Montessori: Transferring buttons (using tongs).

Summary:
The most interesting thing happened today. After break, I was at the store room looking for some art materials when I heard a loud booming music. Initially I thought it was one of the other classes doing their dance practice so I didn't bother. When I came out, I saw the children running back and forth in the hall. They were really noisy and I noticed that the road outside was parked with cars all over.

One of the children said, "I saw a grandfather go up the sky". I was surprised when I heard that. Anyway, I went out to the gate and looked out and noticed a lot of people moving back and forth.
It was only later that I remembered that there was a funeral procession nearby that I understood what the boy meant by "go up the sky", which in other words meant, the grandfather died, or went to heaven! It was most amusing. I had actually that there was a lion dance at someone's house or something!

Okay, there were three interpretations of the entire scenario.

One child said that it was Chinese New Year because it was noisy!

Another saw many flowers on the cars, so he or she said it was a wedding!

The last one said "grandfather went up to the sky".

Anyway, after that that, we practised the music for the concert. Actually, we were not too sure which music to choose, as the principal found the song "Wheels on the Bus" too slow for dancing, and without much movement. So finally we decided on two short songs, but ones that the children seemed to know and enjoy. I think we played it like more than 5 times for each song.
Jasper didn't like any of the songs, and requested for the marching song. To appease him, we let them dance to it for the last song!

I assessed the children on their knowledge of the letters. Qing Zhe and Eugene could only do up till letters G, and Zhi En had a random overall knowledge of the sounds of the letters.

So I revised with them the sounds of the letters up till the letter P, before working with them on building letters using the Pink Series Box 2 cards, which was to build letters for van, cap, men, tap and hen. I did not revise with them using the sand paper letters as taught during the course, as the teacher who teaches them do not use it.

Overall, most of the children have an overall knowledge of the letters and are able to point out the letters when asked. Even those who do not know when asked, the others will point it out for them instead, so basically I do not do much but ask them to point out the letters when asked!

I prepared the art materials for Friday after school ended. We are going to do a collage group activity for our theme this week, which is Wild Animals. We are going to do an art collage for alligators using egg trays and paint it with varying shades of green. It is the first time the children will work as a group collectively to do it, one separately for the boys and the girls. I am quite excited but let's see how it turns out.

The class will be very messy tomorrow! I am not going to wear anything fancy tomorrow in that case!
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Area: Practical Life

Activity: Transferring buttons using tongs (in an ice cube tray).

Reason: To observe child's grasping skills.
-To observe child's perseverance at the activity.
-To observe child's intellectual level.
- To observe child's concept of one to one correspondence.

Implementation:
This is a one-to-one activity. I asked Guo Xuan to the shelf to choose an activity. First he wanted to choose some activity from the Sensorial area, but I did not allow him as I had not taught him to work with it before. Then he went and took the transferring buttons using tongs tray and took it back to the table.
I showed him how to work with the tongs, that is, to grasp the tongs to transfer the buttons from one section to the other.

He started off using his pincer grip, so I showed him how to grasp it again and then let him work with the activity.
He started transferring the buttons to the other sections in a random order.(The box is half filled with buttons). I noticed that he sometimes used his fingers to hold the buttons and transfer it to another section.

I observed that Guo Xuan worked with the activity for about 5 minutes and then indicated that he didn't want to work with it. The buttons were placed all over the sections in a random order.

Then I showed him how to transfer all the buttons with the tongs and transferred it all to the other side.
He then took the tray and placed it back at the shelf.

Evaluation:

The observation that Guo Xuan used his fingers to transfer the buttons instead of using the tongs shows that he still had difficulty with grasping the tongs and needs more practice with it. He was holding the tongs like how he held a pencil instead, which is not the correct way to.
The fact that he was using his fingers also shows that he probably wanted to take the easy way out for this activity as well, and not do the activity as shown or told to.
Guo Xuan did not do the activity for very long, so that could be attributed to either his age(which he is about 3 only!) or that his attention span is still not there yet, which is still difficult for me to judge at this point of time yet.

Guo Xuan placed one button in one section, so I could see that he knew that one section was meant for one button and not two, and no trouble with his one-to-one correspondence concepts.

Personal Learning: I can learn much about a child's perseverance and patience by the way he transfers the buttons! Whether by using fingers or using the tongs.

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