Montessori Musings: Summer Practical Life Activity

Here is another Practical Life activity that is perfect for summer when everything outside is green and blooming. This is a simple transfer activity where wooden leaves are hidden in a bowl of sand. The child finds the leaves and transfers them to the bowl on the left. 

I have a preschool child who is crazy over sand, so she found this activity to be a lot of fun. 

A closer look at the wooden leaves in the sand.

I didn't come to Godly Play with a background in Montessori.  But after practicing Godly Play for about a year, a strong desire to learn more about the pedagogy that inspired GP began to grow in me. I enrolled in an on-line course from Karen Tyler that taught me the basic principles behind the Montessori Method. Through the course's many wonderful albums (presentation ideas for each subject), I learned to create simple activities like the one above. Though the course is aimed at people working with preschoolers, I have been able to use the principles with all ages. 

Practical Life activities support and complement the other work going on in a Godly Play classroom. The activities teach practical skills as the name suggests, but also train the children to concentrate deeply. My friend, Leslie at Thoughts from the Sheepfold, writes: 

"Concentration, peace and contentment are key attributes of prayer and meditation, and practical life builds up these attributes in the children better than anything else."

I'm so glad that I can be a part of helping children in this process!

Montessori Musings: Spring Practical Life Tray Activity

I wanted to show you this easy Practical Life Activity with a spring insect theme. The children make the pattern on the cards by stringing insect buttons on a pipe cleaner.

This activity trains fine motor skills as the child places the pipe cleaner through the small button holes. Mathematical skills are trained as well through the recognition of patterns. While this activity is mainly for 4-5 year olds, a couple of older children found it interesting as well on Sunday. They began to make up their own patterns after a while instead of following the cards, which is a logical progression.

I found the buttons at a hobby shop, and then made the cards myself by downloading free clip art images.

Linked to Montessori Monday at Living Montessori Now

Montessori Musings: Math

I've been taking Karen Tyler's wonderful on-line Montessori course since January. Although I don't get to study nearly as often or as long as I would like, I am still learning some valuable things that I am able to use with both of my children.  Seit Januar mache ich eine Montessori Ausbilding im Internet bei Karen Tyler. Obwohl ich mir mehr Zeit zum Lernen wünschte, trotzdem erfahre ich sehr viel, das ich bei den eigenen Kindern und im Klassenzimmer umsetzen kann. 

When I was in the States over Easter, I purchased some materials from Alison's Montessori and Kid Advance that I have been pleased with:  a wooden Base 10 set, trinomial cube, division board. (Wooden Montessori materials are still much more affordable in the States than in Europe.) Während ich in den Staaten über die Osterferien war, habe ich neues Montessori Material gekauft: 121-teiligen mathematischen Würfel, trinomischen Würfel, Divisionsbrett. (Leider sind solche Dinge viel teurer in Europa.)

I love the holistic approach to mathematics in Montessori in that the children learn the three-dimensional practicalities behind the abstract concepts introduced. They learn literally what a "thousand" or a "hundred" feels like by seeing and touching it.  Der ganzheitliche Ansatz zur Mathematik in der Montessori Pädagogik gefällt mir sehr.  Die Kinder erfahren die abstrakten Konzepten auf eine konkrete Art und Weise.  Sie wissen wie "ein tausend" oder "ein hundert" sich fühlt, weil sie es sehen und tasten können. 

Below my daughter is using the wooden Base 10 set to match quantities with the teen numerals. Unten lernt meine Tochter die Mengen von 10-19 mit den Zahlen einzuordnen. 

A game that I learned from Karen's material is to blindfold the child and have her find a particular quantity. We started by finding one unit, then ten units, then 100, and finally 1000.  Afterwards, I had her find uneven numbers like "17" of something. Im Karens Unterricht habe ich ein Spiel mit dem mathematischen Würfelmaterial gelernt:  die Augen des Kindes werden verbunden und man bittet es "1", "10","100", oder "1.000" zu finden. Danach musste sie ungerade Mengen wie "17" finden. 

