Preschool Center Ideas You Can Use at Home

Children are born with a natural curiosity to learn and explore their individual surroundings. Preschool-aged children thrive in a consistent, well-prepared environment. Promoting accepted behavior helps your child understand limits and consequences. Setting up your home environment to mimic your child’s preschool center will inspire growth and learning.

Ideas for Your Preschool Center for Home Use

The next time you visit your child’s preschool center, check out the different aspects of the room. Use the ones that best fit into your home environment.

  1. Child-Sized Environment

Creating areas specifically designed for your preschooler will help promote learning. Child-sized furniture allows your preschooler to engage in the environment without difficulty. Moving around the room without hindrance develops a sense of independence.

  • Low shelves for books, activities, clothing, shoes, etc
  • Child-sized table and chairs
  • Step stools to reach bathroom sink
  • Clothes hung at a lower level in the closet
  1. Promote Self Learning

Use baskets, small tubs, and trays to store activities and other learning materials. Your preschooler can set the item on the table for further exploration. After playing, placing the items back in the basket promotes responsibility. When making up the baskets, keep items together for specific areas of learning.

For example, a math activity could include placing small objects on corresponding color cards to match the number sequence. Preschoolers with advanced levels of learning could place small items on colored cards representing basic math.

A sensory activity should focus on one or two of your preschooler’s five senses. Simply providing your preschooler with measuring cups, scoops, and different colored beans provide a chance for optimal sensory engagement.

  1. Books

Place books on low shelves directly related to your child’s interest. Allowing your child to find books of interest helps in the learning process. When your preschooler shows interest in a subject in another curriculum area, books can be a foundation for continuous learning. As your preschooler develops other interests or curiosities, add different books.

  1. Incorporate Nature

Upon entering the preschool center, you may notice the emphasis on nature. Developing your preschooler’s understanding about the natural world promotes continuous learning opportunities. Provide your preschooler with items directly from nature.

  1. Creative Environment

Incorporate art into your preschooler’s home activities. Engaging in art promotes creativity with open-ended possibilities. Enhancing vital fine motor skills, art will strengthen finger and wrist muscles needed for learning to write and other activities in the future. Setting up a box of recycled or inexpensive items for art creation will encourage creativity, vocabulary, and language and physical skills.

Implementing small changes in your home will enhance your preschooler’s natural curiosity for exploration. Using the preschool center as a basic guideline will help you provide a consistent learning environment. If you have questions about setting up a home environment, contact the Montessori School of Flagstaff Westside Campus.  We invite current and prospective families to tour our school and visit our classrooms to see the Montessori Method in action.

Five Montessori Books to Read this Fall

Fall is always a good time to start putting a reading list together, especially when you have kids that are learning using the popular Montessori method. Books are a great way for kids to get prepared for autumn and help open the door to other learning experiences. You’ll want to read these books with your children this fall.

Winter is Coming by Tony Johnson

One of the most fun things about fall for younger kids is learning how fall relates to winter. In this cute tale, a little girl visits her favorite place in the woods where she observes the changing leaves, chipmunks and squirrels gathering nuts, and other signs of fall. As she observes these fall events, she notices the gradual change to winter, creating a good starting point to discuss seasonal changes with your child.

In November by Cynthia Rylant

There is so much that goes on in nature and our lives in November that this book makes a perfect way to open up discussion of all of these. The season is starting to shift from fall to winter a lot more quickly, and it’s easy to observe animals starting to prepare. Individuals are getting together to celebrate the blessings in their lives with loved ones. The beautiful illustrations in this book are a great way to highlight all these things.

A Leaf Can Be… by Laura Purdie Salas

Kids love seeing fall leaves, but one thing your child may not have thought a lot about is that leaves have a life cycle. This book uses beautiful illustrations to show how leaves change and evolve throughout the seasons. Your child will have a better appreciation for the colorful leaves depicted everywhere during fall.

Sophie’s Squash by Pat Zietlow Miller

A little girl named Sophie has an unusual best friend – Bernice, a squash. As it gets closer to winter, Sophie starts to notice some changes in her friend. Cute illustrations and a humorous take tell the tale of how both friends get through this time of transition.

Bear Has a Story to Tell by Philip C. Snead

A bear wants to tell a story before he hibernates for the winter. However, he quickly finds that his forest friends are busy making winter preparations of their own. The illustrations help follow the bear on his quest as he learns more about what his friends are doing.

These books are a great way to help your child learn more about fall. Colorful illustrations and fun stories help bring everything to life even for the youngest kids. They’ll be all ready for fall after reading these stories!  At Montessori Children’s Center, we encourage parents to read with their children at home.  Older students are also invited to join, as the Montessori method encourages students to work together.  To see what books our students are reading this fall, visit us today!

Behavior Strategies for your Elementary Student

Maria Montessori is famously quoted as saying, “The undisciplined child enters into discipline by working in the company of others: not by being told he is naughty.” This statement sums up the process of using positive behavior strategies in the classroom. Understanding that children learn from what they are taught, as well as what they experience with their own senses, is crucial to quickly diffusing situations and maintaining order in the classroom. Misbehavior is a symptom of an underlying discomfort or emotional state, and the goal of the parent or educator is to define the problem without allowing the class to be disrupted.

Ask Three Before Me

Teachers are very busy, but some students have difficulty waiting patiently for assistance. The multi-aged environment of a Montessori classroom encourages students to work together to solve problems, and a rule which requires students to seek help from other students a minimum of three times before approaching the teacher is useful in several ways. It promotes social interaction, for example, but is also a source of accomplishment for the student who provides assistance, and allows the teacher to focus on their immediate tasks.

Classroom Design

The classroom layout itself is a type of behavior strategy intended to promote activity for a wide range of student needs. Everything is in its place, and there is space enough for everyone. In order to provide students with freedom of movement, the Montessori classroom combines elements ranging from group areas and activities to single-student activities and open spaces where students can have more room. The idea is to allow students to investigate things at their own pace and work separately or independently according to the immediate needs and projects.

Set the Tone

Children want to feel like part of the picture, and they are easily affected by tone of voice and how things are said. Avoid being accusatory, for example, but make it clear that classroom rules must be obeyed. In the same vein, it is not helpful to address children in a condescending tone. When you are speaking with a child, ask questions which elicit an informative answer rather than rote yes or no responses. Communication is central to social interaction, and Montessori relies on interaction to provide a complete learning environment.

Build Emotional Capital

Encouraging children to be positive creates a positive return. Children want to be noticed in a positive way, and doing so gives the child a sense of accomplishment. When you help children feel good about themselves, they are less likely to act out in ways that help them feel bad about their actions.

The behavior strategies will be slightly different for every classroom. Teachers may experiment with several approaches before they find the one which works best for a given situation and how individual students react. As with other aspects of Montessori education, the lessons learned through classroom behavior strategies will help them become more responsible and interested.

The Montessori School of Fremont in Fremont, California encourages and supports teachers and parents as they try different behavior strategies to find the best one that works for their child.  Montessori education believes in positive reinforcement and allowing children to explore on their own and at their own pace.  To learn more about behavior strategies used at our school, schedule a tour today.