Fall Montessori Older Preschool Group

Hello, Montessori Parents!

In the second part of our unit, we talked a lot about the sky----And how we can get a birds eye view of things!  Whether it is climbing a ladder, a tree, or up in an airplane!  We read a book about a tall, tall tree.  Little by little the leaves fall, revealing all of the creatures that live in the tree, and finally revealing a tree house where the narrator of the story tells the story.  We used pattern blocks to design our own tree and tree house.  They were very proud of their artistic creations!

Welcome to BIRDLAND!!  We really took flight talking about different kinds of birds, their unique bird calls, and sharp colors.  We mimiced the movements of birds in air as we soared, fluttered, twirled, perched, glided, shivered, etc!  We had about 20 different movments that we went through in our bird costumes, and these smart kiddos would know if I skipped even ONE!    That really says a lot about their rock solid memories week to week!!

I wish I had more pictures to post---but not all of them would upload!  (If you want to read about some of the other activities we did, feel free to check out the preschool blog from our UNI classes:  http://joyfulnoisekindermusik.blogspot.com/2012/01/fall-see-what-i-saw-preschoolers.html)  That will show you some of the other activities that are not pictured!
Thanks for a great semester!  See you in the Spring!

Tricia

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Hello, Montessori Families!
It has been a great start to our Fall Semester!  We have a wonderful group of young learners.  They love to contribute! We are having so much fun learning about music through the story of Grasshopper Park. 

We have learned about the C Major Scale and a musical slide (glissando) by singing this song:
(Have them show you how it goes!)

Climb up the ladder,

Climb to the tip top!

Sliiiiiiiiide down!

 Here we are matching our bodies to the slide whistle.  (This is a big hit with the kiddos!)

Here we are playing "Climb up the ladder, climb to the tip top!  Sliiiiiide down!" on the pianos.  We are building a C Major Scale going up and doing a glissando going down.

We have had some fun "following the leader" with ball actions. The song goes like this:
"Do as I'm doing!  Follow, follow, me!  Do as I'm doing! Follow, follow, me!"  We take turns being the leader and we have come up with lots of creative ways to tap, bounce, and roll our balls!

We also have been working on body patterns.  Similar to hop-scotch, we alternate two different movements.  Sometimes our patern is ABAB, sometimes ABBABB, etc.  We have even gotten coordinated enough to do our patterns as partner motions!

We also work on following directions and doing patterns with our instruments.  Here we are tapping in different ways with our rhythm sticks!

We did a little dance with hula hoops.  Here we are dancing with our hoops!

 We also did a little "light dance" using finger lights.  These are lots of fun!

Lots more to come in the second half our our semester!

Coming up we will be talking about descriptive words, and we will be playing guessing games using clues!  To reinforce that at home, put some random objects in a bag.  Give clues to see if your child can guess what is in the bag.  Then switch roles and see if your child can give YOU the clues!