We have also been working on simple addition with the table number rods that I purchased here in Germany from E-bay. She enjoys this and sometimes the number rods turn into a house for the fairies.  But hey, why not? Wir haben auch mit numerischen Stangen, die ich in Deutschland bei Ebay gekauft habe, gearbeitet um mit Addition anzufangen. Und manchmal werden die Stangen zum Haus für die Feen werden. Aber warum nicht?

Linked to Montessori Monday at One Hook Wonder

Epiphany

Last Sunday we celebrated Ephiphany with the children in our church plant.  (The official feast day is on January 6 in Germany, but we didn’t have services on this day.)  The children have, of course, heard the story of the Three Wise Men many times during Advent. The Godly Play story for Epiphany stresses that Jesus was a king like no other and allows the children to ponder the meanings of the gifts. Although gold was a fitting gift for a king, frankincense and myrrh were unusual gifts because Jesus was an unusual king. 

I also added some “wondering questions” for the children at the end to help them explore the Three Kings’ spiritual journey and revelation.  How do you think the Three Wise Men felt when they finally reached the stable where Baby Jesus lay?  Do you think they found what they had expected to find?  Which of the three gifts do you like the best and why?

For the creative phase, the children could either choose to pick out their own art materials and work freely or they could work on an “angeleitet” (instructional) art project.  Below is the project that I presented.  It is a simple piece that came to me when I was out jogging and ran past an art gallery in our neighborhood with negative space paintings.  I chose the star as a symbol of God’s revelation that often comes after a long spiritual journey.  I left it white as a metaphor for revelation being an empty or blank place in us that God fills. 

 

A 3-year-old working on her project.

To paint this project:

1. Give the children a star pattern to trace or allow them to draw their own in the center of the page. 
2. Using a ruler, have them draw straight lines wherever they choose from the outside of the star to the edge of the paper, dividing the paper into quadrants.
3. Ask the children to choose 2 “cool” colors and 2 “warm” colors (after explaining what this means) and paint the quadrants.
4. The children may then fill the quadrants however they choose either with designs or pictures.

This is from a child who chose to work freely.

A normal Godly Play worship service does not usually include Montessori motor skill exercises, but because we have 3 and 4-year-olds in our services, I like to include some to help them further think about what they have heard and to help them in a practical way. Because the Godly Play story deals with the gifts that the Wise Men brought, I had the children practice wrapping gifts. I had planned to do this before Christmas, but couldn’t come up with enough small boxes to do it.  Then I saw on Leptir that Nataša had used wooden blocks and I thought this was an excellent idea! 

The tray with the materials. 

 

Maybe these ideas will help someone next year!

Quote of the Day

"If a child finds no stimuli for the activities which would contribute to his development, he is attracted simply to 'things' and desires to possess them."

- Maria Montessori

Parable of the Mustard Seed

This week at our Familienbrunch (Family Brunch) I shared the Parable of the Mustard Seed with the children.  Jesus told this story when asked to describe his Father’s kingdom and likens it to the smallest of all seeds that grows into a large bush-like tree.  One of the things that Godly play does well is allowing the listener to enter into the mystery of God without too much being explained away.  And GP’s treatment of the parables is excellent. Even though I have heard this parable all of my life, I discover some new aspect each time I tell it that I hadn’t thought of before.

Below is a picture of the materials that I used.  Traditional GP materials are always made of wood, but it can be quite expensive when you are first starting out to purchase all the materials.  And while I tend to be a jack-of-all-trades, carpentry is not one of the things I have experience with!  As a result, I use natural materials as often as possible, but I am not above using Playmobil figures when appropriate to the story.

The questions in the Ergründungsgespräch (The Wondering Phase) at the end are great:  What did the sower do while waiting for the mustard seed to grow?  Could one take the tree and put it back into the ground?  Was the sower happy when the birds came?  What could the tree be? What or who could the trees be?  The kids were a bit restless during this part today, so it was challenging to keep them on track. : )  However, one of the older three-year-olds was fully engaged and had some interesting answers. 

