Montessori Elementary Homeschool Blog - with documentation of our infant Montessori, toddler Montessori, and primary Montessori experiences; as well as preparation for the upcoming adolescent Montessori homeschool years.
Showing posts with label exploration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label exploration. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Given Time and Space to be Creative

Children WANT to be creative. 
Let's LET them!










Just a very few samples as I sort through photos from the last few months.


They need instruction on how materials are to be used - then invited to explore with the boundaries of respect and care.


Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Cubing - Part 3 - Just exploring


After all was said and done, he really, really, really wanted to just build with the squares and cubes. Ok, I said - but you have to graph out your creations. He agreed and off he went:




The camera batteries died after that - and my own batteries were slowing down so I didn't replace the camera batteries until the next day. When he graphed this on paper, he did it two ways - straightening up the inside pieces as he worked:

  1. straight down - so just the tops of each piece. He wasn't satisfied with this because it was a 3-d work. 
  2. he tilted it and drew it out on the graph paper with diagonals in some of the boxes to show both the tops and the full fronts of each piece. That is better he said, but still tricky. He colored the sides in a darker shade of each color than the tops (outlining the tops of the white walls in gray, and coloring gray for the sides). 
So what did this work entail: 
  • geometry
  • art
  • aesthetics
  • architecture
  • planning
  • viewpoint adjustment
Good skills going on!