We are fully into the swing of things now in September! The kids are doing great--everyone has had a great transition to school. They are all coming in nicely, putting away their things and coming to our group. Morning meeting is going great and, for the most part, everyone is able to pay attention and follow directions :) So many skills & standards are covered during our Morning Meeting--counting, patterns, letter recognition, graphing & more. It is a great opportunity for the students to learn from each other and participate in a group activity.
This last couple of weeks we've been focused on shapes. First we covered the 2D (or flat) shapes. We focused on circle, square, rectangle, triangle & hexagon. Each day we talked about the shape and how to describe it as well as examples of the shape in our environment. The second week our focus was on 3D, or solid, shapes--cube, cone, sphere & cylinder. We used our morning message to practice naming & describing the shapes and explored them even more through our Montessori materials.
- CIRCLE: round, flat, 0 corners & 0 sides
- SQUARE: 4 sides, 4 corners, all the sides are the same size, flat
- TRIANGLE: 3 straight sides, 3 corners, flat
- RECTANGLE: 4 sides, 4 corners, flat, 2 short sides & 2 long sides
- HEXAGON: flat, 6 sides & 6 corners
- CUBE: 6 faces, 8 corners, all the faces/sides are squares, 3D
- CONE: circle base, point on top, 3D
- SPHERE: round, 3D, 0 sides/corners/faces
- CYLINDER: circle on the top and bottom, 3D