Spelling Bee

AJ's teacher at Montessori school asked me to read "Brown Bear" and "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle. She said that he was ready to read. Well actually, he has "read" Brown Bear to me many times and we have it on video, however I don't and can't actually believe that he's reading. He's only memorizing I'm sure of it.

On many occassions he's pointed out all kinds of words and titles, and calling each letter out by name. I guess he understands that letters form words. But this is where the spelling gets tricky. Ask him to spell stop and he knows it's S-T-O-P especially from recognizing stop signs. Now here is where it gets tricky.

He's the EXIT sign for a door. He says, "E-X-I-T spells door!"

MONTESSORI PROGRAM

The school also provided a progress report or report card. It is so fascinating all the different tasks they are learning, in various states of readiness. P = Presented, W = Working on it, M = Mastered. I couldn't write them all down, but here is a brief summary from each of the pillars.

Image Source

PRACTICAL LIFE
* Pouring/ Tansferring Solids (includes chopsticks!)
* Pouring/ Transferring Liquids
* Polishing
* Others (Beads, Patterns, Hammering nails)
* Dressing Frames (zippers, buttons, buckles etc)
* Care of Self/ Environment (greet and introduce)
* Social Development

SENSORIAL
* Discrimination of size (Cylinders, Towers, Prisms, Rods)
* Discrimination of colours
* Discrimintation of Stereognostic (touch, weight, sound)
* Discrimination of Forms (Polygons, Geometric Solids etc)

LANGUAGE
* Pre-Writing Activities
* Build phonetic words
* Forming letter (writing letters in booklet)
* Identifying Personal Data
* Pre-Reading Activities
* Writing and Reading preparation

MATHEMATICS
* Numeration 0 to 10
* Numeration 0 to 19
* Numeration 0 to 100 (building quantities by tens, hundred chain, square chain)
* Place Value
* Addition
* Subtraction

CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
* Globe, Continent, Solar System, Time
* Botany (parts of plants, flowers)
* Zoology (parts, life cycle, vertebrate/ invertabrate)
* Science (sink float, magenetic)

Lots of ideas for Montessori teaching materials in a teacher blog