Lighthouse Academy Re-opens it’s famed ‘Transition Class’
Lighthouse Academy Transition Class…..what is it?
Many years ago we started what we have termed the ‘Transition Class.’ This classroom was created to meet the needs of 2 to 3 years olds that were not ready for the bigger pre-school/kindergarten class. These students simply needed a year or two of a smaller class size, a slower pace and the ability to crawl on the lap of the teacher for added comfort. This richer experience gives these students a much stronger start and sets them up for great success early on.
We are proud to offer this class again and are extremely excited to announce that our 12 year veteran teacher Lisa Arthur will be heading this class up starting in January. Ms. Lisa is extremely excited to get the Transition Class up and running again.
This class will re-open on January 2nd, 2012. Enrollment is very limited as we already have 6 students signed up. We will open the class size to 10 max. Please schedule a tour to meet with Ms. Lisa and to see the classroom. Part-time slots will be available for 3 days per week. In addition, we will be holding a ‘Transition Class’ Open House in December. Please keep your eyes and ears open for the date of the this Open House as it will be a very fun and informative evening.
PRACTICAL LIFE:
The Practical Life area may be the most important part of a Montessori classroom for children ages three to six. It encourages children to use activities that are carefully created by the teacher inorder to focus on areas of mental and physical growth & development. These exercises may appear to be “play” when infact they are just the opposite.The children feel a sense of accomplishment and worth that parallels an adults sense of pride after a hard day at work. The activities teach the children important everyday life skills. By using these activities the children learn to be independent, and to be responsible for themselves and the environment. They learn to be respectful and compassionate towards their peers. They learn to concentrate, analyze logical steps to complete a cycle of activity, and practice self control. Exercises in the Practical Life area increase large and small muscle control. The pincer grip (using the thumb & forefinger to pick up/grab objects) is continuously being developed through specific activities in this area.
Some of the exercises you may see in this area of the class are pouring, folding, squeezing, twisting, scooping and polishing various objects. The materials used are “real”, not pretend. This helps to foster a sense of importance and pride for the students.The children use dressing frames inorder to practice zipping, tying, lacing, etc. They help prepare snack, and clean up their snack area afterwards. They learn to use everyday supplies, including nuts & bolts, sewing materials, and other useful items. These activities are so successful because they are presented in a way that the children find appealing and exciting, and they want to be able to experience the indepence that comes with being able to accomplish these things. These skills not only carry on to all other areas of the class, but continue throughout their lives. When they are given the skills they need to be successful and independent, it opens up a world of possibilities for them.
Lessons in Grace and Courtesy are an essential part of the Practical Life area. The teacher models the appropriate social behaviors that children need inorder to succeed in the classroom, which carries into other areas of their life outside of school. Lessons are given in a group setting, and are then modeled throughout the day. Saying “please” & “thank you”, learning to wait patiently for one’s turn, greeting a friend or visitor to the class, and remembering to push in a chair are just some examples of these lessons. The children are in an environment that encourages and practices kindness, respect and good manners.
Montessori Math: Ages 0-6
At Lighthouse Academy we introduce Math to very young children for many reasons. One of the most basic reasons is because these young children are in a sensitive period for order – and the study of math helps to satisfy the needs and interests that go along with this developmental stage. Children are exposed to materials with which they can explore mathematical principles as early as 2 ½ or 3 years of age, and the curriculum follows them as they develop skills and understanding.
Maria Montessori was fond of quoting the French philosopher and mathematician, Pascal, who said that all humans have a “mathematical mind”. Montessori believed this to be especially true of children. They explore the world by organizing & categorizing what they find there; they love to find the patterns in the world around them and this is the beginning of their mathematical education.
You can find activities that introduce and allow the exploration of math-related concepts in each area of the Montessori classroom. The concept of one-to-one correspondences, or pairing, is taught in the Practical Life area with such activities as: using keys and locks, matching cups to saucers, and buttoning or snapping on the dressing frames – to name just a few. In the Sensorial area the same concept is at work in the Knobbed Cylinders activity, as well as in matching pairs of colors with the Color Tablets; while in Language the children might match pictures to concrete objects or play Lotto games. These are just a few of many examples. Seriation is practiced in the Sensorial area with activities like grading the Sound Cylinders from loud to soft, arranging the Touch Tablets roughest to smoothest or fabric tablets from lightest to darkest. Back in Practical Life we find clothes- dish- or table-washing activities involving a long series of steps to accomplish.
We may also find excellent demonstrations of the principles of conservation here, as the children pursue such activities as pouring dry or liquid substances from one container to another, or to multiple containers. Other classic mathematical concepts demonstrated and practiced throughout the Montessori classroom include: similarity and difference, combination (adding), spatial relationships and forms; and temporal relationships.
