Earthquake?

DC had an earthquake today. It wasn't destructive or scary, but it was definitely an experience! I hope that anyone who was closer to the epicenter in VA is safe and unharmed.

I had sent my nappers off to the nap room and I had my five year olds in the room with me. I also had one 4 year old and his grandmother in my room. She was visiting briefly and going to take him to the nap room. I was kneeling on the floor, helping a few children set up Addition with the Golden Beads. I felt a rumble beneath me, but didn't think much of it. Our building is rather old, and I figured someone was moving furniture or doing construction nearby. Then I head some rumbling. I've lived on the East Coast my whole life, so an earthquake was the last idea in my head. There is a 5th grade class above mine, and I thought, jeez how many desks are they moving up there. Then, of course, the walls started to shake and I realized the whole building was shaking. It didn't last very long. Shake. Shake. Over. Nothing fell over (not even my beautiful, new pink tower- phew!) and all the children were safe. I looked over at my visiting grandmother and yelled, "What was that!" I couldn't remember any type of protocol for earthquakes, having never been in one before. I told all the children to get away from the shelves and get in the doorway. After a minute or so, my principal came on the speaker and informed us to have children get under their desks, adults get int he doorways. Oh yea, that's what you're supposed to do. Luckily, the one big shake was all we got, and the desk ducking was only precautionary. The children weren't scared. More so, they were confused and a little bit excited to have permission to wriggle under tables.

A few of my older children, who had actually been awake with me during the shake, wanted to know why the building shook. Did the whole earth shake? Why? Did the clouds cause it? Having finished my second summer of training, I actually remembered the lesson for this! Very quickly, and in a modified, easier to understand version, I drew a picture of the Earth and its layers. I have to admit that was sort of over their heads. I then took two pieces of paper and showed that sometime the plates of the Earth slide over or under each other. Occasionally, they touch each other and crack, causing an earthquake. I skipped over the details of plate tectonics and the different layers of basalt and granite. My five year olds were quite pleased with their explanation. When you start explaining something relatively complex, it's easy to forget that there is so much other prior knowledge needed in order to explain it. I definitely have a greater appreciation for all of the other lessons that go with this one.

Back to School!

School starts tomorrow. Seriously, I don't know where the time went. My second summer of training ended on a Wednesday and I went in for teacher prep that Monday. and here we are with school starting tomorrow!

So, let's recap. The summer was a blur. I learned so much, so fast that I almost can't tell you what we covered. I'm assuming (hoping?) that next summer it will all come together.

What's coming up? Well, I have a very bottom heavy class this year. More than half of my class is 3 year olds. This will be an interesting year. Last time my class was this unbalanced, I felt like I was losing my mind. Here's to hoping it will be better with more experience on my part.

On a positive note, I got NEW, yes, new materials (not replacement pieces!) for a lot of things in my classroom.



A brand new, shiny, pink tower! Oh, isn't it so pretty? I'm just going to cry when it gets chipped. We are going to be doing a LOT of grace and courtesy on the handling of new materials. I think it looks particularly pretty on the green stool, which also got a fresh coat of paint.



The brown stair is new too. Ignore the red rods, they're old. My stair is now made if rectangular prisms instead of cylinders!



New geometry cabinet. Look, it had knobs! That means children will be able to open the drawers on their own! A side note: I also got fraction circles, which I never had before. I was on the verge of chucking my old geometry cabinet when I realized they were perfect holders for the fraction circles. Even though there are no knobs on the old drawers, it still works because I'm only using three of the drawers. Very handy if anyone is looking for fraction storage/shelf display.



A whole bead cabinet! You can see the remnants of my old hooks above the cabinet. We've only had the short chains since... Forever. Now, we have a whole bead cabinet. I'm just waiting for the long chains to arrive.



There are other new things that I got, but this is the last picture I'll post. Here is my new bell stand. Bells are old (I scrubbed and polished so hard, I hope they look like they might be new-ish and not 15+ years old!), but the actual stand is new. My old stand was a whale. It was twice as deep, which made it difficult for the children to play. Also, they loved to lean on all that extra space and it was getting quite bowed. I was just waiting for the unfortunate moment when it cracked. Luckily, we've avoided that!

Happy back to school for everyone who is starting!

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The End and The Beginning

Well, school isn't technically over, but it is for me.

On Tuesday, we had our end of the year ceremony and cook out. I have to say, I think this was our best closing ceremony yet. We did a collection of poems and songs based on our theme, "Peace and Love." Each third year had a poem (or solo) to recite on their own or with a friend. At the end, the children sang "Love in Any Language" while I put a slide show on in the back. It may be the world's cheesiest song, but it was very cute.

Afterwords, I read a poem with a stanza about each third year student and gave them their gift. This year, I had a coupon for a printing service website (vistaprint, if anyone is interested) and so I made each child a little photobook with pictures from their first, second and third year. They came out very nicely, despite being a bit smaller than I had anticipated (I assumed the 4 x 6 book would have 4 x 6 pictures - but the whole book was 4 x 6). Nonetheless, it was a hit.

Our cook out was great too! I was so worried about not having enough food that I sent home a ton of reminders and we ended up having way more than we needed! The kids had a great time, and one parent even brought a mini sno-cone maker. She was a saint for manning it all afternoon!

Then, yesterday, summer training for Elementary started. My children are still in school until Monday with a sub. Talk about not having a break for me! We have jumped in head first once again. It's only the second day and I feel like I've been in training all summer. Oi.

