need 2???), which didn't snap together very well! So I glued them together in two sets of five (easier to move, and takes less space), and using a thick permanent marker, I made the numbers 0 through 9 at the ends of each section. She's either not "up" to doing it on her own, or is not able to maintain interest in it on her own yet, though. So we're doing it as a game and we take turns putting the correct number of spindles in each section. I try to be sure that I alternate between doing the even and odd numbers.

She does really well until about 5 or 6, and then (quite honestly) I think she gets bored and doesn't bother really trying to do it correctly anymore. Math just doesn't have the fascination for her that other subjects seem to. I can't really blame her; neither of her parents were fond of math either!

WARNING - NUDITY AHEAD!!!

That is to say, our anatomy lesson - which (strangely enough, lol...) is anatomically correct! (To see the "nudity" you may have to look closely).

I got this anatomy layer-puzzle at one of my favourite toy stores, Hot Toads! (you can peek at my links, if you want to see other great stuff). I never have enough money when I go there. They are primarily an online store, but they do have a small store in Oromocto, New Brunswick, and the owner really knows his stuff. It's put out by Beleduc-Hape Toys.

This was an excellent activity. The bottom layer is the skeleton, then organs and systems, musculature, skin/nude, then dressed. As she did the puzzle, we talked about what the different parts were called and what they were for in a fairly informal manner. She did catch a lot, because I over heard her explaining to her grandmother that the skeleton was bones inside you and those are you "hard parts"!

Perhaps our favourite subject of all - geography! We're doing world continents. Ella adores maps and globes, and I've always like geography and cultural studies. I've made some "Antarctica" cards that we play with, and we're still planning an "Antarctic Expedition," which will take place in a snowy, barren location (maybe our back yard!). I had been hoping to do it tomorrow, but the weather might be against us. Freezing rain - yep, okay, they've got THAT in Antarctica, but by noon it's supposed to be just plain rain, and that will be wet and miserable. I need a cold day for it, not a wet one!

Ella had a surprise visitor - Nanie! Mum, being off from school (yea March Break!), came down to see Ella at her school, and to play. Every time Ella takes a piece out of the puzzle and lays it on its corresponding "shadow" above the written name of the continent, she'll say, "This is _____" (fill in the blank with whatever continent it is). She doesn't get them all right yet, but when she's stumped, she looks up at me and says, "I can't bemember this one!" and I'll tell her. She'll then repeat the name and continue. When re-assembling the puzzle, she also says each name.

She was so proud of herself - she got them all out, on the right shadows, and said all their names correctly when showing Nanie! Nanie (being a typical grandmother) was pretty proud too!