Children in the Montessori classroom have the opportunity to learn many mathematical concepts before they are six years old. They’ll begin with very concrete materials and gradually progress to abstract concepts. They learn to recognize, recite and eventually to write the numerals one through one thousand, and to associate those numerals with the appropriate quantities (number). At three or four years of age they might work with the Number Rods, Spindle Boxes, Sandpaper Numerals or Numerals and Counters as they absorb information about the concept of zero and even & odd numbers; while at five they’ll enjoy the Tens and Teens Boards, the Hundred Board and the :Long Bead Chains. Threes ands fours can explore the concept of sets of numbers, again with the Spindle Boxes or the Numerals and Counters. Skip Counting can be demonstrated with the Short Bead Chains, while formation of number (place value) and exchanging (“carrying” in arithmetic problems) are concepts that children pick up with an activity like the Bank Game. Here as well are good opportunities for learning addition, multiplication, subtraction and division. Children between four and five will also pick up the concept of squares and cubes of numbers while working with, for example, the Bead Chains and the Hundred Board. When they’re ready, the older fives and sixes can be introduced to the memorization of basic number facts (i.e. addition and multiplication tables) with materials like the Table Rods, Addition Strip Board, Multiplication Bead Bars, and several more. Six-year-old children also often embark on the “path to abstraction” with variations on the Stamp Game that include addition, multiplication, subtraction and division. They also love the Dot Game and the Small Bead Frame.
The Montessori math curriculum is varied, never boring, and challenging – but never forced upon the children. They love these materials! They’re colorful and fun to work with, intricate and beautiful. At Lighthouse Academy, Math is fun, and has little to do with memorizing formulas without understanding the logic behind them. It’s a terrific, positive and effective method to introduce Math to our young children!
MONTESSORI LANGUAGE Article: Montessori Early Childhood Language: Life-Long Literacy
by Dr. Ann Epstein.
The development of language in early-childhood classrooms is an umbrella for the entire Montessori curriculum. Often teachers and parents consider activities on the shelves of the Language area as the heart of actual language learning. Certainly these activities provide powerful opportunities, but language learning occurs most profoundly in the moment-to-moment life of interactions within the classroom. Twenty years ago, working as a speech pathologist, I discovered the wonder of language development in young children. Although I detoured away from speech and language pathology into Montessori early-childhood education, I maintained my awe of how children learn to listen and speak and, later, to write and read. I have had the opportunity to share my language interests as a teacher educator with several Montessori teacher-education programs.
During the last four years, I have continued my learning in a slightly different context. As a supervisor for the University of Maryland’s undergraduate early-childhood special-education program, I have worked with teachers, students, and children in both inclusive and segregated special education settings, often working with children with language delays. In this article, I will suggest a foundation for the development of language skills, review key Montessori language materials and activities, and present suggestions for expanding language practices in Montessori early-childhood classrooms. Language Everywhere, All the Time, with Everyone: A Foundation for the Development of Language .
We know that the development of a young child’s language skills begins at conception. An infant is born into a family with a unique communication style. Family members may be quite open, freely expressing their wants, needs, and feelings. Alternatively, communication may be reserved or even restrained. Babies listen to and absorb not only what family members say but how they say it. A balanced environment, one that is open yet not chaotic or inappropriate, is the most conducive to language learning. We need to talk often and meaningfully with babies. Babies learn to trust their surroundings as older siblings and adults hold and cuddle them, engage them with smiles and coos, and most importantly, acknowledge their communications. Essential communication occurs when a busy father or mother looks directly at a little crying one, rocks her, and says in a comforting way, “Yes, I know, you are upset. You are having a hard time getting to sleep.” As distant as it seems, Dad and Mom are laying the foundation for listening to their child’s requests and statements. Reciprocally, their child is learning to trust that Dad and Mom can be counted on to listen and provide comfort. Years later, this child may enter a Montessori classroom. She enters with a consistently effective communication experience. Her past experiences have proven to her that she can initiate communication and be heard. She is learning to reverse these roles in order to be an effective listener and responder. These communication experiences are the foundation for language learning in the classroom.
Teachers, parents, and administrators need to recognize communication as the foundation for the meaningful development of language concepts and skills. Effective communication depends on authentic relationships between communicative partners. Teachers have the responsibility (actually, the opportunity) to develop and expand learning relationships with young children. This is truly the ultimate opportunity to make a difference. Seen in this light, conversations with young children on the playground, during field trips, on the way to the bathroom, in the midst of conflict resolution, during lessons, and countless other times create the context for the development of language skills. Relationships of trust are built between children and teachers and among peers. Classroom work further contributes to language concept and skill development within this context of meaningful communication.
Montessori Language Work for the Young Child: Early Literacy Activities. Activities related to the development of early literacy skills often greet young children when they visit the language area of a Montessori classroom. Loosely known as “reading readiness” during the 70s and 80s, these activities include opportunities for young children to expand vocabulary, listen carefully to common sounds, and look carefully to find likenesses and differences among objects and pictures.