So, one of the things my trainer mention before we got started was to remember why we are doing training. It's going to be a long, hard summer and we may want to remind ourselves of our positive mission to keep us going. Of course, I want Elementary for my school, and to expand public Montessori, particularly in the urban public education setting. I do feel very passionately about this.

Yet, I really have to say, that throughout this year I have been reflecting on my Primary class. I had a pretty good year this year. When I decided to do Elementary training, it wasn't because I wanted a break from Primary. I wanted it in the future and now seemed like a good time to do it (although now that I'm getting married and am actually planning on getting married next summer in between written and oral exams, now does NOT seem like the best time!). The more I think about it, the more I realize I love Primary. I'm going to finish this training, of course, but I'm beginning to think my heart is really in the Primary classroom. We'll see if this sentiment changes. Just thought I'd record my thoughts for now.

The Collective Exercises

The Collective Exercises (aka: addition/subtraction etc. with the golden beads) can be the highlight of my day or the absolute bane of my existence. I find myself dreading the lesson or getting excited when a new group is ready. From my experience, it all depends on the children you pick for the lesson.

So far, I have given this lesson (addition) a few times over the course of the year. The first group that I gave it to early in the year to some of my third years. They just hadn't had time to fit it in during the second year. I chose another third year who had already had the lesson to be my helper. This very logical choice, which has worked wonderfully in the past, backfired on so many levels. The child was bored, rushed the other children and made the whole experience unpleasant for everyone (especially me). Not surprisingly, the other children didn't want to take out the material to repeat.

Time went on and I gave the lesson again to my last two third years who are simply working at their own (albeit snail-like) pace through the materials. By this time, most of the other third years knew how to do this work. Yet, after the initial presentation (which was me and just those two!) the other third years were just as terrible when working with the final two. It caused constant bickering. Ugh. I was about to throw all of my golden bead material out of the window.

Today, I had a group of second year students who were ready for the lesson. This time, the chemistry was right on. The three children I chose (two second years and one third year) are pretty quiet, and all three are girls. One of them -my shadow from last year- still refuses to speak but was literally squealing with delight as I gave her this lesson. This exact lesson, which had been the source of so much frustration and irritation to me, became a little squeal of glee for myself. How can you not be the happiest teacher around when a child is bursting out of their shell to do math?

Collective Exercises - choose your groups wisely and enjoy the ride :)

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Montessori

Do you have one of these in your house or classroom?



Well, then you may just have some flower arranging vases waiting to be converted! I must attribute this notion to my Mom (happy belated mother's day, everyone!) who gave me the bright idea.

The one pictured above is a little bit large, but smaller ones are perfect. Use them to keep away funk in the classroom, then when they are done wash them out (thoroughly!) and -tada!- brand new vases.




This one is currently in my (house) bathroom. My rosebush is going crazy right now. Not bad, eh?

Secret Artist/Procrastinator

From my feedback, it sounds like people read this blog for the same reason, I read other blogs: camaraderie. It just feels nice knowing there are others out there going through the same thing.

Without any big, philosophical ramblings (though I have some brewing), here are some of the things my classroom has been up to.

A month or so ago, I made a subconscious decision to do anything besides my lingering Elementary homework and timelines. Thus, I decided to create a set of decorative letter cards. I had seen a few cute ones on etsy, but none of them had cursive letters or were completely phonetic. So, why not hand-make a whole set? It was completely unnecessary, though I do think it brightens up the room a bit and has helped a few kids when they get stuck thing of a letter name/sound or the cursive/print version of a letter.



Isn't my elephant cute? The grapes... Well, not so much. One of the children also told me that h was "pimp hat". Guess, I should have left out the feather. Here are a few more.



The octopus was hard and he looks a little crazy. Nonetheless, I had a third year child tell me I was a "secret artist" because he didn't know I could draw. This is absolutely the best compliment I have ever received because, obviously, art is not something that comes naturally to me. It's rather cute that he felt I was hiding such "talent" from him.

Direction

I haven't really felt like blogging lately.

At first, I felt a swing in the reflection of my classroom. This year has had it's challenges and struggles, but it feels like a cakewalk compared to last year. The entire last month of school last year, I thought I was losing my mind. I could barely make it through to the end of the year. This year, I happened to look at the school calendar yesterday and realized there is about 30 school days left. I didn't even realize school was so close to ending! What I'm rambling towards is that I feel a little bit more sure-footed about what I'm doing in the classroom. (just a little bit!) Somehow, This has made those shiny, happy moments I've had with the children seem so special that I've had the feeling I should just let it be, instead of sharing it. I don't know, it's a strange feeling and a strange way of thinking, but that's how my brain has been working lately.

Also, I've realized that I don't really need to post about the things on my shelf.1) If I have found something that works, I've probably already posted about it. 2) there are so many other great blogs out there with better ideas than me! 3) I like to keep the extensions minimal. Of course, if I make/find something awesome, I'm willing to share, but it's certainly not a focus for this blog.

That brings me to my question for you readers (if you're still out there). I still want to blog, but I think I need some direction and focus for this blog. It started out as a place to throw up my feelings/thoughts/elations/disappointments because my friends and family were sick of hearing me talk about the same thing. However, it's evolved. I still can't believe people actually read this. So, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, why do you read my blog? What do you want to read about?


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