Seasons corner is a wonderful thing to support child’s interest in learning about year changes. It can be small and take a little space on your window, drawer or shelf. It can be bigger and have a whole shelf with different materials related to learning about seasons.
There should be several items connected with seasons in general, that will help a child to see the whole picture. Other items should be about the current season. You can change them and add something new like you do with all other shelves in your learning environment. Don’t change all the items at once when one season comes to an end. Change them slowly one by one as it happens in nature. Autumn nature corner is a perfect resource for the child to learn about autumn in Montessori environment.
- hang the seasons timeline or some beautiful prints related to current season near it. You can hang beautiful paintings of well-known artists. This way the child will also appreciate art. Maybe you will make some cross stitching artwork related to autumn by yourself. Child will appreciate it even more. Also you can hang some photos of the child from the previous fall.
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| Mushroom prints |
- put some fall nature gifts on the shelf, such as acorns, pine cones, pumpkin and its seeds, nuts, leaves, sunflower and its seeds, chestnuts, wheat and other. Child will touch them and enrich his sensorial experience. Also these items will cause some future talks related to them. Don’t put all the items on the shelf at once. Put several of them and then when child have explored them enough put something away and change it for something new.
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| Invitation to Explore: Nature in the Fall |
- You can make different activities using variety of objects for learning about autumn. It is just up to your fantasy. I usually can invent some works when I visit different stores. Sometimes some fancy crockery can help to make some work special. Other times I like to include special objects for manipulation that will make a work interesting for the child. Also I am collecting different small and tiny objects and miniatures that I use then for language works. These are just random objects that I use in future for specific topics. As an idea or inspiration look at these cute little clay mushrooms. They can be used for objects matching or learning mushrooms names. What autumn little objects do you use?
- autumn is the season of the crop. You can put a basket with different fruits and vegetables on your seasons shelf. You can exhibit apples, pears, pumpkins, corn, mushrooms, persimmon, pomegranate and other. Child can touch and taste them. This way you can also learn about what is growing in your area. Also a lot of berries ripen in the fall. Put several small plates with different berries. A child can sort them and then taste them.
- make a diorama of the autumn forest with paper animals, animal figures or forest view. A child can discover and play with it. Children love dioramas! It can be easily DIYed. You can cut some carton box and use some printed animals. Kids will love to participate in this project.
- put some educational cards and printables for learning about fall seasons.
This year I have created new series of cards for autumn exploration.
– Autumn language vocabulary cards. They can be used for learning about changes in nature in autumn, learning about its signs, creating stories and describing pictures. Also, you can use them as a matching activity.
– Autumn gifts Montessori 3-part cards. These wonderful cards will show children wonderful gifts of this season. The material includes such gifts as acorn, apple, chestnut, fig, fir cone, persimmon, mushroom, corn, walnut, pear, pomegranate, pumpkin, sunflower seeds, wheat. It would be wonderful to use the cards then for matching to real items.
– for learning about names of the trees
It contains such 14 trees, such as ash, beech, cherry, birch, elm, oak, chestnut, linden, aspen, rowan, maple, poplar, mulberry, willow.
– Apple and pumpkin language sequence cards. Autumn gifts can inspire a child to learn more about their life cycle. This activity is for language development. It shows different stages of plant development. A child should place the cards in the right order from seed to fruit or vegetable.
- put there some cards connected to seasons in general to see what season goes before and after.
I am a Montessori preschool trained teacher here in New Zealand. I love the resources you have available .
I have not worked in a Montessori preschool for 15 years and I am almost 70 years old.
I believe the Montessori method is the best form of Education for any child, I myself learnt such a lot through the method.
I wished I had been able to own my own Bilingual Montessori preschool, but I do have very fond memories working there. A lot of the students that went through Montessori in my time are doing extremely well. A fantastic education system that I would recommend to any parent.