Young children (particularly three and four year-olds) delight in matching sets of objects from cars and trucks to zoo animals. They enjoy learning the names of household tools, unusual fruits and vegetables, and geometric shapes, to name a few. The tape recorder corner is a popular spot as children listen to city, household, and garden sounds as well as favorite stories and songs. Teachers need to observe the “DQ” (dust quotient) carefully for when to change these early literacy activities. By rotating an engaging, dynamic array of vocabulary-building, auditory-. and visual-discrimination activities, teachers are providing children with continual opportunities to expand and refine their literacy skills throughout the three years they spend in primary classrooms. Dr. Maria Montessori personally developed only three language materials for the early-childhood classroom; however, the metal insets, the sand paper letters, and the movable alphabet have proven to be astoundingly effective. In fact, educators outside the Montessori world have recognized the effectiveness of these materials and created similar activities now being used in a variety of early-childhood settings.
Metal Insets Dr. Montessori designed the metal insets to provide appealing opportunities for young children to practice the component strokes of letters. Appalled by the tediousness of the early 20th century practice of requiring children to make rows and rows of straight and curved lines, she designed an alternative approach. Dr. Montessori reasoned that tracing complete shapes would be more satisfying for young children and still provide opportunities to refine pencil control. Children of the 1990s often make booklet after booklet of ovals, pentagons, quatrefoils, and trapezoids. As they first trace the frame of the shape and later the more challenging free-standing metal shape, they are gaining fine motor control. Why provide children as young as three and four with opportunities to strengthen hand control in order to write? Isn’t this too young? And don’t children learn to read before they write anyway? Montessori answered “no” to both the second and the third questions. She observed children in the slums of early twentieth Rome writing on whatever surfaces (floors, chairs, table tops) they could. Rather than seeing this as misbehavior, Montessori interpreted children’s writing behavior quite literally. She recognized their strong interest in writing. Montessori countered the prevailing practice of teaching reading before writing by providing purposeful opportunities for children to write.
Sandpaper Letters and the Movable Alphabet Long before early childhood educators began talking about multi-sensory education, Montessori recognized that young children learn by touching, listening and looking. She reasoned that stroking a sandpaper letter while hearing the sound of the letter and simultaneously seeing its form provided children with multiple opportunities to learn the sound and the visual shape of each letter. Once children learned to associate sounds and forms of letters, Montessori searched for a way for them to compose words. She had designed the metal insets to assist the development of children’s fine muscle control and the sandpaper letters to associate the sounds and forms of letters. How could children put these skills and concepts together to form words? Foreseeing struggles with pencil and paper, Montessori provided children with multiple sets of cut-out letters housed in a compartmentalized box. Children could then select individual letters to compose whatever words they desired.
Composing words is not the same as spelling words. Children at this stage of literacy are expressing themselves through print. Later in the elementary program they will learn to apply spelling rules. Thus, invented spelling is very much a part Montessori early childhood classrooms. Kathy Gray, Montessori directress at Doswell E. Brooks School in Prince George’s County, Maryland and language instructor with Œkos, a Foundation for Education, shares this example: Yue miet not bee aible tue reed this but mie teecher can!! Are children reading as they compose words with the movable alphabet? Usually they are encoding (writing) print without decoding (reading). Montessori recognized writing as the process of sharing one’s own thoughts and reading as the more difficult process of interpreting the thoughts of others.
Recent research concerning early literacy confirms the importance of providing children with meaningful opportunities to see and use print. These experiences will then lead to meaningful reading. Reading in Contemporary Montessori early-childhood classrooms house carefully designed, sequential opportunities to assist young children as they build beginning reading concepts. Teachers have found that dictating sets of three letter rhyming words (sit, bit, fit, pit) for children to build with the movable alphabet provides them with a structured, success-oriented early experience. Again, children begin by “writing” (composing) the words and later discover they can read them. Often children enjoy the follow-up activity of writing these words and making lists or, even better, small booklets. Parents need assurance from teachers that the focus of this activity is not reading the words but building them.
Dr. Montessori wrote of the power of a very simple activity to help bridge children into the world of reading. She encouraged her directresses to assemble a collection of interesting small objects, slips of paper, and a pencil. After asking children to name each object, she wrote the name as the children watched. She then simply placed the labels next to corresponding objects and repeated the words. In today’s classrooms, children watch as the teacher writes and listen as he/she states the word. Children see the concrete connection between the word and the object. The teacher then invites the child to mix up the labels, look at them individually, recall the word and find the appropriate object. Often children recognize the beginning sound of the words. They use this and the overall configuration of the word as they decode.
Decades later, teachers recognize the above lesson as an example of a “whole -language” approach to reading. In Montessori classrooms, teachers incorporate both phonetic and whole-word strategies. The leading reading researchers acknowledge that we still do not know exactly how children learn to read. To meet the needs of all children, teachers need to use a variety of strategies. Our culture holds reading as an essential skill. Teachers and parents feel accountable for teaching children to read. Somehow, we have come to believe that the earlier a child reads, the smarter he or she is; however, solid research tells us otherwise. Teachers and parents need to remember that six and seven year-olds are often just learning to decode. Children this age are usually not demonstrating delays.
