Week 12 - Review

We had many opportunities this week for some extended work. The children are getting a good grasp of the concept of units, rods, squares and cubes. Some of us even began static addition!  It is so exciting to watch the children when they "figure out" and equation. Here is a photo of the children at work.

placing the objects on a new mat to figure out the sum!

They did it!

They asked me to take another photo - they didn't have the units in a "proper" position.

Some of the children are also beginning to extend their language work - moving from recognizing the sounds of each letter and the name to wanted to spell out the words.  We've reviewed that each word must have a vowel.  We begin using the moveable alphabet and then we can print it on the paper.

Other children are beginning to write their own books!  This is truly one of my most favourite times - because the language they are learning becomes their own and they are confident in their abilities. The ability to transpose words on a guide sheet to their own paper is quite a skill and it's terrific that they are so keen to do so.  Today, some of the children decided they wanted to make a shape poster.  So, they got right to work, tracing the metal insets, cutting each shape out, reading out the shape names, matching the names to the shape they had made and then glueing them on the poster board. So much detail, completed independently, at the age of 4!

And, it still blows me away (and some visitors that we had this week, Thursday, 4 women) that the children not only can sing a song about Canada, Central America, and South America, but that they actually can identify the countries! As I work with the children, I say the name of the country (puzzle piece) as I remove it from the puzzle. I then ask the child to place "said country" in the puzzle. I was working with one little guy and I asked him to place Chile in the puzzle first. He did, and then immediately grabbed the next piece and said "Argentina", and "Bolivia", etc.  WOW!!!

We also sampled some new foods this week...some were well received, one was not!  On Monday & Tuesday, I tried the children with pumpkin soup from Venezuela...NO ONE liked it!  I thought it tasted nice - so I'm not sure if it was just that they knew it was pumpkin and thought it was weird to eat it as soup?!?

Wednesday, we had Peanut Vegetable Soup, from Bolivia - this was a success, so much so, they asked me to let their mom's know the recipe...and asked for me to serve it again!

Grind into very fine pieces 2 cups of skinless raw peanuts
Put into a large pot
peanuts
2 L of chicken broth
1 large onion, diced
4 large potatoes, diced
4 carrots, sliced
Cook for 30 minutes
Add
1/4 cup uncooked rice (I used brown basmati)
1 cup of peas
Cook 15 minutes

Thursday, due to an avoidance of nuts in food - we had chicken vegetable soup.

Today, another success - each child had 2 servings plus some had a small bowl of chicken vegetable soup!  "Enchilada Casserole" from Paraguay ***Very EASY***
Preheat oven to 350F
Fry
1 lb of ground beef
1 onion chopped
2/3 cup of green pepper, chopped
1 tsp salt
Add
2 cups tomato sauce
6 cups of whole kernel corn (drained if using canned, I used our frozen corn from garden)
Mix well and place in a casserole dish. Bake 20 minutes. Remove from oven and spread
1 cup of cheese (I used havarti)
Return to oven and bake additional 5 minutes.

All in all, things are going well. I am looking at 3 different places this weekend for possible spaces for expanded the Montessori School and will keep you informed on that process.

Enjoy the blustery weekend ahead!
Angela