What DID we do all day?

Pitch Notation with the Bells, Part One

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:22:00 +0000

Welcome back to week two of "Montessori Music Week" here at What DID We Do All Day? !

I finally had time to stage a little amateur (very) photo shoot of some of the works that can be done with the Bells Music Signs and Notes material concerning pitch. Last week I wrote about modifying this set to create some rhythmic notation works.

Disclaimer: This is only a blog post. It would be a lot of work and too much typing to recreate full presentations here on the blog for all of these works and for the works I haven't included. I am not trying to provide full presentations or, for that matter, all of the presentations. I'm just trying to demonstrate the general types of things that can be done with these materials. There are a lot of little presentations before and after these works that I haven't mentioned at all. So, please don't get upset if it seems like I've skipped a step or ten.

Sometime after the child has demonstrated the ability to match the bells (Miller states that "This shows that the child can hear the pitches and can distinguish one from another."), we can introduce the names of the pitches. This is similar to introducing the sandpaper letters to the child after they can hear the letter sounds and can distinguish one from another. Just as in the sandpaper letters, you only introduce two or three at a time and use a three period lesson as necessary. Basically, you strike or ring a bell and then say "This is c." or "This is g." White discs with the appropriate note names can be placed in front of the bells.

Other notations lessons involve a set of chalkboards with the staff drawn on them called "green boards" or "staff boards." I have been waiting for mine (on backorder) to come from Nienhuis for several months to no avail. I made my own temporarily out of 11X17 construction paper and a permanent black marker. You want these to be at least 17 inches wide. If you can find something the right size, you could make your own from a white board or chalkboard by drawing the lines on with a permanent marker.

The first board that is used is a simple board that features only the five empty lines of the staff (and sometimes a leger line). If yours can be written on and erased you would use this board to introduce the word "staff" and demonstrate how to number the lines and spaces:

Just in case you don't know the numbering, I snapped some photos of portions of the page in my album:

You can also get a glimpse on those album pages (right hand side) of how a blank piece of paper, chalkboard, or white board will later be used to name the "ledger line" and give a "verbal way to describe the lines and spaces created by the use of ledger lines" (Miller, 18).

Another kind of staff board that is used has numbered noteheads printed directly on it. Its purpose is the "Association of the note names with their proper places on the staff that uses the G-clef" (20).

I made mine from 11x17 construction paper again. I glued on 1" cardstock circles I dug out of the package of collage materials in the boys' art closet. The numbers are stickers from the scrapbook section of the craft store.

A set of 8 black discs are needed with the letters on one side and the number on the other (c=1, d=2, etc.,)

Note: You could make discs like these by spray painting the 1" wooden discs sold in packages at the craft store and applying adhesive numbers and letters from the scrapbook section.

The child first labels their set of bells with the white discs shown earlier. The adult places the eight black discs near the staff board in a cluster. The child chooses any numbered disc and places it on its corresponding number on the staff, turns it over, says its note name, then plays the corresponding bell. They continue in random order until all of the discs are on the board.

numbers up

letters up

Another activity I think is pretty neat is the work involving note names on the unmarked green staff. This work uses the green staff board with the ledger line and also a collection of homemade ledger lines (cut from cardstock and laminated).

The Bells Music Signs and Notes material came with 32 white discs (4 each of c, d, e, f, g, a, b, c) to use on the staff boards in addition to the 8 white discs with note names that are used with the bells directly. Again, the child sets up the white discs with the note names in front of the appropriate bells.

The child picks a white disc, says its name, and looks it up on the c-major scale control strip. Then, the disc is placed upside down on the appropriate line or space on the staff board. I photographed two middle-c's so you could see a disc on both the printed leger line (right) and on the homemade laminated one (left).

Then, the child plays the corresponding bell and does a few more. They could place all of the discs or choose to stop at any point. The board would look like this:

As you can see, this work also requires that the child place the G-clef on the staff board.

When the child is done placing discs, per Miller's instructions, "pick a particular line or space. Turn all of the discs on that line or space over. They should have the same name." (22)

I think (although the presentation doesn't say) that you would turn the discs back over before you check another line or space. If you didn't, the board would look something like this:

As with so many Montessori works, there are three-part cards , matching cards, description cards, and booklets that can be purchased or made to go with all of these works. I haven't made mine yet. As I do I will share whatever downloads I am able.

I have labelled this post "part one" for several reasons. One is that I would like to show you the "parallel exercises" for note names of the C-Major scale (both matching and grading) once I have made the materials. Also, as we move into more advanced work I anticipate that there may be more posts with this title and that having them identified might be useful.

It looks like there will be a third week of "Montessori Music Week" here next week. I have had some requests for information about our rhythm band activities, recorders, and music appreciation. I'm sure some of you have had "enough music" and are ready to see some of our other work again. I do have some projects completed that I would love to photograph before I forget all about them. I also was able to photograph a few more sound bins. Perhaps you'll see a mixture of posts next week. My sister had a baby this week and I am sincerely hoping that my new niece's arrival disrupts our schedule somewhat!

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The Major Scale Pattern: Free Download

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:58:00 +0000

Welcome back to week two of "Montessori Music Week" here at What DID We Do All Day? !

The music album I am using, Jean K. Miller's Montessori Music: Sensorial Exploration and Notation with the Bells, includes a series of presentations that help the child learn half steps, whole steps, the tetrachord, and the major scale pattern. (Whole steps and half steps may be called "tones" and "semi-tones" if you are across the pond.) The boys have not gotten to these presentations yet, but I made the materials.

The black and white squares on the Montessori bells boards are similar to, but not exactly like a piano keyboard.

bells board with half and whole steps labelled with cards

a piano keyboard

The white squares on the Montessori bells boards don't touch one another if they are a whole step apart, unlike a piano keyboard in which the white keys wrap under the black. This makes it a lot easier for the child to identify the half and whole steps on the Montessori bells board. After a three-period lesson is given on the half and whole step cards and they are sorted into piles, one can pick two adjacent bells that have a space between them. Play and sing the bells. Then say something like "These bells have a space between them. This is called a whole step." Finally, place the appropriate card. A similar procedure would be followed to introduce the half step. You would continue on until all of the half and whole steps are labeled.

The Montessori bells boards are manufactured in two pieces. The first tetrachord of the major scale is on one and the second tetrachord is on the other. This allows you to take one keyboard on which the bells are placed and move it in front of the other keyboard in order to see that the two tetrachords of the major scale have the same pattern (W,W,H). I will have to cut my one-piece felt board in two in order to do this lesson.

The child will have learned so play and sing the ascending and descending scale in earlier presentations. This is the first time they see that the major scale is built using a particular pattern of whole and half steps. Usually a control chart is provided so that the child can check their work labeling the whole and half steps.

control chart

Whole and half step cards and the control strip are available for purchase through Nienhuis.
I made my own and am sharing the files with my readers via the links below. Due to the size of the control strip I made it was little tricky to create a sharable file. You'll have to print onto legal-sized paper and do a little cutting and pasting. Once you laminate, you shouldn't be able to tell the difference :)

whole step file

half step file

Half Step and Whole Step Control Strip

Miller states that "An understanding of whole steps, half steps and the tetrachord are concepts which prepare children for work with the tone bars during the years from six to twelve." The tone bars provide two octaves of notes and the child will be able to construct any major scale they wish by following this pattern of whole and half steps.

Enjoy! Tomorrow I hope to continue this series and post a little bit about the pitch notation materials.

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Dum ditty, dum ditty, dum dum dum...

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:10:00 +0000

Welcome back to week two of "Montessori Music Week" here at What DID We Do All Day? ! Today, I am going to talk about drums and little bit about the Montessori philosophy concerning "care of the environment. Tomorrow we will be back to the bells with some free downloads for your music theory works!

Now, on to the matter of a good drum. As an economical choice for primary and elementary-aged kids I really, really like this drum:

Remo Kids Percussion, Floor Tom, 10 Diameter with Mallet, Rain Forest Fabric, $29

It is unusual in that it it can be played either with the included, soft mallet or with the hands. Only use a soft mallet with this drum.

Remo 10" Black Mallet with Cloth-Covered Rubber Head

Some similar Remo drums come with more of a "stick" which I don't like. Wood mallets will damage the head. It seems to me that those plastic sticks would as well. The other mallets are perfect.

