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A #nursery child joyfully holds a single #Montessori ‘Golden Bead’ in one hand and a 1,000 Golden Beads, in the form of a cube, in the other.
He’s enthralled by the difference in magnitude, number & weight.
He holds 10 & 100, feeling their relationship.
It got me drawing…
Nursery child draws an elephant with wonderful expression & succinctness, a simple line and perfectly judged areas of tone capture the imagination:
“I’ve drawn it for you…It’s sitting down and feeling sad because it’s the last day of school…and his trunk is crumpled up”
Joy
A nursery child explores the Montessori Shape Boxes.
She engages with the properties of congruence, shape, colour, & magnitude, using them to create imaginative & varied designs:
“I’ve made a rocket & there are lots of stars around — every star is going to be different!”
Joy!
Nursery child plays on the “Number Ten Study Rug” with Numicon
“You can make 10 with 5 and 5 and that’s fair but you can’t make ten with 6 and 6 “
“You can’t make ten with 7 and 7.”
He laughs.
“You’d have to squash a 7 down into 2 and 1 which isn’t fair … Or three”
Joy.
When my ideas stall,
play is the spark I turn to.
It’s the fire starter that breathes life
into my sleepy designs.
It unwraps and
shakes awake thinking.
Play excels at this,
to tame play
or try and contain it
is to dim plays brilliance
and silence the magic.
Since my pupils are the main stakeholders in their learning, why plan it without them?
And, if I want them to drive their own learning, the sooner they’re in the driver’s seat, the more prepared they’ll be when the road is theirs to travel alone.
A Nursery child picks fresh leaves & daisies and lays them out with careful attention to position and 1-1 correspondence.
She adjusts any spacial and numerical errors as she goes:
“Squirrel is making a picnic, all his friends get one daisy each so they don’t squabble!”
Joy!
That moment when you walk past a little toaster left on a garden wall and you realise it sums up your state of mind!
When my pupils playfully improvise with wooden blocks, shapes & spacial relationships, I can’t help recalling John Coltrane’s sentiment:
‘Damn the rules,
it’s the feeling that matters’
And when I see the speed at which ‘feeling’ translates into learning, I think:
‘Yep, he has a point!’
jo0L5s retweeted
The ‘Poo Study Box’
Made from an old wine box;
The Bristol Stool Chart as a key;
7 specimen jars for analysis;
Fake Poo;
Numerals as labels for classification;
Rug to work on;
Vocabulary: liquid, solid, viscosity, classify, order, key ..e.t.c
#eyfs #earlyyears #science #maths
jo0L5s retweeted
Just about to teach the letter ‘Y’
Turns out it’s been changing it’s shape and expanding a songbook of sounds across the globe for some time now…
#teach #eyfs #phonics #earlyyears #earlyreading #edutwitter #nursery #montessori #Y #letters #teaching #letterY
A #nursery child’s independent play with the #montessori wooden letter box:
He lays out the letter rugs cards, making words and reading as he plays.
Taking it all in & looking within the words he joyfully jumps up & down in excitement:
‘Look at the vowels … i o a o e o e …!’
jo0L5s retweeted
"Looking & Drawing are as much a process of unlearning
as learning”
My Art College tutors told me.
Unlearning!
The idea of ‘Unlearning’ as a positive process really
stuck with me,
it’s shaped my relationship with error,
and if I embrace it,
Unlearning is a great friend.
jo0L5s retweeted
Brilliant how @Joolone creates the conditions for mathematical play and creativity in his nursery.
Read about the cycles of study made accessible by study boxes and rugs (open-access article):
atm.org.uk/Mathematics-Teach…
