Walking on the line

 

        Walking on the line is an exciting exercise. Though I loved the exercise, I could never present it to children in an inspiring way, that they do on their own. 

        Many times, the physical space was very constraining to the children or may the place where the line was put was not thought through and done...

        Leaving aside all these, Recently I started following a trainer from TMI, Denver who likes to help Montessori guides draw the lines on the floor. I found his little mission very interesting and inspiring and practical to help in classrooms..But the more interesting part is his thought about Walking on the line. Pasting it here for me to remember. Also, I am taking this as something to do with children more mindful when I get back to work with children.

    Apart from this I found reading the chapter "Walking on the line"  in the book Creative development very interesting.

Writing down a few lines that I would like to remember

"To detach the child from us the adults, and to attach him to the environment, so that between the child and the environment, there is a union because of which the child can act by himself alone - this is to facilitate independence"

"We can ask the child asked to sing a song while walking"

Something from the same chapter to help me consider while setting up things for Walking on the line.

"In the case of a rope-bell, the longer the rope, the more difficult the activity."

Metal Insets , Writing

 

Metal insets are one of the keys to literacy is what I have heard. Hmm,  it's true, maybe because it is one of the keys that lead you to write. It prepares the hands - the mechanism to write. When such a hand comes to the writing, it can then follow the will of the individual. But this writing ability is prepared through metal insets.

Earlier preparation:

• Lots and lots of tracing and moving around geometric figures. The hand has to go around different geometry figures- sometimes short, sometimes long
• Many different forms of repetition of exercises with geometric cabinets.

    A hand which is capable of delineating a precise contour, and an eye, which is able to follow the movement of the hand, is indirectly prepared to draw and write.

        

        So our role is to Observe how they trace and how they have control of moving around the figures goes before we present the metal inset.

Point of interest for us while presenting:

1. Start with an ellipse or circle as they have no angles. With an ellipse the area to be filled is narrower, making it easier, to begin with.
2. 
    When we draw around the frame, we draw the outline smaller than the frame.
3.  When we draw around the inset, we draw something that is larger than the inset.
4. Eventually, you have to hold the pencil at the same angle through both outlining if we want to see two concentric figures.
5.  3 pencils each serve a purpose - freedom with limits
6.  We draw the strokes as light as possible.

What is the progression we need to observe?

     In filling in the outline of the inset using the third pencil too, the child is offered a technique and certain limits. He is told to make light strokes, as light as possible, and not to go out of the limits of the inner circle, until the control of lightness is acquired. The idea is to give the child the capacity of holding the pencil and acquiring an elasticity in holding the pencil so that he need not have to make horizontal parallel lines at first. Initially, the child makes heavy enormous lines, but after a week or two he acquires the light touch. He is also told that while filling the outline with parallel lines he must start at one extremity and go to the other. In the beginning, the child finds it a bit difficult. We can only teach the child the exact technique, we must not force him to follow it. Gradually he acquires lightness of touch, and gradually the pencil mark is hardly visible. Each line is fine like that of a light pen line.

These drawings somehow restrain the hand so that it leads to the coordination of mechanical movements needed for handwriting. 

What to do next? 

    This drawing eventually leads to the development of decorative art.  It leads children to explore the composition of shapes and the relationships between them.  Now, though, it is a drawing, it's not a drawing that represents anything in the environment like flowers. Now attention is on the line and hand and hence the preparation. 

    With many figures combined, the hand is helped to fill in little spaces, to make big strokes, to fill in large spaces, to make little hooks.                                        

Linear Counting

As everyone knows, a chain of ten is where there are 10 ten bars of squares to form 100 ( a square of 10)

Here is what I want to note: what is its primary use when presented to a child?

• A glimpse of a linear representation of what a quantity 100 looks like

• Opportunity to offer a child counting from 1-100 which may not have happened with a square bar.

• Earlier the same bar gave an idea about the decimal system but now it decomposes to give the idea of stretching the bar.10, 20, 30 ....are like signposts that the child passes from one milestone to another. Counting is like going from one milestone to another and that is true everywhere in our life - like measuring and many things - That is the biggest takeaway for a child of this age and this is the biggest idea to be passed on more than anything else.

  • Counting is not based on groups in decimal systems - but just moving on from one item to another - Just like a rosary helps an adult to follow counting mentally, the chain here helps to count.

  • Once the technique of counting is strong in children, we show an idea of grouping - counting in 2s, and 3s through the next chains

  So what I must not forget or what is better to offer with these chains is

  1. Offer children exploration of chains so that they see the differences visually many times. For eg., numbers 6 and 7 vary by one quantity but squares of 6 and 7 vary by much more. If children start seeing the differences visually at this age, I am hoping it starts with them for a much longer time.

  2. I read somewhere it helps in writing numbers afterwards. Maybe that's the by-product of counting that we look for many times with children :)

  Prior to this type of counting, a few ideas which I ought to have to show children

  • 
    Knowledge of terms between 10 and 20 is crucial as well as understanding the quantities also.

  • To help a few children who can read, we can even have cards highlighting the names between 10 and 20 - where groups of units in one colour and teens in another colour.

  six teen

  fif teen

  nine teen

  
  

  • Counting with teen boards, ten boards every time shows how quantity and naming is similar between 1 and 9 and how it changes when a 10 is added. The change of words for every ten has to be highlighted to children to get them used to the counting and transition of names from one milestone to another.

  We have given the vision of the number system and visual differences across the groups in decimal systems earlier, and
  we have given the idea of counting is given in steps to ease the transition to counting.

Land and water forms and some more...