For the Creative Phase, we painted flowerpots and planted cress, an edible and fast-growing plant found in Germany.  I like to do activities in children’s church that help them explore God’s creation. Many children in the western world and in big cities are somewhat disconnected from nature, and I believe that experiencing nature is vital to children being able to explore the character of God and understand the Bible.  It is also amazing how much joy children find in getting their hands dirty with planting seeds and then being able to eat the fruits of their labor.   The inspiration for this project came from Nataša, a Montessori teacher in Croatia, whose blog, Leptir, I follow. 

One of the Montessori elements that I also value and try to implement in our children’s worship services is the idea of giving the children different options instead of having them all do the same thing at the same time.  While there is always some sort of artistic way of exploring the story, the children may also choose to play with the materials in the story. 

This week I offered another option which was a hit.  (It, too, was inspired by Nataša in Croatia!)  One classic Montessori exercise to develop fine motor skills and the ability to classify and categorize is to have the children transfer objects with a tweezer from one place to another.  Here to go along with the theme of planting, I placed dried beans in a bowl of sand and had the children fish them out with tweezers and transfer them to another bowl.  

Update 2012: Please click here to see a later post on the Parable of the Mustard Seed and here to find out about the new materials.

What is Godly Play?

How do I summarize Godly Play?  The technical definition would be that it is a form of religious education that developed out of the teachings of Maria Montessori.  But it is much more than that.  It is storytelling at its best. It is an art form.  It is a gateway to exploring the Biblical narrative and helping others find their way within as well.  It is a language teacher that helps young children find words to describe what they experience with God. It is a way of preparing one's self to meet with the triune God.

Maria Montessori was the first woman to gain a medical degree from the University of Rome. At age 40, she stopped practicing medicine in order to devote herself entirely to the world of education and she revolutionized it.  Though a devout Catholic, she never specifically developed her ideas in the area of religious pedagogy.  Her successors eventually took on this challenge.   In the year that I was born (1971!), an episcopal priest named Jerome Berryman from Houston, Texas travelled to Bergamo, Italy to study with Montessori's direct successors.  Out of his educational experiences there, Berryman developed the concept of Godly Play and put his ideas into practice at Christ Cathedral in Houston.

Godly Play is quiet, meditative and thoroughly engaging.  A storyteller sits with children in a circle around him.  The children are asked to if they are ready to hear a story.  Then storyteller then begins to tell a Biblical story using natural materials (wood, paper, felt, sand, etc.).  He intentionally doesn't make eye contact with the children, but is completely focused on the story, so that the listeners become absorbed in what they are hearing.

After the story, the storyteller leads the children in an "Ergründungsgespräch", which literally translates as "to fathom" and "conversation".  In English, this is called "The Wondering Phase".  The storyteller asks open-ended questions beginning with phrases like "Ich frage mich . . . " (literally: I ask myself . . ., but English-speaking storytellers say, "I wonder . . .") invites the listeners to say whatever is on their minds. The questions sound a bit strange the first time you hear them, but they are designed with intention to allow the listener to identify with and put themselves within the story.  I have to admit that I was shocked the first time I heard this phase described as "The Wondering Phase" in English, because it sounded to my ears a bit too fairy tale-ish.  (I first learned about Godly Play entirely in German and it wasn't until much later that I became acquainted with any of the English terms. ) 

Afterwards comes the "Creative Phase" in which the children are invited to pick out artistic materials to express their thoughts and respond to what they have heard.  They are also allowed to play with the story they have heard or pick another story from the shelves in the room to play with, which is very important since children learn by playing.  In case you're wondering (no pun intended), a  typical Godly Play worship also has a prayer time with the children, worship in the form of singing, and a "feast", a snack that also has the idea of communion embedded within it.

Although Godly Play came from America, it has been translated into the culture here in a thoroughly German way.  There is a German non-profit made up mostly of theologians and professionals who are now writing their own original Godly Play stories instead of merely translating Berryman's stories.  They also train people (like me) to do Godly Play in churches and schools.

That's about all I can describe in one post and any Godly Play enthusiast will tell you that I left out a lot, but I hope to talk more about specific aspects in future posts.

Below is a picture of Erich playing with some of the materials. You can see Jonah, the Nativity, the Risen Christ and Mount Sinai being used as a boat with the articles of the tabernacle in them: : )  The sand is our "Wüstensack" (Desert Bag).