This drum doesn't have to be tuned. It stands on its own feet. If the child is big enough to hold different types of drums properly (upper elementary) there are a lot of other choices. If you have questions about those, ask me. However, if you don't hold a hand drum properly it doesn't sound good. A footed drum like this one makes everything a lot easier on the child.

The diameter on this drum (10") is a good size for hand-drumming. Many of the other Remo choices (conga, bongos) are so small in diameter they are really only good for drumming on the edge. You want the child to be able to experience the low sound they get from drumming with the palm in the middle as well as the high sound achieved by drumming with the fingers on the edge. This drum is made economical by its 7.5" height.

A couple other choices:

My favorite drum, and usually the favorite of kids is a 26" tall Remo tubano.

Remo TU-0514 14" Pretuned Tubano $140

These come in 10, 12, and 14 inch diameters. Kids always pick the 14" and it sounds really cool to boot. The floor tom is $30 though and the tubano is $140. Again, this is a footed drum but its height is perfect for a small child standing or for a larger child or an adult to play seated. The floor tom really is just a short tubano.

At home, we are currently using these:

Remo Kid's Percussion 8" x 14" Pre-tuned Djembe, $54

These are great drums and are my favorite next to the footed tubanos. They take some work to make sure the kids are holding them right. My boys really can't hold them correctly, so they play them standing with the included strap. Ours our "loaners" so you will see I keep them up high so they aren't damaged when I'm not looking.

There are a lot of drum choices in the Remo rainforest collection collection. I like the following: floor tom, tubanos, djembe, and frame drums. The kids do not seem to like the bongos or the conga due to the small diameter of the heads. I had a larger set of tunable bongos in a different brand that they liked a lot better.

I like the Remo rainforest collection because they don't need tuning. However, a permanent drum head means the head can't be replaced when damaged. If you hit these with things you shouldn't or rub them up against wall or furniture while transporting them you can damage the head. I used multiples of every drum in this collection for five years, almost daily, with 200 kids I trusted. I trained them very carefully how to care for them and none of the drums were damaged in the years I used them. I had very high expectations for the kids behavior. I was not a Montessori teacher, but I think I taught them how to use and care for these in a very Montessori way. After I had Kal-El and went back to visit the school, several kids came up to me with tears in their eyes to say that many things had been "ruined" while I was gone because the teacher didn't have those expectations or train new students in the same way. Also, whereas I taught the kids to store them on labelled spaces in cabinets with doors, the new teacher didn't like "wasting time" teaching the 30 kids how to all get an instrument from the cabinets in an organized fashion. Instead, she just left all the instruments on the floor around the perimeter of the room where they were often hit with just about anything by any visiting sibling or outside group that had use of the room. A child who is used to a Montessori lifestyle in which the "care of the environment" is purposefully taught should have no trouble. Time spent teaching the child how to properly retrieve and care for things from the beginning may mean a little extra time spent before you can get started on what an adult might see as the "real work." However, that time is paid back tenfold by quick and appropriate retrieval and use of the materials in the future.

I bring this up because no drum is indestructible and I want to warn families that they will have to teach children what they can and can't hit them with and how to carry them properly. You also want to think about storage. If you put a drum on the bottom shelf and bang the head into the top shelf every time you put it away, your drum won't last very long. The 26" tubanos should not be carried by the head. The head will eventually pop off. They need to be carried with one hand on the handle and the other underneath the bottom. Before being allowed to carry the drum, the child should have developed a good level of body awareness so that they aren't banged into every other piece of furniture, or other kids with drums, on their way to and from storage. All of the "walking the line" activities in the Montessori environment are great preparation for this.

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Rhythm Instruments

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:25:00 +0000

Welcome to WEEK 2 of "Montessori Music Week(s)" here at What DID We Do All Day? !

In Friday's post, Rhythm Instruments NOT to Buy, I posted about rhythm band instruments for home or classroom. I talked about kits, such as the one in the picture above (example set from Cascio) that run between $90-140. One of my readers (thanks Mel!) let me know about a Hohner 6 Piece Rhythm Instrument Set that is available on Amazon for about $30 which, if you have your heart set on those types of instruments, is a really good price and a good-sized set for home use. I'm just not that excited about what's in it. Many other sets are 15-piece sets (read: filled in with extra rhythms sticks and many ways to jingle). However, if you read my post on Friday, you know that I think that the instruments included in these kits are generally not fun or sturdy choices.

Today I would like to show you what I chose to put on our music shelf in our home classroom for two children. My own kids have a "10-piece" set if you like to look at it that way. If you are trying to outfit a larger classroom I would recommend that you double or triple the set accordingly. I would also recommend outfitting the whole class with rhythm sticks which, at about $1.30 a pair, are very economical.

My mixed bag of life experiences includes several years in charge of purchasing and using these types of instruments with large groups of adults and children. The recommendations I am making are for specific brands and instruments that I really liked, the children really liked, and that I found both economical and superior to other choices.

Here is some photos of our rhythm instrument basket:

Hmmm...the professional photographer at the instrument company managed to photograph the tiny instruments in their kits so that they look huge. I've managed to photograph my large instruments so that they look small :(

I thought it might be nice if there was one concise description in one place in this post that lists what it contains: One great tambourine, two-pair of rhythm sticks, one pair of 7" cymbals, one excellent guiro, two inexpensive but great triangles, and a couple pair of maracas. I also recommend buying a good drum. We have two on loan from friends. Based on the specific instruments I will recommend, not counting the drum, you can outfit yourself with a similar collection for about $35...WITH the drum, $65. That is a lot better than the $90 set pictured at the top of this post and you'll have great instruments that kids and adults will love.

The most expensive parts of a kit like this (not including the drum) are the tambourine and the cymbals. There seems to be an unwritten rule that states "tambourines must cost a minimum of $20." The tambourine the boys use is identical one I used in the classroom for years and was superior to all of the other 20 tambourines I had. I splurged on it ($18) because of the combination of great sound and fun shape:

Rhythm Band Fish Tambourine

However, I also strongly recommend this tambourine:

Pulse Pro Tambourine Black $10

I've used it, it sounds great, and it is a steal at only $10.

I think cymbals may be so expensive because they are brass. Kids like BIG cymbals. 7" are a good size for the classroom. My favorite economical choice are this pair by Rhythm Band.

Rhythm Band Brass Cymbals, 7" Pair $17

They have a pretty good sound. They are the best I've found. If you are expecting a big beautiful splash like in a Sousa march, you might be disappointed. You would need larger and/or more expensive cymbals for that. (At least $60 for a 14" pair, a couple hundred for a GOOD 14" pair.) In contrast, you can often find really great pairs of finger cymbals (little 2" cymbals) that have a great sound. I used a few great pairs and some duds in the past. I've never purchased any though, so I would recommend trying some out at the music store. Little girls like to choose finger cymbals sometimes. Little boys always seem to angle for the biggest cymbals they can get.

Trophy Rhythm Sticks $1.29

There are some variations on these: smooth or fluted, color, and length. I like each pair to have one smooth and one fluted so the child can run the smooth stick along the fluted to represent longer notes. I think the 8" and 10" sticks feel too short (although they may be good for very young children) but think the 12" and 14" feel great. As I said before, I recommend getting enough of these for everybody. They are fun when everyone has them, but not as fun when the kid next to you has the cymbals.

For children, one usually finds the highly-breakable handled guiros like I talked about on Friday. Otherwise, another common one is a big wooden fish (my students broke three of those over the years). You can find some really cute ones shaped like frogs, grasshoppers or turtles starting at about $10 (price increases as size increases, the small ones are always smaller than you think they will be. Oh, and F.Y.I., the grasshopper gets the best sound). The benefit of those is that they can work double duty along with some continent work.

I thought I was going to get the boys a large grasshopper until I found this guiro:

Hohner Kids 8" Guiro Plastic $5.50

I LOVE this guiro! In my experience, this is a very unusual guiro. It is made of sturdy plastic and shaped like the traditional fish guiros. It has indentations on the bottom to encourage children to hold it properly. At 8", it is a great size. Unlike most guiros this size, it has three different ribbed sections each in a different size and spacing of ribs. You can get a LOT of different sounds on this thing. AND, it has an area where it can be hit rather than scraped so it can double as a wood block (now you can cross "wood block" off your list). I also like that the mallet/scrapper is a little bit flexible which will prevent breakage somewhat (thin, rigid scrapers can be very brittle).

