Maths of Practical Life: Time

I am doing a mini Waldorf block for some friends so they can decide if they want this method for their homeschooling daughters. So the girls came over today to have a "trial run" and today was a busy day! The way I teach has a little Montessori thrown in there, so it's a bit of a blend (the color coding and keeping track of your daily work and having some choice time, mainly).

It's a Baking main lesson block so naturally we made pancakes and peach muffins, but we also did so much more!!!!

• set up "plan books" to record daily work - write color coding key on 5 x 8 index card and glue in the front cover of our composition books

  yellow - Language

  orange - Cultural

  red - Art

  purple - Practical Life

  blue - Math

  green - Science & Nature

  brown - P.E. & Health

  gold - Penmanship

  silver - Foreign Language

  

  write today's date at the top of the page - write down each work that you do, with the appropriate colored dot in the margin, as you go throughout the day

• chanting math facts while tossing bean bags - we started with addition facts - to give this a good rhythm say them from the whole to the part (I learned this from Barbara Dewey), like this 1 is 0 + 1

  2 is 1 + 1

  3 is 2 + 1

  4 is 3 + 1

  5 is 4 + 1

  count up to a target number and then chant the facts in reverse order back down to the start

• morning pages - silent creative writing time - 5 minutes on the time timer, then we gently ring the chime when time is up
  

  I've gone to using blank journals for morning pages since that gives children a chance to illustrate their stories, plus I've gotten more into visual journaling and not just standard creative writing

  

• practice a poem for two voices "Fishes" on page 10-11 - begin to memorize poem of the week - "Hummingbird" on page 7 - discuss whether Hummingbird is a concrete poem

• beeswax modeling of a hummingbird or a deep-throated flower
• discuss choices for free time including academic board games like Colorku

• reading assessments - reading aloud - shopping for chapter books - setting reading goals - talking about appropriate follow up work (I'll be making sets of phonogram cards, as well as alphabetizing work and dictionary work tonight)
• making pancakes - a recipe which does NOT require you to keep track of the time - you look at the pancakes to see if they are ready to be flipped over - we pretended this was an ancient food from before people measured time
• main lesson story inspired by:

• follow up work including making peach muffins, practicing reading a clock (a clock with hands... and my clock happened to also have Roman Numerals), calculating elapsed time (for the older daughter)

Follow Up Ideas for Homeschool / Home

I'm buying a rubber stamp blank clock face for the classroom

look on eBay or Etsy for "rubber stamp clock" - I recommend 3 1/2 or 4 inches square to make it easy for children to draw in the hands - always make sure it MATCHES the clock in your classroom perfectly or you'll just confuse the children - make sure you have a stamp pad which is the right size (and if you use the Montessori teaching clock you'll also need blue and black colored pencils)

so that children can make little books of clock faces and draw in the hands to practice time by the hour, half hour, quarter hour, or

so that you ask children to look at the classroom clock and stamp the clock and draw in the hands and write the current time, or

so that you can stamp clocks and draw in the hands and the children can write below them what time they show, or

so that you can stamp clocks and NOT draw in the hands, but write the time below the blank clock face digitally, and they can draw in the hands to match

Montessori Nomenclature - Months of the Year and Days of the Week for follow up History work

excellent Montessori resources for reading a clock are the Hello Wood Montessori Teaching Clock and The Clock Exercise by Nienhuis

Elapsed Time Task Cards - free PDF at Teachers Pay Teachers, if you want more of a worksheet approach

reading stories at home such as How to Tell Time: A Little Golden Activity Book (with Tommy Too-Late) -- thanks for this suggestion from a parent! -- or the classic


The Phantom Tollbooth