New Jobs

Another day gone by means that we are one day closer to the end of the school year. Everyday at circle time, the class goes over what the date is by counting forwards from the first of the month. Another chart counts the days left of school; by “taking away” or subtracting one each day, they’re left with the number of days left between school and summer.

Today at circle time, though, there were a few new things. Over the weekend, the teacher pulled out a few new jobs for the students to do. As they are starting a mini-unit on the ocean, the teacher added three new ocean-related jobs to the classroom. Montessori classrooms are constantly changing around the jobs in the room in order to introduce new skills and to keep the students engaged. Then the teacher shows the students how to complete each job; that is what happened in circle time today.

The first new job was for one to four people. There was a box of magnetic, upper-case letters. Students used a magnetic fishing pole to pull out one letter and then had to match it with the lower-case letter on the sheet. As the students noted, this was an example of a “letter work”, meaning that it worked on their words and spelling.

The next job was a “numbers work.” The classroom has a triangle of beads; the first row has one bead, the second has two, the third three, and so on. Each different rod has a different color bead, so the three-rod is green, the four rod is red, etc. The new job was a picture of a sailboat drawn in the outline of these rods; students were expected to count out the beads on the rods and color the picture according to the bead colors on the rods.

The third and final job was another “number work” in which students had to classify different sea-related items into groups of the same thing; for example sea glass, shells, and wooden sailboats. For the numbers one through nine, there was a different item that had each number: one seahorse, two shells, etc. The students had to line them up from one to nine.