Behind the Scenes: Our Learning Environment

I think that a good environment for a preschooler should be one that naturally encourages exploration and playful learning.   So I have tried to set up our house to do exactly that.  A Montessorian would call this a prepared environment, and unschooler would call this strewing...I just call it our home.  And here is a behind the scenes look at how we have it set up. 

If you notice we tend to have an area for the kids in almost every room of the house.    I do this for several reasons:
-The first and most important is that it keeps kids busy, and a busy kid is a good thing in my book.  A bored kid often tends to get into things that they shouldn't.  A bored kid often tends to fight with their sister or brother.  And a bored kid is also usually "high maintenance" and makes it so it is hard to get anything done around the house.
-The second reason is that I don't spend all day in one room.  My kids naturally tend to follow me around wherever I go, and this gives them something to do as they move from room to room.
-The third reason I do this is because I feel strongly that this is our kid's house too!  Just like my husband and I have something of "ours" in every room, so do our kids.  It doesn't seem natural to us to confine them to one room or area. 


Our listening Center:
Our listening center is in our family room next to the couch where we usually read together.  The kids have several audio books and musical CDs that they can listen to here.  The listening center has a comfy ottoman for laying on while reading, a CD player that is easy for a toddler to work, and plenty of floor space for dancing!

Sophia listening to a Nursery Rhyme CD while following along.

Our Favorite Listening Center Products:
-Themes To Remember, Volume 1,
- Wee Sing Nursery Rhymes and Lullabies,
- Poetry Speaks to Children (Book & CD) (Read & Hear) 
- Various Audio Books for Children (Purchased or record your own)



Our Library:
Near our listening center, we have our home library.  This is several bookshelves that hold all of our families books.  We try to keep these organized by subject.  My husband and my books are on the higher shelves, the kids books are on the lower shelf. 



Water Serving Station:
I try to encourage the kids to help themselves to their own snacks and drinks.  We have a little water serving station sent up for them.  You can see the blog post about it here. 

Help yourself to a glass of water

Update:  Since that post was published, the water station has now now been moved to the kitchen on the linoleum floors due to too many spills on the carpet!  :)   We also keep everything on a small table.  Other than that, the setup and equipment remains much the same. 


Our "Classroom":
This is what I affectionately call our classroom.  Although it is really our dining room.  This picture was taken in early February, so as you can see we have it all decked out for Valentine's day.  This has a small child sized table that we use for painting and other activities that are best done sitting.  

Our "Classroom"

Here we have two little "learning shelves" set up.  You can see them next to either side of our hutch.  One we call our "Language Arts shelf" and the other we call our "Montessori Shelf". 


We use the tops of these shelves to house all of our theme books for the month. This particular month, we were reading and talking about John James Audubon and Groundhogs.  (The groundhogs are because of groundhog's day.) Interesting combination...wouldn't you say? 

Our "Language Arts" Shelf - It has a lot of our Handwriting Without Tears (HWOT) Curriculum

On the "Language Arts" Shelves:
On top of the bookcase:

Our "theme" books for the month.   (This month we are studying Groundhogs, Weather, Shadows, and Hibernation in honor of Groundhog's day.)

Top Shelf (left to right):
Blue Basket - Mat Man Building Supplies
Wooden Box - Wooden Pieces for Capital Letters
Workbooks (Let's Cut Paper! (Kumon First Steps Workbooks), Let's Sticker & Paste! (Kumon First Steps Workbooks), and HWOT Get set for School Workbook)

Middle Shelf (left to right):
Wooden Box for HWOT Wet, Dry, Try Technique Tools (Slate , Little Chalk Bits, Tiny Sponge Cubes)
Sandpaper Letters from Polliwog Learning on Etsy.com
Tub of Tiny Crayon Pieces (The tiny pieces help force the child to grip them correctly)
HWOT Stamp-n-See Screens

Bottom Shelf (left to right):
Green Basket - HWOT Roll-a-Dough Screens, Homemade Playdough (recipe here)
Larger Green Basket - HWOT Capital Letter Cards and Blue Mats

Montessori Shelf

On the Montessori Shelves:
 On top of the bookcase:

Our Art books for the month.   (This month we are studying John James Audubon.)