You can pick up a triangle just about anywhere. It is hard to mess up a triangle. My favorite ones have a round ball hanger like in the picture. I picked up triangles for the boys for $2 each at the craft store, they sound great, and they even came with extra ball holders. If you lose your holders, you can order new ones online, or just use a rubber band or loop of yarn. Our $2 triangles are six-inch triangles. As with all things, I find that if given a choice of different-sized children will always choose the very biggest one they can find.

Rhythm Band Musical Steel Triangle (I paid $2)

If you insist on some kind of "jingle bell" instrument (I admit, they CAN be fun around Christmas), I like the jingle "cluster" version the best.

Hohner Cluster Bells

The wrist loops are cheaper than the cluster bells. If you are choosing a wrist loop, get the nylon rather than the plastic because the plastic gets brittle and breaks. None of the wrist loops are adjustable, even though you would think they would be.

We have a few choices of maracas at our house. One is a large wooden handmade pair that are a souvenir from a trip that a family member took. They work really well. We also have a couple of small plastic pair that I found for $1 a pair cheaply at a craft store. Whenever I'm in a craft or toy store I try the various sets of maracas. 99% of the time they are duds, but every once in a while you'll find a THICK plastic pair (watch out for cheap, separating seams) that has a good sound. It is a little more expensive to set out to buy a pair on purpose. But, if you do, these maracas by Nino are really durable and have a great quality, loud sound:

Meinl Plastic Egg Maracas, Pair $5

The egg shaker version is just as good (although kids seem to feel more grown up and authentic with a handled pair), and more economical for a crowd because you get 4 pieces altogether:

Meinl Plastic Egg Shaker (4 pc Assortment) $8

The Remo fruit or vegetable shakes are great also, but more expensive. They look super realistic (like food) are durable, and have great sounds. They are usually sold online in big sets, but you can usually find individuals for sale at a music store. You can buy an individual online, but they are often $10 apiece that way.

Remo SC-ASRT-09 Fruit Shakes Assortment 9 Piece Box

That covers everything that I chose for our basket! There is one item that is not pictured because it was backordered and I'm still waiting. I wouldn't consider it a "staple" but I wanted us to give it a try. It is a pair of claves:

Toca Claves, $7

I've used claves successfully in upper elementary, but haven't tried them in lower. I'll let you know how it goes.

There is one item that is on my wishlist for the future (I don't need everything right away!), just in case you are curious...a mini afuche/cabasa. They are easy for kids to play, particularly in this smaller size.

Mini afuche/cabasa, $18

I know I didn't get into the interesting topic of good drums. This post was getting too long as it was. I have written a separate post about drums and will try to get that up soon!

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Letter Y Sound Bin

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:08:00 +0000

I only have one "miniature" item for my letter "Y" sound bin. I pull the rest of the sound bin together using full-sized objects from around the house, and throw in a few photographs.

yardstick, yarn, yam, yogurt (actual tub from the refrigerator, Me Too was very concerned until it was put back), "yellow" paper, and four photographs.

The one miniature item is this yo-yo. I realized it was missing from the collected photo after I uploaded. One of the boys absconded with it.

Here is a closeup of the photographs I used to supplement the bin:

yawn, yolk, yacht, yak

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Rhythm Instruments NOT to buy!

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:44:00 +0000

Welcome back to Montessori Music Week here at What DID We Do All Day? !

Please do not skim the pictures on this post, think that I am recommending the products pictured, and go out and buy them. Today's post is about WHAT NOT TO BUY!

Disclaimer: If you own any of the instruments pictured and are enjoying them, stop reading, cover your ears and chant "la, la, la, la," and disregard this post because I don't want to ruin your enjoyment!

On our music shelves we have a super nice collection of rhythm instruments for the boys to explore. ON MONDAY I have a post planned in which I will show you what kinds of instruments I chose for our family (I still have to take photographs for that one). In this post, I wanted to familiarize those of you with the types of instruments widely available and give you some insider's tips. I have a ton of experience with many brands and styles of rhythm instruments that I've used with large groups of children across many age groups. Today's post is about the types of instruments we chose NOT to put in our basket. You will see lots of little "instruments for children" for sale at toy stores and craft store. Let me warn you, these are NOT great choices. Most of these are not only expensive, but also the following:

flimsy
too loud, or alternatively, so improperly made they barely produce sound
of such poor tone quality you can't stand letting the kids use them.
inappropriate for the age intended
messy
poorly designed, won't last the week (you would think that would fall under "flimsy" but, sadly, some instruments can be both flimsy and poorly designed.)

Many classrooms are outfitted with a collection of rhythm band instruments that you can buy as a collection such as this one:

A smaller set, more appropriate for a single-family homeschool might look like this:

Don't do it! Let me take you through some of the elements here and explain the multiple problems. I'll put up the larger collection again for easy reference:

If you have a classroom full of kids and a box full of instruments like this, the kids who are lucky enough to draw the drums, tambourines, cymbals, and triangles are the going to be the only ones smiling. YOU are going to stop smiling once you here those drums and tambourines. THE KIDS with the drums and tambourines will stop smiling as soon as their mallet breaks through the skin of the instrument. The drums and tambourines in a kit like this ARE toys and the SOUND LIKE toys. They are also too flimsy to stand up to the rigors of actual use by an actual child if you can stand listening to them long enough to let them actually use them. The diameter on the little red drums (tom toms) in particular is so small even the kids know they are ridiculous.

The triangle players ARE happy and will STAY happy. Yea!

The kid who got the pair of cymbals will be happier than the kid who got the single cymbal with mallet, as long as the cymbals aren't (as they often are) 3 inches in diameter. Kids like a good 7 inch cymbal.

The kids who got the other instruments are probably depressed and I don't blame them. Most of the rest of these are just sad unless you are under the age of three and in a "Mommy and Me" class. One exception is the rhythm sticks (the blue sticks along the bottom). These are a very valid, and handy, music learning tool. However, they are fun when the whole class is using them. They are not fun when you are holding them and the kid next to you has a drum, cymbals, or a triangle.

A lot of the remaining instruments have funny names that are very similar to one another so I dug up some pictures of each to make it clear what I'm talking about.

The "jingle tap": possibly the most depressing instrument in this collection. Did you ever notice that tambourines come with many of these silver discs on them? That is because a single little disc or pair of discs makes a pitiful noise by itself. This is a single disc from a tambourine with no second disc paired with it to even clatter against. Sometimes I think these things are designed so the music teacher has something inaudible to give the kids who can't play at the right time in a concert.

A guiro-style tone block. Kits often come with its equally-sad sibling, the tone block (no ridges). The problem with this is the design. Real wood blocks or claves are tricky for the child to hold, so this handled version was invented. The cylinder has to be hollow to make a good sound and is split into two halves with a slight space between them (see the seam down the right side of the tone block running the long way). As soon as the child pushes on or squeezes this too hard (usually when getting up from sitting on the floor with it clenched in their hand) this instrument will be crushed.

The "jingle loop." Like I said, fun when you are two, not when you are six. Plus, the plastic on these gets really brittle and breaks open at some point making it more a "belt" than a "bracelet."

The "jingle cluster." Honestly, how much jingling do we need? Don't the sad sounding toy tambourines have this covered? That said, this is the best sounding and sturdiest option if you feel the need to jingle.

Maracas. Ahh, maracas. Maracas in general are a good addition to a rhythm band collection. The kits usually come with brown ones like these or the purple ones often seen. Don't buy these. They all split apart at the seam eventually spilling their innards everywhere. Innards made in China. My students have found some really weird, creepy things inside of the maracas when they fall apart.

In toy stores you often see the really small wooden ones. Try them first. Most often the wood is too thick, the cavity inside too small and filled with too few "innards" to make enough sound.

Handled Castanets. Handled castanets are really a different instrument than regular castanets and are not very musically interesting...i.e., there's not much you can do with them. Regular castanets with no handle are really very difficult for the child to keep assembled properly or hold properly. I don't think they are an appropriate choice.

Sand blocks and their evil cousin "wood clappers." The sandblocks can actually be fun if you are not playing with such a large group that you can't hear yourself and if you don't mind sprinkling your surroundings with sand. The wood clappers (same exact thing without the sandpaper stapled on) are painfully loud and will damage your hearing.

