Proof of Concept

In the past three weeks, I've started as director of a Montessori preschool, and have free reign with the afternoon staff to try all my Froebel Gift ideas. The school will buy the materials, a bit at a time. Tonight I met with my core team, Bekah, Taran, Dominique, and Lydia, and roughed out the plan: write a book about trying the ideas over the course of the next year, have some of the ideas fail, have children invent others, etc. Be more Waldorf. Be project-oriented, love and gift-oriented as the children are naturally - even though this is not Montessori in its strictest sense. I've never been Montessori in the strictest sense, I know now.

Place Card Project: Group 1 (Red) With blocks and children in a circle, discuss dinner time. Have children build a table with a chair for each person eating together tonight. Begin by showing Box 3 and describing it as "being the whole family together". As children build, invite them to name the people in their family. Let children play as briefly or as long as they like, building anything they please.
    Pro tip: Survey parents at arrival via sign-in sheet as to #eating together tonight is _____or not sure_______, to manage children's expectations.
     Prep needed: buy enough blocks, write up the survey.
     Extra nice: teachers take notes on what children say.
                              Group 2 (Orange) With small pieces of very nice paper (ideally), fold into enough parts for members of family. Talk about the whole piece of paper as symbolizing the family, "and so we will always use all the parts of the paper if we do any tearing or cutting in our projects." Show children how to spend time creasing the paper with their fingernails, and then begin to practice tearing neatly. However the paper ends up torn, it will make a beautiful place card. Make initials for family members by rubbing small sandpaper letters, or having children copy a letter if they can't yet write it. Decorate with googly eyes.
     Pro tip: Tell children after creasing but before tearing the paper for the first time that "even when people are good at tearing paper, sometimes the piece of paper has its own idea about what shape it wants to be, and the tear goes a different way than you asked it to when you were creasing it.  Try not to be upset by this. This is the spirit of art talking to you. Throughout your life, you'll slowly learn to hear the voice of art."
     Extra nice: We will talk in the future about the whole piece of paper also symbolizing a person's whole self - values, habits, manners, aspirations, tastes, humanity.  Another perspective we will suggest: the children of the class as a whole. The six pieces of the self listed could be connected with the knitted balls, as a concrete object to sustain thinking about an abstract concept. 

              Group 3 (Yellow) On the playground, use the parachute and bounce a ball in it. Talk about the ball as being... what? I don't know. Yet.