Interpreting the Farm

I had to share this rather humorous take on the farm.  This child has only been presented through the preposition, so there are a few mistakes, for all you Montessorians out there.  She decided to embellish her work by drawing pictures of the animals.  I think it says, "The pig is feeding her pigs.  The geese ate the mother dog.  The horse is standing on the barn and the geese on ________.  The big fat _________ fainted on Sunday and the donkeys on _______________________ in the barn."  If you have any ideas to fill in the blanks, let me know by commenting!

More Bunny Love

Can you stand the cuteness!  Marley, our rabbit, is going on five years.  He is a Mini-Rex and their lifespan is 5-7 years.  Get ready for the tears when the big day comes!  I hope he takes a cue from our guinea pig Robby and lives much longer than predicted.  Robby lived to be 9 or 10, which is extremely long for a guinea pig.  Cross your fingers for Marley--he turns 5 on July 4!

Tea Time

There has been a lot of tea work in our room lately.  It is a lovely activity.  We use herbal tea and have an airpot of warm water.  The children prepare the tea, and while it is steeping, they may invite a friend to share teatime with them.  After they prepare the tea table, they clean up their work, bring the tea to the table, and enjoy the time with a friend.  The sort of crumbly cheese snack in the middle photo is a quesadilla, which is another activity in our room.

Searching for Spring

We are all a little winter weary in our Casa.  We put the window washing work out in hopes of spring cleaning being just around the corner.  I love the juxtaposition of the spring dress and kelly green tights against the window and the never-ending snow.  On this same day, we also started some seeds.  Now, all we need is a little sun and a little luck.  

Честита Баба Марта-- Happy Baba Marta

 

Today we celebrated Happy Grandmother March (a Bulgarian holiday) in our Casa, as one child's mother is originally from Bulgaria.  Here is what skyscrapercity.com has to say about the holiday:

Martenitsa (Bulgarian: мартеница /ˈmar.tɛ.ni.ʦa/, plural мартеници, martenitsi) is a small piece of adornment, made of white and red yarn and worn from March 1st until the 22nd March (or the first time an individual sees a stork, swallow or budding tree). The name of the holiday is Baba Marta. "Baba" (баба) is the Bulgarian word for "grandmother" and Mart (март) is the Bulgarian word for the month of March. Baba Marta is a Bulgarian tradition related to welcoming the upcoming spring. The month of March, according to Bulgarian folklore, marks the beginning of springtime. Therefore, the first day of March is a traditional holiday associated with sending off winter and welcoming spring.

We made our own martenitsas in our room, and welcomed the first day of March, which was sunny and warm.  Hopefully, spring is on the way soon!

Continents and Confusion

This continent work has been popular in our Casa lately.  The children punch out the continents in colors that correspond with the puzzle map, cut out the hemispheres, glue the continents on the hemispheres, and label the continents.  My trainer always said we MUST NOT do this because the punched continents are not accurate representations of the continents.  However, many of my colleagues (AMI and AMS) offer this activity so I decided to try it. It does seem to give the children a real and remembered sense of the continents and their names.  I always try to help the children realize what our continent is in relation to country, state (in our case) and city.  On Thursday I asked a small group, "What is our continent?"  Most replied with our city name, finally, "North America!"  "Okay, what is our country?"  City names again, then, from the same child, "United States!"  "Okay, what state do we live in?"  A few missteps but eventually, "Minnesota!"  "And what city are we in?"  Thank goodness they got that.  I then went the other way, what city, state, country, continent.  My last question was, "And what planet do we live on?"  Someone shouts out, "The Sun!"  I've got some work to do. 

A Truly Logical Consequence

I thought you might enjoy seeing our little baking set-up.  We've been making tortillas (gluten-free) for some time now.  The children use them later to prepare quesadillas for a snack.  This looks like a fairly successful baking adventure as I don't see flour all over the floor.  Rice flour can be extremely slippery.  Yesterday two children had "accidentally" spilled all of their flour and were slipping around on it as they "cleaned" up.  I just said, "Oh, it looks like you could use some help cleaning up," and we moved on.  Later, one of the children said, "Where are my tortillas," and was truly confused.  I said, "Remember, your dough fell all over the floor?"  He wore such a crestfallen look.  I love it when logical consequences are actually natural.  There was no need for any further words.