The last item often found in these kits is a conductor's baton. This is delicate and will be broken in the first week. Usually it is snapped in half by one child after another child pokes them with it.

I apologize for writing such a long, negative post. I don't like to be a Debbie Downer, but I'm good at it. While my pictures address instruments specific to school-type rhythm band kits, I hope you will be able to recognize their colorful plastic cousins out in the toy and craft stores. I promise I will balance out all of this negativity on Monday when I show how you can spend about the same amount money (or a little more if you decide to get fancy) on real instruments that your kids or students will love, can be used by children or adults for a lifetime, and are pleasant to listen to.

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Bells Album

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:15:00 +0000

Welcome back to Montessori Music Week here at What DID We Do All Day? !

I purchased the above album from Nienhuis to go with our "bells music signs and notes." It is written by Jean K. Miller and titled "Montessori Music Sensorial Exploration and Notation with the Bells."

If you plan on only doing the bells and not the notation materials and you have the Gettman, the presentations in the Gettman should be fine. His presentations cover many variations of the two main activities done with the bells: matching and grading. Miller's album contains more variations and games but they cover the same ground. The extra variations are very similar knobbed cylinder extensions. Once the child can place all the cylinders do it: from two different rugs, from across the room, from across the room but walk in a circle before getting to the other side, etc., If you have the cylinders extensions somewhere apply those to the bells and you'll have it all.

The Gettman does not have the notation presentations however, and that is why I chose to buy this album. An extra bonus is that Miller's album is heavily illustrated with photographs. I'm not the type who feels that every album or presentation needs to be illustrated. I will say that the bells are one thing that is very helpful to have an illustrated album for. You don't get all twisted around in all the explanations like this one: "take 3 contrasting bells, widely spaced (but not the lowest bell and the highest bell) and place in reverse order in front of the bells at the right end of the bell setup."

Here is a photograph of a pair of pages with a bells presentation:

Here is a photograph of one of the pitch notation pages:

The illustrations are extra important when you plan to make all your own staff boards and print materials. There are nice illustrations of the front and back of every card in a set so you don't have to guess what is on the back, or guess what a whole set contains based on what you can see on the top card. I haven't made my print materials yet but will share when I do.

I am very happy that I purchased this album. I will point out that it has one major limitation. It is very clear upon reading the album that is intended to be the first of a pair of Montessori music albums. The album abruptly stops halfway through the pitch notation exercises before flats and sharps are introduced. On page 9, the author states, "See the next book in this series for a presentation of sharps and flats." As far as I have been able to ascertain, there IS no "next book in this series." I asked for help on Montessori Online and received one reply (thank you Cara!). That person didn't believe a second book existed but gave me a list of all Jean K. Miller's books that she could find. There is another music book written Music Theory with the Bells in a Montessori Environment. That book was published in 1970 and 1989 whereas the album I own has a 1999 date. I am guessing that either a second book was planned and never written, or that the album I own is a "prequel" to the other book. It's also equally possible that the 1999 book is a spruced up and retitled version of the 70/89. I am trying to get my hands on that other book, but it is out of print and I don't want to spend a crazy amount of money on it...particularly when I don't know what's in it! The Keys of the Universe album program I begin in February may contain the needed presentations in the music album. If not, I have seen the table of contents from Elizabeth Papandrea's music album and it appears that the presentations might be included there. If a reader has either of those albums and could comment, it would be much appreciated!

Does anyone have access to a copy of Miller's other book? If so, can you leave a comment and let me know what's in it? There are some copies in college libraries a few states away. I'm going to talk to our library and see what they can do for me. I am missing my PhD candidate days when I could get any book I wanted, for as long as I wanted, ASAP. Miller also has another book "Montessori Elementary School and its Curriculum" that I would love to read. Has anyone read that and would you recommend it?

Gotta run! Kal-El just finished reading Me Too a book and now they are fighting about which of them is the most "funky." (As in "funky music," not as in "smells funky.")

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Rhythmic Notation

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:20:00 +0000

Welcome back to Montessori Music Week here at What DID We Do All Day? ! There is a lot more to report than I thought. I think that next week will be Montessori Music Week here as well. I still want to tell you more about the album I'm using (it's great, but has limitations), show you our music shelves, talk about the pitch notation materials I made, talk about instrument choices for the music shelves, and much more. Today I'm going to talk a little bit about our rhythmic notation materials.

The Nienhuis notation materials are primarily intended to be used with several different types of staff boards for pitch notation. Oddly, there are a few beams included as well as both open and closed noteheads. This led me to believe that we would be able to use this material to notate rhythms. When it arrived, I was surprised to see how few beams were included (2) and that there were no flags or rests. I asked about this on Playschool6 and received a few responses. The consensus was that the child learns to notate pitch before rhythm in the Montessori environment; that by the time the child would begin to notate rhythm they would be at the point where they would find this material cumbersome. This is analogous to the way that the child finds the golden beads cumbersome once they are ready for abstraction and we free them from the limitations of the beads with the presentation of the stamp game.

Me Too using the notation materials to invent his own rhythms.

The bridge from the Montessori bells to pitch notation is a very natural and logical one. If the Montessori bells are the child's only or primary hands-on musical experience at this age they will, of course, eventually want to name those pitches and to see how the pitches look on paper. This is much like the progression from sound games to sandpaper letters. However, pitch and rhythm are two very different but equally important and equally interesting elements of music. A child that is learning to play an instrument during their primary or early elementary years will have exposure to both. In that case, it is only natural that they will be interested in rhythm as well. In fact, my experiences with many young children and music have shown me that some children will find themselves particularly drawn to rhythm and others drawn to pitch. Because rhythm and pitch notation can be taught exclusively from one another and either one can provide scaffolding for the other in future lessons I see no reason not to follow the child here.

Kal-El seems to find pitch obvious and somewhat uninteresting. He is (as you could see in yesterday's post) very fascinated with rhythms. He chants rhythms throughout his day in all kinds of unlikely situations. He won't just "rosin his bow"; he has to do it to a "rhythm." When he uses his nail brush in the bathtub he chooses a rhythm to chant and follow with the nail brush.

My album does not include presentations for this. I have seen the table of contents from the Elizabeth Papandrea elementary albums and rhythmic notation appears to be covered. I recently was fortunate enough to win half-off of the Keys of the Universe elementary course/albums. I haven't seen the table of contents from that music album so I don't know what is covered there. I'll let you know when I begin that process in February. Please feel free to leave information in the comments if you know if presentations for this type of thing are contained in any other albums. Despite this, I don't feel like I need a manual to do this. If you know your subject manner, have studied Montessori theory/philosophy, and have taken a child through a number of presentations, you should be able to write your own presentation for anything the child wants to learn. This process in music is so analogous to the process of language acquisition and learning to read that it is pretty obvious what should happen here. If it turns out that the elementary albums do not have presentations for this, I promise I will write mine out and offer them here at a future time. How I am doing this may differ from other sources because I am technically doing this "out of order."

There are several learning steps that take place before the child would reach the point where they can create their own rhythms on paper. Just as we play sound games with the child to introduce them to all the key sounds of their native language, we should play sound games with the child to make them aware of the basic rhythms in music. Just as best practice suggests that we don't tell the child the "name" of the letter sound at that stage, we don't tell the child the name of the rhythms at that stage either.

Once the child is familiar with, and can reproduce, many rhythms with their bodies or with an instrument they will be ready to put a name to the rhythms that they already know. (By "name of the rhythm" I specifically mean how the rhythm is counted. More on that later.) This is a little different than with language, where we don't tell the child the name of the letter until after they have learned both the sound and the symbol. This is because the sound and the letter name are not the same and thinking of the letter name when you look at the symbol interferes with the reading process in which you need the sound and not the name. In music, the counting of the rhythm can sound just like the rhythm itself. In this case, teaching the counting words for a particular rhythmic symbol does not hinder the reading process because they are the same. Here is a rhythm that Kal-El built yesterday:

There are many systems of "counting words" for rhythms. Decide what you are going to use and come up with the words accordingly. A lot of people like Kodaly counting words for young children because you can teach rhythm separate from meter for a while. The words my boys use for the rhythm above would be "ti-ti ta ti-ti." (As an adult I count this "1& 2 3&".) The counting words are different than the "names" of the rhythms. The names would be "eighth note, eighth note, quarter note, eighth note, eighth note." Much like the letter names in early reading, this information is not particularly useful. I've chosen not to tell the boys the proper names of the rhythmic units for now.

