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MONTESSORI SHAPE WORK

Page history last edited by RichiesPicks 10 years, 7 months ago

10 August 2013 MONTESSORI: SHAPE WORK (board book) by Bobby George, June George, and Alyssa Nassner, ill., Abrams Appleseed, August 2013, 18p., ISBN: 978-1-4197-0935-7

 

"All my life's a circle, sunrise and sundown,

Moon rolls through the nighttime 'till the daybreak comes around"

-- Harry Chapin

 

"The beams and the bridges cut the light on the ground

Into little triangles and the rails run round"

-- Suzanne Vega

 

"You're so square, Baby I don't care"

-- Leiber and Stoller

 

In my younger years, while studying child development and learning about the Montessori approach, I found a lot to like about it and to employ in my work of educating little kids.  Multi-age groupings; setting up centers to permit child choice and free movement; extended blocks of work time; hands-on learning by working with materials; and engaging in purposeful activities, these all did and still do strike a chord with me. 

 

And so this Montessori philosophy-inspired board book that visually and tactually introduces young children to three different types of triangles (isosceles, equilateral, right-angled); to three different types of rounds (circle, ellipse, oval; to three different types of parallelograms (square, rectangle, rhombus); and to three different types of polygons (pentagon, hexagon, octagon) is a book that I am excited to now have in my toolbox for sharing when my new grandson gets a little bit older.

 

For each of these shapes, there are both die-cuts to feel and real world examples to recognize.  For instance, you have a painting of a sailboat with right-angled triangles; a framed mirror in the shape of an ellipse; a soccer ball covered with pentagons; and a tractor trailer in profile, showing us a rectangle. 

 

And this, of course, is what we want young children doing -- going out into their environment and observing the shapes of road signs and architectural componentsand designs on sweaters.  Real-world geometry.  Great stuff!

 

"Shine on you crazy rhombus"

--Pink Floyd

 

Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
Moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_school_lit/

http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/people/faculty/partingtonr/partingtonr.php

 

 

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