Saturday, July 3, 2010

Montessori Classroom Guided Tour, Part 2

There is just so much to show you, I couldn't fit it all in one post!  Yesterday I showed you the Practical Life and Art Areas.  In the flow of a Montessori classroom, the next subject area is Sensorial.

This little shelf (hand-made by me no less!) saves so much space.  If I were to put it on the cabinet shelves it would take up 2/3 of that island you see behind the shelf.



The red will probably move, they filled in some empty space while I wait for replacement sensorial works.  After all these years in the classroom, I'm STILL looking for a perfect container for the rugs!

Next in the Montessori room is the Math area.


I didn't have a bead cabinet before the flood, hence the absence of beads.  Please don't count the 1000 chain, I think "Nearly 1000 as long as you don't look too closely" chain is a more accurate description.  The plant in the corner is fake -it followed me from our last location.  We didn't have much space or adequate lighting for plants there.  I spied these trees at Goodwill and decided we could polish leaves of silk plants just as easily as we could live ones!

After Math comes the Language area.  The top of the shelves should be a perfect place for real plants to grow!


I have a reading nook set up here, but I'm thinking I will move it to another spot and put a doll house in this space.


Finally, we end with the Cultural and Science materials.


Never before have I been able to put out so many materials!  As I had shelving from my last classroom I was able to use those shelves for the sensorial and math materials, leaving these built-in cabinets free for my cultural and science.


I will still present materials thematically since it seems to put parents at ease if we have unit studies.  But if Junior is wanting dinosaur work even though we are talking about Asia, then Junior will be able to have dinosaurs without me digging through stored materials!

There you have it, a tour of my classroom.  I think my students will be thrilled to be in our new space!

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