After the child is familiar with and can reproduce many rhythms and has learned the counting words for those rhythms the can be give three-period lessons on the "parts of" a written note. Many similar materials produce the notes all as one piece (note head, stem, and flags or beams all attached).It is wonderful how the Nienhuis material allows the child to build the rhythms himself by providing the parts rather than the whole. We used the material to learn the following parts: notehead, open notehead, closed notehead, stem, beam, flag, "ta" rest, "ti" rest.

The material does NOT include flags at all and nearly no beams. If you want to use the material in this way you will have to make your own. In the "popsicle stick" section of the craft store they have all kinds of sizes of wooden sticks and things sold by the bags. I used Woodsies by Loew-Cornell, item number 1021175, "skinny craft sticks."

They were perfectly in scale with the Nienhuis material. I used a clippers to cut them to a few useful lengths and then hit them with my can of black enamel spray paint. Now that they are finished, they look as if they came with the material in the first place.

You will also want some rests and barlines. I printed a variety of rests out on my computer, cut them out, and laminated them. You could probably also do this on a Cricut . Then, laminate them. You have to make some leger lines in this manner for the pitch notation presentations anyways. I also made a non-pitched clef but haven't introduced it yet.

I used a few 11X17 pieces of green construction paper and a permanent black marker to make a few staff boards featuring a one-lined rhythm staff.

The flags are not as professional-looking as the beams. Again, it might be nice to do these on a Cricut with chipboard and then spray paint. I wanted them right away so I made them out of extra-thick craft foam. I drew a shape I liked by hand, traced it onto the foam a few times, and cut them out by hand.

Here is a rhythm that is very familiar to Kal-El that shows one of my homemade beams, eighth rests, and flags.

After the child knows the names of the parts of the notes, you can show them the notation for the units of the rhythms they know. I started, for example, by showing Kal-El what a pair of "ti-ri's" (16th notes) and a pair of "ti-ti's" (eight notes) looked like by building them with closed noteheads, stems, and beams. In a subsequent lesson I showed him that these notes look different in pairs or groups than they do alone. I introduced the "flag." As always, the three-period lesson is your friend. After receiving three-period lessons on enough rhythmic units the child is able to use this material just like they use the movable alphabet, but to write rhythms instead of words.

Here are a few rhythms Kal-El has built with his music "movable alphabet" this week. He likes to point to the notes as he counts them out when he is finished. The boys will often pull an instrument off the shelves and play them as well.

"ti-ti ta, ti-ti ta"

"ti-ri-ti-ri ti-ti"

I hope this gives you an idea of what I bought, what I made, and how we are using it. If I were writing proper presentations I would have to give a lot more detail, define terms, and skip fewer steps.

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School Days

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:00:00 +0000

This post is just a little break from my "music week" posts to show you some of the non-music work that went on around here over the course of the past week.

Me Too revisiting the geometric solids. Kal-El is practicing dynamic operations with the golden beads in the background.

Kal-El pulled out the sandpaper letters and experimented with some different ways to spell "goofy."
(Note: when teaching the sandpaper letters "oo" makes the sound as in "book" not as in "zoo" but Kal-El now knows several spellings for these sounds.)

Me Too deciding that sound "zig zag" starts with...

...so he could complete a z/i sound sort.

Kal-El chose to work with the thousand chain several times this week. Now that the Christmas tree is down you can see how the chain and rug stretch all the way across the front of the house. I presented finding a single number. He sets up the rug and chain. I wrote a single number (such as 337) on a slip of paper with an arrow and Kal-El's task was to find that specific bead. The first day he had to find it "the long way" by counting to that specific number. The second day he placed all the red arrows first (100, 200, 300, etc.,) and experienced how much faster he could find any number once all of the hundreds were in place.

Kal-El rolling his 1000 chain rug. I cut six or seven pieces from couple of yards of felt and my mom sewed them together end-to-end for me. You could get a continuous rug if you ordered enough felt, but you would also waste a lot of felt that way.

Me Too working with pattern blocks.

Me Too identifying capital and lowercase "Y."

Me Too tracing leaf shapes from the botany cabinet.

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Montessori Music Notation

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Welcome back to "Montessori Music Week" here at What DID We Do All Day?.

Me Too and Kal-El have been studying Suzuki violin since June. They know how to count a few rhythms by now, most prominently: tiri tiri ti ti, and ti tiri ti tiri. A couple of weeks ago Kal-El pulled an ornament off of our Christmas tree, brought it to me and told me he found "notes." He asked me what kind of notes they were. It was a pair of sixteenth notes so I told them they were "tiri." (The kids are learning some kind of Kodaly counting at this age. They will learn how to count "properly" later. Yeah, yeah...I know some of you think Kodaly counting is proper counting. Let's not bicker.) He asked me what "ti ti" would look like and I told him the pair would have one beam instead of two.

I was cooking dinner and forgot all about him for a while. I looked up some time later when he exclaimed "Look Mom! I made 'tiri tiri ti ti'!" He had made several trips to the Christmas tree and had brought back a motley assortment of sixteenth notes and icicles. He had laid them out on the kitchen counter to look like this.

See how he tried to use the icicles to make his eight notes? I left him to his own devices and he worked out several rhythms and counted them. (If you are musically literate please note that I realize all of his 16th note pairs needed to be flipped over.) Here is a photo of his "ti tiri ti tiri" (strawberry strawberry, or as I would count it "1-&-a, 2-&-a"):

Wait! There is a proper Montessori material for this (almost) and I suppose this was the unequivocal sign that he is ready!

Sooo...I placed my first ever order from Nienhuis. I felt very hoity toity afterward too :) None of the other Montessori suppliers actually carry the notation materials. What I wanted was THIS:

Bells Music Signs and Notes. Image from Neinhuis.

For once, the Neinhuis prices were somewhat proportional to what I felt I was getting. The only similar material I found elsewhere was this one from Music in Motion (a super-fun catalog to peruse by the way); the MIM material was surprisingly much more expensive. Since the MIM version was felt and velcro rather than wood, more expensive, and didn't suit the activities quite as well I went with then Nienhuis version.

I planned to make my own staff boards from construction paper. However, the wood ones from Nienhuis were also almost reasonable so I splurged on a set. They turned out to be on backorder so I wound up making my own anyway.

Bells Staff Boards. Image from Neinhuis.

I also ordered Jean K. Miller's book "Montessori Music Sensorial Exploration and Notation With the Bells. The Gettman book has enough presentations given for the bells. It does not provide any notation presentations. This is likely because the bells are not considered "music education" in the Montessori curriculum, but rather a sensorial material for auditory discrimination. I'll post more about Miller's album and some other music album options later this week.

Nienhuis offers a few other music materials that I wanted but were strangely unreasonably priced. I made most of those myself as well and you will see them later this week as well.

The Nienhuis "music signs and notes" material is oddly inconsistent about the rhythmic materials it includes. I had to DIY some additions to our set to make it all work for us. This post is already rather long so I will let you know what I added, how I did it, and show you some pictures of the boys using the material tomorrow!

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DIY Montessori Bells and Bells Board(s)

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:05:00 +0000

Welcome! I've declared it "Montessori Music Week" here at What DID We Do All Day?. Each day this week I will show you a little more of our Montessori music materials. Today I am excited to show your our DIY Montessori bells and bells boards.

I made our bells from two sets of children's handbells like these (from Hobby Lobby).

When I purchased these sets they were $15 each, but with two 50%-off coupons it only cost me $15 total.

This set of bells from Neinhuis costs $979:

I used parts of a can of white and a can of brown spray paint that I already had lying around the house from making Montessori materials in general. And to answer your next burning question...NO! Spray painting the bells does not change their pitch. I know you don't believe me, but it doesn't. I am a professional musician. I started by spray painting ONE of the bells from ONE of the sets. This way I could play a sprayed bell and an un-sprayed bell to compare the pitch by ear. I also have checked them all with my professional quality tuner and they all still register in tune at A=440.

I taped the handles with painter's tape to maintain their existing white color. I chose not to spray the underside of the bells. This serves as an extra (but unnecessary) control of error in that the child can check their matching work by turning them over. I've asked my kids not to peek underneath and they generally do what I ask when it comes to that type of thing. If your's can't resist the urge to peek, you could tape the clapper with painters tape and spray the underneath as well.