        I love geography and when I saw someone sensorially showing an island and a lake, I was just amazed. What I have read in textbooks is so demonstrated concrete to children. At the same time, had a question - why? do they need to learn geography so early? Yes, they do have an absorbent mind, but still, is it needed though? Then I got fascinated by puzzle maps, continents, countries, flags, reading them...But then I did not see much of this work being done in the classroom in my first year...

        During my third year, I started making reading labels for a few continents and still wondering where is the interest- Slowly, in few years after reading and after having a few conversations with one of my mentors, I started getting the picture a little clearer- I am only going to share what I have learnt from these materials and what is better to focus from my side...

• By starting from land and water forms, we give a vision of the whole. This vision is interesting because it can be seen as very concrete by the child. This is taken in along with the child's imagination. As the whole appeals more interesting, a child may or may not wish to know its details. Thus, they begin to understand the finer portions of details.
• The concept of WHOLE is given only to kindle interest and appeal in a grand manner to children. As a guide, this is the point of interest to follow the child to help them understand the next level of details.
  
• When it comes to the globe, it helps children realise something they hear often like the world, countries, to group the ideas that they have listened to in conversations - where children have families accustomed to travelling. - Here is the biggest reminder for me to have conversations about travel to understand what the child has experienced so far, instead of merely giving globes as a simple presentation.
• When these children have experiences of listening/travelling and know all these geographical elements, the material makes more sense to help them organize all these ideas in a very orderly manner.
• Otherwise, I see the puzzle maps as an aid to help children discriminate irregular shapes of different colours - the child who has experience of discriminating regular shapes and colours has progressed to applying that knowledge at a different level. So the whole point of interest is shifted here from understanding countries to visually discriminate shapes and seen as an intellectual activity to build intelligence -(not to do anything more with a real understanding of countries)
• Still, as with other material, after enough experience names or rather nouns have to be given (not seen as a learning outcome for geography) in these classified ways, children just acquire words that are new. Slowly they are not new words but become a part of them and help build a child's repository of words- this may gradually help them to understand later when they read- So giving words here, I see as similar to naming objects

This is my reflection and Copying here an excerpt about how flag maps came into a classroom to get a bigger picture

                When the children were walking on the line doing the exercise with flags made of pieces of coloured paper in their hands, one of the flags was the flag of one of the countries. The children asked for flags of different countries, which we gave them. Many of these flags are sensorially stiking and easily recognisable because they have symbols which are special to various counties. The arms in the Italian flag, the Swastika in the German, the sickle in the Russian, the funny rectangles in the English. and the various stars in the American - these special differences seen in the flags were attractive to the children. So we made another glove on which each nation was of a different colour, which has no other distincton except the border limits of these nations. The children were asked to pin each flag in the map of the country to which it belonged.

Geometric Solids, Stereognostic bags and some more....

 To help refine stereognostic sense

I have often wondered why Geometric solids were first, then the bags, and then the rest of the exercises.

Geometric solids - Although they vary, they are regular in dimensions like the geometry cabinet. The child who handles these solids is given many many experiences with holding them, carrying them, feeling them, and then given the names

Now I am just going to write down a few reflections:

• Geometric solids carry everything that the child knows from the geometry cabinet. It gives a more realistic perspective of shapes that they can see in buildings, pictures, and things around them for children. Here there is no abstraction of a single quality, but the amalgamation of abstraction of many qualities put together. It is kind of giving an idea of stereognostic sense as a whole with this material- and then going into specifics
• The structure of the 3-period lesson is followed to a certain extent here- You give the names and then ask the child to touch, visualise and name the solid (like the 3rd part of 3 periods)
• The exercise is like the 2nd period of 3 period - like you ask for a solid and then the child picks among the solids
• Throughout these materials, the colour is tried to be kept as a constant factor in bags...
• 
  Across all the 4 bags -after passing on the idea of visually seeing the objects with hands, now its time to find identities, finding the gradation among a few things - All these exercises appeal to me as though they help in the acquisition of knowledge and mystery bag is kind of application of your knowledge built so far.
• I have read somewhere that children can even describe the things they take out of a mystery bag and we may keep objects more difficult to feel, more difficult to describe like a pod of cardamom.
• Now coming back to solids and cards- I wonder what is the point of interest with these? Now that children have gathered a sense of solids, its time to apply that and see how they are all related -exploration - so what do we have to really pass on - how many solids can fit a shape or sometimes one solid to one shape mapping or take a solid and how many shapes actually fit in.I was always carried away by the technique of this exercise and got confused in the beginning.....and it's all coming back to the geometry cabinet in a way...

Fabrics

 'Fabrics' is one of the materials offered to help children refine their tactile senses.

A fabrics box calls for six to eight pairs of fabrics cut into identical squares contrasting/similar in texture and colour. I always used to wonder how this came up because out of all other manufactured materials in a CASA, this is one of the handmade materials and that means it is set by the guide in the classroom - the personality of the guide gets reflected especially in handmade materials.....

    

It also meant I needed to understand where the references came historically from......were there any notes that people referred to?

And then I read about them under a title called ' Game of the blind' (Book: The Montessori method)

A pretty little chest composed of drawers within within which are arranged rectangular pieces of stuff in great variety. There are velvet, satin, silk, cotton,linen etc. We have the child touch each of these pieces, teaching the appropriate nomenclature and adding something regarding the quality, as coarse, fine, soft. Then, we call the child and set him at one of the tables where he can be seen by his companions, blindfold him, and offer him the stuffs one by one. He touches them, smooths them, crushes them between his fingers and decides, "It is velvet- It is fine linen, it is rough cloth? etc. This exercise provokes general interest....

Now, this makes sense for a guide to think about when we have to set up, isn't it?