Impressed with Montessori (again!)

Collin & friend washing clothes


Collin decorating the Christmas Tree


Triangle work (see the different types - isosceles, equilateral, and scalene used to create triangles)


Brass polishing work (so cute!)

(Photos taken by Miss Brianna - she is so nice to document the different works the kids do at school!)

I spent the morning observing Collin's preschool class. I learned so much, and was so impressed with the things these little four year olds are learning. These kids have memorized most of the 71 Phonograms (see Spalding method) and have carefully learned the different writing strokes used in cursive writing. I mean, Miss Brianna can ask them to close their eyes while she secretly writes a phonogram on her small dry-erase board; she just simply tells them the strokes she is using, as in "connector stroke, uphill stroke, downward basement stroke..." and then when she is done, she asks the kids if they know what phonogram she just wrote. Three out of three - the kids got them right - and they were not easy phonograms either (qu??).

I observed Collin hand-washing, remembering each and every step Miss Brianna showed him, including carefully folding and rolling his apron; and then happily playing the Bank Game. It is a game where the teacher asks the child to get a certain quantity, like 250, and the child goes to get that in object form: 2 100 squares and 5 tens. Collin did this for a long time, maybe 10 times, stopping by where I was observing and telling me "She told me to get 9 tens again!" or "She told me to get 6 hundreds, 4 tens, and 9 ones Mom!"

Needless to say, I was amazed at how much he has learned from there -- it just inspired me to kick start my home preschool again - in "hibernation" since Maddie was born!