Some bell sets also are numbered (1-8) and have that number engraved on the top of the bell. Ours did, so I filled it with wood putty (just smeared some in with my finger) before I sprayed them. I considered just leaving it alone because the numbers are pretty small and difficult to notice on a sprayed bell.

Here are the boys finishing up matching some brown bells to the white ones. Me Too is still working on matching. Kal-El finished all of the matching activities and extensions over the course of two work periods and is now working on grading the bells.

The bells boards are usually made of wood, come in two pieces and look something like this:

Neinhuis, $42

Note: all of the suppliers photograph these upsided down for some reason. If you are making them yourself please note that the green goes in back so that you build your keyboard in the right direction. I made ours in one piece from a couple of yards of felt in green, white, and black. I measured my bells and then cut appropriately-sized squares from the black and white felt. They are joined the green felt with Stitch Witchery (I can't use a sewing machine. Yet.). You could use liquid stitch (or sew it properly with a machine) but I find that liquid stitch shows through thin fabrics like glue does when you glue tissue paper.

NOTE: (added 1/24/12) I may choose to cut my felt "board" in half at a later date in able to properly present the "tetrachord."

We currently have this material laid out on the window seat because I don't want to have to set up the white control bells each time the boys want to use this.

When they can both successfully grade the bells themselves it they will be moved to a shelf to save room in our homeschool setting. The bells will go on the tray you see to the right of the bells. The felt "board" can then be rolled and stored in a very compact manner with the bells.

I'm sure you've noticed that I don't have the black bells. They ARE available. You can buy one set of the five missing chromatic bells for $30:

Remember, you would have to buy two sets. I have decided NOT to buy the chromatic bells, at least for now. I have looked through all my bells presentations and I found something like 50 presentations that use only the white bells, and 4 or 5 that use the black. I decided not to shell out an extra $60 to do those few presentations. The child eventually learns to build a major scale with the bells, but you can only build the C major scale anyway because you only have one octave of bells. Elementary Montessori students graduate to the tone bars:

Nienhuis, $698.99

I plan to substitute a good set of resonator bells instead like these:

The each individual resonator bell can be removed, carried around, reordered, etc., unlike a xylophone or glockenspiel. They cover an two full octaves which now allows you to play in any key and construct any scale. The resonator bells cover G-to-g rather than C-to-c like the Montessori tone bars so I will have to adjust my accompanying materials a bit but I think it will be a good compromise. You can buy a resonator bell set for about $160 if you shop around. The $60 I would have to pay for the chromatic handbells seems like it would it would be better put towards the resonator bells.

Stay tuned this week for more music materials! I'll show you our Montessori music manual, our notation materials, and the other instruments on our shelves.

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Letter "H" Sound Bin

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:21:00 +0000

Here is a glimpse of a recent incarnation of the letter "H" sound bin. This is how it looks on the shelf:

It contains our usual collection of books and activities:

The objects in the letter "H" object box this time were as follows:

hat, hanger, hummingbird, helmet, hamster, heart, husky, horseshoes, house, hedgehog, hippopotamus, hammer, horse, helicopter, haystack.

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Letter "I" Sound Bin

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 13:00:00 +0000

In addition to the usual collection of books and activities the objects in our letter "I" sound bin are as follows: igloo, insect, infant, indian, iguana, inch.

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Letter "Z" Objects...and a zucchini rant

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:00:00 +0000

These are the objects from a sad, sad little sound bin. Our letter "Z" sound bin only had three objects to photograph: zipper, zebra, and zig-zag. Fortunately I remembered to present this in the summer when we had a zucchini to throw in. I can only do that in the summer though, I have yet to find an artificial zucchini for our collection. If you are a manufacturer of artificial vegetables for toy kitchens duly note that there is a valuable hole in the market to be filled here. Just think of it, kids could practice for zucchini season by filling paper bags with the toy zucchini and pretend to leave it on neighbors' doorsteps. Maybe when we get our Montessori elementary albums there will be a presentation on how to properly dry and varnish a zucchini so we can add one to our collection. Then we could also add "zucchini polishing" to our practical life area. Wow. I think I'm up too late. Anyway, I also throw in the sandpaper number "zero" when I present this letter, but I forgot to include it when I took the photograph (Me Too always insists on putting it back where it belongs and won't leave it in the sound bin). Another suggestion might be "ziti" but my kids' noodle knowledge stops way short of ziti. Should I throw in my lemon zester?

The little letter "Z" book didn't fair much better. The only nice addition it had was "zoo." Zoo is a good example of the type of thing I like to put in the little books...a logical picture but tough to use as an object. Our "Z" book has a couple other less helpful additions: zinnia and zither. Both are rather wishful thinking regarding the grasp of Me Too's flower/instrument vocabulary. I'm a musician and every time I see the zither picture I think "autoharp." Not helpful. Maybe a picture of zits? That would definitely break my "never teach them a word you don't want them to use in public" rule.

My best advice? If your child knows anyone whose name starts with "Z" (say he has a friend "Zachary") throw a picture of him in the bin :)

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I've Been Featured...

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:44:00 +0000

How did we choose Montessori and decide to homeschool?

What do I enjoy most about education at home?

What five books would I hide under my bed if the rest of my homeschooling/education/parenting book collection was being seized?

Here's you big chance to find out!

I have been featured over at the blog My Homeschool Style. Check it out!

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Letter "N" Sound Bin

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:51:00 +0000

One of my current bloggy projects is to get all of my sound bins posts collected together one page. There is now a "sound bins" tab at the top of my blog under my header. I found time to photograph a couple of our bins last night so you might see a few sound bins posts today. Some posts will show the whole bin, others just the contents of the object box. I happened to set the "N" bin aside to photograph when we finished it the other day and photographed the whole shebang.

As always, the bin is a medium-sized basket that sits on our language shelves. I collect most of these objects from nearby storage on the top shelves of the school room bookcases. Typically a bin holds an initial sound search, a letter shape search, an I Spy book, the sandpaper letter, an AlphaTales book for that letter, a homemade book of pictures of things that begin with that sound, and a tin bin full of objects with the capital and lowercase letter magnets stuck to it.

Some people consider "N" to be a tough letter, but we have a rather large collection of objects for "N":
newspaper, napkin, nest, noodle, newt, nose, necklace, needle, nickle, nut, nail, nurse (nurses hat).

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Compass Work: In the Field

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:37:00 +0000

In the elementary spirit of "going out," Kal-El proposed an "adventure walk" today. He specifically requested a park that he knew had a lot of branching, paved trails as well as a savanna with many animal trails to follow. He was in charge of the expedition. He decided where we would go, how to get there, what to bring, packed everyone for the trip, and led the way.

They are sporting their new "explorer vests" that my parents bought them for Christmas. In addition to a wide variety of pockets the vest has many loops that caribiners may be attached to. They are geared up with compasses, whistles, magnifying glasses, specimen containers, binoculars, tweezers, flashlights, and thermoses. I think they were most excited about the "chocolate bar for the trail" they each had stashed in a pocket of their cargo pants.

Here Kal-El is checking his new compass. Each time the trail would have a choice of directions, Kal-El would take out his compass and inform us which trail we would take according to cardinal or ordinal direction. He is a compass expert! Me Too was in charge of keeping track of north. Just after we set out and were a short distance from the car I asked the boys in which direction the car was. They determined it was due west. I explained that when we reached a point in the field where we could no longer see the car, we would always know that it was west and we could find our way back to it if we had to. I tested them on this in several places out in the savanna.

Kal-El scouting for wildlife with the binoculars.

This is the last shot with Me Too in dry pants. He waited too long to ask for help and wound up peeing all over his thermos in an attempt to pee on a tree. His favorite clips are the two in the center and bottom of the vest...not ideal for a man in the field.

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School Days: Other Works

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Language works earned their own post today. Here is a selection of some of the other works the boys did this week.

Geography:

Kal-El worked very methodically with the United States puzzle.

He removed just one piece and put it back. Then two, and put them back. Then three, and put them back. He continued in this manner up until about 12 I think and put it away.

Me Too is reviewing world flags in hopes of having more added to his collection.

He says he wants to be a "flag expert."

Sensorial:

Me Too worked with the knobless cylinder extension cards (free cards available from Polestar Montessori here)....

...and the xylophone.

