Fall Mystery Bag Items

The mystery bag is one of my favorite works in the classroom and it also seems to be one that can be forgotten about as the year goes on.  To keep it inviting, I try and switch out the items each month or so and relate it to the current unit study or holiday.  These are the items that were in it for November.  It was used often!

Tooth Tonging (or pulling?)

The classic ice cube tray has so many uses in the Montessori classroom!  The plastic teeth fit just right in each compartment and the tongs are the perfect size.  The fact that the teeth open with be extra inviting!

Tooth Brushing

This is another tooth work!  I glued more of the plastic teeth from Oriental Trading on to a baby food jar.  I used extra sticky glue (not sure what kind) to be sure they didn't come off.  Baking soda is in the dish and they'll get just a little water in the extra cup.  The toothbrush is just the right size.

Teeth Flossing

For our human body unit we are going to spend a couple of days on teeth! My director came up with this idea when I was looking for some kind of original care of self activity when I was switching out our practical life shelves! I have a ton of these plastic teeth (they are from oriental trading and they are meant to hold a tooth and it's on a necklace string)  You buy them in huge packs for very cheap!  We had some balsa wood lying around from some wood sanding we did last year and I just hot glued the teeth on.

  We just used green ribbon for the floss!  Some of the teeth are easier to get in-between with the floss and some are harder!  Just like the real thing :)

X-Ray Art Work

While studying the human body I lucked out at my son's school's book fair and came across this book!  It talks all about x-rays, shows great pictures of inside both people's and animal's bodies, and it's written by kids!  I read this at circle and then showed the x-ray art work to follow!

 I first drew the bone lines on black cardstock (cardstock will hold the pasta better).  

I had the noodles all separated out on the tray for easy access and control of error.

They were able to do this on their own with the lines drawn in!  They looked great!

X-ray Picture

We've just started studying our human body unit last week and with all the talk of skeletons around Halloween I thought we'd start with just that!  We read a few books about skeletons on days prior, talked a bit about the details of bones, the fact that we are vertebrates, and if we didn't have them we'd be so floppy!
This activity was presented on the 3rd day of our human body unit and we'll leave it up for the next 6 weeks or so!

This was ordered from Montessori services.  It even has control of error on each picture so the kids can figure it out!  We layed them all out at circle, reviews our 'Dem Bones' song and started with the skull!  If someone thought they knew where it was they'd raise their hand and find it!  I walked over to the door with them to help them hang it up.  

Sound of the Week

At the school I'm at we do 'Sound of the Week' each Tuesday.

There are multiple activities for each letter that the school has collected over the years and I try and add to that collection when I can!  The foundation for each letter every week that we have are the sound drawer, the sandpaper letter, the ASL card for the letter, and an initial sound booklet.  We also have an animal alphabet book as well as a clever rhyming book (Ants on an Apple) that we use at circle.  

We also put out a simple art project (in this picture there's both a stamping and a pin pushing of items that start with 's') , as well as a handwriting activity for the older children.

Pumpkin Painting

This is a very simple art project that's great for October!  On the tray is pre-cut circles, red and yellow paint tablets (my favorite kind of paint!) green stems and a black crayon.

They first glue on the stem and draw a face on the circle with the black crayon then paint with the yellow and red to make orange!

This one was done by one of our five year olds in our classroom!  

We had done some group presentations of color mixing activities (things that are on the science shelf) a few weeks before this so it went along perfectly with the sequence!

Weather Tracking

This activity was inspired by my friend Tiffany :)

Each day at our end of the day circle we track the weather.  Weather is one of the duties on our job chart.

Here are our jars

 We color code the type of weather.  Yellow for sun, white for clouds, blue for rain, and clear for those magical snowy days!

On the first day of the new season we tally them up!

 Our Weather person gets to write down the numbers and we hang this in the classroom for the year adding more seasons to it as we go!  

This is a picture of part of our job chart.  My director came up with this version of the job chart and I love it!  It's a magnetic dry erase board with everyone's name on a magnetic tag.  It just rotates around in a circle each week.