Top Shelf (left to right):
- Yellow Basket -Melissa & Doug See & Spell
- Sandpaper Numbers from Polliwog Learning Products
- Clear Zipper Pouch - Melissa & Doug Beginner Pattern Blocks

Middle Shelf (left to right):
- Wooden Box-Melissa & Doug Bead Sequencing Set
- Second Wooden Box - Various Magnet exploration items (Magnetic Balls, Magnetic Wands, Stack and Match Magnet Rings)
- Red, Yellow, Blue and Green Wooden Boxes -Montessori Knobless Cylinders

Bottom Shelf (left to right):
- Various Beading Activities (Melissa & Doug Deluxe Wooden 27-Piece Lacing Beads in a Box)
- Plan Toys Cone Sorting
-
- Twist & Turn Sorter




This side of the room has our calendar and "weather" tracking stuff.  We also have an easel out for the kids to write on when ever they want. 

Our Calendar Center

Kitchen:
In the kitchen, the kids have their own little broom center where they can easily reach their tools when it comes to clean up time.  We use got this broom set here for the kids and have been very happy with it.  The vacuum cleaners are called Super Vac Toy Vacuums.  They really suck up small bits of dirt!  (Very small, but every little bit helps!)  We bought ours through Amazon, however I see that they are currently unavailable.  When it comes to clean up time, the kids also have some spray bottles (with vinegar and water) and some rags/sponges.  They help me wipe down the table and winters in addition to helping me clean the floor.

Kid's Cleaning Supplies

 We also have an area for the kids to hang their aprons up next to mama's aprons. 

Hang up your apron please!

Our Nature Study Basket (Has the kids Nature Notebooks, my Nature Journal, some field guides, and Handbook of Nature Study)

Our Basement / Playroom:
The basement is where we keep most of our toys.  Although we try to have a "play area" on every floor of our house.  (It keeps the kids busy and out of trouble!)  Here are some photos of our main play area. 

Play Kitchen Center

Another Picture of Kitchen and Grocery Store Center  (We have a kitchen, a baby bed/high chair, grocery carts, and a cash register to encourage dramatic play)

Shelf Near Kitchen (This holds the Puzzles, Melissa and Doug Latches Board, Larger Wooden Food Pieces, matryoshka dolls, etc.)

Train Table:  We switch this out from time to time and rotate new activities

Playroom Wall

Bookcases full of toys  We have our block center here near the bottom right.

Close up of the "Building Center"  (Design and Drill, Pound and Roll Tower, Melissa & Doug Deluxe Wooden Pound-A-Peg, Various Pretend tools)

Chalk Board Magnetic Wall, Building Center and Small Table

Dress Up Clothes and Props- I Still need a mirror for this area so the kids can check themselves out

Links to Become Attached To:
-Don't waste your Homemaking
-Homemaking Link-Up
-Tot Tuesday
- Tot School
-We Play
- Montessori Monday
- Preschool Corner

Montessori Monday: Water Serving

One of the things I appreciate the most about the Montessori method is the idea of setting up a child's environment so that they can have a certain level of independence.  I think that too often we under estimate the abilities of children.  I also think that allowing children a certain level of independence helps boost their self esteem.


If you visit any Montessori classroom you will probably see some type of pouring activity in their practical life section.  Students typically start our pouring with beans or other dry material and eventually move up to pouring with water.  I decided to put all of this pouring practice to use in our house by setting up a drink station for the kids.

How this station came about:
For awhile, I felt like I was filling up sippy cups all day long.  The kids would usually take a drink, set their cup down somewhere, lose it, and then ask for another sippy cup full of water.  Between the two of them I was filling up cups every 20 minutes all day long---and then going through the house and collecting all of the lost cups so I could wash them.  It was insanity.  I decided that a big part of the problem was our whole sippy cup set up.  Sippy cups don't require care.  You can just throw them down anywhere without having to worry about them spilling.  They almost invite the child to be careless with them.  Another part of the problem was that we simply had too many cups.  Lots of cups = lots of dishes! And finally, a huge part of the problem was that the children currently had no way of getting a drink for themselves. 

So I set off to think of a way to make this possible for them to do.  Some would call this neglectful parenting, I call it Montessori!  ;)

Here is where the kids are able to pour themselves a glass of water whenever they want.  Every morning I set out clean glasses, fresh ice, and fresh water.  The rest is up to them.   So far they have loved it! 

Here is a close up of the little side table I added to our sink.