Math:

Me Too worked on subtraction with the small number rods.

He prefers these to the large one I think because they are less cumbersome when he does this type of work.

Kal-El is practicing dynamic addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication in preparation for the bank game. Here he is loading up a tray:

Both boys love to pull out calculators when we are working with the golden beads. They like to use them at the end of each "problem" in one of two ways.

They think it is neat the that calculator gets the same result that they do. For example, Kal-El will bring me the beads and number cards for 3256 and 2362 and then add them together to find 5618. Afterward he likes to punch 3256 and 2362 into the calculator to watch it also find 5618. (Me Too likes to just punch in one of the numbers...like 3256. He hasn't figured out the operations buttons yet.)

Another way Kal-El likes to use the calculator is to watch the individual number cards add up to the larger number.

If he brings me 3513...

...he will sometimes pull out the calculator after he stacks and names the number so he can punch in each card individually (3000, 500, 10, 3) and watch the calculator find 3513.

He gets the answer correct 100 percent of the time when he does the work with the golden beads and cards. He often mistypes the number when he puts it into the calculator. For this reason he has stated that Kal-El is "better at math than the calculator is."

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Montessori Madmen

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:51:00 +0000

I wanted to let you all know about a new blog and website called Montessori Madmen. They describe themselves as follows:

The Montessori MadMen are a ragtag group of Montessori dads from around the country and a variety of backgrounds, united by a common zeal to bring the Montessori method to millions more American children. The Madmen include the fathers behind the viral Montessori Fastdraw videos, Trevor Eissler and Daniel C. Petter-Lipstein; the creator of the Montessori apps featured in two, yes, two Apple ipad commercials, Bobby George; and passionate fathers who are successful marketers and entrepreneurs in their respective industries.

They have also started a campaign called "Fill the Chair" intended to entice more current and potential Montessori parents to observe a working Montessori classroom and more teachers to invite them to do so. They have a Facebook page here, and if you send them your photos of parents visiting Montessori classrooms they will post them.

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School Days: Language Works

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:00:00 +0000

I'd like to show you some of Kal-El's language works from the past week. As you'll see, Me Too likes to listen and learn while Kal-El does his work as well.

Kal-El set a goal for himself to try to "memorize everything" in the Antarctica continent box this week. I tied his handwriting work into this interest by writing out a lot of Antarctica vocabulary onto Handwriting Without Tears blank capital letters practice sheets (This page had types of penguins, etc., Also, he's practicing capitals right now). I have posted about our HWT works in the past. This paper is basically just a fancy type of the "squared paper" that you would see in any Montessori classroom.

We try to make our HWT work as choice driven as possible. I just write up the sheets and leave them on the shelf. If the vocabulary is interesting, Kal-El will excitedly do 4-6 pages of this type of work a day. I found that out once when I put what I thought was a weeks worth of work on the shelf one evening. When I came downstairs at 6:30 a.m. the next morning, I found all the work completed on the table.

The next several works are adapted from lesson in The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. I've posted about some of the ways I use this book in the past. Usually I just use it to make readers. This is an example of one of several readers he used this week that reviewed many of the phonograms that make the "ee" sound:

He practiced the "ea" spelling of the "ee" sound with a game the book suggested called "Eat a Treat."

I spread out a pile of cards randomly on the table. Four of the cards read "eat a treat," the rest have a single word written on them that use the "ea" spelling of "ee" such as "beach." I put five M&M's on the table as well. Each time he picks a card he reads the word(s) on it. I'm sure I don't need to tell you what happens when he picks one that says "eat a treat." He loved this and asked to play it every day last week.

The last activity I have pictures of is a sentence-to-picture matching work.

In the book it was presented as just a list of sentences to read. I found a photograph for each rule and cut the rules up into individual sentences. They made the best sense in a certain order so I also numbered them. Kal-El put the sentences in order, read each sentence, and found the picture that best matched. This focused on practicing the many spellings of all the long vowels together.

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School Room Tour!

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Welcome to our school room/learning space!

This tour is long overdue, I know! November marked one year in our new home for our family.

I teased you with the "before photos" over a year ago before we began "renovations." After having a Montessori classroom that was partly packed up all the time for nine months while we tried to sell our last house, getting the new school room ready was our first priority when we moved in. Photographing it was another story. Although you've all been seeing it in action the whole time, there was always one more thing I wanted to do before pulling out the camera for the official glamour shots:

"I just want to wait until the bookshelves are in."
"I just want to wait until the crown moulding is up."
"I just want to wait until I put the 'insert name' material out."

I finally decided to just DO IT!

In our old house, the school room was tucked away in the back of the house through the master bedroom. It was a ranch-style home and the school was on the extreme end of one side of the house and the family room was on the extreme other end. One thing we were excited about in this home is that the school room could be right off of the foyer, or "grand central station" here, so it would really be in the middle of things. This room is meant to be the formal living room. We didn't need both a living room and a family room. The downside is that it is the first thing you see when you walk into our home. There is no hiding the homeschooling!

I really need to learn how to use our SLR on manual so that I can change some of the settings and get more professional photos. I apologize in advance. The room looks better in person than in the photographs.

Here is a BEFORE picture of the foyer looking into the school room so that you can see how the room relates to the rest of the home...

...and the AFTER!

The foyer really deserves its own post, but you can get a glimpse at some of the new front door and the new crown molding.

Here is another BEFORE picture of the school room with a bit of a better view...

...and the after!

A lot of invisible work went into this space (which is about 12'x17'). I painted the ceiling about five times until I was happy with the shade of blue. Things are really dreary for about six months of the year in our neck of the woods and blue ceilings help me combat the gloom.

A lot of drywall repair was needed before I could paint the walls and ceiling. This past summer we replaced all of the baseboards and added crown molding. All of the switches and receptacles needed to be replaced. Many of our receptacles were so worn that I couldn't keep the vacuum plugged in.

I'll take you around the room clockwise so you can get a feel for the whole space. There is a very shallow bookcase just inside the entry:

I had my eye on bookshelves like this one at Pottery Barn for about six years, but didn't want to spend a couple hundred dollars to get one. When I spotted them at Target on sale for $30 one day (online, free shipping) I snatched up three...one for the school room and one for each of the boys' rooms. I keep the one in the school room stocked with books on topics we are focusing on. The art above the shelf was drawn by my grandfather specifically for Kal-El when I was pregnant.

Next to the bookcase, this big, bay, SE-facing window does double/triple/quadruple duty for us. It provides this room with the best light in the whole house (which is still not enough to work by in the gloomy thick of winter, even in the morning when the sun is on that side). We hung a prism up in the window to cast rainbows all morning long. If you look carefully you will find rainbows in some of these photographs and in our photographs in general quite often. The window seat provides much needed storage for our geometric and botany cabinets. The window seat also serves as a work surface or a perch for popular activities such as spying on the neighbors or the bird feeders/bath just a few feet away from the window.

The bead cabinet is just to the right of the window:

I took these photos a few weeks ago. The bead cabinet now proudly holds the 100 and 1000 chains along with the appropriate squares, cubes, and arrows.

Recessed lighting would be perfect in this room, however it would have required an expensive electrician who would put 14+ holes in the ceiling in order to install them. The 14+ holes would require an expensive drywaller to make them look like they were never there. For now, we've settled for some floor lamps, one of which barely tucked into that corner next to the start of the math shelves.

Continuing clockwise are the math and sensorial shelves. The center section is currently quite empty in anticipation of all the big math works (such as the bank game) that Kal-El will be starting soon.

Their violins are tucked next to the shelves on the right (next to the maps cabinet). The red rods used to be there, but they have been retired. I hung their artwork in our Lil' Da Vinci art frames over the shelves so the art looks different sometimes weekly, sometimes daily depending on the boys' whims. If they look hung a little high it is because I anticipate materials stored on top of the bookcases as the boys get older.

This is our geography corner:

It sports a Calder-esque mobile, the map cabinet, and our geography shelves. This was also a good spot to sneak in the red and blue rods (math). The small sets of drawers on top of the white bookcase hold my collection of miniature objects. I use them in the language area, of course, but also throughout the culture curriculum. I just store all of those tiny things here alphabetized for easy retrieval. This makes it really easy to put together sound bins, or find just the right whale for the Antarctica box.

Turning the corner are the rest of our bookcases.

