Well She Sneaks Around the World from Kiev to Carolina

It's a funny thing with these Montessori children. Once they see one friend working on something, it's all they need to get motivated. And lately just seeing me working on something gets them going. Fun game.

So we're into maps. A fun bonus to the Montessori curriculum for me has been learning more about geography. We have puzzle maps for the world, each continent and the United States. The kids like making ones to take home. Well, many of them do. Some just like taking apart and building and rebuilding and taking apart again...and again.

They start with the world, tracing the continent puzzle pieces and perforating them with a large push pin (and hopefully learning the names of the continents in the meantime!):


And a few discovered that they could trace the maps from a flat paper version (both of these children had made all of Africa already once by tracing and perforating each country's puzzle piece separately on construction paper...I don't think they regret it):




The biggest reward came for me when I overheard this conversation:

O: I'm gonna color this flag.

(shows to D)

D: Oh, that's Zaire. But it doesn't exist anymore. Now it's the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Boo-yah!

In Da Windows

When Children Motivate Each Other...

to find work:


and Shop at Target:


They immediately hugged each other when this was discovered. Hopefully that kind of reaction will last well into their teen years.

Color Potions?

shake it.

Now I call this color mixing...but it's taken on a life of its own in the Mad Lab that is the Unity Class.

Color Wheelin'

We're heavy into color mixing these days. All with the help of liquid watercolor. Tres convenient.



The finished wheel is bee-yoo-ti-ful in the windows.