 

It took some tweaking to find a setup that allowed the kids to do this independently. 
At first I tried storing all of this stuff next to the sink, but it was too hard for Sophia to reach around things without knocking over a cup.  She needed more room, so I used a clear plastic bin as a side cart to give them some counter space.   Even though it is just a plastic bin, I tried my best to dress it up and make everything look "pretty" and nice for the kids.  That way they would know that these glasses are something to be taken care of.  Not something you just throw on the floor.

One the side cart we have a glass for each child.  (Marcus gets the blue glass, Sophia gets the green.)   They also have an ice bucket, ice tongs, a coaster, and a napkin to store the tongs on. 

On the sink I am storing the pitcher of water that way they won't have to carry it anywhere. 

 It took a little tweaking to find a process that they were able to do independently.  What we finally found worked the best was to have the child fill their cup full of ice.  (They LOVE using ice tongs by the way!!)  Then place their glass in the metal sink and pour water using both hands on the pitcher.  (The metal sink is able to catch any spills.)  Then when they are finished, they know how to wipe up any spills and rehang the towel. 

To see what other Montessori inspired activities we have gotten into this past week, check our our weekly wrap up post here.

A is for Alien: A Unit Study on Space

At the library this week, Marcus asked to get some books out about aliens. 
I did a quick search and found stumbled upon two titles that we really enjoyed.  I ended up turning this into a light unit study.

Updated: 11/10/2010 with more ideas!  

Fun Read-Alouds:

The first book we read was Alien Invasion written and illustrated by 7 year old Benjamin Kendall.

 

When I first checked this book out, I had no idea that it was written by a little kid.  However, I have to say that Benjamin Kendall is one awesome kid!  This book had me chuckling from beginning to end.  It is not outright funny, but it has this subtle type of humor that I found extremely enjoyable to read.
The story was a great one, and Marcus asked me to read it to him about 9 times this week!   I also couldn't get over his illustrations.  I am 30 and can't draw near as well as Benjamin at 7! 


The second book we checked out was Alistair and the Alien Invasion.

 

This was another great find.  The kids both enjoyed this story and I read it multiple times too this week.  This book also had my chuckling.  My favorite part is the illustration of Alistair ironing his socks before he leaves for space.

History:  
For history, we read Aliens are Coming!

This is a true account of the 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast written for children.  This book did a great job describing what life was like in 1938 and role that radio played in society. 


Projects: 
After reading our alien books, I remembered seeing a Alien Letter craft on the blog No Time for Flashcards.  So I quickly pulled out all of the stuff to make it and Marcus made an Alien shaped letter A.
First I drew an A on a piece of construction paper and he painted it.

Without any prompting from me, I noticed that he was just naturally tracing the shape of a letter A with his paint brush.  This is what the "A" looked like when he was finished. 

After that we cut out the A and pasted it to another sheet of paper.  Then we added some eyes, a mouth, and antenna.  It turned out very cute I think!

I then asked him if he wanted to add the page to the alphabet book he is making.    (More about the alphabet book in another post.) However, he said that he wanted to use it to pretend to be an alien.


I told him that we could do better than that...we could make actual Alien Masks!!!  This wasn't a craft project I planned.  I just happened to remember that we had some things on hand that would work for alien masks. This is one of the reasons I like to have lots of generic craft supplies on hand.  Sometimes they make for very enjoyable impromptu projects like this.  And things always feel so much more natural when they are child-led and driven.  As opposed to some huge, planed out thing that I try to get the child excited about doing.

So, what did I have on hand?  

Well, Michael's (one of my favorite places in the world to shop) has this aisle of paint-able items that are made out of very thick and heavy card-stock.  They have full sized swords, crowns, animals, dinosaurs, feet...all sorts of things made out of card-stock.  They usually come in packs of 6-12, and they are fairly inexpensive.  I often stock up on these just to have around the house when I need a craft project for the kids to do.  You can paint them, color them, decorate them with jewels, glitter, decoupage, stickers...you name it.

I actually have an entire bin that is labeled "paper things for the kids to paint".  You can see my stash here.

Well, one of the things that we have are masks.  (You can see them sitting on top in the picture.)  Again, I wasn't exactly sure what I would do with these when I bought them.   I will tell you one thing, I didn't expect that we would turn them into aliens!

This was an open-ended art project that the kids totally made and designed themselves.   I put the following supplies out on the table for them to use as they wanted.