I ordered the tall shelves in black to break things up a bit. All of the shelves are "Carson" shelves from Target. The black shelf to the left holds "culture" works. The one in the middle contains writing works. The shelf to the left holds language materials. The uppermost shelves are temporarily "mine." I keep spare parts to things up there, as well as works I plan to present very soon and things I need to rotate frequently (like sound bin innards). I'll post some closer looks at what is on the shelves in the future.

Turning the corner finally brings us to the last wall of the room.

Here is a BEFORE photo of that side...

...and the AFTER!

Kal-El snuck into that one! We have a work table here that has a child-sized chair as well as a stool that is used as often by me as anyone else.

I was sooo convinced that I needed shelf-space not couch-space in this room and lobbied heavily to get rid of this extra couch shortly after we moved in. I was so wrong and I 'm really glad we have it! It is a great cozy spot to snuggle up together while we work.

The short white bookcase is a work in progress. It is shaping up to hold our music works. The little sets of drawers on top of this shelf hold collections of manipulatives such as beads, counters, jingle bells, plastic flies, you name it! These are used across the curriculum as well. Jingle bells can be counters on the math shelf one day, show up as a stringing work on the practical life shelves the next, in the "j" sound bin later on, or on the tray to be weighed on the balance a few days later.

You won't see any art supplies in here because they are stored in a big closet in the foyer and are used in the kitchen most often. We have a lot of other child-spaces scattered throughout the house as well.

Last but not least...this is where we stash our rugs. It is a pretty large collection for just two boys. We have various sizes and styles. The boys usually choose the large, low-pile grey rugs from Wal-mart with the rubber backing because they roll the nicest. I was so excited to finally order the white cotton rugs from Montessori Services only to find that they flop over in the basket terribly and the boys don't like that.

Well, there you have it. A long post that was long overdue!

The "official tour" of our OLD school room at our previous home can be found here.

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noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Check out who turned SIX last month! How he got to be SIX already is just beyond me. The years are flying.

The poor kid had to make his own birthday cake because that just how we roll around here. Me Too felt sorry for him and jumped in to help.

It is Power Rangers all the time around here. This is super cheesy, but super easy: I decorated his cake by finding pictures on Google images to print, laminate, and tape to straws so I could stick them in the cake. They double as puppets afterwards and they are easy to reuse if you have to make a birthday cake twice as we always seem to.

These boys may look innocent and congenial while they enjoy the cake, but don't be fooled...

...cake just isn't safe with Daddy around.

No worries. Kal-El got his revenge with our extend-a-fork. Take that Daddy!

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AI Sound Bin

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 20:30:00 +0000

This is our "AI" sound bin. It includes a letter search, a sound booklet, and some "AI" objects. Me Too has been reviewing the "AI" sound bin. It is part of our review of the sandpaper letters before I go ahead and put out the movable alphabet for him.

Remember, Sound bins will look different depending on where your child is in the language sequence. (I think my original post on sound bins is here.) Sound bins can be very useful right from the beginning when you are introducing the sounds and/or playing "I Spy." Just keep in mind that if you are trying to stay true to the Montessori principle of having only one new idea at a time you would not have any materials that include the symbol for the sound at first. Rather than learn two things at once the child would first learn the sound and learn the symbol for that sound later with the sandpaper letters. Whether you are able to do this "by the book" will depend on your child's existing knowledge base. Some children (such as Kal-El) will already know the symbols at an early age. Some will know lowercase, but not uppercase. Me Too has already learned the sounds and the lowercase sandpaper letters so you will see both in his sound bins at this stage. You will also see uppercase in some of his sound bins because Kal-El uses them and Me Too has been frustrated that he doesn't know them too.

It can be very tricky to find objects for some of the double sandpaper letters, particularly if that sound usually only occurs in the middle of a word. If you are at the stage where you are NOT using the symbol yet you have a lot more flexibility. If we were just practicing the long "A" sound without the "AI" symbol we could use a lot more objects (such as "cake", or "steak", or "clay", or "grey" for example). However, if you are using a symbol the spelling of the sound in the name of the object should match in case the spelling should "stick." You probably cannot in good conscience present a sound bin for middle sound until the child can identify "a middle sound" of course.

I found our situation to be further complicated by regional pronunciation. It seems in our area that we do NOT use the "long A" sound to pronounce words in which the "AI" spelling is followed by an "L" such as "mail" or "pail." The majority of "AI" words end with "L" so a lot of words were not available to me. I don't know how to describe the sound we do use other than that it is somewhere right in the middle between the "a" in "cat" and the "e" in "bet." I see a lot of posts on Playschool6 in which mom's get really concerned about doing it "just like Dwyer" or get upset about the objects or pictures some people use in their materials. Just take a deep breath and do what is logical in your geographical area. If you try to force the child to use the materials unaltered and they don't match your regional pronunciation you are setting them up for failure. Sometimes it is different, but so close the child will alter it automatically without noticing. Also be aware of possible regional differences before you criticize language materials for purchase or on blogs. Most of the time this will explain the discrepancies.

These are the objects I was able to use in the "AI" sound bin. As always, with the difficult to demonstrate sounds I will print and laminate a few pictures to fill out the bin. Here we have: paint, train, brain (small beige blob under the train, from our human body kit), afraid, rain, chain, and stain (coffee stain on the paper towel).

Just a note on how I rotate these on the shelf: I don't keep out all 40 sound bins at once. I start with one. Then, I add a second one. Then, I dump the objects or pictures from those two together and the child can do a sound sort. To increase the difficulty, one can wait until 3-4 baskets have accumulated before dumping them together for the sound sort.

I have started a separate page on the blog for storing links to our sound bins posts. You can find a tab for it on the top of the blog just under the header. I haven't gotten very many of our sound bins up there yet, but check back later to find the rest.

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Treasure Maps

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:37:00 +0000

The boys have already learned how to make a map of a shelf, or a room or of a street. Today, they learned specifically how to use a map to find their way. I made the above blank maps of their rooms and laminated them. They are labelled with words (for my reader) and some pictures (for my non-reader).

Next, I used a dry erase marker to draw the path that they needed to follow to lead them to "X marks the spot." I hid a treasure for each of them in the rooms so they would have something to find when they reached the X. You could make this activity more complex by hiding another map at the X to lead them to follow a path in another room of the house. I followed the presentation for this activity in the Karen Tyler geography album.

After we were finished, I showed them how to clean the arrows off the map and talked to them about what markers were okay to use on the map and which were not (washable markers or overhead projector markers also work). I put the blank maps and dry erase markers on the geography shelf in the school room. They have been pressed into service all morning as the boys draw paths for one another on the maps and hide various items to find.

Our compass work is continuing nicely. Me Too has lost interest but Kal-El used the compass to map north, south, east, and west in several rooms each day.

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Magic Show

noreply@blogger.com (My Boys' Teacher) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:31:00 +0000

Kal-El in his magic outfit

The boys were lucky enough to have their cousins (who live quite far away) come and stay with us for a full week after Christmas. On New Year's Eve all four kids (4,6,8, and 10) presented us with a 30 minute magic show. They spent the whole day preparing...making hats, wands, magic tablecloths, dressing rooms, billboards, and magic capes. My 8 year-old nephew is the lead magician. He has been "studying" magic tricks with my FIL who is quite good and he can complete many "real" tricks. He ran the majority of the show, but each of the boys performed 2-3 "tricks."

Here Kal-El is turning a golden dragon into a flag. He wrapped the dragon in a bandanna. Then, both Kal-El and the bandanna disappeared under the table for several minutes. When he re-emerged, there was a flag in the bandanna instead.

Me Too scaring everyone with a rubber rat.

Me Too's big trick was to have his stuffed doggie disappear. He would say "hocus pocus...make doggie disappear" and then toss the dog out of the family room. Another time he tried to stuff the dog in his shirt. It became tangled and the trick didn't work so he said, "let me try this another way...hocus pocus...Mommy? Can you make doggie disappear?"

Kal-El watching the older cousins perform tricks from his perch in one of the "dressing rooms."

They were very proud of their magic hats.

There were many card tricks. The older cousins were very convincing. Kal-El would have you choose a card and show it to him. Then, he would turn the fan of cards around, remove the card you showed him and hand it to you. Magical!

My in-laws took the whole family out for pizza at dinner time. Dinner and a show on New Year's Eve...what more could I ask for?

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