Land and Water Forms

We have been using the curriculum from Montessori House to guide Atticus's Primary education (preschool-kindergarten). We also used the Toddler curriculum to get him prepared and help me have some ideas of what to do with him at that age. I highly recommend them. This day we did our first official geography lesson: Land and Water Forms. (He has been casually learning states.) If you want the details on how to conduct the lesson, I really recommend getting the curriculum. I think they may have an option for purchasing individual or bundled lessons in a subscription if you are not prepared to invest in a full year yet. What I want to show in this post is the practical assembly side of it and also show how nicely they turned out. :)

You can actually buy the demonstration trays already made, but I think that really skips an important visual learning step. The curriculum suggests making your own using modeling clay, and that's what we did. It was a nightmare trying to track down trays to use, so I'm partly sharing this just to save you the hassle. Walmart. After making my brain numb looking at craft stores and online, I found these trays in the physical store at Walmart. And while they aren't separate trays, you will see that for this first lesson they work perfectly. They are a nice size, nice shape, and best of all they were inexpensive. The clay is modeling clay. I'm sure there are crafty people out there making their own. I bought ours from Michaels.

You will need two sets of trays. We used about four "bars" per tray. (In the picture, each chunk is actually two bars.) Only fill one set of trays with clay. Use enough to make sure you get a decent amount of depth.

To make it pliable cut it into chunks and then work at it with your hands, combining the chunks into one large piece as you go until you've gotten all the pieces for a single tray worked together and pliable.

Don't expect a lot of help from your toddler. This was fun for maybe five minutes. Instead, I listened to a lecture I downloaded from iTunes U while I worked the clay and Atticus took a nap. It took an afternoon, so plan accordingly.

I would recommend very lightly greasing just the bottom of the trays you are filling with butter or oil. This will allow the clay to peel out easily for the demonstration. I didn't do this, but I regret it. Don't, however, grease the empty trays. Press the clay in to evenly fill each tray in one set. Leave the other set empty.

That little glass carafe I got at Target. It is a nice little size for little hands and pours very nicely.

Cut out the different forms using a butter knife and place them opposite each other in the empty tray. Pour some blue colored water in the appropriate areas and explain the name and features of the form in relation to the land or water around it. (Detailed instructions are in the curriculum.)

For these we did Lake/Island, Bay/Penninsula, and Straight/Isthmus. You'll note that I made a point to keep the top set defined by surrounding land verses the bottom set which is defined by surrounding water. Also they are arranged to clearly show that each pair is a pair of opposites. So really, the connected trays is, I think, an asset in helping your child organize these new concepts in his or her mind.

Atticus helped pour the water into the second two pairs and then he contributed his own touch to the lesson: machinery and vehicles.

We did a bit of quizzing. So far he is quite good at pointing out the proper form when I name it, but less adept at naming them himself. Ironically, "isthmus" is not his most challenging form to remember. It is more a tie between "bay" and "straight."

And yes, apologies to Dr. Montessori, but Atticus does frequently do his work in his underwear.

 

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