Supplies:
1)  Blank card-stock masks (availabe at Michael's)
2)  Purple and Green paint
3)  A bowl of Googly Eyes
4)  Teeth cut out of craft foam left over from our Aligator art project
5)  Craft feathers
6)  Pipe Cleaners  (antenna?)
7)  Paint brushes
8)  School Glue

I love watching my kids at work.  This is one of the reasons I love open ended projects like this.  I love to observe how they each interact with the supplies given.  This is what I observed as they were working with the various supplies:

Paint:
Well, after I laid out the green and purple paint the first thing Marcus did was ask for blue and red paint.  I said, "Aren't aliens green?"  He said, "No, I want a blue alien".  So I gave him some blue and red paint.  Shortly after Sophia said, "I want blue!"  So we had two blue aliens.  :)

Marcus also wanted to paint his aliens mouth red.  However, it gave his alien a very scary look because it kind of looks like blood!  I don't think that was his intention...although maybe it was!  


Eyes:
Marcus made a neat row of eyes on the forehead of his alien.  
Sophia used every remaining googly eye in the bowl to cover her alien.  (Seriously!  She used up the supply of googly eyes!)


Feathers:
Sophia added feathers, but only two, and only to one side of her alien's head.
Marcus didn't want any feathers on his alien.

Pipe Cleaners:
Neither child attempted to use pipe cleaners in their design.

Teeth:
Each child certainly wanted their alien to have lots of sharp teeth! 

After our masks dried we danced around in them and played alien for quite awhile.
Marcus and Sophia also thought it would be fun to jump out and scare Daddy with the masks when he got home from work.  I swear I had nothing to do with giving them that idea!  ;) Poor Doug!

Uh-oh....an alien lost an eye.  Luckly she has many back ups!

Sensory Exploration:
For sensory exploration we played with moon sand.  Moon sand is a great material that even adults love to play with.  It has a really cool consistency.  It is like sand that can be molded and hold its shape.  The con is that it can be quite expensive.  Here is a great moon sand recipe that you can make from home.

To make a sensory box for play, I suggest adding in some minature space toys and astronauts. 














Other ideas for sensory play are to provide white playdough.  (This is my favorite play dough recipe.)  Have your child roll the dough into a ball and use an eraser tip to create moon creators.  For even more fun, put out your miniture astronauts and spaceships and have them explore the moon.  Add rocks (astroids) and have those crash into the planets and smash them.  (Can you tell I have a little boy?!) 


Nature Study:  Make a Lunar Calendar
An easy thing for preschoolers to observe in space is the moon.  Take the kids outside at night and have them observe the shape of the moon throughout the month.  Have them draw the shape of the moon and create their own lunar calendar.  DLTK has a some great ideas that makes it possible for even little kids to re-create the shapes of the moon that they observe. 

Making Learning Fun also has some nice moon sequencing cards that can be used to reinforce your observations. 

Other Science Ideas:
With our local preschool co-op, we took the kids outside and we built a scale model of our solar system using various balls as props.  This really gives the kids an idea of how large our solar system is.  We used a 16 foot wide sun made out of old yellow sheets sewn together.  For the rest of the planets we used various balls that were aproximatly the correct diameter.  If you want to replicate this experiment at home, you can use this cool calculator to determine the sizes and distances of your "to scale" model. 

Math:
We also had some Montessori math items on our shelves this week.

We used star counting cards and mini star erasers. The kids identify the number and then count out the appropriate number of start erasers for each number. 

We also used these rocket counting cards.  With these cards, the child counts the stars and then puts a clothes pin on the correct number.  The kids didn't seem to be very interested in these, so we will probably put these out until they are a bit older. 

Field Trip:
We happen to live near an AWESOME children's science museum that has a space exhibit.  If you don't have something like that, you could take your kids to visit a planetarium.

However, even if you don't have any of those things, how wonderful would it be to just take the kids out at night and star gaze.  Talk about making memories!  How special would it be to stay up late one night and just gaze at the stars together. 



Go-Along Books to Put on the Reserve List:

















Other links to become Attached to:
The  Ultimate Alphabet Craft Collection for the Letter A.
STart (A Story + Art)
Tot School (See what other toddlers are doing)
Preschool Corner (See what other preschoolers are doing)
Paint the Moon with Puffy "Moon Paint"
Making Learning Fun (a host of Space related ideas for learning!)
Kid Soup Space Ideas (this is a subscription only site.  However, you can get a free trial.)  
More Books About Space



Thanks for reading!!