We are Working!

I finally have work time going for all my class now. I started it slowly by having the ones who finished their traditional classwork choosing work to do from the shelves. I have run out of shelf room (I ordered the teen and tens board set from Sue at Montessori Steps). Really nice sets that came with cards you can use as 3 part cards. I'm going to have to figure out how to rearrange some things to get more room. I am in the process of making my traditional tasks from the past two years more Montesssori-ish by adding control cards. For these items I am using my drawers from last year as I am out of space. It works pretty well. Each child has a colored folder and the folder corresponds to a drawer. In their folder are the response sheets for tasks I want them to do. They match the sheet to a miniature version of it on the manipulative/hands-on material it goes with. For example, for pink series word work I put the pink word work book in the child's folder. They go to their drawer and in it, they will find a pink book attached to a ziplock bag that contain the picture and word cards, a control chart, and photographed instructions for what to do. They take the ziplock bag and word book to their choice of work space and do the activity.
I am using a folder system right now, to ensure that all students are working on something on their level. I have a checklist of their "have to's" that I check off when they complete. I use a 3 "have to's" and then choices system. This also keeps the children from fighting over the most popular choices as they finish at different rates.
I would love to eventually go to an all choice work system, but as this is all new for me, I feel the need to take baby steps.

Getting Started and Materials

We have been in school for 3 full weeks and 2 days so far. I have been very pleased with my start. I am chomping at the bit to get into "work time", but I know I MUST get work routines and classroom expectations down before I let them go or I will be crazy! So far I have done the pink tower presentation and everyone had a chance to build it once, the geometric solid presentation, intro to the decimal system parts 1,2, and 3 with beads only (teaching ones, tens, hundreds, thousands), the bead stair (in small groups), and pink/blue words with moveable alphabet (with 2 students). I realized this evening (while in the car on my way to pick up dinner) that I need to develop a checklist that I can keep on a clipboard with the tasks I am using a place to date when I observe the introduction, practice, and mastery. I think this will keep me up to date on everyone's needs. So if anyone is interested I will be happy to share when I get this finished.
The materials I ordered from Caliber Montessori and Alison's. I was very happy with the prices and quality from Caliber. I am not as thrilled wih Alison's. I have written to them and will post their response when I receive it.

***I did receive a reply from Alison's. They offered to allow me to return the bead stair for a refund. I didn't. I wanted them to send me the holder for the bead stair instead of me returning it and reordering. I felt this would be the fair thing since they misrepresented the product by showing it in the picture and not indicating that it was NOT included in the description. Oh, well I only ordered from them to get the introduction to the decimal system set that was on clearance. I won't be using them anymore.

Tasks I've Created So Far

I've printed, laminated, cut, gathered, ordered new things and these are the tasks I have so far for my work time. I finally thought to take pictures so I could post them.

We have had 5 days of school so far. We are finishing our first week today!

I am loving using these Montessori lesson presentations.

I started with the pink tower presentation. I did it to the large group and let them come up one at a time and practice making the tower. Next I did a geometric solid lesson whole group and passed around the solids so they could see them and touch them.

I have broken my children up into small groups so I could do a bead stair presentation (numbers 1-9) to each group and better get a grasp on their needs. In a very unMontessori like fashion, I put 6-7 children at the DVD center to watch Chrysanthemum (a story we had read) and then a sight word DVD, 4-5 at the computer center, and then I did a quick presentation of a play doh name task to 3-4 students, so I was able to pull 4 for bead stair. I have 19 children and do not have an assistant at any time so this was the best I can do for small group work. When I get children working, I hope to be able to work individually with them.

On my math shelf I have the pink tower ( I ordered), geometric solids (I had these just had to make the cards), 2 pocket charts for hundred boards and number cards 1-100 and 101-200, introduction to the decimal system set x2 (I ordered these), number cards and counters (made the cards, I had the counters), bead stair and number cards to 9, seguin board and tens board (Imade these), extra bead stairs (I ordered), and put back for later bead cubes that I ordered. Overall I spent around $100 for these materials.

