practical life

Lots of news to report:

I am more than half-way through the schooling to be a certified Montessori teacher. This feels great! Also, DAUNTING! There's more work to this that I want there to be. I want it to be: I care about Montessori, I believe in Montessori, I can teach Montessori...but really, there are some intermediate steps. Most of these steps are usefully -- like knowing the procedure for table scrubbing or sandpaper letters.

So, my task this year is to dig in deep to those extensions and variations to the materials. One of the mentors in my life convinced me that the materials have the answers for my kiddos that spend all day in school. Yes, the need some community driven extras, but there is plenty in the materials to fill up a 10 hour school day.

I have had so much energy for the classroom in this past week (about 2 weeks out from the start of the school year). Lots of thinking coming together. There's a little nagging thought that I'm overthinking things. That I'm putting too much of myself into this. That there really *isn't this much* to think and plan. What if I'm setting myself up for being disappointed.

I know I have the curse of big thinking. It gets me in trouble when I want to do 10 things in a week and can really only get to 2. I need to scale down. I have a 100 ideas for this year and realistically, 20 might be the max. I'm good in the sense that I'm just trying to get a sequence down for the enrichment activities that I plan. The sequence would mirror the kind of sequence in the albums.

For example, I'm looking at what I want to do with art and cooking curriculum. I really want to go clay crazy this year, so we will start with playdough (familiar from at home) to learn how to treat the clay in class and work up to making thinks to take home with model magic and sculpey.

Or for cooking (which my practical life training treated in a mish-mosh way) figuring out the individual skills that kiddos need to prepare food in a small group. Haha, patience is the first one! That was one of the most stressful activities last year because the children would say, "I want a turn, I want a turn," because I was disorganized and didn't layout a consistent ground rule about prep. Or we had to go back to the kitchen to get something, etc. Now, it will be fun to prepare things with the kids because we'll follow a sequence and keep items in the classroom that we use a lot. If I give a lesson (and make a work) about leveling off flour, the kids can do it and I can stress less when we're making cookies.

Also, I'm on a healthy food kick. Got some cool cutting implements and want to do more fruits and veggies. Most of my class last year ate a lot of different fresh stuff.

More to report soon, I'm sure.

Meanwhile, some tasty illustrations courtesy of training lunch hour: