The Geometric Cabinet, one of our visual activities, will be presented this week.  The cabinet has six drawers, each containing wooden frames and blue wooden insets.  The drawers are arranged as follows: drawer 1 contains circles, drawer 2 contains rectangles, drawer 3 contains six types of triangles, drawer 4 contains polygons, drawer 5 contains curvilinear shapes, and drawer 6 contains quadrilaterals.

 Sound Bags will continue to be introduced this week, focusing on f, i, n, z, and v..

I am excited to play the zero game with the class.  We will spread the number cards face down on the table; each child will then take a turn selecting a card and turning it over.  They will whisper the number to me and then clap that many times.  The rest of the class guesses the number by listening to the claps.  When a child picks the number zero, they remain silent and do not clap.  Maria Montessori considered this activity a way to enhance the child’s understanding of the number zero and a character-building activity.  It is hard for the child who picks zero not to participate in the game's actions.

We will continue our study of continents by introducing South America and Europe.  I will also introduce Land and Water forms to the children.  These are a set of geographical landforms and the corresponding, but converse, water forms (e.g., an island and a lake). These forms allow the children to have hands-on experience of placing items on the land and in the water areas to aid with their understanding of these geographical formations.