My language shelf seems a little lacking to me and I did realize that I don't have any 3 part cards for word study or sentence/picture match cards. So back to the laminator I go. On the shelf I have the play doh names task, pink and blue series short a magnetic cards with magnetic letters, 2 magnetic short a word family tasks, some other pictures of short a words for building with magnetic letters, and 2 trays with different levels of yes/no question cards (from sparklebox.com they are like pink and blue series levels) that they can use in the pocket charts if they wish to sort by yes or no.

My little divided trays are childrens trays I picked up a few at a time at Dollar General this summer, the tiny baskets are at Dollar General now, the larger basket trays I ordered from Oriental Trading.

Golden Bead Work

When I started looking for materials that I wanted to use this year and I saw the possibilites with the Bead Stair and Golden Bead Work, I knew these were things I had to have. I originally thought I would make them all myself, but after pricing beads, I discovered I could order the bead stair sets cheaper than I could buy all those colored beads and make them. The Golden Bead work however is another story.
This I wanted to purchase one small set and make the rest myself. I started looking into materials and it is so frustrating. Trying to find inexpensive gold beads online was ridiculous! So I headed to Wal-Mart. I live in a small town so Wal-Mart's craft section is no hidiously small-no gold beads. One Wal-Mart did have a large pack of clear beads and gold pipe cleaners so I decided to start with those. I made some 10 bars that I was pretty happy with.
Yesterday, I had the chance to go to Hobby Lobby. They had lots of packs of silver beads, pearl beads but NO GOLD BEADS in large packs. I did find some 6mm gold beads in packs of 20 in the clearance section so I bought all they had as well as some packs of gold and silver pony beads. I really wanted to use round beads instead but for the cost difference I will settle!
Has anyone else had this problem trying to find cheap gold beads?!??

Where to put their work???

My next planning task is deciding where to put the work for them to choose from when I have enough work for work time. I saw that at 1+1+1 she is using the workbox system which is really a cool idea but I have 20 little lovelies so that will not work space wise for me. I found the most adorable little trays at Dollar General and couldn't resist. Will post a picture soon. They are the perfect size for most of the work. I bought every one that I could find at all the area stores and they come in four different colors that almost match my group colors. They have blue, pink, red, and green and my group colors and blue, purple, red and green. My room is organized into activity centers versus subject centers so this is going to be the challenge. I currently have a magnetic center, a drama center, a pocket chart center, a DVD center, and a computer center, all other tasks are done on the carpet or at tables. I am thinking of just placing the work for now on top of my bookcases and changing out between language and math work times for now.

August Planning

Here is what I am planning for my classroom this August with Montessori materials/lessons and my other stuff I love. During work time the first few weeks, I will present a lesson to a small group while the other kids are doing something else. The something else at this time, includes DVD center, computer center, listening center, and then maybe some cut and paste things. I may introduce cutting strips to the whole class. Many of the lessons I will be doing at first are the ones for 4 year olds and I teach first grade. However, since my students have no Montessori experience prior to now and some are developmentally delayed, I think it will work well to get the foundation started.
At first I am going to hold a Language/reading work time in the morning and a Math work time in the afternoon. These may evenually mesh as the tasks get longer and students will need more time to complete activities.
I plan on doing the pink tower presentation as well as presentations on getting work, setting up work, work rules to the entire group as our first lesson and then break up into small groups. This way I can focus on student's individual needs for lessons.

Summer!!!!

I love summer because my mind gets relieved of all the every day stress and starts to get creative again. Of course I leave school every year with a list a mile long of new things I want to make for my kiddos next year.
This coming August I am really going to be implementing more and more Montessori items and activities into the classroom. I will still keep my favorite non-Montessori things that I love too such as the listening center and DVD center. In a very non-Montessori way I am going to mesh my listening center with some of the pink word activities I have planned. I will record myself giving directions to the students and have them practice building words or stamping words with CVC patterns. Because I am still tied to my Reading Series: Reading Street and I do really love it, I am going to introduce the CVC words with the sequence of the stories so that the first week they will only work with short a words, then i, then o, then u, then e, then a review of all.